Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Stuart Jackson

Laurence Cummings and John Caird’s second Garsington exploration of the operas of Monteverdi brims with wonderfully playing and singing in an attractive setting.

Benjamin Britten’s dark masterpiece Peter Grimes returns triumphantly to Opera North, conducted by Gary Walker and revived by Karolina Sofulak and Tim Claydon.

Sir David McVicar's classic staging of The Magic Flute, now over 20 years old, shines afresh in a stylish performance conducted by Marie Jacquot, making her Covent Garden debut.  

Adele Thomas makes a good case for Semele's operatic credentials in her production which makes effective nods towards Baroque opera’s devotion to spectacle.

Director Francesco Micheli undersells Handel in this Glyndebourne debut, but there's plenty of froth to keep the audience entertained. 

Pianist Julius Drake and his two singers probe the audience’s collective soul with the depth of their Mahler performances. 

A delightful performance of Haydn's oratorio, streamed from the Barbican all the way to our reviewer in Australia. 

For social distancing reasons, the Festival dispensed with a full staging of Wagner's epic love story, allowing singers and orchestra to share the stage in an able compromise.

Directed by Gerard McBurney, this concert recreated the marathon Akademie conducted by Beethoven in Vienna which saw the premieres of four major works. 

Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, Semele willingly pays the price of death through transformation. 

Themes and Variations from Brahms and Dvořák, haunting Britten with Stuart Jackson and Alberto Menéndez Escribano, John Wilson standing in to conduct at City Halls, Glasgow. 

Natalya Romaniw is a natural as our maligned heroine: Paul Curran creates staging of bewildering comic complexity and pulls it off with panache.

ENO's new production of Salome which opens the season features some commendable music-making, but is let down by a flawed concept and dull staging.

Barrie Kosky's punchy, visually exhilarating take on Saul, with Iestyn Davies as a sublime David, makes for a powerful evening of drama at Glyndebourne.

A series of ill-advised staging choices leads to a disappointingly drab performance of Monteverdi's Homeric epic.

A young, vibrant cast brings to life a rarely performed Baroque opera, in the production from the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence.

Don't attempt to plough through the synopsis, but enjoy Cavalli's sexy score, persuasively performed in Jean Bellorini's modern staging. 

The stunning Glyndebourne production of Saul by Barrie Kosky also makes a big impact in the Adelaide Festival.

Ian Page assembled a fine cast, with a particularly good Leporello from David Soar for yet another superb performance of Mozart from Classical Opera.

A concert performance wasn't perhaps the best way to make a case for Jommelli's Il Vologeso, presented as part of Classical Opera's Mozart 250 series. 

There’s something decidedly odd about pitching up at Glyndebourne sans picnic hamper, wrapped up in heavy layers, the aroma of mulled wine wafting through the foyer... 

Barrie Kosky's production, revived for the tour, turns Handel’s 1739 Old Testament oratorio Saul into a gripping psychodrama. 

J.C. Bach's opera Adriano in Siria, set to a popular libretto by Metastasio, was first performed in London in January 1765 when the nine-year-old Mozart was in town.

Polyphony live up to their reputation, performing Bach's St John Passion with intensity and dynamism, in a performance only marred by some routine orchestral playing. 

Handel and the Huddersfield Choral Society go way back, and their union is probably listed somewhere in the Old Testament.

For an opera school production, it's a good idea to choose a classic: something that will focus the audience on the quality of the singers and orchestra rather than on innovation in the piece or programming.

One of the consistent joys of seeing a performance by the Royal Academy of Music's opera school is that they bring in world class conductors. At last night's La vera costanza, the orchestra, conducted by Trevor Pinnock, was exceptional.

They are sadly few in number, but some things in this St. John Passion I can report in mildly positive terms would include Stephen Layton’s hand-selected choir Polyphony, whose members dealt with Bach’s demanding vocal lines capably and sang in clear, idiomatic German; bass-baritone Neal Davies (a perfectly respectable if not overly engaging Christ); and Derek Welton’s robustly s

When you go to a student opera production, even at an institution as prestigious as the Royal Academy of Music, you don't expect to see one of the opera world's conducting legends in the pit. But that's precisely what we had at last night's performance of Berlioz's Béatrice et Bénédict, in the shape of Sir Colin Davis (CH, CBE), a man with several thousand opera performances on the clock.

Le metteur en scène suisse frappe très fort en se livrant comme rarement sur ses craintes géopolitiques, dans une production qui fait de l'œuvre de Monteverdi un fascinant manifeste d’ascétisme, d’austérité, d’aridité.

Christophe Rousset und Les Talens Lyriques zeigen, dass etwas Verschollenes modern, ergreifend und aufregend sein kann.

Christophe Rousset et Les Talens Lyriques exhument La divisione del mondo, opéra de Legrenzi donné pour la première fois en France 350 ans après sa création. Une découverte qui offre des moments exquis, portés par la mise en scène de Jetske Mijnssen.

Zusammen mit dem Chor war für mich der Countertenor Iestyn Davies der klare Höhepunkt des Abends