He was a drunkard, a nearly illiterate loudmouth, and a serial womanizer with a natural gift for seemingly endless self-promotion. He strong-armed and bullied his way to personal fame and fortune by building a gaming syndicate, and intuitively and prosperously

One year after the launch of the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra’s Ring Cycle, Music Director Jaap van Zweden brings us Die Walküre (the Valkyrie), the second installment of Richard Wagner’s monumental opera tetralogy.

The Royal Opera House delivered a remarkably gripping new production of Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci by Damiano Michieletto. The Italian directorial wunderkind unified the verismo double bill, setting the operas in the same Mezzogiorno village where some characters from both

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

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.