Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Victoria Simmonds

With a semi-staged production, directed by Benjamin Davis, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra has also been bringing George Benjamin's opera to concert hall audiences.

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.  

Jonathan Dove’s witty Flight at Scottish Opera is finely sung by a tight ensemble with standout performances from Jennifer France and James Laing.

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

Mozart's Don Giovanni is transported by director Oliver Platt to The Queen Mary in the 1930s. It looks handsome enough, but the concept is flawed.

The Royal Opera's first revival of George Benjamin's medieval shocker is characterised by stellar singing performances, notably from Barbara Hannigan and Iestyn Davies.

Opera Holland Park's traditionally staged Cenerentola has plenty of sparkle and a fine cast of talented singers.

Mark Padmore's fine Wigmore Hall recital could have borne the title The Fallen Man as two of the works chart the downfall of men, albeit in very different ways. 

The London Mozart Players and a talented company of singers presented a special chance to hear a rare, unfinished Mozart opera in an even rarer guise. 

Shorn of Katie Mitchell’s production and presented on the Barbican Hall’s stage with only the occasional prop, George Benjamin's modern masterpiece Written on Skin came across with even greater intensity.

Saffron Opera Group's opening salvo bodes exceptionally well for their planned full cycle of concert performances of Wagner's Ring over the next two years. 

Fine soprano performances from Ruth Jenkins-Róbertsson and Victoria Simmonds can't save Ambroise Thomas's inanimate object of a plot. Thank goodness Wagner saved us from more of the same. 

First seen at the innovative, fearless Aix-en-Provence festival three summers ago, George Benjamin’s riveting, grisly Written on Skin has arrived in New York. 

Flight represents a brave new departure for Opera Holland Park, the first contemporary opera to take to its main stage, in a striking staging with top quality musical performances. 

A Child Of Our Time brought this year's Auckland Arts Festival to a magnificent finish with its message as universal as it was when first composed. 

A suitably rustic account of Janáček’s tale: seductive, engaging, and with a sense of intimacy ideal for this small venue.

Through His Teeth is a gripping psychological drama. Bedford was commissioned by the Royal Opera House to write a piece on the subject of Faust, to run alongside the star-studded performances of Gounod’s opera on the main stage. Heartily recommended to anybody in need of an evening of modern drama and violence.

Offenbach’s wrongfully neglected masterpiece has returned to us at last, thanks to the concerted efforts of Opera Rara, the Orchestra of the Age of the Enlightenment and Sir Mark Elder; and, above all, because of the tireless, lifelong devotion of one man: Jean-Christophe Keck.

21st century opera is a broad church. There aren’t many of us, I suppose, who are intimately familiar with the biographical accounts of the lives of 13th century troubadours, popular at the time in Spain and south west France. But Martin Crimp and George Benjamin, librettist and composer of Written on skin, aren’t exactly run of the mill people.