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Melbourne-born soprano Sioghan Stagg returns for a one night stand with Kristian Bezuidenhout and the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra as part of their Australian tour.

In a concert performance at the Berlin Philharmonie, conductor René Jacobs gives his own – thrilling – take on Monteverdi's L'Orfeo.

Reuniting two old friends and collaborators, the Staatsoper Berlin presents a new production of Marc-Antoine Charpentier's Médée, with mixed results. 

One of the world's top period instrument ensembles bring Handel's Water Music and other baroque classics to Klosters.

“How Excellent.”  The first words sung in Handel’s Saul are in praise of God and were first uttered in a performance nearly three centuries ago. But they apply equally to Claus Guth’s interpretation of the work staged by Theater an der Wien.

Maurice Steger makes his debut with the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra in a concert of Baroque favourites. 

Promoting Leonore, the original version of Beethoven's Fidelio, René Jacobs made several choices of his own, only some of them justifiable.

Excellent musical performances are confounded by clumsy, unimaginative staging in Rameau's explosive first opera.

Beethoven lovers were expecting an authentic recreation of the first version of Fidelio but instead they got Leonore à la Jacobs.

In an all-Mendelssohn programme, Pablo Heras-Casado led the orchestra in detailed and original interpretations, with a strong performance from soloist Isabelle Faust.

Jacobs has found in the excellent musicians of this orchestra the perfect laboratory to explore his conception of Mozart.

An outstanding concert, with impressive performers that love to play together and had lots of time to rehearse

An evening at the Wigmore Hall with the fabulous Freiburg Baroque Orchestra and fortepiano star Kristian Bezuidenhout in the keyboard concertos of CPE Bach and Mozart. What could go wrong? 

The controversial Aix-en-Provence Così fan tutte reaches the Edinburgh Festival with a thrilling first-rate international cast and the excellent Freiburger Barockorchester.

René Jacobs conducted the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra in an outstanding performance of Mozart's Idomeneo as part of Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart Festival

Gerhaher's glorious rendition of Mozart arias and the crisp sound of the FBO made for a delightful evening. 

A bright evening of the "Mozart Effect" series somewhat dulled by a bizarrely structured programme.

An updating of Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail to the post-World War One era in a desert fails to inspire in Aix. 

The 67th Aix Festival got off to a hot, heady start with Katie Mitchell's witty and ingenious staging of Handel's 1735 sorcery opera Alcina. 

Not the Barbiere you might have been expecting if you hadn't paid attention to the small print at the Theater an der Wien... 

Perhaps the best jokers keep the straightest faces. For much of this evening at Wigmore Hall, the body language of the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra portrayed serious musicians going about their serious business. 

Come for the singing, enjoy the music and bring your sunglasses: this psychologically charged Idomeneo at the Theater an der Wien is not to be missed.

What a lovely way to round off a weekend, with some feel-good favourites from one of the world’s finest early music ensembles. Currently in their silver jubilee season, the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra actually began to emerge a couple of years earlier than their official 1987 launch.

The title reflecting a countertenor aria from Henry Purcell’s Ode to St Cecilia, “’tis Nature’s Voice” was the overall theme of this year’s Lufthansa Festival of Baroque Music, which drew to a spectacular close on Saturday.

When the Theater an der Wien’s in-house magazine featured an article about costumes created by none other than Christian Lacroix for this new production of Radamisto, I was intrigued by the pictures, but also a bit nonplussed by the idea that his gowns had been hand-painted in order to illustrate the different levels of Radamisto’s nightmare.

Alceste is the short and sombre story of a wife who gives her life to save that of her husband, King Admète of Thessaly, a deed which ultimately convinces the gods to reprieve both of them. Gluck, hoping to avoid the over-decorated vocal style then in vogue, set this plot to unadorned vocal lines to give depth to the underlying emotions.

The last production I saw of L’Orfeo explored the idea of music as a manipulative force, suggesting disturbing consequences to the docility it can engender. Director Claus Guth is less concerned with Orfeo the musician, and makes minimal acknowledgement of the work’s pastoral and mythic elements.