Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Susana Gaspar

A great orchestral performance of an exciting score don't quite mask the dramatic weaknesses of Opera Rara's latest.

A memorable outdoor Traviata from a young cast who immerse us completely in the story.

Complete performances of Semiramide are as rare as hen's teeth. Opera Rara came close in a terrific concert performance in the Hanging Gardens of Kensington.

 Despite a stellar Mimì, a disappointing La bohème at Grange Park Opera.

From Studio to Stage was the name of this year’s summer performance by young artists on the Jette Parker programme at the Royal Opera House. The programme includes not only singers but also conductors/répétiteurs, a pianist, a lighting designer and stage director Pedro Ribeiro, who surely wins the prize for best headshot.

How, I wonder, is it best for an opera company to treat a revival of a well-aired, well-liked, decent but not particularly radical production of a top ten opera? This was what the Royal Opera had to contend with in this season’s revival of David McVicar’s 2003 setting of Die Zauberflöte: many in the audience will have known every note of the opera, and several will have been thoroughly familiar wi

Take one hapless but lovable hero, one capricious but ultimately vulnerable heroine, a doctor and an army officer straight out of commedia dell’arte, a couple of basso buffo patter songs, at least one memorable romantic ballad, and stir the lot into a good lashing of boisterous Italian music with a sprinkling of furtive tears.

There's no such thing as a perfect comic opera, and I know it's wrong to describe any work of art as perfect. But seeing Mozart and da Ponte's Le Nozze di Figaro last night, I found this a difficult principle to accept: this opera is about as close as you can get.Many operas have a slew of memorable tunes; many have opportunities for singers to show off their qualities.

The Jette Parker Young Artists double bill of Jules Massenet’s rare one-act opera Le Portrait de Manon (sequel to Manon) and Hector Berlioz’s Les Nuits d’été, featured romance, mystique and sumptuous singing.