Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | English | Max Emanuel Cenčić

The problem with on-stage vulgarity is that, while it might be sophisticated and knowing satire, it ends by being what it is parodying.

Max Emanuel Cenčić with Armonia Atenea under George Petrou provide an exciting and satisfying concert at the Halle Handel Festival

The Staatsoper's new L'incoronazione di Poppea is serious, intelligent but short on fire.

Ann Hallenberg shines in an amazing cast in a concert performance of Handel's Ottone in Vienna. 

Handel's Tartar-Ottoman drama Tamerlano gets a majestically beautiful, if not wildly dramatic, outing at the Barbican with Il Pomo d'Oro. 

Maxim Emelyanychev conducted the period orchestra Il Pomo d’Oro in Tamerlano at the Concertgebouw, an enjoyable performance of Handel's darkest opera. 

Armonia Atenea and a thrillingly virtuosic cast, led by countertenor Max Emanuel Cenčić, bring Hasse’s Siroe to Amsterdam

Such is the growing popularity of the solo countertenor voice that in this past week I was able to hear four countertenor performances in London - the latest being Max Emanuel Cenčić.

Handel's Tamerlano seduces the Versailles Opéra audience in a concert performance.

The sensational countertenor Franco Fagioli led an all-male cast in an extravagant staging of Vinci's Artaserse, a neglected Baroque opera,  at the Royal Opera House at Versailles.

Let’s be clear: this was a performance of the highest order. From the first five notes of the overture, the sixteen-member orchestra Armonia Aténéa led by George Petrou ravished the audience of the Salle Pleyel with Handel’s full splendour.

The Orchestre de Paris’ 2013/14 season opened with a cymbal crash. Orages (meaning “thunderstorms” in French) was commissioned by the Orchestre de Paris to the Lebanese composer Bechara El-Khoury. In this musical storm, sounds hurt each other, as if superimposed.

A cast of five countertenors and one tenor performing an opera by Handel contemporary Leonardo Vinci may look like a long evening to those who don’t appreciate the high male voice, but Baroque lovers hoping for a triplet and trill fest as well as some vocal drag got all they wanted in this concert version of Artaserse.