Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Shelley Jackson

Every July, Buxton’s charming opera house hosts an international festival of opera, literature and the arts. This year the festival opened with a strong familiar favourite, Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin.

It's not easy to imagine a freezing Parisian attic when you're in the middle of the rolling Dorset countryside in a baking summer, but Dorset Opera's excellent production of Puccini's La bohème is atmospheric enough to do so.

A newly-orchestrated version of Jonathan Dove’s chamber opera drew some impressive performances from Heritage Opera in this pared-down adaption of Jane Austen’s third novel.

Sex and violence bubbles beneath the surface in this near-faultless staging of Carmen. 

Maestro Leo Hussain’s translucent rendition of the score made Capriccio the crowning glory of the Santa Fe Opera Season.  

Zurich’s unexpected and original twists on Giacomo Puccini’s great opera was riddled with gimmickry. 

“For some operas,” famed conductor Carlo Maria Giulini once said, “you can accept a voice of not absolute beauty – if it is well used and he is an artist and interpreter, it will work. But for Verdi you need all this plus the essential sound.

As the legend goes, a noble cavalier loses his battle with giant windmills. But the Academy of Vocal Arts wins big with their latest production, Jules Massenet’s melodic Don Quichotte.