Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Elizabeth Llewellyn

English National Opera opens its new season with a revival of David Alden's masterly production. 

Rodula Gaitanou sets Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal's comedy in the Cinecittà film studios of the 1950s. 

 “Behold, the sea itself!” Prom 16 is all at sea with Doreen Carwithen's Bishop Rock and Grace Williams' Sea Sketches ahead of RVW's great Sea Symphony.

Rolf Martinsson opts for clichéd opulence in his song cycle Ich denke Dein…, while Emilia Hoving delivers a sublime, conflicted account of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony.

Gwyn Hughes Jones, Elizabeth Llewellyn and Sir Simon Keenlyside star in David Alden's setting of Otello in a militarised Cyprus.

Verdi and Schiller lose out to Barbora Horáková in a new staging for English National Opera. 

Opera Holland Park updates Puccini's setting to the 1960s in a production that does not completely work, but benefits from the strong performance of Elizabeth Llewellyn as its leading lady.

Sparks flew as two British music giants, Vaughan Williams and Birtwistle, collided at the Barbican.

A tight production from Martin Lloyd-Evans together with a strong cast and loving treatment from conductor Matthew Kofi Waldren made a strong case for more regular performances of this neglected gem.

Esa-Pekka Salonen conducts the Philharmonia in a fine account of Mahler's mighty “Symphony of a Thousand”, culminating in a dramatic realisation of Faust's redemption.

Any performance of Mahler's Eighth Symphony is a special event. This one was a thrilling end to the Royal Scottish National Orchestra's season.

English Touring Opera’s Verdi title for their Spring season in this composer’s (and Wagner’s) anniversary year is one of no small ambition. Premièred to only modest success in Venice in 1857, it would take Verdi another 20 or so years to return to Simon Boccanegra to try to fix the old “wobbly table” (as he and his librettist, Boito, later dubbed the 1857 version).

Carmen has always been in my head as a “pretty” opera: lovely tunes, colourful setting, exotically alluring gypsy brushing up against hunky bullfighter and handsome soldier - not exactly French Grand Opera, perhaps, but a far cry from gritty verismo.

Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica's libretto for La Bohème has to rank as one of the greatest libretti in opera. It's fast-paced, taut and witty throughout, expansively romantic at times. Most importantly, the wonder of La Bohème is the way it paints human relationships with the pin-point accuracy of a Dutch master or a Victorian miniaturist.

Abschluss des Musikfests ION Nürnberg: Michael Tippetts Oratorium A Child of Our Time erzählt angesichts der Nazi-Herrschaft eine bewegende Geschichte der Menschlichkeit, Überwindung von Gewalt und der Versöhnung.