Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Stephen Richardson

Richard Farnes returns to Opera North to conduct and Sam Brown directs a concert staging of Wagner's final opera, Parsifal. 

Deborah Warner's intelligent new Covent Garden staging provides the perfect backdrop for a strong singing cast in Britten's maritime masterpiece.

Richard Jones' setting is superb in its bare minimalism, but he pays great attention to all the psychological nuances in Janáček's opera. 

A memorable performance makes a worthy memorial to the late, great Bernard Haitink, who conducted the production's premiere. 

In a new production at The Grange Festival, Elin Pritchard's performance of Puccini's titular heroine in this 1940s-era update is a tour de force.

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

Barry goes for out-weirding Carroll at a fast and furious pace. There's plenty of fun and it's beautifully staged – but is that enough?

Almost 30 years since its last run, Gerald Barry’s The Intelligence Park makes a boisterous return to the stage. 

Opera Holland Park updates Puccini's setting to the 1960s in a production that does not completely work, but benefits from the strong performance of Elizabeth Llewellyn as its leading lady.

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. 

Tim Albery's production for Opera North is well sung and superbly acted, involving us deeply in Janáček's tragic family drama.

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.

Nevill Holt Opera and Royal Northern Sinfonia offer a sumptuous production, with gorgeous singing, but one unafraid to make us confront the uncomfortable aspects of the plot.

Top accolades go to soprano Mary Plazas, whose Duchess was at once despicable for her sense of entitlement and her racist and anti-Semitic views, and heartbreakingly vulnerable with her realisation at the end that "the only people who were ever good to me were paid for it".

If you had received an invitation to a masked ball at which there turned out to be no masks and no dancing, it's understandable you'd feel disappointed. 

A compelling and energetic debut production from a new opera company in the raddled surroundings of Wilton's Music Hall.

A slick production from the Garsington Opera Company, who use the location of the Wormley Estate to their full advantage. 

Opera North's production of Benjamin Britten's Billy Budd, directed by Orpha Phelan, is a tense psychological drama which puts the emphasis on issues of democracy and attitudes to dictatorship. 

Martin Lloyd Evans returns to Scottish Opera direct a visually rich and lively Mikado. Richard Suart is a veteran Ko-Ko with no-one safe from his Little List as it changes for every performance.

Can classic opera reflect the political status of the society in which it is performed? Calixto Bieito's production of Turandot for Northern Ireland Opera raises some uncomfortable questions.

The benefits of opera in concert are felt in Manchester with the BBC Philharmonic, with a performance of Beethoven's only opera, Fidelio. 

Unsuk Chin's opera Alice in Wonderland is performed by the Los Angeles Philarharmonic, conducted by Susanna Mälkki. This is no Disney movie! 

Smetana's The Bartered Bride by Opera North at Leeds Grand Theatre directed by Daniel Slater is a confident revival of an old success. 

Garsington Opera takes a comedic approach to Beethoven's Fidelio. The result is amusing and musically strong, but lacking in both dynamic staging and emotional depth.

Treliński’s de-romanticizing of the plot of Puccini's Manon Lescaut makes for a compelling piece of theatre… it’s just not Manon. 

A very welcome and triumphant revival of Peter Grimes begins Opera North’s Festival of Britten season, soon to be followed by A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Death in Venice. The work has often been described as Britten’s greatest, the paeans of praise beginning soon after its first performance just after the Second World War, often involving the word “enigma”.

The Importance of Being Earnest is Gerald Barry’s fourth full-length opera; his previous three have set texts much more at home in the opera world than this ambitious libretto from Wilde’s famous play.

Alfredo Catalani's La Wally is the last of three rarely performed Italian operas from the late 19th century verismo period to feature in Opera Holland Park's 2011 season. Catalani belongs to group of composers whose place in the modern repertoire suffers from the problem of "not being Puccini," the more poignantly since he was born in Puccini's home town of Lucca.

C'est peut-être l'événement de la saison à l'Opéra de Paris : dans le chef-d'œuvre de Britten, la metteuse en scène britannique fait des débuts remarqués dans la Grande Boutique.