Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Oliver Brignall

Despite the excellent playing of the Britten Sinfonia, Anna Morrissey’s flawed production disappoints. 

A spirited and seamless production of Strauss’s Ariadne is aided by some excellent singing and playing at London’s premier summer opera festival.

An embarrassingly trite libretto proves unsalvageable, even with a committed cast of singers.

Iford's stone cloister makes a suitably eerie setting for a fine traditional account of Verdi's Macbeth, notable for its powerful male leads, from Iford Festival Opera and the CHROMA Ensemble.

Stephen Barlow’s staging of Puccini's Western is easy on the eye, if short on verismo. Susannah Glanville impresses as the barkeeper with a heart of gold.

“I’m an old man, but I’m profoundly optimistic about nothing.”Francis Bacon said no end of fascinating things, about painting, art, life, everything really. So listening to his thoughts, especially when guided along by an interviewer as expert as Melvyn Bragg, was always going to make for an entertaining evening.

They say that Violetta in La Traviata is one of opera's hardest soprano parts. Violetta changes character completely over the opera's three acts – all the way from voracious party girl to delicate, dying consumptive – and the singer must be in complete control of the role to make this work. The musical part, of course, is hardly easy either.