Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | English | Christophe Mortagne

With gloriously inventive sets and costumes, Alex Esposito’s splendid Four Villains drive a wonderfully entertaining new production.

The Royal Opera's season opener is a welcome return for Tchaikovsky's opera after nine years, and a house debut for American director Ted Huffman.

The star tenor is clearly under the weather, but the young house-favourite mezzo shines in an impressive role debut in a revival of Benoît Jacquot's cinematic staging. 

A human waxwork, a lottery win and circus buffoonery combine in a long-neglected Offenbach operetta, given a fizzing performance by the forces of Opera Rara and the London Philharmonic.

Comedy fails to spark in Laurent Pelly's new production of Falstaff at the Teatro Real. 

Robert Carsen's Eugene Onegin was binned by the Met but works wonderfully in its revival by the Canadian Opera Company COC with high class singing and acting from a young, engaging cast.

Bartlett Sher's production of The Tales of Hoffmann, revived at The Met, takes a Kafka-esque, surreal view of the opera.

Los Angeles Opera's Tales of Hoffmann survives multiple cast changes to look and sound fabulous, but it drags dramatically.

When an enormous black gondola creaks and shudders its way across the stage in the “Giulietta' act of the Royal Opera's Tales of Hoffmann, it acts as a metaphor for John Schlesinger's venerable production.

Poor intelligibility and lack of pace in the music or acting make L'Étoile into a disappointingly flat evening.

The two leads in the brand-new cast of the Met’s three year old production of Massenet’s Manon were unbeatable. 

L’étoile at the Dutch National Opera, directed by Laurent Pelly and conducted by Patrick Fournillier, is bubbly and light like a glass of sparkling wine, to be consumed without restraint. 

Every opera poses an acting challenge to its prima donna, but Massenet’s Manon, whose 2010 production by Laurent Pelly started its first revival at Covent Garden last night, is particularly harsh on the singer of its title role. Ermonela Jaho rose to the task magnificently.

Read our review of Laurent Pelly's production of Massenet's Manon in its 2012 broadcast from the Met Opera in New York.