Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Jürgen Hoffmann

That both the lead and a second key role were ill and couldn’t sing did not bode well, yet this performance of Verdi’s Un Ballo in Maschera shook up the house nonetheless.

The charm of Gaetano Donizetti’s spirited two-act L’elisir d’amore lies in its mixture of sharp comedy and poignant pathos. Zurich gave us just that.

Men unfaithful out of habit? Sheer madness to trust a woman? These were the great themes of what has proven to be Mozart’s most popular opera.

In Mozart’s marvellous Così fan tutte, what begins as a harmless wager around what women left alone will do suddenly balloons into a major calamity. 

Jens-Daniel Herzog sets his new Orlando in a sanatorium where, pulled between his love for a woman and his passion for war, the protagonist is trying to recover his sanity.

Revival of a 2014 production of Rusalka in Vienna was a great success musically with a splendid cast headed by last minute replacement Camillal Nylund.

Zurich’s revival of Georges Bizet’s three-act opera Les pêcheurs de perles (The Pearl Fishers) pulls out all the stops, but it was not to everyone’s liking.