Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Aleksandrs Antoņenko

Mascagni's stirring music and gripping storyline cast their spell over a festival audience at the edge of the Baltic Sea.

A celebration of young Latvian musicians and established Latvian artists performing a huge variety of works from Vivaldi to Stevie Wonder: how about that for something completely different?

During the “Salce” and “Ave Maria” in Act Four Bezsmertna turned this to magical effect, thinning out and floating her shimmering soprano into gossamer threads.

Herheim places the composer at the centre of his opera in a staging that's clever and erudite but somewhat cold; musical performances are mixed.

Netrebko met the audience’s high expectations, as she does every time, conquering the challenges with her remarkable artistry. 

The Met Opera's concert performance of Verdi's Requiem was an emotional tribute to Dmitri Hvorostovsky. 

The Met succeeded in casting two strong singers for the difficult lead roles of Puccini's final opera. 

An icy female ruler, three chaotic cabinet ministers, questionable hand-holding - it could only be Puccini's last opera in a revivial of Serban's gorgeous 1984 production.

Kent's staging brings out the sleaze in Puccini's first big hit; Sondra Radvanovsky thrills in the title role; the musical performance improves through the evening.

Little mark of Shakespeare's drama or Verdi's passion behind Bartlett Sher's exsanguinated, highly-stylized Otello for The Metropolitan Opera.

A gripping double bill of  “Cav &Pag” from Italian director Damiano Michieletto at Covent Garden includes a few surprise guest appearances. 

Bartlett Sher’s new production of Verdi's Otello opens the Metropolitan Opera's season in a staging dominated by multimedia sets.

Director Tatjana Gürbaca’s production of Aida in Zurich strictly underscores the psyche and emotional parrying of the principals.

Riccardo Chailly kicks off his interim role as Principal Director at La Scala with Turandot, featuring Luciano Berio's ending, a score he knows like the back of his hand. 

The Met's revival of Carmen, with its rotating set, has a successful opening night with a strong cast, an insightful conductor, a superb orchestra and chorus, all working well as a team.

When the Met estimated the timing for Norma, Bellini’s familiar bel canto opera included in their fall repertory this year, they did not factor in the ongoing applause for soprano Sondra Radvanovsky.

Giuseppe Verdi and Arrigo Boito's Otello is renowned as one of the few truly successful Shakespearean operas, and while it's mostly a masterpiece on its own terms rather than Shakespeare's – countless scenes and characters are cut, and the very Verdian drinking song goes on far longer than you'd probably expect – there remains a hint of the brilliance of characterisation with which Shakespeare's p

Murder. Suicide. Grand larceny. Puccini's triptych of short operas, two tragedies followed by a riotous farce, always makes for an evening of variety, with the potential for many snatches of greatness.

Otello, Verdi’s penultimate opera, is a tightly-wound setting of Shakespeare’s familiar tragedy. From the opening storm to the title character dying upon a kiss, it is more fragmentary and emotionally cool than his earlier work, an opera that tends to be more admired than loved.

  Read our review of Stephen Wadsworth's production of Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov in its 2010 broadcast from the Met Opera in New York.  

Selbst bei kurzfristigen Absagen weiß es die Staatsoper einen „gewöhnlichen“ Repertoireabend zum Glänzen zu bringen.

En faisant le choix d’une modernité parfois triviale et brutale, cette nouvelle production déçoit quelque peu malgré la grande qualité du plateau vocal et musical.

Loin de toute la monumentalité qui a pu rendre indigestes les belles mélopées et accents verdiens, souvent cantonnées aux grandes pompes et à un logos lourdement orientaliste, cet opéra à l’écriture pourtant raffinée, et à la profondeur mésestimée, méritait une telle relecture.

Jürgen Roses Regiekonzept für die Bayerische Staatsoper polarisierte bereits bei der Premiere vor zehn Jahren, doch eine bemerkenswerte Norma lässt alles andere vergessen.

Dans le cadre des Nuits de l'Orangerie, Anna Netrebko avait concocté le 4 juillet un programme d'opéra italien quasi en famille, à destination de ses nombreux fans : ceux-ci n'ont pas été déçus.