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This abridged version of Massenet's Cendrillon was clearly chosen for a wide Sydney audience, succeeding as a popular offering in the Australian summer holiday season. 

A triumphant house debut for Nadine Sierra in the latest revival of Laurent Pelly’s production of Donizetti's joyous village rom-com. 

Laurent Pelly’s new production combines froth and hilarity with a dark, satirical heart; Marc Minkowski and the orchestra seduce us.

Laurent Pelly's Night in the Museum production of Giulio Cesare is finally staged at the New National Theatre, Tokyo, after its 2020 pandemic cancellation.

With Laurent Pelly directing, a very French evening sees a veritable feat of singing from Stéphanie d'Oustrac in La Voix humaine, followed by riotous surrealism in Les Mamelles de Tirésias.

Laurent Pelly's long-standing production of Offenbach's opéra-fantastique returns to the Deutsche Oper Berlin, under the baton of Emmanuel Villaume.

At Dutch National Opera in Amsterdam, Laurent Pelly stages Cenenrentola as a pink daydream.

Laurent Pelly’s darkly stylish production of Manon is revived with a strong cast of singers. In the title role, Lisette Oropesa demonstrated elegant and incisive singing, while Michael Fabiano was her virile and powerful partner.

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

Comedy fails to spark in Laurent Pelly's new production of Falstaff at the Teatro Real. 

Deutsche Oper Berlin staged an ambitious production by Laurence Pelly with mixed results. The performance included new discoveries and young singers brought fresh energy to the evening.

Top-notch singers and some sensitive direction almost make up for Laurent Pelly's frustrating Opera Philadelphia production. 

Laurent Pelly’s elegant musical stave production of Il barbiere di Siviglia, from the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, charms and delights at the Edinburgh International Festival.

Laurent Pelly’s staging provided some of the most memorable moments in this performance of Cendrillon. 

This was meant to be Pretty Yende's night, but it was Armenian tenor Liparit Avetisyan who stole hearts as country bumpkin Nemorino. 

Laurent Pelly exploits the satirical side of Rimsky-Korsakov's The Golden Cockerel at La Monnaie in a darkly humorous but colourfully performed production.

After an absence of nearly a quarter-century, Humperdinck's evergreen returns to Seattle Opera in a winningly staged, musically sensitive production that looks beneath the fairy-tale surface.

Four star singers shine in Pelly's glamorous production of Don Pasquale, which brings out both the lightness and the darkness of the opera.

Berlioz's Béatrice et Bénédict is light and fluffy, making it perfect summer festival fare. Sadly, like a soggy soufflé, Pelly's one-trick staging soon falls flat.

Le Roi Carrotte, simmered by Laurent Pelly in the cooking pots of the Opéra de Lyon

One has to admit that the 2015 vintage of this operatic Grand Cru, with us since 1999, is a particularly fine one. To be consumed with immoderation!

Sultry Spanish rhythms and bawdy humour are counterbalanced by Gallic charm in the return to Glyndebourne of Laurent Pelly’s productions of L’Heure espagnole and L’Enfant et les sortilèges. Danielle de Niese joined a largely Francophone cast to ensure this joyous revival fizzed.

The two leads in the brand-new cast of the Met’s three year old production of Massenet’s Manon were unbeatable. 

Laurent Pelly's production of Giulio Cesare is a play of references to antiquity, heroism and myth. However, it does not thrill. 

While still a charming production, a touch more warmth and bel canto style are yet required to bring some authentic Italian sunshine to L'elisir d'amore in Bow Street this November.

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.

L’étoile at the Dutch National Opera, directed by Laurent Pelly and conducted by Patrick Fournillier, is bubbly and light like a glass of sparkling wine, to be consumed without restraint. 

The singing is strong and the stagework slick in Laurent Pelly's rib-tickling, often uproarious production of Le Comte Ory.

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.

