Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Simone Osborne

Excellent performances cannot turn a conventional production of Massenet’s Werther into a dramatic experience for the 21st century. 

Canadian Opera Company's Don Pasquale offers a stylish Italian 1960s Fellini-inspired concept that delivers  comedy but omits the pathos. 

Leaving unresolved loose ends aside and viewed from a child’s perspective, Joel Ivany’s new Hänsel und Gretel at the Canadian Opera Company it’s a fun night at the opera.

Vancouver Opera's opening production of the 2015-16 season features an ideal cast let down by stale production

Academy Award-winning actor Marion Cotillard's portrayal of Honegger's Joan of Arc was curious, exultant, yet unflinching. 

The Canadian Opera Company’s update of A Masked Ball to the 1960s, Kennedy-era Boston, while problematic, is actually based on Verdi’s experience of staging his first production a hundred years earlier. Verdi’s score flows right into the heart, and Adrianne Pieczonka is irresistible.

Even Emperor Josef II would have thought this was a bad idea. The real-life monarch depicted in Peter Shaffer’s fictional play Amadeus quite memorably forbade ballet in his court operas. But the absurdity of the dancers carrying on with no music playing in Mozart’s Act III convinced the Emperor that he was in the wrong.

Can you set Verdi’s Rigoletto in a high-rise apartment building, in modern dress, without popping any of your credulity strings? Probably not, but that is what Opera Hamilton has done in its latest production, directed by Michael Cavanagh.

Das Opernhaus des Jahres präsentiert zwei Werke des Barockkomponisten Pergolesi.

La très attendue mise en scène de La flûte enchantée de Mozart au Festival d'opéra de Québec a valu un triomphe au metteur en scène Robert Lepage, qui a procédé à un véritable dépoussièrage de l'œuvre. 

Pour cette œuvre si particulière, la salle de la Halle aux Grains était poussée dans ses retranchements physiques, ouvrant l’arrière-scène, son balcon, et la fosse à orchestre afin d’accueillir presque deux cents musiciens.