Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Richard Burkhard

Simple solutions prove the best in Beethoven's "problem" opera as John Cox's staging is revived at Garsington.

Simon Higlett’s exquisite sets and costumes give a backdrop to Donizetti’s frothiest of rom-coms.

At the Southbank Centre vivid performance of seminal works shows how Schoenberg added colours to the Chameleon and enriched our sound world. 

Joining OHP's 2019 production of Wolf-Ferrari's charming domestic comedy, a blazing new production of Pagliacci delivers everything that one could want from Leoncavallo's infamous opera. 

In the first and last acts, ladies entered with a train still attached to a bolt of cloth, which was then cut to length by an attendant. Was this production brought to the stage in a great hurry, allowing no time for costume fittings? 

Upcycled and recycled, a green production of Verdi's final opera is directed by Olivia Fuchs. 

Come for the shave, stay for the comedy. Christopher Luscombe's new production of Rossini's beloved opera buffa avoids overcomplicating the plot, letting the work's humour and the abilities of the principals shine. 

Opera North's child-friendly production of The Cunning Little Vixen, conducted by Andrew Gourlay, is loaded with charm.

It’s a risky business to describe comic nuance or timing, so please take my word that these qualities were as pitch-perfect as the vocal prowess on display.

A top notch ensemble brings Coult’s first opera luminously to life at the Buxton International Festival, finding renewed relevance in the post-pandemic era.

John Savournin directs Opera Holland Park's end-of-term G&S romp.

Outstanding singing from a beautifully chosen cast led by Miah Persson and Hanna Hipp. 

Peter Mumford's intelligent staging concept and a knockout performance by a reduced Philharmonia Orchestra made this a night to remember.

Wolf-Ferrari's Il segreto di Susanna provides an airy bon-bouche to Tchaikovsky's Iolanta, brilliantly sung by Natalya Romaniw and David Butt Philip and conducted to fairy-tale perfection by Sian Edwards

A daring double bill from Opera North and Phoenix Dance Theatre pairs Jeanguy Saintus' new choreography for The Rite of Spring with a revival of Christopher Alden's production of Gianni Schicchi. 

Opera North's triumphant UK première production of Silent Night by Kevin Puts is directed at Leeds Town Hall by Tim Albery and conducted by Nicholas Kok.

Bruno Ravella's fast-paced Falstaff for Garsington still has crucial space for pathos amid the comedy, with a notably subtle central performance from Henry Waddington.  

A twist on the usual Enlightenment path, this is an admirable production, excellently executed.

Weill's neglected "American Opera" opens in Madrid with a refurbished production by John Fulljames and a strong cast led by Patricia Racette.

Two thematically linked, but contrasting short operas are the final component of Opera North's Little Greats season at the Leeds Grand Theatre.

Charles Edwards and Annabel Arden direct Leoncavallo's Pagliacci and Ravel's L'Enfant et les sortilèges in a contrasting pairing of two short operas in Opera North's 'Little Greats' season.

A convincing outing for Leoncavallo's rarely performed tale of adultery, populated by characters who are flesh and blood and are immediately recognisable today.

Tchaikovsky's High Gothic opera about gambling obsessions is worth seeing for a first class staging, albeit with a mixed musical performance.

Roberto Abbado's precise conducting made the score tingle with life. The magical glissandi were full of mystery, the hotbed of musical detail cleanly communicated and the amorous outbursts treated with Italianate ardour.

Opera North's revival of L'elisir d'amour directed by Daniel Slater at the Grand Theatre, Leeds, still bubbles with life, in spite of its age.

Opera Holland Park give us a broad span of human joys and tragedies in an excellently staged and acted rendering of Puccini's Il trittico.

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. 

Scottish Opera's La Cenerentola is colourful, fun-filled and packed with tunes. Russian mezzo Victoria Yarovaya shines in the title role.

Martin Lloyd-Evan's highly sensitive production features a show-stealing performance by Richard Burkhard but is marred by problems of orchestral balance.

Richard Jones' new production of Rodelinda for ENO has some very good singing, but suffers from a production that refuses to take the opera seriously.

This autumn is Strauss and Freud season in London: while the Royal Opera are showing Charles Edwards’s searingly Freudian take on Richard Strauss’s Elektra, ENO have opted for the polar opposite mood with Johann Strauss’s Die Fledermaus: Christopher Alden’s production is just as Viennese, just as laden with dreams and sexuality, but filled to the brim with gags and frivolous decadence.

What to do with a “classic revival” that has, in the main, met the critics’ eye of approval? That was the question facing Natascha Metherell, the revival director of ENO’s production of La bohème, which opened this week at the Coliseum. The revival was in fact deftly handled: a production which remained faithful to Miller’s original vision, with honest, rather than over-egged, sentimentality.

Following acclaimed productions at Scottish Opera of The Marriage of Figaro and The Barber of Seville, recently revived, Thomas Allen returns to Glasgow to direct The Magic Flute.

Baritone Thomas Hampson recently quipped that he'd try anything other than Gilbert and Sullivan, echoing the sentiments of many opera fans who are inclined to see the operettas penned by the Victorian duo as the preserve of amateur dramatic societies and school drama clubs. With this in mind, it was somewhat surprising to see Opera North create a new production of Ruddigore back in 2010.

Gaetano Donizetti's commedia dell'arte-inspired Don Pasquale is one of the favourites in the opera buffa repertoire. At its ending, the assembled company boisterously enjoin us to remember that when an elderly man marries a much younger woman, no good can result.Apparently, the same is not true of an elderly conductor joining a much younger orchestra.

The operas of Mieczyslaw Weinberg are being pulled out of obscurity. Until the 2010 Bregenz Festival, when director David Pountney placed the composer at the centre of the three-day event and staged an ambitious production of the The Passenger, none of his seven operas had ever been heard outside of Russia.

L'ouvrage lyrique méconnu de Kurt Weill bénéficie d'une distribution américaine inspirée, d'une mise en scène agréablement surprenante et d'un excellent Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo.