Live, Video: Kritiken zu klassischen Konzerten, Opern, Ballett und Tanz finden | Stephanie Corley

As the UK continues to emerge from lockdown, Leeds Playhouse and Opera North stage Sondheim. 

Tim Albery's production for Opera North is well sung and superbly acted, involving us deeply in Janáček's tragic family drama.

Cole Porter's exuberant wordsmithery and his smash-and-grab appropriation of a dozen musical styles can hardly fail to entertain; Opera North give us four top class leads.

Jonathan Dove’s witty Flight at Scottish Opera is finely sung by a tight ensemble with standout performances from Jennifer France and James Laing.

The first UK production of Karl Amadeus Hartmann’s 1930s anti-war opera Simplicius Simplicissimus is a musical and dramatic triumph, and as pertinent as ever

James MacMillan has honed his first opera Inés de Castro into an unmissable evening:  unspeakably gory but utterly thrilling.

To end the 2012/13 season, Scottish Opera has teamed up with the D’Oyly Carte Company to create a crisp new production of The Pirates of Penzance, which heads off to England and Wales after touring Scotland.

What clever scheduling by Opera North. In the centre of Leeds the snow is turning grey and slushy, the temperature is ridiculously low and it's dark before mid-afternoon, but inside The Grand Theatre it's a different story- a story which seems specifically designed to lift the winter blues.