Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | English | Rebecca de Pont Davies

Benjamin Britten's Peter Grimes is a nuanced, gripping tale that should pack an emotional punch. Despite fine moments, Oper Köln's production didn't serve the work. 

Originally conceived by Robert Carsen for the Vlaamse Opera, this production of Katia Kabanova is now at Teatro Regio, second chapter of a Janáček/Carsen project.

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.

Martin Lloyd Evans returns to Scottish Opera direct a visually rich and lively Mikado. Richard Suart is a veteran Ko-Ko with no-one safe from his Little List as it changes for every performance.

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

Stephen Medcalf's meticulous staging of Tchaikovsky's bitter masterpiece is lit up by Jung Soo Yun's Lensky, giving a direct injection of emotions: verismo before its time.

As director of the film Topsy-Turvy, Mike Leigh seemed like a natural choice to turn his hand to The Pirates of Penzance at English National Opera. Sadly, this proved not to be the case. 

Royal Opera’s first rival of Anna Nicole opens to an enthusiastic student audience. Eva-Maria Westbroek dazzles, but second time round the work seems even more burned by its clumsy libretto.

Bringing Peter Grimes to Grange Park a year after the Britten centenary is an enormous challenge. With ‘Grimes on the Beach’ still fresh in the memory, the task of recreating the Suffolk coast in Hampshire’s idyllic countryside might have seemed a step too far. 

In the revival of David Alden's Peter Grimes at English National Opera, the singing is excellent, the orchestral performance is out of the top drawer and the staging hardly puts a foot wrong.

A very welcome and triumphant revival of Peter Grimes begins Opera North’s Festival of Britten season, soon to be followed by A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Death in Venice. The work has often been described as Britten’s greatest, the paeans of praise beginning soon after its first performance just after the Second World War, often involving the word “enigma”.

Miraculous as Jonathan Harvey’s music is, it seems reductive to call Wagner Dream an opera. Half the cast, after all, don’t even sing, but act: it’s a sincere meeting of music and theatre in a way that opera usually isn’t.

With most of the original cast of English National Opera's critically acclaimed production returning to the Royal Albert Hall to perform Britten's Peter Grimes for the BBC Proms, this was a performance of which much of the audience had high expectations. For the most part, these were met and, on occasion, exceeded.