Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | English | John Brancy

Gorgeous French music, polished choral singing and excellent soloists are marred by an overwhelmingly dark timbre and unsympathetic video.

Sir George Benjamin and Martin Crimp’s new chamber opera receives a powerful UK premiere in the Linbury Studio at Covent Garden. 

A two-week Ralph Vaughan Williams retrospective closed with his gentle, folksy spin on Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor.

Sir George Benjamin and Martin Crimp’s fourth opera shares the best qualities of their previous work but is an inspiring, breathtaking fable.

Mariame Clément’s Glyndebourne production of Don Pasquale, revived here for the 2015 Tour, delivers its lesson particularly harshly. 

Attention to clarity and detail without fussiness is a wonderful thing in the presentation of a Rossini comic opera, and Opera Saratoga in upstate New York scored a triumph with their new production of La Cenerentola by assembling a fine all-around team.

Generally, opera doesn’t give old age much of a look-in, but the closing scene of Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen, written in Janáček’s old age, is an exception, as the Forester muses on the passing of time and the renewing cycle of life. In today’s Juilliard School production, Aubrey Allicock gave us the most touching and thoughtful of renderings.

The Montreal International Musical Competition, this year devoted to voice, ended on a high note with the Winners’ Gala Concert on June 8. First, Second and Third Prize winners sang two arias each, but, in a gratifying show of solidarity with the remaining finalists, the program afforded concertgoers the opportunity to hear the five runners-up as well.