Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Helen Sherman

Nicole Car makes her role debut as Dvořák's Rusalka in a production by Sarah Giles that proves a winner. 

Danielle de Niese's assumes the title role at the Sydney Opera House, leading an impressive cast with an interesting approach to characterisation with a somewhat over the top blingy setting. 

Handel's Giulio Cesare is heavily abridged in Sydney, but generally well-performed musically, albeit with a rather awkward staging by Neil Armfield. 

Opera Australia's well nigh perfect production of Mozart's Così fan tutte excels in every dimension, with an excellent ambiguous conclusion.

A fine ensemble cast brings Puccini's triptych of one-acters to the Sydney Opera House stage, with stand-out performances from Lauren Fagan, Viktor Antipenko, Simon Meadows and Angela Hogan.

Pinchgut Opera presents magnificent music and a timeless ethical debate on faith versus sectarian difference. 

In its 25th anniversary season, Richard Eyre's production continues to attract the world's great sopranos to the role of Violetta, the latest being Aleksandra Kurzak. 

Vivaldi's Farnace is reconstructed by Pinchgut Opera in ways which might not do the composer full dramatic justice, but the production and high musical values provide an excellent night of operatic drama. 

Pinchgut Opera's L'incoronazione di Poppea is a glorious feast of singing, acting and playing but the production is brutal, taking Monteverdi's vision of corruption in high places to excessive lengths.

Mozart's first stage work was written when he was just eleven years old; in this performance by Classical Opera, the composer's youthful writing and touches of humour are brought to life by a solid cast and lively conducting.

Opera North revives Sir David McVicar's 2002 production of Der Rosenkavalier under new Musical Director Alexander Markovic.  

Ian Page assembled a fine cast, with a particularly good Leporello from David Soar for yet another superb performance of Mozart from Classical Opera.

Opera North's Così fan tutte directed by Tim Albery at the Grand Theatre, Leeds, is a welcome revival of an intelligent, nuanced production.

A memorable production of Vivaldi's pasticcio opera Bajazet from Pinchgut Opera in Sydney. 

A gleeful production of The Marriage of Figaro from Opera North, which makes it hard to imagine any dark side at all to the comedy. 

Just as we would often rather come out of a barber's with a haircut reasonably similar to the one with which we walked in, but just a bit smarter and tidier, sometimes it’s nice to see a well-known and much-loved opera done straight, and done well. 

Classical Opera, with some deft revisions to Süssmayr's recitatives and a superb team of soloists, bring us a Clemenza both powerful and poignant, finally doing justice to Mozart's underrated late opera, composed for the coronation of a Hapsburg king. 

When the Baroque movement in art ended, the backlash was severe. The very adjective became an insult: the cold, clear, rarefied eye of 18th-century Neoclassicism found its opulence stifling, its luxury oppressive, and its profusion of ornament, ugly.

A very concise, two-act opera which tells a bleak wartime tale of sacrifice, rarely performed and never realised to the satisfaction of its own composer. You could be forgiven for thinking I was describing something from 20th-century Germany, perhaps an expressionist work taking after Berg’s Wozzeck or similar. You’d be wrong.