Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Clare Presland

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.

Ariadne auf Naxos shines in an ultra-contemporary world of high net worth tantrums at Longborough Festival Opera, complete with glam rock fairies, giant string, and glorious music. 

In Siberian conditions more akin to The Winter's Tale, a revival of Robert Carsen's season setting of Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream offered a warm glow at the Coliseum.

Problems of orchestral balance cloud Olivia Fuchs's straightforward, compelling staging of Janáček’s tirade against the rigidity and hypocrisy of small town society.

Netia Jones' new production taps into Britten's silvery underworld in a staging dominated by video wizardry which is hypnotically beautiful, but comes at a price.

William Kentridge's Lulu for ENO is easier to admire than it is to love. But if you want to be challenged dramatically, this is the opera to do it.

Philip Venables' 4.48 Psychosis is the first musical adaptation of the eponymous play by Sarah Kane, which is the culmination of a three-year programme run jointly by the Royal Opera and Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

Anthony McDonald’s Rusalka looks and sounds wonderful in a traditionally told production, with Anne Sophie Duprels returning to the role.

Calixto Bieito’s new production of Verdi’s The Force of Destiny for English National Opera is – for him – a tame affair. 

Dmitri Tcherniakov turns Shostakovich's "satirical tragedy" into a riveting piece of theatre, help by an outstanding performance from Patricia Racette and a top class orchestral performance from new ENO Musical Director Mark Wigglesworth.

Calixto Bieito  updates the Carmen to the final years of Franco’s dictatorship and in Joan Anton Rechi’s revival, the results are often gritty and fierce, if unlikely to do anything for the Spanish tourist trade.

A new co-commissioned production from English National Opera and the Barbican sees Tansy Davies tackle the most harrrowing of modern subjects: 9/11.

Two years ago, when this controversial production by Peter Konwitschny was first seen at English National Opera, I was completely knocked sideways by it. Could it deliver the same emotional blow to the solar plexus this time around?

An operatic thiller? Can such a thing exist? With an edgy score, Søren Nils Eichberg’s opera Glare tries hard to convince, at least initially.

Military service brutalises. If you’re in any doubt about this, Berg’s short opera Wozzeck should dispel them, and particularly so in Carrie Cracknell’s new production for ENO.