Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | English | Nina Lejderman

In the Nederlandse Reisopera's Così fan tutte, the team of young soloists and the Orkest van het Oosten conducted by Arnaud Oosterbaum give a musically rewarding performance that compensates for an unconvincing stage direction.

While it may seem perfectly formed for the full grand opera treatment, Verdi's classic Un ballo in maschera can also work extremely well on a small scale, as shown by this intimate and compelling treatment by Timothy Nelson at Iford. 

Purcell’s The Fairy Queen is a tricky thing to stage. It’s not an opera, with its own story-line, but a masque, a series of musical interludes intended to slot into a performance of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. One solution could be just to perform it in concert, but the music is so dramatic that it lends itself wonderfully to stage action.