Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Neil Armfield

Handel's Giulio Cesare is heavily abridged in Sydney, but generally well-performed musically, albeit with a rather awkward staging by Neil Armfield. 

80% less of Shakespeare's text adds up to more intensity in Brett Dean's Hamlet as Neil Armfield's staging is mounted by Opera Australia. 

Brett Dean’s Hamlet at the Met is a worthy addition to the operatic canon, and the production is a treat. 

In arguably its best production to date, theatre luminary Neil Armfield combines with Pinchgut and Erin Helyard for the first time to deliver this electrifying production of Rameau's comic masterpiece, Platée.

Neil Armfield's enchanting production of Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream finally comes to Australia as the centrepiece of the 2021 Adelaide Festival, making a virtue of necessity with its astute casting of Australian talent.

Brett Dean's Hamlet is an extremely powerful theatrical experience, excelling in all aspects of production, singing and musical values, but is it an opera?

A restless score, a stylish modern setting and gripping central performances from David Butt Philip (trading Laertes at the festival for the title role here) and Jennifer France (Ophelia) do much to commend this new work

Brett Dean treats Shakespeare's behemoth as a timeless story told in language that has become timeless; no effort is spared in elucidating and amplifying that story.

Setting the opera in the backyard of a suburban house feels refreshingly honest: the ridiculous and simplistic tale of the evil witch, the prince and the maiden is rightfully returned to the arena of children's games, and adults look on indulgently, with a wink.

The final instalment of the Melbourne Ring is vividly brought to life by excellent singing, an adaptable set, and committed playing from the pit.

A combination of ingenious sets, truly heroic singing in the title role by Stefan Vinke, and excellence throughout the rest of the cast makes the Melbourne Siegfried an unmissible highlight of the Ring so far.

On a night of technical delays and extraordinary singing, Opera Australia's revival of Die Walküre is particularly memorable for Amber Wagner's Sieglinde and Lise Lindstrom's Brünnhilde.

The revival of Neil Armfield's Melbourne Ring is relaunched with a successful Rheingold, sensitively conducted by Pietari Inkinen, with an especially fine performance from Warwick Fyfe as Alberich.

The Canadian Opera Company has judiciously chosen a real chestnut (La bohème) and a more complex if less popular work, Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes, for its fall season. The latter is given a well-sung and directed production despite some faux pas in the set design and the characterization of Grimes by tenor Ben Heppner.

Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos boasts the most confusing cast list of any opera. Ariadne and Bacchus feature either as themselves or as "primadonna" and "tenor", in addition to figures from Greek mythology, we get Commedia dell'arte names like Scaramuccio and Truffaldino, there are backstage characters like the composer, the music master and the wigmaker, and a spoken part of the Major-Domo.

Much anticipated, ten years in the making, interrupted by some fairly momentous bumpy bits at Opera Australia such as the removal of Music Director Simone Young who comissionned the work in the first place, Bliss has finally arrived. And the good news is that audiences in Sydney received it warmly: the season of just five performances sold out.

Ein Werk, das sowohl traditionell als auch innovativ, elegant und leidenschaftlich ist: Brett Deans Hamlet, dessen gewaltige Aufgaben an Szene und Musik an der Staatsoper in München überzeugend gelöst wurden.