Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Eve Gigliotti

Nadine Sierra's thrilling Violetta deserves better than Michael Mayer's superficial production revived at the Metropolitan Opera.

Brett Dean’s Hamlet at the Met is a worthy addition to the operatic canon, and the production is a treat. 

“Leave your hoop skirts and swords at home,” the audience was advised, in order to avoid overcrowding when Handel’s Messiah premiered in Dublin in 1742.

The world première of Breaking the Waves was a qualified success, with a powerful drama performed with commitment by strong cast and musicians.

Zambello's Die Walküre engages and excites in this promising Ring cycle. 

The plight of women trapped in plural marriage—one husband with multiple wives—glowed like a firebrand on the Perelman Theater stage on Sunday. Opera Company of Philadelphia’s Dark Sisters, in co-production with Gotham Chamber Opera and the Music-Theatre Group, is OCP’s final offering of the 2011-12 season.

The barely legal lives of women in polygamous marriages may seem like fertile ground for an opera. Dark Sisters, composed by Nico Muhly with a libretto by Stephen Karam, has many attractive moments in music and story, yet demonstrates the difficulties of drawing art from life.

When death takes away everyone you ever loved, acting cool and staying amiable might not be the easiest things to do. You start having thoughts you never dared think before. You start questioning the unquestionable. Chances are you will turn into an agnostic. Giuseppe Verdi did.