Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Javier Camarena

Top drawer singing and comic acting bring out the comedy in Laurent Pelly's light-hearted production

The second performance of the Met's Pearl Fishers saw one of the leads withdraw mid-performance again. A welcome performance by young baritone Alexander Birch Elliott could not rescue the evening. 

I puritani returns to Barcelona’s Liceu with Annilese Miskimmon’s production. Javier Camerena and Pretty Yende lead the inauguration of the season with a fine example of romantic bel canto.

Javier Camarena’s debut as Edgardo contributed to a triumphal night at the Teatro Real together with Lisette Oropesa’s charismatic Lucia and David Alden’s powerful staging.

Despite a great cast, the Metropolitan Opera's revival of Semiramide bores with tacky costumes and no direction.

Jamie Barton stole the show in a lacklustre concert performance in Madrid.

The casting was something special. Each of the principals was fun to watch, magnificent to listen to, believable in every gesture, look and touch. 

As it turned out, the second performance of the Met’s revival of I puritani was the one to see – it offered some of this season’s greatest singing – and a surprise.

For the latest revival of Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier's candy-striped production, the Royal Opera serves up the operatic equivalent of stodgy semolina.

Javier Camarena gave a thrilling performance in the penultimate Rosenblatt Recital.

Led by phenomenal performances by tenor Javier Camarena and his superb colleagues, Met's Don Pasquale was a joyous occasion to celebrate Donizetti's late Opera Buffa.

In Donizetti’s most popular comic opera, the great mix of slapstick buffa and an obtuse venue make up the stuffs of what audiences continue to love. 

Theatre director Christoph Marthaler is renowned – if notorious – for his “off the wall” productions and adherence to bad boy antics. This Viaggio was no exception.

In a very silly production of Rossini's La Cenerentola at the Staatsoper, the cast takes a while to warm up, but are irresistably charming in full form.

Donizetti's La Fille du régiment brings much needed joy to the Teatro Real, with Javier Camarena's astonishing voice and Aleksandra Kurzak's unapologetic tomboy mesmerising the audience.

The cast performs on flying, technicolor sofas in this colorful rendition of Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail. In an unusual revision of the text, we are guided through the opera by a narrator and backdrop artist.

Not the typical Cinderella fairytale: Cecilia Bartoli brings Cenerentola to a present day Whitsuntide by cleaning the tables of a diner.

The Met’s playful production of Rossini’s great, loveable and busy La Cenerentola is back and in excellent hands. Joyce DiDonato's Cinderella, singing the role at the Met for the first time is perfect.

This year’s revival of Mary Zimmerman’s La Sonnambula at the Met requires too much suspension of disbelief to seriously work, but it provides a fun and vibrant take on Bellini’s bel canto opera all the same. In the title role, Diana Damrau knocked it out of the park. 

The final production of the San Francisco Opera’s fall season was a new staging of Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia, advertised everywhere as The Barber of Seville.

“Of all my works, the one that pleases me most is the Casa I’ve had built in Milan to accommodate old singers who have not been favoured by fortune or who did not possess the virtue of thrift in their youth”. This is how Verdi described the retirement home for elderly musicians he founded at the time of the composition of this opera Falstaff.

El estreno de este Il pirata prometía ser el evento vocal de la temporada y, tan solo en cierta medida, ha colmado las esperanzas de disfrutar de otra noche para la historia.

El escenógrafo veneciano plantea el trasvase de la trama a un contexto contemporáneo, la playa masificada de nuestros días, pero olvida en su ejercicio de adaptación lo más fundamental: preservar un adecuado equilibrio entre las afectadas aspiraciones de los protagonistas y el desengaño hilarante en el que éstos se ven constantemente envueltos.

El Teatro Real renueva la producción de Damiano Michieletto de L'elisir d'amore y apuesta por el dinamismo con cantantes versátiles como actores.

I Puritani ouvrent la saison de l'Opéra Bastille. Si la mise en scène de Laurent Pelly déçoit, les chanteurs se distinguent, Elsa Dreisig et Javier Camarena en tête.

L'Opéra Garnier propose la reprise de la géniale mise en scène de Damiano Michieletto, qui multiplie les trouvailles heureuses. Michele Pertusi, Christian Senn, Javier Camarena et Pretty Yende forment une distribution convaincante.

Puértolas y Camarena protagonizaron una velada que fue de alegría y bálsamo para los amantes del bel canto del Liceu de Barcelona. La fille du régiment, con un reparto compensado y de altos vuelos, hizo las delicias del público que tenía ganas de una de las obras de Donizetti que más momentos estelares ha dado en los últimos años en el coliseo barcelonés.

Rigoletto vuelve al Gran Teatre del Liceu ante la enorme expectativa de un reparto que comprende el debut del tenor Javier Camarena como Duque de Mantua y la vuelta del malagueño Carlos Álvarez a uno de sus roles más logrados.

El tenor mexicano Javier Camarena dio una lección de belcanto ante un elenco discutible y un foso rutinario

El espectacular canto de Celso Albelo destaca en un elenco vocal sólido y una producción atractiva pero vacía de tragedia.