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The Solomon's Knot collective offered a lively account of four cantatas from Bach's Christmas Oratorio. 

Amanda Majeski is magnificent in the title role; Ed Gardner shows total master of Janáček's music. But that's not enough to rescue a poorly thought out Richard Jones production.

A series of ill-advised staging choices leads to a disappointingly drab performance of Monteverdi's Homeric epic.

Issues that cropped up in the first run of Mitchell's production have been ironed out. In the hands of a strong cast, a chilling interpretation of Donizetti's masterpiece.

Peter Nardone directs the Three Choirs Festival Chorus and Philharmonia Orchestra in a problematic yet thought-provoking opening concert at Worcester Cathedral.

Holten's masonic lodge setting of Meistersinger gets a lot right but is occasionally uneven; Terfel and Hughes Jones are constantly good to listen to.

Despite the beautiful sensitivity of La Nuova Musica, coupled with some truly sublime singing, the silliness of Cavalli’s opera is sometimes overplayed in this semi-staged production; less is, sometimes, more.

Bryn Terfel and Sir Antonio Pappano brought their excellent interpretation of the 1869 version of Mussorgsky's seminal opera to the Royal Albert Hall for a one-off revival.

The Academy of Ancient Music gave a finely honed account of Handel's unusual "little opera", written for the Earl of Carnavon's household musicians: a sweet pastoral offering never yet out of the repertoire. 

Richard Jones new production of Mussorgsky's episodic epic has plenty of strengths, but is marred by unappealing designs and rushed tempi.

Richard Jones creates forceful theatre by staging Ariodante as a tale of shaming and abuse. Andrea Marcon conducts an accomplished cast and the first-class Concerto Köln.

A joyously fresh and zesty Orfeo, played on a selection of period instruments and with a magnificent leading tenor, makes for a superb evening of Monteverdi with Sir John Eliot Gardiner. 

The Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists performed Monteverdi's L'Orfeo in Costa Mesa.

In a diverse programme consisting of Haydn and Pärt, Stephen Layton impressed with his choir Polyphony, while the Britten Sinfonia performed a fine rendition of Shostakovich's Chamber Symphony. 

Benjamin Britten was very precise about what constituted the official canon of his works, but, in addition to his stipulated 95 opus numbers, he composed a huge amount of occasional music.

To those who grew up with Michael Tippett’s music and lived through the later premières, the neglect into which he has fallen and the ill-disguised contempt of many is both puzzling and distressing. The same fate befell both Sibelius and Vaughan Williams in the years following their deaths and now, fifteen years on, there is perhaps just a faint glimmer of a Tippett reappraisal on the horizon.

The last night of the Bristol Proms was experimental. A full house at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre was greeted by artistic director Tom Morris to introduce this semi-staged version of Handel’s Messiah – last performed in the venue in 1782, when it was too sacrilegious for churches. Morris said that Handel was “a dramatist”, and to honour this, he took a more theatrical route with this performance.

Henry James’ chilling 1898 novella The Turn of the Screw is a curious story and might be considered a gift to any composer as the basis of an extraordinarily sinister opera libretto.