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The National Arts Centre Orchestra and Joshua Hopkins bring Jake Heggie and Margaret Atwood’s Songs for Murdered Sisters to Roy Thomson Hall, intriguingly partnered with two works from the high Romantic.

Matthew Aucoin’s Eurydice enjoys its world premiere at LA Opera. 

New York City's Metropolitan Opera restages its shorter, family-friendly version of Mozart's The Magic Flute with great music and delightful visuals.

A wonderfully realized production at San Francisco Opera of Jake Heggie's operatic version of a holiday classic. 

Bartlett Sher's production of Gounod's Romeo et Juliette returns to the Met. 

Synergies between singers compensated for accurate but unexciting orchestral playing.

François de Carpentries' Oslo production of The Barber of Seville was both unfunny and underwhelming. 

Mohammed Fairouz’s second opera, The New Prince, premiered in Amsterdam, is directed by Lotte de Beer as a colourful, dizzyingly fast-paced  revue.

With the many glories of the score and the easy butts of class and marital comedy, it is hard not to be pleased by a Figaro performance, although tonight’s did not sparkle as much as it might have. 

Maestro Leo Hussain’s translucent rendition of the score made Capriccio the crowning glory of the Santa Fe Opera Season.  

If the production is full of pleasures, they do not immediately or obviously connect to a sense of some larger plan, which might have been helped along with a more dynamic set.

This production proves that even Mozart’s best-laid plans can be undone.

As part of the season of Scrooges and Santas, it’s a refreshing reminder of sweet simplicity in a complicated world.  

Mozart himself might have pulled a few weeds from this early opera. Lovely voices and sprightly playing can't overcome an overgrown plot in Santa Fe. 

David Pountney's production of Mieczysław Weinberg's opera The Passenger travels to Chicago. 

Chalk and talk is dead. Teachers scramble to bring history to life in classrooms up and down the country through dressing-up days and interactive whiteboard activities. Few, however, can equal Robert Carsen’s efforts in his riotous production of Handel’s Rinaldo, here on its first Glyndebourne revival since its 2011 première.

Read our review of Franco Zeffirelli's production of Puccini's Turandot in its 2009 broadcast from the Met Opera in New York.

The Canadian Opera Company provides a traditional production (that’s a complement) of Puccini’s La bohème at Toronto’s Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts. Its strengths are a well-sung Mimì (Grazia Doronzio) and Marcello (Joshua Hopkins), and fine directing by John Caird. The set design is very good except for the first act and the orchestral playing is sound.

It was with great curiosity that I set off for the Barbican on Saturday night. I’ve never been to see an opera in the cinema before – I don’t think I’ve even sat through a pre-recorded film of an opera for many years, as I am a great fan of the “real thing”: opera performed live on stage.

Read our review of David McVicar's production of Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda in its 2013 broadcast from the Met Opera in New York.

Robert Spano conducted the Orchestra of St. Luke's and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chamber Chorus in an ambitious concert in Stern Auditorium at Carnegie Hall. The results were as mixed as the programming, which featured J.S. Bach's Brandenburg Concerto no. 3 and Magnificat, alongside Messiaen's Trois petites liturgies de la Présence Divine.

Glyndebourne has a great track record with staging Handel’s works. In recent years, there have been great productions of Theodora, Rodelinda and Giulio Cesare, all of which have proved equally popular at subsequent revival and Glyndebourne on Tour (GTO) productions as well.

En ouverture de saison, la production mise en scène par David Marton et dirigée par Nathalie Stutzmann est un succès, porté par une belle distribution.