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Amy Lane’s production of Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette at the COC is eye-catching and enjoyable but doesn’t offer the same level of insight as her Faust last season. 

Pet Halmen’s 2003 production of Puccini's unfinished final opera places asks more riddles than Turandot's quiz questions to her would-be suitors. 

Rossini's Otello is rarely performed, mainly due to its three demanding tenor roles, but the Rossini Opera Festival delivers a knockout, both vocally and emotionally. 

This production brought the work into the 21st century, at least visually, with a more modernised and digitally-stylised telling than their recent attempts.

The Rossini Opera Festival stages a new production of the most famous of Rossini’s masterpieces to celebrate the composer in the 150th anniversary of his death.

Paul Curran's movie-Like Carmen for Opera Philadelphia

San Diego Opera's main stage offering proved that even a warhorse can remain thoroughly enchanting when a production looks and sounds as beautiful as this company’s Madama Butterfly.

Even us Verdi enthusiasts experience something of a heavy tread as we wend our way to yet another Traviata at the Royal Opera House.

Jonathan Miller may not be directing new productions of operas any more, but his productions are still being revived in many countries; in Tokyo’s New National Theatre, his Falstaff has just been revived.

The Metropolitan Opera’s five-year old production of Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann returned to the repertoire with a remarkable undertaking of the title role by Vittorio Grigolo.

For frothy entertainment, Pelly’s Fille is harmless fun, even if it descends into pantomime cliché. Juan Diego Flórez’s Tonio ensures it remains a hot ticket and Patrizia Ciofi’s Marie is a bundle of energy.

San Diego Opera's season opening Pagliacci focused squarely on the character of Tonio, in Andrew Sinclair's intriguing vision for this verismo classic. But the vocal performances were lacking. A director can only do so much.

Chicks dig the high notes. The enduring popularity of Donizetti’s The Daughter of the Regiment seems to indicate as much. The plot is silly (even by opera’s standards) and much of the music is not as memorable as some of Donizetti’s more popular works.

The nationality of Gaetano Donizetti's La Fille du Régiment is as confused as that of its eponymous heroine. Written by a homesick Italian expatriate for that most Parisian of venues the Opéra-Comique, it both continued Donizetti's Italian colonisation of the Paris opera scene (much bemoaned by Berlioz) and showed him adapting his style to the conventions of French theatre.

Plus donné au Théâtre Antique d'Orange depuis 1978, l'opéra de Saint-Saëns fait son retour avec un duo de rêve en Roberto Alagna et Marie-Nicole Lemieux.

La phalange mulhousienne a donné une création française de Kareem Roustom avant une brillante Symphonie espagnole par Alexandra Soumm. La Symphonie « italienne » de Mendelssohn a moins convaincu.

Noche de segundo reparto en el que la soprano Olga Kulchynska fue el eje de atención y reclamo en una producción de reality televisivo se implantó en el escenario desterrando la imagen genuina de la Ceilán de Bizet.

El Liceu vuelve a presentar Les pêcheurs de perles 55 años después con una innovadora pero arriesgada puesta en escena de Lotte de Beer.

Das Saxophonquartett Clair-Obscur und die Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie interpretieren exzellent das Rebellentum der 80er bei der Uraufführung von Enjott Schneiders Berlin Punk.

Die Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie fasziniert in der Weserstadt mit Schostakowitsch und Tschaikowsky.

Als Einleitung zum Konzert wäre diese Leistung wohl über die beiden anderen Werke vergessen gegangen. So aber wurde das Publikum mit der Erinnerung an ein kleines Glanzstück nach Hause entlassen.

En cette fin d’année, l’Opéra de Paris nous offre un spectacle réjouissant, plein de magie.