Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Louise Kemény

A brooding and melancholy presentation of Bach’s masterpiece from the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and Mark Padmore. 

The singing is the main attraction in Dutch National Opera’s Le nozze di Figaro, but this new production is also entertaining and looks good enough to eat.

Bruno Ravella's version of Handel's Agrippina moves the action from Classical Rome to the avaricious Eighties in a sharp, amusing night at Iford.  

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. 

Wit is the ruling spirit of British Youth Opera’s delectable production of Benjamin Britten and W.H. Auden’s operetta Paul Bunyan, directed by Will Kerley.

Audiences have come to look forward to the annual co-production between Scottish Opera and the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, where student opera singers, orchestra players and backstage crew get a chance to partner up with their professionals across the other side of Glasgow’s Hope Street.

British Youth Opera have been fostering the best of young British vocal talent for 25 years, and it’s a delight to see them celebrating their anniversary this year with a work precisely as old as they are: Judith Weir’s A Night at the Chinese Opera dates from 1987, and made for a lively showcase for these rising stars at London’s Peacock Theatre last night.

Recital of songs/ arias by Britten/ Bellini/ Donizetti/ Schubert/ DebussyLouise Kemeny brings a level of intellect and thoughtfulness to sung texts which is probably unique among young singers. She has to her name both a Masters degree in renaissance literature, and a scholarly article about newly-installed Oxford Poetry Professor Geoffrey Hill.