Rechercher des critiques de musique classique, opéra et ballet | Isabel Leonard

Edward Gardner brings out the Wagner influence in Massenet's opulent score, Juan Diego Flórez give a persuasive performance in the title role.

Isabel Leonard demonstrated her keen sense of language and a wonderful lack of affectation in both scores she sung.

An unforgettable evening at the Met as John Dexter's production of Poulenc's masterpiece is revived to close the season. 

Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s proves the highlight of a frustrating evening at The Metropolitan Opera

The cast, sets, costumes and direction of Muhly's opera Marnie impress, but the music somehow falls short of expectations.

Guest conductor Charles Dutoit returned to Los Angeles for a program devoted to one of the composers he is most closely associated with. 

Nézet-Séguin's West Side Story in concert mixes passion and politics in Philadelphia.

Jean-François Sivadier's pulsating new production propels The Don through his lusty adventures at a whirlwind pace. 

From the moment he stepped on stage as our ill-fated title character, Italian tenor Vittorio Grigolo seemed as if he may burst at the seams. 

Juan Diego Flórez plays the role for the first time on stage and it's a vocal triumph 

Bernstein's On the Town is luxuriously cast, crisply played, and impressively danced in a much-more-than-semi-staged production at the San Francisco Symphony.

Affable host Richard Gere united a starry musical cast to celebrate Carnegie Hall’s 125th Anniversary Gala.

Mozart’s beauty asserted but never implied, Sir Richard Eyre’s Le nozze di Figaro brings grand complications in bright turns and quick wit.

Mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard paints Carnegie Hall in the high colors of Spanish folk music, accompanied by classical guitar player, Sharon Isbin.

A star-studded cast headlined by Isabel Leonard and Lawrence Browlee share a hilarious production of La Cenerentola – complete with rat ballet corps!

There was a nod to John Adams in the score, but also a kind of edgy Americana, complete with powerful writing for male chorus, and an attempt to communicate the flavor of rural North Carolina, not far from where Higdon grew up.

A visually striking production of Rossini's La Cenerentola for Washington National Opera.

In a very silly production of Rossini's La Cenerentola at the Staatsoper, the cast takes a while to warm up, but are irresistably charming in full form.

An opening night of Così fan tutte in Munich in which Gaëlle Arquez and Marina Rebeka as the two sisters take the honours. 

After a six week hiatus, the Metropolitan Opera's new Le nozze di Figaro has returned, with a new cast and conductor.

There’s nothing like a trip to The Barber to refresh you. This season, the Metropolitan Opera revives Bartlett Sher’s 2006 production of Rossini’s comic masterpiece, The Barber of Seville. 

Richard Eyre’s witty direction may weight Figaro too heavily towards bedroom farce than satirical drama, but with sparky acting it’s difficult not to be won over. 

The new Barber of Seville at the Lyric Opera, brought to life by the director Rob Ashford, set designer Scott Pask, and conductor Michele Mariotti, is not only intelligent and imaginative but also strings successions of images, gestures, and sung moments into truly satisfying large-scale forms.

The final production of the San Francisco Opera’s fall season was a new staging of Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia, advertised everywhere as The Barber of Seville.

The wait was long between James Levine’s 2,442nd and 2,443rd performances at the Metropolitan Opera, but it was worth it. What’s more, Lesley Koenig’s 1996 production of Così wears its age well.

Not a new production, the Metropolitan Opera’s staging of Dialogues des Carmélites, originally directed by John Dexter in 1977, was nonetheless fresh and compelling in its approach and not at all tired, despite its age.

It’s pretty luxurious to be able to stumble out of your front door at ten to six, wander five minutes round the corner to your friendly local cinema, be greeted with a glass of sparkling wine, and then watch a high-definition live screening of a top contemporary opera production at the Met.

Every year, Glyndebourne brings an opera from their festival to the BBC Proms and adapts it to the Royal Albert Hall stage. This year they brought their hottest production of the summer, The Marriage of Figaro (directed at Glyndebourne by Michael Grandage and adapted for the Proms by Ian Rutherford), and it was wonderful to see the Albert Hall packed to rafters.