International

KANAZAWA, Japan – Concerts in this national favorite holiday destination, and in Tokyo and Osaka, amply demonstrated the Taiwan Philharmonic's impressive artistic ascent under music director Shao-Chia Lü.

MUNICH – Panned and booed at its Met premiere, and often revived, this staging has gained nothing from longevity. A decade on, as seen at the Bayerische Staatsoper, Anja Harteros and her co-stars failed to save the show.

BERLIN - The first stop on a trek leading to the bicentenary of Bruckner’s birth in 2024 found Christian Thielemann leading the Second Symphony and Christian Mason’s Eternity in an Hour, premiered in Vienna in April.

BERLIN – Deutsche Oper has given Detlev Glanert’s 12th opera an elegant staging. Although the score and Hans-Ulrich Treichel’s libretto are expertly crafted, the two-act work emerges as more cerebral than emotionally shattering.

BADEN-BADEN – Victoria Bond's new chamber opera emphasizes Clara Schumann's inner life as she balances the demands of others against her rising awareness of her own needs. The Osterfestspiele gave the world premiere.

PARIS – The famed company has scored a 21st-century hit with a former company staple not seen in Paris for 125 years: Adolphe Adam’s Le Postillon de Lonjumeau. American tenor Michael Spyres' solid high D secured the stylish enterprise.

BERLIN – Operas based on ancient myth might seem a difficult sell today, but March saw a new version of Jörg Widmann’s Babylon at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin and Manfred Trojahn’s Orest at the Wiener Staatsoper.

AMSTERDAM – The musical adaptation of Beckett's play, begun by György Kurtág in 1990 and repeatedly deferred, got an airing at the Dutch National Opera. A more ideal marriage of text and music could hardly be imagined.

BERLIN – Papageno and other characters are puppets, Pamina and Tamino cavort in red moon boots, Monostatos is a robot, and the Queen of the Night flies in Yuval Sharon’s comic-book staging of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte.

BERLIN - In tribute to the late Michael Hirsch, Simone Young led his never-performed 2011 …irgendwie ein Art Erzählung… (“almost a kind of story”), an episodic chain of thought that opens with an accordion's ethereal cluster chord.

BERLIN – To the sound of melting glissandi and teeming microtonal strings, survivors walk toward a black sun. In Beat Furrer and Klaus Händl's apocalyptic new opera, it's lights out for Earth, and humans drift and stammer.

BERLIN - A concert version for the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin by director Frederic Wake-Walker emerged as an ambitious but cumbersome attempt to infuse the religious work with contemporary relevance.

BERLIN – In a concert exploring Italian-influenced French music dating from the reign of Louis XV, the ensemble Les Talens Lyriques expressed the virtues of authentic-minded musicianship and a historical approach.

BERLIN - The first production of Rameau’s first opera, Hippolyte et Aricie, at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden, conducted by Simon Rattle and directed by choreographer Aletta Collins, was more ambitious than revealing.

NORTHRIDGE, Calif. – Sometimes the results are galvanic. Other times, they can be numbingly routine: On this occasion, Valery Gergiev and the ever-touring Mariinsky Orchestra delivered the goods in two Stravinsky symphonies.

PRAGUE – Only the fourth non-native chief conductor of the Czech Philharmonic, Semyon Bychkov wants the orchestra to be known for more than Dvořák and Smetana. A 13-city U.S. tour begins on Oct. 27.

LONDON – The Royal Opera House's concert version of the 1749 oratorio featured a superb cast, the orchestra of the Early Opera Company led by founder Christian Curnyn, and a dazzling showing from the Royal Opera Chorus.

BERLIN – In her role debut, soprano Sonya Yoncheva launched herself fearlessly into the drama of Cherubini’s Médée. Andrea Breth’s new production for the Staatsoper follows a wave of stagings in the original language.

OSLO – Violinist Eldbjørg Hemsing, who has long championed music of Tan Dun, premiered Fire Ritual, which draws from techniques of erhu and guqin, at the Ultima Contemporary Music Festival, the composer conducting.

PARIS – The Camerata, an early music group, performed a program of American patriotic and religious tunes from the 18th and 19th centuries during the themed weekend it shared with the Boston Symphony Orchestra at the Philharmonie.