Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | English | Carole Wilson

Kate Lindsey and Heidi Stober weave vocal magic in the latest Covent Garden revival of Humperdinck's box of delights. 

Who needs a stage, sets or costumes, when opera can move us like this? Agneta Eichenholz leads a terrific cast in a concert performance of Janáček's searing opera. 

It's been in the Glyndebourne rep for almost fifty years, but John Cox's production, complete with Hockney's iconic set, remains timeless. Robin Ticciati's superb conducting and an excellent cast made this latest revival a complete success.

A highly satisfying level of polish in La Monnaie's stream in which one recognizes a precisely executed live performance at its core – one that would be thrilling to experience in person. 

Barry goes for out-weirding Carroll at a fast and furious pace. There's plenty of fun and it's beautifully staged – but is that enough?

Dmitri Tcherniakov's staging turns Rimsky-Korsakov's opera into storytelling for an autistic boy, but does he deliver a fairy tale ending? 

A devilishly fun performance of Gounod's take on Goethe, saved when Mandy Fredrich flew in at short notice to take over the role of Marguerite. 

Many scenes could risk to be particularly disturbing,  but their overt brutality appeared functional, to the structure of the drama. A dark, gloomy story as unambiguously told as it should be.

This Paris production of The Snow Maiden proves that director Dmitri Tcherniakov is today's greatest champion of Rimsky-Korsakov's operas. 

Carole Wilson’s Herodias almost upstages Lise Lindstrom’s sexy Salome in a fine revival of Boleslaw Barlog's 1972 production in Vienna.

My mother always told me not to sit too close in the theatre, and after seeing this revival of Martin Kusej’s modern realization of Stravinksy’s The Rake’s Progress at the Theater an der Wien, I think I know what she was talking about.Act I begins innocuously enough in a sparse apartment, unfurnished apart from a mattress and a television.

With Verdi's centenary coming up, his last opera Falstaff has had more attention than usual, with this production at Opera Holland Park following hot on the heels of Robert Carsen's new production at Covent Garden.

After their Mascagni debut last year, with L’amico Fritz (the composer’s first post-Cavalleria opera), Opera Holland Park have set out to uncover more music from the so-called ‘one-hit-wonder’ – still known to most for his smash verismo opera alone.

In this Royal Opera production of Gounod's Faust, there's no question about who's in charge. Not only does the devil get all the best lines, but he bosses the show from beginning to end. Clad in feathered hat, long curly wig and reminiscent of the Laughing Cavalier, René Pape plays Mephistopheles quite superbly, alternating between mercurial bouffe comic lines and extreme sardonic nastiness.

La Forza del Destino isn't performed nearly as often as Verdi's most popular works: this year's production at Opera Holland Park is the first time it's been staged in the UK for several years.