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Two very different natural worlds are connected in a compelling performance of Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony and Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde, featuring Karen Cargill and Brenden Gunnell.

Andris Nelsons brings his Shostakovich project to a close in Boston with an incandescent performance of Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. 

Sailor suits and powder-puff bows as Herbert Fritsch directs a colourful new production in Berlin. 

A superb cast of singers is let down by Christoph Marthaler's cold, stilted staging as Reimann's Lear returns to its birthplace.  

Glyndebourne welcome audiences back into the house with a one hour Offenbach operetta whose comedy and plot lines are thin but which still delights.

Natalya Romaniw is a natural as our maligned heroine: Paul Curran creates staging of bewildering comic complexity and pulls it off with panache.

The Faust Symphony formed the bloated climax of a demonic date with the Grim Reaper, who loomed large over Sir Antonio Pappano's “Total Liszt” programme with the LSO.

Suffering, forgiveness, and natural brass in a brand new dramatic oratorio

Promising young South-African director Alessandro Talevi opened the new season at the Teatro La Fenice with a new mis-en-scene of Mozart's Idomeneo.

You think semi-staged opera is only half the fun? Think again. Glyndebourne's production of Mozart's oriental opera was a revelation.

David McVicar updates Mozart's Singspiel Die Entführung aus dem Serail to the time of composition in a stylish, tender production at Glyndebourne. 

Smetana's The Bartered Bride by Opera North at Leeds Grand Theatre directed by Daniel Slater is a confident revival of an old success. 

Britten's score achieves his usual kaleidoscope of different colours, played marvellously by the City of London Sinfonia under Steuart Bedford. Annilese Miskimmon's production yields an intense dose of psycho-dramatic tension.

Mahler’s Symphony no. 8 had not been heard in Milan for 27 years. Tonight, Riccardo Chailly returned to perform the “Symphony of a Thousand” with his former band, the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi.

It is interesting that neither of the 200th anniversaries of Verdi and Wagner have received much attention in Oslo, especially when compared to the frenzy that has been dominating so many concert halls and opera houses all over the world. What is even more interesting is that it has only been the Oslo Philharmonic that has paid any kind of attention to the two composers.

Britten’s opera The Rape of Lucretia is, as the title implies, not an easy opera subject-wise. It is based on André Obey’s play Le viol de Lucrèce, which in turn is partially based on Shakespeare’s poem The Rape of Lucrece. This was Britten’s third opera, and the first of his so-called chamber operas, operas with small orchestras and small casts.