Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Brian Thomson

Fireworks, party boats, Violetta swooping from a giant chandelier: soprano Stacey Alleaume triumphs in this magnificent restaging of Francesca Zambello's spectacular waterfront La traviata.  

Gale Edwards' popular revival, set in the 1930s Weimar Republic, brings visual delight and showcases Australian-Chinese tenor Kang Wang as Rodolfo.

For the first time, a musical comes to the outdoor stage of the annual Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour. 

Gale Edwards' Opera Australia staging of Richard Strauss' bloody opera is revived with Lise Lindstrom in the title role. 

A fine cast led by Maija Kovalevska conveys the timeless beauty and emotion of Puccini’s Parisian melodrama, but the 1930s Berlin setting remains an imperfectly realised transformation.

I must admit that Bach through Brass, as this concert was entitled, filled me with a certain amount of trepidation. Bach, on instruments for which the music in the programme was not designed, on instruments which were not even around in Bach’s time (at least not in their modern-day form), did not sound immediately appealing; nevertheless, something drew me in, and I was pleasantly surprised.