Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Graeme Danby

Strong vocals from the three principal singers and a sure musical direction from young conductor Farrell help offset some of the less than convincing elements to Olivia Fuchs' production. 

Cameron Menzies sets Verdi's timeless opera in a timeless world, with a mixture of styles indicating that all is not as it seems.

Excellent soloists, inventive sets and fine direction from Sheil and Phelan makes for an entertaining Cenerentola at the Bord Gais Energy Theatre Dublin. 

Michael Barker-Caven sets Aida in a 21st-century war zone in the Middle-East, allowing the audience to focus on the human drama.

A spirited account of Verdi's early opera in its first professional UK staging, nowhere near as “ugly” as Verdi would have had us believe. 

A wonderful ful-filled caper by the Irish National Opera of Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro with Erraught as Susanna and Miskelly as Cherubino really impressing. 

In Siberian conditions more akin to The Winter's Tale, a revival of Robert Carsen's season setting of Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream offered a warm glow at the Coliseum.

William Kentridge's Lulu for ENO is easier to admire than it is to love. But if you want to be challenged dramatically, this is the opera to do it.

This revival of Catherine Malfitano’s excellent 2010 production features some splendid singing from Gwyn Hughes Jones as Cavaradossi – but is let down by some poor diction and varying drama.

In Janáček's searing excoriation of small town social mores, superb orchestra, singing and acting make this revival of David Alden's Jenůfa into an unmissable evening of opera.

Stellar singing and excellent acting makes this a brilliantly satisfying and amusing 1970s take on Rossini's classic The Barber of Seville. 

Miller eschews the oriental side of the tale, seeing The Mikado as a play on daft British eccentricity. 

Verdi's rarely-performed early masterpiece gets a succinct, powerful outing in top class style at Buxton. 

Calixto Bieito  updates the Carmen to the final years of Franco’s dictatorship and in Joan Anton Rechi’s revival, the results are often gritty and fierce, if unlikely to do anything for the Spanish tourist trade.

Lyric Opera Production delivers a conventional Tosca to close the opera season. 

Opera North's La Fanciulla del West, directed by Aletta Collins, contains a bold performance from Alwyn Mellor as Minnie, and a powerful Ramerrez in Rafael Rojas.

While there’s no reason that a children’s opera should be simple or easy, there’s no real need for it to be difficult either. So I was a little confused going into the Barbican’s performance of Oliver Knussen’s brilliant brace of Maurice Sendak adaptations this Saturday, which was surrounded, despite the works’ subject matter, with a slightly unbecoming aura of seriousness.

The memory has dimmed somewhat in the past few years. But it remains firmly entrenched in my mind. I wish I could say that this moment was a formative one in my development as musicologist; that destiny took hold of this young boy and led him to the path of his eventual vocation. But no such thing happened.

For many people, to repeat a commonplace, opera is about those "wow" moments, the times when music, voice and staging come together to lift you onto a different plane. In ENO's Tosca last night, a "wow" moment happened more or less whenever Gwyn Hughes Jones opened his mouth: his Cavaradossi had total heroism, total artistry and effortless, silk-smooth phrasing.