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Carsen's scaled-down Ring makes a timely comeback with a melancholy message of decay.

Both the technical effects and the singing impress in San Francisco Opera's dark Siegfried.

San Francisco Opera's Die Walküre overcame a disappointing first act, winning the audience over with excellent singing and playing and impressive stage effects.

At San Francisco Opera, conductor Donald Runnicles and a top-notch cast deliver a delicious Rheingold in Francesca Zambello's colorful production.

The 2011 Lyon production, with an excellent orchestral and vocal performance, brings an austerely moonlit version of Tristan und Isolde to Barcelona.

The Met revived Beethoven's only opera Fidelio with a strong cast and excellent chorus and orchestra, with a production that celebrates liberty and love.

The Met revived Jurgen Flimm's modern production of Salome, with Patricia Racette making a successfu last minute role debut in the title role.

Highly idiomatic and effective singing by Greer Grimsley, Denyce Graves and other cast members, coupled with inventive stagecraft wizardry, make the Minnesota Opera's first-ever Rheingold a memorable production.

Christopher Alden's risk-taking, Expressionist-tinged production of the early Wagner breakthrough is provocative in all the right ways.

Tosca’s popularity stems not only from its music, but also from the inherent truth in its drama and its in-depth portrayal of unrestrained human passions. 

In James Conlon's final performance as music director of Ravinia, he presented a magnificent Flying Dutchman with a stellar cast.

Romance and Treachery in a Grand Season Finale for the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra

Vancouver Opera's updated Sweeney Todd is an incisive and disconcerting theatrical experience, backed by a musically excellent cast

The Dallas Opera adds a light touch to a Richard Strauss' decidedly unfunny opera Salome, featuring soprano Deborah Voigt in the title role. 

“It is not his trial, it is mine, mine. It is I whom the devil awaits.” Richard Croft's Vere leads an outstanding cast in LA Opera's revival of Billy Budd.

What happens when the director develops in directions the company neither wanted or expected? For San Francisco Opera’s new Der Fliegende Holländer, this discovery led to decisive action: director Petrika Ionesco was sacked just before the opening.

Seattle Opera’s Siegfried takes place in familiar territory. Mime lives in the part of the forest where the gods roamed in Das Rheingold, and the dragon has made its lair where Hunding and Siegmund fought in Die Walküre (there’s even a bloodstain on the rock, which the Wanderer touches regretfully).

After Sunday night’s breathtaking Das Rheingold, it was difficult to imagine Die Walküre could be more beautiful or committed. Seattle Opera outdid themselves with this second installment of the Ring cycle, which featured energetic playing and singing, gorgeous stage pictures, and devastatingly believable acting from all of the singers.

Some Ring cycles are based on ideological concepts; Seattle Opera’s current Ring cycle is based on a place. That place is the Pacific Northwest of the United States, home to such extraordinary natural beauty that stage director Stephen Wadsworth has deemed it fit for the gods.

All things considered, this Met Siegfried was a mixed affair. There was much to enjoy and much to marvel at; there were times where the performance felt as if it might achieve real lift-off, but it never quite achieved the sustained momentum of Friday's Walküre.

In last night’s performance of Die Walküre at the Met, Martina Serafin as Sieglinde and Simon O’Neill as Siegmund drew us completely into the process of two people falling into illicit love.