Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | English | Hélène Guilmette

Palazzetto Bru Zane, spurred on by the zealous advocacy of conductor François-Xavier Roth, has turned to Saint-Saëns' very first opera, Le Timbre d'argent.

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

Kent Nagano and the OSM came up trumps in concert version of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande.

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. 

An ultimately disappointing Fauré Requiem gave way to an outrageously funny performance of Poulenc's comic opera Les mamelles de Tirésias with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Ludovic Morlot.

Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the chorus and several soloists star in a dramatic version of Bach's St Matthew Passion in which l'Orchestre Métropolitain was less distinguished. 

Francis Poulenc’s 1957 opera Dialogues des Carmélites has the virtues of necessity. Director Robert Carsten’s production puts these virtues before us in simple black and white. The virtues begin with the story: Blanche, an aristocrat afraid of the French Revolution who hopes to find refuge in a nunnery, becomes a refugee of religious persecution, and chooses to die a martyr with her sisters.