Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Timothy Redmond

Byrne is stunning in the title role while a strong cast of singers, orchestra, classic sets and dramatic acting make this a thoroughly enjoyable performance. 

Top accolades go to soprano Mary Plazas, whose Duchess was at once despicable for her sense of entitlement and her racist and anti-Semitic views, and heartbreakingly vulnerable with her realisation at the end that "the only people who were ever good to me were paid for it".

Guildhall School of Music and Drama tackles Gian Carlo Menotti's rarity, a tale of stateless and paperless 'citizens of nowhere' seeking refuge amid Kafkaesque bureaucracy. 

The first UK production of Karl Amadeus Hartmann’s 1930s anti-war opera Simplicius Simplicissimus is a musical and dramatic triumph, and as pertinent as ever

The Guildhall School of Music and Drama is firing on all cylinders with this double bill of rare surrealist operas by Martinů.

Stellar performances can’t save ENO’s production of Thomas Ades’ masterpiece from poor direction, set design and venue.