En direct, Vidéo: Rechercher des critiques de musique classique, opéra et ballet | Dimitri Pittas

L’Orchestre Métropolitain, son chœur affilié et trois chanteurs solistes livraient dimanche dernier un concert intitulé « Yannick Nézet-Séguin et l’âme russe », sous la baguette du chef éponyme. Si l’on tient compte de la flamboyance du jeu, de la clarté des tableaux, du chatoiement des couleurs orchestrales, ce n’est pas l’âme russe qui a été révélée cet après-midi-là, mais bien plutôt celle du chef d’orchestre.

Cela fait près de vingt ans – et plus de cent représentations – que cette production de La Bohème, mise en scène par Jonathan Miller, ravit les spectateurs de l’Opéra de Paris.

Laurent Laffargue insuffle une originalité à l'opéra de Puccini en le revisitant à la façon « sixties ».

Anthony Minghella's classic production of Madam Butterfly makes a welcome return with a sensational role debut by Natalya Romaniw as Cio-Cio-san.

Virginie Verrez acted not with fire and ice but with gallic insouciance.

Kaneko's vivid designs grace this charming Butterfly. 

In the penultimate concert of the 2016 Proms, Marin Alsop drew together some impressive forces for Verdi's Requiem, led by the remarkable soprano Tamara Wilson.

The Met's brought back its Die Fledermaus set in the turn-of-the-century Vienna in a glittering production with a winning ensemble of singers.

Bartlett Sher’s new production of Verdi's Otello opens the Metropolitan Opera's season in a staging dominated by multimedia sets.

Marco Tutino's Two Women at San Francisco Opera feels lacking in musical originality and its out-of-date accompanying taste of re-heated Italian verismo comes a little over-cooked.

Some very fine singing and beautiful, if sometimes confusing, visual effects in Opera Philadelphia's Don Carlo.  

A blazing performance by violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja and a mildly disappointing Mozart Requiem round off New York’s annual Mostly Mozart Festival

Irina Brook's new production of Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore sparkles in a witty new production at the Deutsche Oper Berlin.

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.

The Canadian Opera Company provides a traditional production (that’s a complement) of Puccini’s La bohème at Toronto’s Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts. Its strengths are a well-sung Mimì (Grazia Doronzio) and Marcello (Joshua Hopkins), and fine directing by John Caird. The set design is very good except for the first act and the orchestral playing is sound.

We celebrate this year the bicentennials of two of the most influential composers of the 19th century. Yet celebrations in Amsterdam have been rather one-sided so far.

On Monday night – and, one might guess from the way the opera crowd gripped their collars as they swept into the Civic Opera House, the coldest night in Chicago this winter – a new La Bohème opened at the Lyric (it’s on loan from the San Francisco opera).

The Cleveland Orchestra closed its 2011/12 season on Thursday and Saturday, May 31 and June 2, with stirring performances of Giuseppe Verdi’s Requiem, with the orchestra’s Director of Choruses Robert Porco conducting the orchestra, the precisely-trained Cleveland Orchestra Chorus, and an unusually well-matched quartet of soloists.

The Canadian Opera Company’s second offering for its 2011-2012 season is Verdi’s ever-popular Rigoletto. It comes on the heels of Robert Carsen’s stunning production of Iphigenia in Tauris. In Carsen’s brilliant conception of the opera, everything works to produce a great night of opera By contrast in Christopher Alden’s production of Rigoletto just about nothing works.

Ukranian soprano Liudmyla Monastyrska made a sensational Royal Opera debut earlier this season, as a late substitute for the title role of Aida. In the revival of Phyllida Lloyd's production of Verdi's Macbeth, she produced an equally commanding performance.

Read our review of Adrian Noble's production of Macbeth by Verdi, in its 2008 HD broadcast from the Metropolitan Opera in New York.