Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Yvonne Howard

A good, honest staging and solid singing add up to an excellent new production – its third – at Opera Holland Park. 

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.  

Cal McCrystal goes long on the ham and keeps the gags flowing in a visually stunning production that will delight G&S lovers.

The latest revival of Jonathan Miller's The Barber of Seville has everything you could want; strong direction, a strong orchestral performance, and a cast that's universally strong. No close shaves there!

A period-perfect Albert Herring from Francis Matthews for Buxton International Festival takes time to settle into its stride, but provides plenty of laughs along the way. 

Opera North's new production of The Snow Maiden is the first professional staging in the UK for over 60 years, although the magic is intermittent

Crowning this cycle came a truly magnificent performance of Götterdämmerung, centred very much on Richard Farnes and his orchestra.

In Anna Russell's wittily deadpan analysis of Wagner's Ring cycle, she describes Wotan as “the head god” – pausing for dramatic effect before adding “and he's a crashing bore too.”

Opera North's cycle offers a form of personal Wagner therapy: all four music dramas in concert performances, but with carefully choreographed video and lighting effects. 

Miller eschews the oriental side of the tale, seeing The Mikado as a play on daft British eccentricity. 

Opera North revives a brilliantly successful production of Carousel directed by Jo Davies at the Leeds Grand Theatre.

An excellent orchestral performance and fine singing from Yvonne Howard and Heather Shipp make Opera Holland Park's Norma well worth seeing, in spite of imperfections.

Vert-Vert, undoubtedly the only opera named after a dead parrot, is a very, very silly opera – more a series of comic sketches than an integrated work. But in Garsington's production, everything delights.

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 story of Hansel and Gretel is at least 200 years old – the Brothers Grimm, those avid collectors of German folklore, first published it in 1812. And this well-loved tale’s longevity is something that Garsington Opera’s new production draws attention to from the outset. During the overture, a group of shadowy figures drop pages from a book, which Hansel and Gretel collect with glee.

Jonathan Miller and ENO’s iconic interpretation of Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado has returned to the London Coliseum this Christmas, to the delight of G&S fans across the capital, including myself.

Henry James’ chilling 1898 novella The Turn of the Screw is a curious story and might be considered a gift to any composer as the basis of an extraordinarily sinister opera libretto.

Where could be more appropriate to see the story of Caligula, Rome’s most notorious emperor/self-proclaimed God, than in the Coliseum! Its purple SPQR livery made the opening to this performance all the more striking as Caligula, dishevelled, unhinged and not a little scary, crept on stage through the curtain in dead silence.

The Hallé Orchestra, led by Sir Mark Elder, followed their award-winning 2009 Götterdämmerung with a concert performance of Die Walküre over two nights, prefaced by Gerard McBurney’s new work, The Madness of an Extraordinary Plan. With an array of famed soloists, Elder masterminded a triumph, with the magnificent Hallé showing their quality on the concert stage.

Wagner's Die Walküre was split into two concert performances over two days, the first on one evening and the second on an afternoon and an evening. This review is for both. A spot picks out a man in the Bridgewater Hall’s front row, who steps up to stand by a table in front of the Hallé Orchestra, which is ready to begin. He puts on a braided coat to become Richard Wagner.

The first lesson I learnt from this evening’s stunning performance by Opera North of Das Rheingold to a completely full Hall One at the Sage is that however much you listen to Wagner's opera, absolutely nothing can prepare you for the physical and emotional impact of seeing a live performance, with the sheer power of the orchestra and the dramatic force of the music.

In the run up to their widely anticipated concert staging of Wagner's Das Rheingold this summer, Opera North are providing us with a number of events at their Howard Assembly Room which aim to explore different aspects of the Ring Cycle.

This reviewer fully expected not to enjoy today’s matinee, having read the recent Guardian review and heard mixed reports from friends who saw it when it first came out.

Dimanche 5 juillet au Barbican, le London Symphony Orchestra rejoint par des élèves de la Guildhall School et de nombreux choristes amateurs présentait "The Monster in the Maze" de Jonathan Dove, un opéra très enthousiasmant dirigé par Sir Simon Rattle, suivi par une symphonie de Walton elle aussi exaltante.