Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Katharine Goeldner

Lise Davidsen's thoughtful role debut at the Marschallin rescues a production that is often at odds with the story it seeks to tell.

The Met revives Robert Carsen's updated production of Der Rosenkavalier with a strong cast led by Camilla Nylund.  Sir Simon Rattle led the Met Orchestra in an inspired and detailed reading of the score.

A terrific cast, led by soprano Celine Byrne and conducted by Patrik Ringborg deliver a compelling and thrilling performance of Korngold's Die tote Stadt.

Highly idiomatic and effective singing by Greer Grimsley, Denyce Graves and other cast members, coupled with inventive stagecraft wizardry, make the Minnesota Opera's first-ever Rheingold a memorable production.

The singing is the main attraction in Dutch National Opera’s Le nozze di Figaro, but this new production is also entertaining and looks good enough to eat.

What makes this Figaro memorable and admirable is the way it manages both to be sprightly in its tone and details and also luxuriant in places that another director might have blown through.

Bard SummerScape made musical history by presenting the first full staging of British composer Ethel Smyth’s opera The Wreckers. Born in 1858 and dying in 1944, Smyth was celebrated in her day (John Singer Sargent painted her portrait in 1901) not only for her compositions, but for being an openly bisexual member of the suffrage movement.

This double bill by The Royal Ballet made for a splendid mix of musical and choreographic magic – Mendelssohn and Ashton, Mahler and MacMillan.

Everybody’s favorite bad girl in the world of opera is back again for a spectacular romp of delights, mischief, seduction, and tragic culmination in the Lyric Opera of Chicago’s 2010 revival of its 1999 production of Bizet’s Carmen.

Au Théâtre du Capitole de Toulouse, la ténébreuse Ville morte de Korngold est allégée par la mise en scène de Philipp Himmelmann. Direction musicale souple et plateau vocal équilibré complètent la production.