Classical music, opera, ballet and dance in Brisbane, QLD, Australia

A youthfully fresh corps and Victor Estévez hold together this uneven double bill, with Acosta’s troubled Carmen demonstrating the challenges of adapting opera to ballet.

Englishman Laurence Dale’s Göttingen Festival production of Handel’s Agrippina, now presented in the second Brisbane Baroque Festival, is based on the political void between appearance and reality. 

The Perfect American, a fictional account of the final months of Walt Disney’s life, is a visually rhythmic flow of scenic magic on a blended Glass base – gently but harrowingly absorbing.

For many reasons, the ACO’s most recent show The Reef was an artistic experience like no other in all my years of concert-going. It is difficult even categorising the event: an orchestral concert with accompanying video footage? A film with live soundtrack? Neither does full justice to the nature of the project.

Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and the incidental music by Mendelssohn it inspires both employ a wide range of expressive techniques in their respective medium. Bringing the drama and the music together in one performance, the Queensland Symphony Orchestra and 4MBS Arts Productions delivered an evening of finely tuned light entertainment.