Performer: Nicole Piccolomini

Siegfried in Leipzig succeeds on all fronts: an engaging production, a great ensemble of singers and a well-conducted orchestra.

Quinn Kelsey's Rigoletto is commanding, emotional and complex. His bass-baritone has all the qualities you could ask for – darkness and light.

As the year of Wagner’s bicentennial approaches its end, De Nederlandse Opera concludes its latest revival of Pierre Audi’s Ring cycle with his 1998 production of Götterdämmerung.

Of all the mischievous dramatic reversals that line Rigoletto’s plot – the hunchbacked jester tricked into abducting his own daughter, the daughter tricked into loving the brainless Duke (posing as a penniless student), and the terrifying reunion of father and daughter in a scene of murder – is not the most breathtaking, after all, the fact that the opera begins with a convincing display of the de

​In each case, you know the murder is coming. In each case the music is explosive and closes the opera: there is nothing left to say except Canio's simple words: "La commedia è finita.

Nach langer Renovierung ist die Kölner Oper neu erstanden. Die Wiederaufnahme von Verdis Rigoletto passte in diesen Rahmen – ebenfalls grundsolide gearbeitet, zwar etwas unterkühlt, aber mit klaren Charakteren der großartigen Sängerinnen und Sänger. Und in einem Punkt erschreckend aktuell.