Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | English | Rosalind Plowright

The Royal Opera orchestra, chorus and a large cast bring their A game to Sir Antonio Pappano's last run as music director.

Finally reaching the stage of the Venetian theatre, Benjamin Britten's first major opera meets with success thanks to Juraj Valčuha's conducting, Paul Curran's staging and an excellent cast.

Gaitanou’s direction of the singers is so exact that it becomes impossible to separate them from their characters.

The French-Sicilian tenor shines in Sir David's McVicar's pristine take on Umberto Giordano's slice of verismo. 

Brilliant staging, superb acting, a magnetic performance from Virginie Verrez and an excellent orchestral performance make a strong case for Samuel Barber's all-but-forgotten chiller.

Two thematically linked, but contrasting short operas are the final component of Opera North's Little Greats season at the Leeds Grand Theatre.

Opera North's Little Greats festival continues with two deeply contrasting short operas - a grimly tragic and austere version of Macagni's Cavalleria rusticana and a frothy and hilarious production of Gilbert and Sullivan's Trial by Jury.

Eva-Maria Westbroek proves an outstanding Káťa in the Staatsoper's revival of Janáček's opera, powerfully conducted by Simon Rattle. 

An intriguing performance of a wonderful, psychological opera that needs to be heard much more frequently this side of the Atlantic.

Tchaikovsky's High Gothic opera about gambling obsessions is worth seeing for a first class staging, albeit with a mixed musical performance.

The main problem with Keith Warner's staging is that the director’s dominating focus is on the Jungian ‘Elektra complex’ rather than Elektra the opera.

Though certainly not the most heartwarming of tales this Christmas season, this is a production one shouldn’t miss.

Opera Holland Park give us a broad span of human joys and tragedies in an excellently staged and acted rendering of Puccini's Il trittico.

Few live events could offer a more intense, visceral, grotesque experience than witnessing a performance of Oscar Wilde’s play Salome translated and adapted for the opera stage by Hermann Lachmann and set to music by Richard Strauss.

Read our review of  Richard Jones' production of Engelbert Humperdinck's Hansel und Gretel in its 2008 broadcast from the Met Opera in New York.