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Violetta Valéry was Armenian soprano Hrachuhí Bassénz, who made a strong impression on the audience, certainly by the end.

An exquisitely matched pair of sopranos as Susanna and the Countess make up for some quirky casting elsewhere. 

Birthday concerts are strange things. If a hall is going to celebrate your birthday, you'd want to be in the audience and have some of your favourite musicians entertain you.

Sir Bryn Terfel’s Falstaff is still a cherishable rogue as he takes on the title role in Robert Carsen’s joyous staging at the Royal Opera. 

Even stronger than first time round, Michieletto's impressive staging is complemented by an outstanding double role debut from Hymel and a heartbreaking Santuzza from Elīna Garanča.

In music of Mahler and Brahms, David Afkham, a gifted young German conductor, was not afraid to bring forward a personal view

Not much to set the heart racing in two works of German Romanticism performed by the London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, conducted by Fabio Luisi.

At La Scala, Milan a disappointing tribute to Giorgio Strehler's historic staging of The Marriage of Figaro by young English director Frederic Wake-Walker. 

Simon Keenlyside returned to the Met after absence and led a delightful cast of Don Giovanni at the Met.

“If music be the food of love, play on, give me excess of it.” There was certainly plenty of Shakespeare-inspired music on the bill for the London Philharmonic Orchestra's celebration of The Bard. 

In Vienna State Opera's new production of Rigoletto, director Pierre Audi brings us close to a Rigoletto less freakish, more identifiably everyday. 

Great singing from veterans and some visually stunning effects light up the Met's revival of Hytner's 2010 production of Verdi's Don Carlo.

A prelude that was pedestrian rather than portentous signalled Maurizio Benini’s approach to Rigoletto: Verdi as aural Ovaltine, tucked up in cosy dressing gown and slippers.

Munich revives La traviata showcasing Diana Damrau, who is growing into one of the best Violettas to grace the opera stage today.

Anna Netrebko makes a glorious role debut as Lady Macbeth in a revival of Martin Kušej's jumbled production of Verdi's first Shakespeare opera.

A great deal of the audience were in the house for La traviata last night for the chance to see Diana Damrau and Dmitri Hvorostovsky. They will not have been disappointed: these were performances of the very highest quality by two very fine singers, with Francesco Demuro all but matching them.

Simon Keenlyside and Graham Johnson's concert at the Vienna Konzerthaus featured songs by Schoenberg and his pupil Hanns Eisler, as well as Britten, Wolf, Schubert and Brahms. These consummate artists made a difficult program seem easy to perform and even easier to listen to.

Ailyn Perez, Stephen Costello and Simon Keenlyside star in Verdi's La Traviata at the Deutsche Oper Berlin.

Director Keith Warner's Royal Opera production of Berg's Wozzeck makes a truly cathartic experience that fully deserved the long ovation it received, with strong performances from Simoin Keenlyside and Karita Mattila.

Thankfully, when it comes to classical music, programmes around the theme of death tend to make highly energetic evenings. The eighth Prom of this year was no exception, as Thomas Adès led the BBC Symphony Orchestra in the world première of his new work Totentanz, but not after performances of two similarly themed works: Britten’s Sinfonia da Requiem and Lutoslawski’s Cello Concerto.

How, I wonder, is it best for an opera company to treat a revival of a well-aired, well-liked, decent but not particularly radical production of a top ten opera? This was what the Royal Opera had to contend with in this season’s revival of David McVicar’s 2003 setting of Die Zauberflöte: many in the audience will have known every note of the opera, and several will have been thoroughly familiar wi

Centered around the later, lesser-known composers of art song, tonight’s programme started with a first half of melancholy Hugo Wolf Lieder. Both Schubert and Schumann wrote settings of Goethe’s unhappy Harfenspieler, but evidently Wolf was unsatisfied, as, on principle, he avoided setting texts which he thought had been successfully treated before.

Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin is one of the most beautiful scores in the operatic repertoire, and I don’t blame people who come to it looking forward to immersing themselves in the warm bath of the familiar story and music.

