Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Russell Harcourt

80% less of Shakespeare's text adds up to more intensity in Brett Dean's Hamlet as Neil Armfield's staging is mounted by Opera Australia. 

Unseen since the 18th Century apart from one night in Germany, Legrenzi's Giustino deserves to re-enter the repertoire after its revival by Pinchgut Opera's Erin Helyard.

Perhaps Pinchgut Opera's finest production to date, a brave presentation of a classic Baroque opera, little heard in Australia apart from Handel, benefits from the star presence of Vivca Genaux in splendid form.

Englishman Laurence Dale’s Göttingen Festival production of Handel’s Agrippina, now presented in the second Brisbane Baroque Festival, is based on the political void between appearance and reality. 

A memorable production of Vivaldi's pasticcio opera Bajazet from Pinchgut Opera in Sydney. 

Agrippina was a force to be reckoned with: the granddaughter, sister, niece, wife and mother of four Roman Emperors (and lover, incestuously, of at least two). As Mary Beard points out in her brilliant programme introduction, “Agrippina was probably the best connected woman that the Roman world ever saw” – and one of the most ruthless.

When the Baroque movement in art ended, the backlash was severe. The very adjective became an insult: the cold, clear, rarefied eye of 18th-century Neoclassicism found its opulence stifling, its luxury oppressive, and its profusion of ornament, ugly.