Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Wolfgang Koch

A musical performance of stunning quality underpins this revival of Krzysztof Warlikowski's lavish, ambiguous Strauss staging.

Zubin Mehta's conducting is a disappointment, but Guth's remarkable production makes powerful sense of Strauss and Hofmannsthal's rich fairy tale. 

Staatsoper Berlin opens its season with a strong new production of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg that pays homage to the past and at the same time points to the future.

Castorf's anarchic take on Siegfried pushes well beyond his treatment of the earlier parts of the Ring, and not all the heroics from Stefan Vinke, Wolfgang Koch and Catherine Foster can rescue the evening.

Frank Castorf's Soviet-era farm-setting does not obtrude on the emotional core of Wagner's Die Walküre, with excellent performances from Johan Botha, Anja Kampe and Claudia Mahnke, with superlative playing from the Festival Orchestra.

The first installment of Frank Castorf's controversial Ring is applauded on its 2015 revival at Bayreuth, but arguably the incessant visual action detracts from the appreciation of the music. 

The music makes this an enchanting Die Frau ohne Schatten, even if Warlikowski’s fantastical production remains an unsolved puzzle.

Catherine Foster's Brünnhilde bathes Bayreuth's Siegfried in a warm glow, while Wolfgang Koch sings a superb Wanderer. But director Frank Castorf does his best to subvert both.

Kirill Petrenko starts Die Walküre with a flourish as Frank Castorf’s staging takes us back to the Baku oilfields in late tsarist Russia.

In this second year of Bayreuth's bicentennial Der Ring, Oleg Bryjak shines as an outstanding Alberich. Frank Castorf's production is striking but as yet incomprehensible.

Nobody puts Wagner in a corner: the Staatsoper’s new Lohengrin has some excellent qualities, but ultimately just needs more space. 

Monumental in scale and scope, Götterdämmerung is a work to which it is hard to be indifferent. For many, the idea of an evening of fantasy opera lasting nearly seven hours is unimaginable, so uncongenial is the subject material and so great the attention span demanded.

The classical world came off lightly in the recent New Year Honours list, with the Royal Opera House’s knighted Antonio Pappano the only winner. He has much to celebrate, more so after directing last night’s concert performance of Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg with authoritative ease and good cheer, supported by a fine array of soloists.

Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal began their collaboration on Die Frau ohne Schatten (The Woman Without a Shadow) with utopian ambitions. Unfortunately they weren’t the same ones. For Hofmannsthal, this would finally be the opera where his poetry would be illuminated by rather than buried under the music.

Josef Ernst Köpplinger inszeniert ein gelungenes revolutionäres Durcheinander, aus dem Olga Beszmertna herausglänzt.

Mit Richard Wagners Rheingold hat die Bayerische Staatsoper einen soliden Auftakt für den wohl letzten Ring-Zyklus in München unter der Leitung von Kirill Petrenko abgeliefert.

Unter der Leitung von Kiril Petrenko überzeugt die Bayerische Staatsoper in der gelungenen Neuinszenierung von Puccinis Il trittico mit meisterlichen Klängen und exzellenter Besetzung.

Die Bayerische Staatsoper hat Richard Wagners Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg unter großen Staraufgebot als Sängerfest inszeniert und auf eine ideenschwangere Inszenierung verzichtet

L’Opéra de Paris remet au goût du jour Capriccio de Richard Strauss dans la mise en scène de Robert Carsen. L’œuvre est magnifiée par une distribution remarquable et un orchestre en très grande forme.