It’s pretty luxurious to be able to stumble out of your front door at ten to six, wander five minutes round the corner to your friendly local cinema, be greeted with a glass of sparkling wine, and then watch a high-definition live screening of a top contemporary opera production at the Met.

Read our review of Robert Lepage's production of The Tempest in its 2012 broadcast from the Met Opera in New York.

La Traviata is such a warhorse that we often forget how many issues it raises for presenting a staging that can convince us of what is in the first analysis a quite ludicrous story, despite Verdi's veristic intentions.

The plight of the introvert, stigmatised by society despite the many benefits of their contemplative natures and inner strength, is an important part of the contemporary Zeitgeist, but it is in fact nothing new.

Although written many years before Rossini's The Barber of Seville, the story of The Marriage of Figaro is in fact the sequel to that of the later opera. This farcical masterpiece of the opera buffa style was the first of three operas Mozart worked on with the Italian librettist Lorenzo da Ponte and was a risky undertaking.

There was a definite buzz about London’s Southbank Centre on the evening of 16th February, for this was the night of the second concert in the Philharmonia Orchestra’s ‘The Still Point of the Turning World’ series, which began last month to huge critical acclaim (see my review).

A glittering high society romance. A sordid tale of a prostitute born in the gutter and dying alone and painfully. A bel canto charmer, packed with glorious tunes. A scathing attack on Victorian sexual hypocrisy. Verdi's La Traviata is all of these things: find in it what you will.Richard Eyre's production for the Royal Opera is a hardy old soldier.

Famous for his operas, Benjamin Britten had been planning something new for some time when he was invited in 1958 to compose a work to celebrate the rebuilding of the bombed Coventry Cathedral. The composer saw the resulting War Requiem as a force for unification, choosing his three soloists from the UK, USSR and Germany, the countries he believed to have suffered the most during World War Two.

Mendelssohn’s oratorio Elijah, first performed at the Birmingham Town Hall in 1847, was enormously popular in Victorian England. In this sense, the Royal Albert Hall, the grandest of Victorian buildings, is spiritually an ideal venue for this great choral masterpiece.

Ukranian soprano Liudmyla Monastyrska made a sensational Royal Opera debut earlier this season, as a late substitute for the title role of Aida. In the revival of Phyllida Lloyd's production of Verdi's Macbeth, she produced an equally commanding performance.

Read our review of Nicholas Hytner's production of Verdi­'s Don Carlo in its 2010 broadcast from the Met Opera in New York.

Read our review of Patrice Caurier and Moshe Leise's production of Ambroise Thomas­'s Hamlet in its 2010 broadcast from the Met Opera in New York.

Mit Fabio Sartori und Anja Harteros entsteht beim ersten Don Carlo der Saison ein ganz besonderer musikalischer Zauber.

Carlos Álvarez und Simon Keenlyside sind ein Duo Infernale: wer Falstaff mag, wird nicht so schnell einen besseren erleben.

Albina Shagimuratova, Pavol Breslik und Simon Keenlyside verzaubern das Publikum der Wiener Staatsoper.

Un Don Giovanni de haute volée porté par un Simon Keenlyside impérial, dans une mise en scène sombre mais d’une efficacité redoutable.

Marco Arturo Marelli hat für diese Inszenierung wie immer solide Arbeit geleistet, was Personenführung und psychologische Charakterisierung der Charaktere betrifft, doch muss einschränkend gesagt werden, dass ihm vieles schon viel besser gelungen ist. 

Ermonela Jaho bot an der Bayerischen Staatsoper in "La Traviata" einen fulminanten Ersatz für Sonya Yoncheva. Während das Ensemble mit starkem Auftritt überzeugte, hat die Inszenierung wenig zu erzählen.

C’est à un admirable récital que Simon Keenlyside et Malcolm Martineau nous convièrent dans une somptueuse errance romantique dans les terres schubertiennes. Après un Hamlet mémorable, nous espérons le revoir bientôt sur les planches genevoises afin de goûter à son sens inné de la scène et succomber de nouveau à cette voix somptueuse.