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

How do you like your Tchaikovsky and Sibelius? Great music admits of several approaches, often challenging traditional views. Noa Wildschut's violin and the RPO under Richard Farnes show why expectations are not always met.

Natalya Romaniw, a diva to her fingertips, proves an ideal Floria Tosca in ENO's open-air performance at the South Facing Festival in Crystal Palace Bowl.

Benjamin Britten's final opera hasn't been staged by The Royal Opera in over 25 years, but his setting of Thomas Mann's Death in Venice receives a great new production by Sir David McVicar. 

Director Louisa Muller overcomes the problems of opening a ghost story in natural daylight to deliver plenty of operatic chills. 

A welcome revival at the Met of Robert Carsen's witty production of Verdi's final opera. 

The ubiquitous cycle of life and death was explored in two contrasting works by Musgrave and Brahms in Richard Farnes’ debut with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus.

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.  

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. 

Tom Cairns' production feels empty and distracted, but Kristina Mkhitaryan was a sensational Violetta, strongly reinforced by an impressive Germont from Igor Golovatenko.

BBCSSO and Richard Farnes’s special chemistry in a night of British music. Thoughtful Butterworth and noble Elgar and  Lawrence Power joined the forces for a wonderfully spirited performance of Macmillan’s Viola Concerto.

An outstanding Azucena and solid vocal and orchestral performances more than make up for David Bösch's unappealing staging.

The Marx Brothers famously sent up Verdi's middle period masterpiece in A Night at the Opera and if Bösch doesn't exactly send up Trovatore's corrosive cocktail of infanticide, jealousy and vengeance, he undermines it with his staging.

Stephen Hough delivers an exciting account of Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto no. 1 while the sparks from a speedy Beethoven's Symphony no. 7 fail to ignite. 

Richard Farnes and the CBSO give disappointing readings of Wagner and Sibelius, with only the Beethoven Fourth rising above routine.

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

While the Welsh were merrily slaying Belgians in Euro 2016, one dragon was on the receiving end at the Royal Festival Hall.

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. 

Under the baton of Richard Farnes, the Orchestra of Opera North performed Lutosławski and Mahler in Leeds Town Hall.

Der fliegende Holländer at Leeds Town Hall shows Opera North at its most exciting, in a production conducted by Richard Farnes, with Béla Perencz and Alwyn Mellor.

A brilliantly successful performance of Götterdämmerung by Opera North to bring its four-year Ring to a fiery close. 

Opera North's La Fanciulla del West, directed by Aletta Collins, contains a bold performance from Alwyn Mellor as Minnie, and a powerful Ramerrez in Rafael Rojas.

Opera North's Death in Venice is another winner for the company in Britten's centenary year, originally directed by Yoshi Oida. Alan Oke is a successful, anguished Aschenbach.

Siegfried, the “Second Day” of Der Ring des Nibelungen and the third staging by Opera North after Die Walküre in 2012 and Das Rheingold the year before, is just as enthralling as its predecessors.

Britten’s The Turn of the Screw, part of the London Symphony Orchestra’s contribution to the Britten 100 celebrations, was supposed to have been conducted by Sir Colin Davis; it was instead dedicated to his memory following his death last Sunday.

On 29 January 1728, at John Rich’s theatre in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, playwright John Gay and composer Johann Christoph Pepusch presented to the London public a new ballad opera that would shake the foundations of musical entertainment.

Few operas begin as arrestingly as Verdi’s Otello; no overture here – or, indeed, the first act of Shakespeare’s play. Instead, in a single galvanising orchestral outburst a terrific storm is set in motion, underpinned by the most gratingly dissonant of pedals in the lowest reaches of the organ.

The strange yet compelling story of the 350-year-old opera singer Elina Makropulos was Opera North’s showcase in a production première at this year’s Edinburgh International Festival. Leoš Janáček wrote The Makropulos Affair, his penultimate opera, based on the Karel Čapek play about Elina Makropulos, who was given a potion to preserve her youth when she was sixteen.

Opera North’s concert staging of Wagner’s Ring Cycle continued last night with Die Walküre, the “first night” proper of the cycle after the “preliminary evening” of Das Rheingold.

Queen of Spades began life as a sharp little ghost story by Alexander Pushkin, quite different in tone and spirit from the melodramatic adaptation by Modest Tchaikovsky, who wrote the libretto for his composer brother.

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.