Every opera poses an acting challenge to its prima donna, but Massenet’s Manon, whose 2010 production by Laurent Pelly started its first revival at Covent Garden last night, is particularly harsh on the singer of its title role. Ermonela Jaho rose to the task magnificently.

Read our review of Laurent Pelly's production of Massenet's Manon in its 2012 broadcast from the Met Opera in New York.

The return of Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann to the stage of San Francisco Opera on Wednesday night was a welcome and long overdue event.

Of the seventeen operas Handel wrote to star the Italian castrato Senesino, Giulio Cesare in Egitto is the most popular, and the one performed most often. It is a dramma per musica filled with ironic hints, and based on power and sex intrigues in ancient Rome. The 38-year-old Handel wrote it in England when his imported Italian-style operas started to fall out of favour.

The Netherlands Opera’s revival production of Prokofiev’s L’amour des trois oranges is sweet, juicy, and just a bit bitter in the right moments.This production presents Prokofiev’s piece in the original French with Dutch and English supertitles. At its first performance in Chicago in 1921, Prokofiev’s opera was presented in French rather than Russian. French is a sensible choice for this region.

Robert le diable’s 1831 opening was perhaps the most successful opera première of all time. Meyerbeer was lauded by luminaries like Chopin, Dumas, Balzac and Heinrich Heine, the opera was played in 69 cities in its first two years and spawned an entire genre of French Grand Opera.

Take one hapless but lovable hero, one capricious but ultimately vulnerable heroine, a doctor and an army officer straight out of commedia dell’arte, a couple of basso buffo patter songs, at least one memorable romantic ballad, and stir the lot into a good lashing of boisterous Italian music with a sprinkling of furtive tears.

From time to time, audiences are presented with what I consider to be a rare event, a “dream” performer: one so convincing in his or her role that they become an ideal, establishing a standard to which all following interpretations will inevitably be compared – for example, Jacqueline du Pré’s interpretation of Elgar’s Cello Concerto has become a timeless benchmark.

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.

I once heard a lecture by Gérard Mortier, then head of the Paris Opera, contrasting the twin operatic traditions starting from Monteverdi's serious and affecting dramma per musica and the lavish court entertainments of Lully. A couple of centuries on, there's no need to ask the side of the fence on which Massenet's Cendrillon falls.

Natalie Dessay has been making a real signature role out of Marie, Donizetti's foundling "Daughter of the Regiment" who turns out to be of noble birth (well, partly, wherein lies the tale). We went to Covent Garden last night specially to see her, and she didn't disappoint: her performance was quite out of the ordinary.

Read our review of Laurent Pelly's production of Donizetti­'s La Fille du Régiment in its 2008 broadcast from the Met Opera in New York.

Le metteur en scène français transpose avec succès l'action dans l'Angleterre des années 1960, bien suivi par l'ensemble de la distribution, très homogène.

La reprise de cette production de 2013 laisse une impression mitigée ; si la mise en scène reste sobrement efficace, le plateau vocal ne convainc pas totalement.

La mise en scène par Laurent Pelly vient réparer un manque : le chef-d’œuvre onirique et féérique de Britten n'avait encore jamais été donné dans l’opéra de la capitale vaudoise.

Le metteur en scène signe une nouvelle production réjouissante, reprenant à bon escient les codes de la fotonovela. La distribution et la direction contribuent à faire de ce Turc en Italie un événement.

Joli succès pour cette reprise du spectacle bien connu de Laurent Pelly, grâce notamment à une distribution équilibrée (Lawrence Bownlee, Julie Fuchs, Felicity Lott, Susan Graham...).

Donnée dans une adaptation française qui la prive de sa truculence, l'opérette de Johann Strauss fils laisse une impression mitigée sur tous les plans, de la distribution à la mise en scène.

Avec un plateau vocal entièrement renouvelé et sous la direction idéale de Jacques Lacombe, la production inaugurée l'an dernier à l'Opéra-Comique remporte un franc succès.