Rechercher des critiques de musique classique, opéra et ballet | Iain Paterson

Dans cette production berlinoise décevante et faussement actuelle, seuls l'orchestre et la superstar Sonya Yoncheva parviennent à convaincre.

Le RSNO a clôt sa saison samedi soir avec un programme Beethoven/Strauss. 

Dutch National Opera revives Pierre Audi's acclaimed Die Walküre for the very last time.

Fine musical performances meet Andrea Breth's dreary new production in a dramatically unsatisfying evening at the Staatsoper.

Sir Mark Elder and The Hallé orchestra are the powerhouse in a memorable performance of Siegfried. Simon O’ Neill, Iain Paterson and Christine Goerke head up a universally strong cast.

Bergen National Opera’s new production allows the story to speak to itself, while strong performances from Eric Halfvarson and Elisabeth Teige gave the performance its edge.

A strong cast, a lyrically simmering orchestra and lucid staging make this a Tristan und Isolde to treasure.

An exceptional musical performance was enhanced by a streamlined but ultimately moving staging in an evening of near perfection in Dresden.

Iain Paterson's house debut as the Holländer was sufficient reason to drop anchor in the Main for this revival of David Bösch's 2015 production. 

The Hallé's Elgar Festival concludes with the work the composer wished to be remembered by. 

An operatic take on The Winter's Tale – categorised as one of Shakespeare’s ‘problem plays’ – premieres at English National Opera. 

The Hallé's oddly-ordered Ring arrives at the beginning with Das Rheingold.

Donald Runnicles ends the 2016 Edinburgh Festival with Gurrelieder. 

Despite a miscast Isolde, Wagner's operatic monument to love makes its mark in the production by the composer's great-grandaughter.

Bayreuth's controversial Ring returns with a new conductor and a refreshed cast.

A strong performance at Staatsoper Berlin of the third opera of the Ring, Siegfried, was a showcase for tenor Andreas Schager in the title role.

The second evening of Staatsoper Berlin's Ring featured an exceptionally strong musical performance, both from the orchestra and the singers. 

The revival of Das Rheingold at Staatsoper Berlin was still marred by distracting use of dancers on stage, but musically it was a great success. 

The production is a disconcerting combination of cold metallic future and Neanderthal aesthetics – a startling pairing of humanity’s beginning and its end. 

Director Kirill Serebrennikov gives us a frightening new reality of the modern world beset by war and terrorism in his reimagining of Strauss's Salome

Sir Mark Elder and the Halle introduce Vaughan Williams masterwork Sancta civitas to the Proms.

A conceptually diffuse production of Tristan from Katharina Wagner is partially redeemed by stirring orchestral playing under the direction of Christian Thielemann and some fine singing at the opening of the Wagner Festival at Bayreuth.

All five of the Houston Grand Opera’s performances of Die Walküre sold out immediately – more than 13,000 seats – and there are several good reasons why.

With ENO having been in the news for all the wrong reasons last week,  it needed Richard Jones' The Mastersingers of Nuremberg to be a great production. Lit up by a towering performance by Iain Paterson, it is.

First class performances from Stephen Gould and Nina Stemme are backed by a magnificent orchestral performance in the Royal Opera's revival of Christof Loy's spartan production.

In the revival of David Alden's Peter Grimes at English National Opera, the singing is excellent, the orchestral performance is out of the top drawer and the staging hardly puts a foot wrong.

In the Royal Opera revival of Richard Strauss’s Elektra, the overwhelming theme is blood, both metaphorical and literal.

A Beethoven cycle last year, The Ring this year: what will Daniel Barenboim bring to the 2014 Proms? Perhaps, given the recent success of extracts both at the Proms and at Lincoln Center Festival, the smart money is on Karlheinz Stockhausen’s 29-hour, seven-opera cycle Licht. Then again, perhaps not.

Andris Nelsons and the CBSO brought their superb Beethoven cycle to a close with fine performances of the Eighth and Ninth Symphonies at Birmingham’s Symphony Hall.The Eighth Symphony suffers from sitting in the shade of the Seventh and Ninth, but Beethoven’s “Little” F major symphony has a great deal to offer.

The word Götterdämmerung contextually translated becomes “twilight of the gods”, and Thursday night’s story at the Met was indeed full of endings: the conclusion of the saga of the ring and the end of several lives, human and god alike.

Few things could unite such a large group of people as the Hallé’s Meistersinger did tonight. Some 515 performers, drawn from three orchestras and five choirs, gathered to present highlights from the first two acts of Wagner’s opera and the third act in full.

Three years ago, John Berry, ENO’s Artistic Director, invited acclaimed theatre director Rufus Norris to reinvent Mozart’s Don Giovanni. Unfortunately, it was not much of a success, and was panned by critics. This year, the production has returned to ENO, with some changes, albeit none that are particularly remarkable. ENO’s publicity machine has, this time round, gone on an advertising offensive.

With most of the original cast of English National Opera's critically acclaimed production returning to the Royal Albert Hall to perform Britten's Peter Grimes for the BBC Proms, this was a performance of which much of the audience had high expectations. For the most part, these were met and, on occasion, exceeded.

Nikolaj Znaider concluded the Hallé Beethoven cycle in emphatic fashion, preceding the Choral Symphony with another ninth symphony, that of Shostakovich. The football-style roar from the sell-out audience at the end of the evening was a good indicator of the quality of the concert.

What’s the connection between Harry Potter and Mozart? Fiona Shaw is perhaps best known these days as the boy wizard’s Aunt Petunia – or our greatest classical actress for those with longer memories.

It is always exciting to witness the birth of a new piece of composition, all the more so when the soloist is the inimitable Yo-Yo Ma.

The ENO’s production of Parsifal, which opened last night, is a revival of their 1999 staging, directed by Nikolaus Lehnhoff and conducted by Mark Wigglesworth. This is Wigglesworth's first Parsifal, and he's made a triumphant start. The fifteen minute prelude was like listening to a symphony all by itself, and I was grabbed from the very first note.

Mozart's Don Giovanni is an opera that is most difficult to classify. On the one hand, it has many of the trappings of a traditional opera buffa: a fast-paced farce with people falling in and out of bed, master and servant switching clothes, a buffoon-like manservant sung in the bass register and so on.

For a long period, Charles Gounod's Faust was one of the most frequently performed operas, its popularity due to a lusciously romantic score which contains a series of showstopping set-piece arias, many of which have found their way into popular culture (to give just one example, the Jewel Song in Act III has a starring role in the Tintin story The Castafiore Emerald).