Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | English | Julien Behr

Hamlet lives! Ambroise Thomas' operatic take on The Bard has a particularly French ending but that doesn't spoil this terrific revival in Paris. 

A disappointing new production by David Marton at Opéra de Lyon. 

It is unlikely that anyone went home from this soul-inspiring performance without that famous "Ode" ringing in his or her head.

Cologne Opera's staging of Ravel's two comedies needed a stronger directorial response to the performance space, but the musical rewards compensated.

René Jacobs conducted the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra in an outstanding performance of Mozart's Idomeneo as part of Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart Festival

A lush programme of Fauré, Stravinsky, and Poulenc is let down by Minkowski's erratic conducting, but is partially redeemed by two of France's fastest rising singers.

Operalia is a curious beast among voice competitions. Step onto the stage, belt out your aria and, before you’ve barely had time to acknowledge the applause, the next contestant shuffles along the conveyor belt. A one-shot saloon. 

Come for the singing, enjoy the music and bring your sunglasses: this psychologically charged Idomeneo at the Theater an der Wien is not to be missed.

Josep Pons strode purposefully onto the Barbican stage to conduct the BBC Symphony Orchestra in a performance of Haydn’s “Clock” Symphony. The first movement opened by way of an Adagio laden with a suitable sense of portent, the layers of writing for the strings being clearly articulated to bring this out.

Ambroise Thomas’s Hamlet has riled and infuriated ever since its 1868 première, though for many it is merely an object of derision: one 1869 correspondent to the satirical magazine Punch admits not having seen the work but nevertheless disparages it as ‘Omelette’, a musical ‘burlesque’, and pillories Thomas’s fondness for drinking songs with the lines ‘To drink or not to drink? That is now the que