Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | English | Sophie Junker

A joyous, consummately skilful account from Vox Luminis breathed delightful life into Purcell and Dryden's unusual semi-opera at Snape Maltings.

With splendid singing from Chorus of Royal Nothern Sinfonia and Quay Voices; Paul McCreesh’s B Minor Mass is full of joy but lacks emotional punch.

Closing your eyes while listening, you could easily imagine yourself in a gilt-edged salon, with Her Highness Mademoiselle Marie de Lorraine, Duchess of Guise, peer of France, princess of Joinville, hereditary seneschal of Champagne herself sitting not far from you, enjoying and approving every lovely note.

Handel’s original version of Acis and Galatea was written in 1717–18 at Cannons, a stately home in Middlesex. Composed with light orchestration, it was not meant to be performed in an opera theatre, but rather in this private mansion.

Under the title “Monteverdi Ballets”, Spitalfields Music Summer Festival presented a joint collaboration between the Early Opera Company and Avant Garde Dance. The challenge was to merge music and dance coming from two different artistic projects into a single unified product.

Joshua Rifkin’s theory that Bach had no ‘choir’ in the modern sense may have gradually inched its way towards acceptance, but for all the heated discussion his research has generated, one-per-part Passions are rarer than one might suppose.

A true highlight of this year's London Handel Festival was a performance of the dramatic oratorio Saul, featuring a large cast of young soloists, including several previous finalists of the Festival's annual singing competition, all now getting well established in their solo careers.

In 1790s France, a young noblewoman, Blanche de La Force, decides to enter a Carmelite convent. As the increasingly paranoid revolutionaries close in, Blanche, her family and the nuns hold a series of discussions on their circumstances, the danger, their faith and, ultimately, their martyrdom.