A tacky Italian beach resort in the heat of the summer holiday and a moderately quaint old town with a strong operatic tradition make an odd contrast. Yet Gioachino Rossini’s hometown, Pesaro on the Adriatic, hosts a longstanding opera festival

Every now and then the Salzburg Festival puts on a performance of such perfection, we are reminded how this festival became the leading operatic summer event in Europe. This year’s new production of Mozart’s Nozze di Figaro (Marriage of Figaro)

A highlight of this year’s Salzburg Festival was a new production of Beethoven’s only opera, Fidelio. It was largely deemed a vehicle to show off leading German tenor Jonas Kaufmann at his vocal and artistic zenith. And indeed, he did

The Ride of the Valkyries from a helicopter, the William Tell Overture for a merry-go-round, Barber’s Adagio for Strings in a barbershop while the violinist gets a shave, the New World Symphony on the Star Ferry, performances on a double-decker

Gaetano Donizetti‘s rarely performed masterpiece Roberto Devereux screams out for a truly great soprano as the Tudor Queen Elisabeth I. Certainly the most successful Donizetti opera commissioned by the great impresario Domenico Barbaja (in 1837), the work was largely forgotten

Since August 2014 the Opéra National de Paris has a new impresario, Stéphane Lissner. The Parisian returned to his hometown after a successful stint as the first non-Italian to run La Scala, Italy’s premier opera house.

On 15th May, The Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra performed Mozart Piano Concerto No.18, with pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet and Shostakovich Symphony No.11, The Year 1905 conducted by Case Scaglione.

The iconic egg-shaped structure of Beijing’s National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA) sits forbiddingly surrounded by a man-made lake. It’s easy to miss the entrance ramp which leads to the box office lobby, the electronic ticket readers and the