Live, Video: Kritiken zu klassischen Konzerten, Opern, Ballett und Tanz finden | Tommi Hakala

The traditional end of year performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony took on extra significance in this, his 250th anniversary year. 

For any opera house, the production of a new Wagner Ring cycle is a huge undertaking and becomes a mission statement. For Finnish National Opera, its mission is to stage an all-Finnish Ring.

In an unusually convincing concert performance, Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Finnish National Opera emphasised the lyrical aspects of Wagner's Das Rheingold.

Leading five choirs, fine soloists and a glowing Netherlands Philharmonic, conductor Marc Albrecht emphasised the human struggle in a highly dramatic performance of Mahler’s mammoth eighth symphony.

Auguin conducted as if he really believes in this evergreen work, which was wonderful to hear in the composer’s rather overlooked anniversary year.

This was more stadium rock than stuffy opera house, lighting as ‘metaphor made real’ as the lovers were – literally – star-struck, blinded by love.

With so little of worth happening onstage, this performance requires a unanimously strong set of performances from the main cast.

Existen pocas maneras más ilustres de despedir el año que con un programa conformado íntegramente por obras de Mozart. Pudimos corroborarlo a propósito del talento descollante de Beatrice Rana en colaboración con su compatriota, el avezado Gianandrea Noseda, y la Orquesta de Cadaqués.

Renzetti's traditional rendition does not reveal yet unprecedented details of a score that is the summation of Verdi's mastery and his last work – his third based on Shakespeare.

The Castle in the Water, Sallinen's new “chronicle”, is a new work of innovative beauty. Tragic, comic and epic, in seventy-five minutes it tells the history of Olavinlinna and gives a snap-shot of those connected to it.

An all-Tchaikovsky programme of opera and ballet was an appealing way to enter the Christmas period, especially under the energetic baton of Jac van Steen.

Opening the weekend that marked the 60th anniversary of the Hungarian revolution, The Mine (A Bánya), the first of Rautavaara's nine operas, dramatizes events from those turbulent times. 

Vittorio Borrelli’s production of Hänsel und Gretel in Turin offers a refined mise-en-scène focusing on the tiny, playful and colourful aspects of the plot.