Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Jonathan Peter Kenny

A Rossini comedy should sparkle, but this new production, starting its tour from Hackney, is decidedly lacking bubbles.

A fine cast breathes life into the story of the captured Ottoman Sultan Bajazet and his Mongol conqueror.

It sizzles with energy, fizzes with musical delight and rejoices in an understated sense of fun. Conway gives the work’s incongruities free rein and defies the audience not to chuckle.

James Conway's production for English Touring Opera returns in a trimmed-down, single-evening guise. 

A direct and expressive new production of one of Mozart's most adventurous operas enthrals at the Hackney Empire. 

English Touring Opera's triple bill of early Baroque miniatures promised an intruiging evening but failed up to expectations. 

Immersive, direct and passionate Bach from English Touring Opera and the Old Street Band.

Conway's decision to render Handel's epic in its entirety was let down by a static staging and unnecessary repeats that masked the hidden gem-like arias.

ETO's charactistically clear, simple production conveys Homer's story with clarity, confidence, and charm – and even humour – from a fine cast, making an exciting start to fully-staged opera at Saffron Hall. 

Updating 470BC Abydos to a 1940s RAF base complete with tin hangar and outdoor privy seemed at times more Dad’s Army than a particularly cohesive tale of war and love.

A beautiful and much-put-upon princess, a pair of royal lovers who have never met, a scheming mother, and a pirate who is a prince in disguise: Ottone is a feast of ideas, beauty and fun. 

Agrippina was a force to be reckoned with: the granddaughter, sister, niece, wife and mother of four Roman Emperors (and lover, incestuously, of at least two). As Mary Beard points out in her brilliant programme introduction, “Agrippina was probably the best connected woman that the Roman world ever saw” – and one of the most ruthless.