Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Anna Prohaska

Anna Prohaska reigns supreme in programme of Cleopatra and Dido-inspired Baroque arias in her late night Prom.

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. 

Berliner Philharmoniker’s interpretation of Das Paradies und die Peri reaches for the heavens. 

Two rarely performed works are showcased by the Staatskapelle under Daniel Barenboim.

The Staatsoper's new L'incoronazione di Poppea is serious, intelligent but short on fire.

At the Theater an der Wien, director Mariame Clément and novelist Lucy Wadham have crafted innovative material that brings the old-fashioned lyrics to life in a coherent and contemporary dramatic setting.

Concerto Köln, honed to perfection, and an accomplished cast star in Claus Guth's tense, dark staging of Handel's Jephtha. 

Themed around legendary African queens Dido and Cleopatra, Prohaska’s recital with the virtuosi of Il Giardino Armonico could serve as a template for the ideal Baroque programme.

A nameless octet competes with the big names and easily wins the silver medal in Salzburg.

Any production of Le nozze di Figaro in which both Marcellina and Barbarina give star performances is ensemble casting at its finest.

Director Michael Thalheimer staging Weber’s Der Freischütz entirely in the Wolf’s Glen, albeit relocated from a “fearsome forest gorge” to what looks like a badger’s sett. 

The 67th Aix Festival got off to a hot, heady start with Katie Mitchell's witty and ingenious staging of Handel's 1735 sorcery opera Alcina. 

In a thoroughly riveting recital at the Concertgebouw, soprano Anna Prohaska probes Ophelia’s psyche through songs from the nineteenth century onwards.

Zabou Breitman brings silver screen glamour to Paris Opera's production of Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail, with the show stolen by Anna Prohaska's Blonde.

With speculation rife as to whether Sir Simon Rattle will become principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra upon departing from the Berlin Philharmonic, this electrifying concert provided a tantalising glimpse of what the future might have in store. 

Robert Carsen’s production is an exercise in extreme minimalism. Dialogues des Carmélites is a great opera, and this production touches greatness without quite grasping it in both hands. 

My mother always told me not to sit too close in the theatre, and after seeing this revival of Martin Kusej’s modern realization of Stravinksy’s The Rake’s Progress at the Theater an der Wien, I think I know what she was talking about.Act I begins innocuously enough in a sparse apartment, unfurnished apart from a mattress and a television.

The Theater an der Wien has a storied history with Fidelio, having hosted the première of the work’s first and second versions in 1805 and 1806 respectively.

There are some musical compositions that have always been a bit of a gamble, for composers, performers and even listeners. They might be exceptionally difficult, require extraordinary forces, or show such originality as to be perpetually startling.

Friedrich Nietzsche’s life was not that of an isolated contemplative but rather full of personal frustration, eventually ending in syphilitic madness. While his work has been often linked with music--most notably in his relationship with Wagner and Richard Strauss’s tone poem based on Also sprach Zarathustra--making his life into an opera may seem a dubious proposition.

Regisseur Claus Guth und Laurence Cummings am Pult formen Händels Saul zu einem berührenden Gesamtkunstwerk.

Mit Faurés Requiem und Saint-Saens Orgelsymphonie bilden zwei spätromantische Werke das Programm des Chorkonzertes der Salzburgerfestspiele, in dem besonders der Chors des BR beeindruckt.

Das Theater an der Wien feiert sein 10-jähriges Bestehen mit einer von Nikloaus Harnoncourt eingerichteten Fassung der Leonore von 1806. 

Mit einer topbesetzten Fledermaus feierte Kirill Petrenko den Auftakt eines vielversprechenden Opernjahrs 2016.