Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | David Pountney

The use in the score of ancient musical instruments is what differentiates this work: pifferi, a lute, a “viola pomposa” give this work a distinctive flavour.

David Pountney’s 2014 staging was revived in Naples with good singing and empathetic conducting.

Stellar voices and orcheatra and some inspired staging choices elevate an otherwise heavy-handed production of Pelléas et Mélisande from the WNO at the Hong Kong Arts Festival.

When the entire plot is triggered by a freak accident, you can't blame director David Pountney for making Fate itself one of the key characters.  

David Pountney's new production of Die Walküre for the Lyric Opera of Chicago incisively charts the tectonic shift of control over the future from Wotan to Brünnhilde.

David Pountney's House of the Dead makes for high entertainment at Welsh National Opera.

Welsh National Opera’s new season commemorating the centenary of the 1917 Revolution with three Russian-themed works opens with both a bang and a whimper with this trenchant revival.

Elena Langer's gorgeous and tongue-in-cheek Figaro Gets a Divorce shines in Geneva, despite David Pountney's boxy libretto. 

That both the lead and a second key role were ill and couldn’t sing did not bode well, yet this performance of Verdi’s Un Ballo in Maschera shook up the house nonetheless.

A welcome opportunity to hear one of Tchaikovsky's less known operas in Naples.

In spite of some questionable staging, Lyric Opera of Chicago opened its Ring cycle on a strong note with a stellar cast, notably featuring Eric Owens’ role debut as Wotan.

Two parts of Puccini's triptych are directed by Michael Barker-Craven - Il tabarro and Suor Angelica - in brilliantly successful productions at Leeds Grand Theatre.

David Jones' First World War epic poem comes to musical life in Iain Bell's newly-commissioned opera. 

Elena Langer and David Pountney's new WNO opera Figaro Gets a Divorce did not disappoint. Langer's new refreshing score had flair and imagination in a memorable performance.

Rolf Wallin and Mark Ravenhill’s new opera Elysium tackles fundamental questions about humanity itself, and largely succeeds. Despite slightly uneven music and libretto, the performers shine in this sci-fi opera.

Two American premières offer very different musical and dramatic takes on Poe's short story, and both prove gripping. 

A striking staging of Rossini's Guillaume Tell at the Grand Théâtre in Geneva: well cast, beautifully sung and impeccably choreographed.

Mélisande as Lulu in David Pountney's unfulfilling production of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande at Welsh National Opera. 

The Royal Danish Opera's new production of Carl Nielsen's first opera Saul og David updates the action to the present-day Middle east and, while well-sung, comes off as overly simplistic.

David Pountney's production of Mieczysław Weinberg's opera The Passenger travels to Chicago. 

Zurich’s Opera House takes on Die Frau ohne Schatten, one of Richard Strauss’ most convoluted and technically demanding works. 

A colour-coded Mosè in Egitto uses the paintings of Marc Chagall to inspire the costumes for the Jews and the Egyptians in this production of a Rossinian rarity.

Welsh National Opera's new production of Rossini's William Tell shows off orchestra and chorus to their full under Carlo Rizzi's baton

Two worlds occupied by the same two women and presented, jarringly, as a single multi-story set. One is the pristine white deck of a 1960s ship bound for Brazil, and beneath it, where the hull might be, is the grey grim world of Auschwitz.

How does Usher House stand up? Like the house, it doesn’t. Welsh National Opera's double bill based on The Fall of the House of Usher underwhelms.

Is it possible for us to feel a shred of sympathy for Lulu, surely one of opera’s most notorious anti-heroines, even when she meets her grizzly demise at the coda of Berg’s eponymous masterwork? I think it speaks volumes about the astonishing quality of soprano Marie Arnet’s performance that my answer to this question after seeing Welsh National Opera’s new production of Lulu is a most def

The glittering white of a luxury cruise liner above, the darkened hell of the concentration camp below. Johan Engels' set for Weinberg's The Passenger, first seen at the Bregenz festival in 2010 and now at the ENO in London, is one of the most striking and effective opera sets I've ever seen, both framing the action and adding colour.

Im Janáček’schen Familien- und Beziehungschaos glänzten Dirigent Ingo Metzmacher und das Orchester der Wiener Staatsoper.