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An enterprising trio of works by Ligeti, Respighi and Schoeck leave a lasting impression of oppression, alienation and dark nights of the soul.   

Beautifully prepared singing and playing brings out the tender side to Berg's modernist classic as part of the Southbank Centre’s Multitudes festival. 

Mark-Anthony Turnage's operatic adaptation of Thomas Vinterberg's tale of abuse provides rich entertainment even as it shocks.

Fauré was the finest of French songwriters. Stéphane Degout and Véronique Gens shine in a full-length evening in a packed Wigmore Hall. 

A grand rendition of Verdi’s Don Carlos opens season at the Grand Théâtre de Genève under the inspired baton of Marc Minkowski, in his first encounter with the opera, directed by Lydia Steier. 

Joana Mallwitz makes her Royal Opera debut in the pit as Sir David McVicar returns to direct this revival of his much-loved 2006 show.

Dreisig, Degout, Jaroussky – the cream of French singing puts the history of female composers on show for International Women's Day.

A highly successful Falstaff at the Archevêché in Aix-en-Provence, for our greater pleasure: a true lesson in joy in a world where, we are told, all is but a joke.

Even outstanding soloists had to wait their turn in this Rolls-Royce performance in Aix-en-Provence.

Cecilia Bartoli leads a great cast in Gluck’s masterpiece, presented in Zurich in a new insightful production by Andreas Homoki.

Bertrand de Billy made his debut with the LPO in an all-French programme headlined by Fauré's Requiem and preceded by a rewarding pairing of Poulenc's Organ Concerto and Sept Repons des Tenebres

The Canadian director's aesthetic is a perfect fit for Gluck's work. Dazzling performances by Gaëlle Arquez and Stéphane Degout. Great musical direction by Thomas Hengelbrock.

A devilishly fun performance of Gounod's take on Goethe, saved when Mandy Fredrich flew in at short notice to take over the role of Marguerite. 

Tcherniakov reduces Berlioz' epic to little more than Circle Time therapy, a poor way to mark the composer's anniversary year.

Hamlet lives! Ambroise Thomas' operatic take on The Bard has a particularly French ending but that doesn't spoil this terrific revival in Paris. 

Despite a great cast led by Marina Rebeka, La Fura dels Baus's unambitious approach to the myth of Faust and Dan Ettinger's noisy conducting prevent a brighter season opening at the Teatro Real.

George Benjamin and Martin Crimp's second full scale opera is a refinement of the craft showed in Written on Skin – but the lessons are less in love and violince than in power, tension and beauty of the score.

A (nearly) complete performance of the original French version of Don Carlos forms the centrepiece of Daniele Rustioni's Verdi Festival in Lyon. 

If I wrote that I loved Philippe Boesmans' Pinocchio, my nose may grow a little. The 81-year old composer in collaboration with Joël Pommerat, shifts the tale far away from any cutesy Disney fantasy, returning it to the harsh reality of Carlo Collodi's original fable.

Nothing is better than when Berlioz ramps up the decibels. With a huge orchestra and choir and a deluxe starry cast assembled in Strasbourg, this was a special performance. 

Under the baton of René Jacobs, B’rock Orchestra gave an inspired performance  that ought to contribute in giving Il ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria the place it deserves in the standard repertoire.

The singing is the main attraction in Dutch National Opera’s Le nozze di Figaro, but this new production is also entertaining and looks good enough to eat.

Suave baritone Stéphane Degout was mood – and word – perfect in the brooding melancholy of Debussy. In perfect collusion with pianist Alain Planès, he was even better in droll fables by Poulenc and Ravel.

A decadent romantic programme of Wagner and Mahler, where Nathalie Stutzmann delivered a scintillating performance particularly in Wagner's Prelude.

Great opera at the Los Angeles Philharmonic as Esa-Pekka Salonen conducted Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande as part of the City of Light, a retrospective that examines works seen in Paris during the first half of the 20th century. 

Leah Hausman's revival of David McVicar's production allows the comedy to stem from the situations set up by Mozart and da Ponte... aided by Erwin Schrott's witty Figaro.

Whimsical program of French symphonic and operatic works opens the CSO's "French Reveries and Passions" festival.

“Acting is the expression of a neurotic impulse. It’s a bum’s life,” stated the late, great Marlon Brando. Felix Breisach took this idea to heart when staging his modernized Figaro in a mental institution.

Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande is on the bill at the Paris Opera. How to control one's enthusiasm for a work that is so delicate and so evocative, served up by such highly devoted artists?

With the Philharmonia on top form, a superlative cast and clever touches of direction, this was a truly stunning concert performance of Debussy's only opera.

The singing is strong and the stagework slick in Laurent Pelly's rib-tickling, often uproarious production of Le Comte Ory.

Ambroise Thomas’s Hamlet has riled and infuriated ever since its 1868 première, though for many it is merely an object of derision: one 1869 correspondent to the satirical magazine Punch admits not having seen the work but nevertheless disparages it as ‘Omelette’, a musical ‘burlesque’, and pillories Thomas’s fondness for drinking songs with the lines ‘To drink or not to drink? That is now the que

“Once Upon a Time…” No doubt, this has become one of the most familiar lines of childhood. Indeed, what childhood would be complete without fairy tales and fantastical stories of knights, princesses, dragons, and talking animals? Even into adulthood, fantasy and fairy tales continue to capture the imagination of many.

Read our review of Bartlett Sher's production of Rossini's Le Comte Ory in its 2011 broadcast from the Met Opera in New York.

When Franz Liszt conducted Le Comte Ory in Weimar, he said it “bubbled like champagne,” according to the Metropolitan Opera’s program note. It also noted that Liszt arranged for the audience to be served champagne in Act II.

Some in the audience stormed to their feet at curtain call with exuberant bravos for the cast and conductor. Others walked out at the first intermission. “A monumental success,” one claimed. “The worst opera I’ve ever seen,” another said leaving the theater.

Gounod's Roméo et Juliette isn't exactly a rarity, but it is no longer one of the stalwarts of the opera repertoire, a position which it certainly occupied during the Victorian era (there were 102 performances at the Théâtre-Lyrique in Paris in the first year of its life, followed by 291 performances at the Opéra-Comique in the next twenty).

Un an après une saisissante Passion selon saint Jean, Raphaël Pichon et ses troupes récidivent avec la saint Matthieu, dans une lecture plus introspective, plus analytique, plus distanciée – mais pas moins accomplie.

Raphaël Pichon al frente del Ensemble Pygmalion ofreció una versión profunda, cálida y detallista de la magnífica obra de Johann Sebastian Bach.

Sowohl in elementarer Organik als auch in extremen Kontrasten packend, verpasst Pichon in geübter, plastisch-drastischer Art und bewährter Partnerschaft mit Bariton Degout Brahms ein neues, ebenfalls preiswürdiges Gesicht.

La mise en scène de Michael Thalheimer, la direction musicale de Mark Elder, le décor, les lumières, la distribution : tout concourt ici à produire une soirée prodigieuse.

Le chef et les musiciens ont proposé des interprétations exceptionnelles dans un programme pourtant riche en tubes (Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune, Bolero...).

Pour le Requiem de Fauré, Raphaël Pichon a réuni la même dream team que pour le Requiem allemand de Brahms quelques mois plus tôt : Pygmalion, Sabine Devieilhe et Stéphane Degout. Pour un même succès !

Tandis que le chœur s'est montré exemplaire dans cette partition romantique chargée, Stéphane Degout et Sabine Devieilhe ont fait des solistes inspirés.

Formidable dans le rôle-titre, Stéphane Degout emmène une très belle distribution, sous la baguette excellente de Daniele Rustioni et dans une mise en scène intelligente signée Richard Brunel.

Le directeur artistique du festival alsacien a convié « son » orchestre bruxellois pour un concert d'ouverture exalté et exaltant, avec le baryton français en invité d'honneur dans Mahler.

Absent des scènes françaises depuis sa création en 1931, le chef-d'œuvre d'Albéric Magnard revient à la vie et bénéficie de l'incarnation convaincante de Stéphane Degout dans le rôle-titre.

Le dernier projet original de Pygmalion et Raphaël Pichon, avec la metteuse en scène Silvia Costa, la Maîtrise Populaire de l'Opéra-Comique et une belle distribution, est une franche réussite.

Fast gänzlich wie im Buche und Mendelssohns vollbrachter Gestaltung strömten flexible Kontraste der Extreme bei Pygmalion aus allen Poren in emotionale Bahnen.