Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | English | Michael Druiett

Opera North's Aida, directed by Annabel Arden and conducted by Sir Richard Armstrong in Leeds Town Hall, is a welcome radical interpretation in the spirit of the times. 

Scottish Opera’s production of Philip Glass and Christopher Hampton's The Trial says less about Kafka’s vision of an absurd world and more about the absurdity of contemporary operatic conventions.

How picturesque do you like your Puccini? Do you take your Turandot sweet or sour? How much lacquer is layered over your ideal Madama Butterfly?

Hot on the heels of its Eugene Onegin, full of potential marriages that never reach the altar, Dorset Opera put on an excellent production of an opera with a successful, slick and murderous power couple.

Opera North's cycle offers a form of personal Wagner therapy: all four music dramas in concert performances, but with carefully choreographed video and lighting effects. 

Mahler's epic setting of the final scene from Goethe's Faust is so demanding of musical resources that any performance is a special occasion: what better work to conclude the Orchestra Of Opera North's triumphant 2015-2016 season? 

A superbly-sung title role from Ed Ballard is the best part of this otherwise patchy, well-sung but ultimately unmoving Werther from English Touring Opera. 

Fine orchestral and singing performances in ETO's Pelléas et Mélisande aren't enough to overcome some of the work's difficulties.

Gustave Charpentier's Louise, revived and in excellent form at the Buxton Festival.

Take an exquisite production of a Puccini tearjerker, cast it attractively… then crush its fragile wings under the weight of the Albert Hall’s vastness.

Philip Glass finds a new simplicity in an impressive première production of The Trial from Music Theatre Wales. 

Siegfried, the “Second Day” of Der Ring des Nibelungen and the third staging by Opera North after Die Walküre in 2012 and Das Rheingold the year before, is just as enthralling as its predecessors.

Director Alessandro Talevi’s imagination, wit and audacity meant that Don Giovanni, which has just launched Opera North’s new season, was a huge success. The production was enthralling throughout, never dragging or disappointing, even in the second act. It works much better than others I have seen, because the emphasis is placed firmly on the comic rather than the pathetic.

The first lesson I learnt from this evening’s stunning performance by Opera North of Das Rheingold to a completely full Hall One at the Sage is that however much you listen to Wagner's opera, absolutely nothing can prepare you for the physical and emotional impact of seeing a live performance, with the sheer power of the orchestra and the dramatic force of the music.