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Sir Simon Rattle and the LSO open their 2021-22 season with an eclectic mix of British music that sees the orchestra at its most lustrous. 

Handel’s Messiah is not too re-imagined, thankfully, with an almost Crystal Palace sized choir although not all singing at once!

A veritable Baroque bonanza featuring a top-tier cast and orchestra in an emotionally incisive and handsomely crafted production.

An over-directed, but vivid staging demonstrating political rise and fall in Ancient Rome transported to the present day.

Messrs Rattle and Sellars bewitch the Barbican audience with a sumptuous rendition of Janáček's magnum opus. 

Mahler 2 must be mother’s milk for the CBSO Chorus, though they sang with affecting passion from their soft, seated entry to towering last peroration of the Resurrection hymn.

Simon McBurney's production of The Magic Flute continues to delight and this revival benefits from a strong cast, led by the superb Lucy Crowe as Pamina.

A rare and compelling performance of Beethoven's string quintet was the centrepiece of another instalment in the Nash Ensemble's traversal of German Romantic composers.

Sir Roger Norrington and a strong cast joined a Baroque-style London Philharmonic Orchestra in a highly accomplished Dido and Aeneas, preceded by Handel’s clean and stately Water Music.

Dame Ethel Smyth's Mass in D enjoys a rare outing with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Martyn Brabbins. 

Fiona Shaw's production doesn't always get everything right, but Lucy Crowe's debut as the Countess is the defining success of the this revival.

Handel’s opera Orlando is famous for the great mad scene at the end of Act 2. Specifically written for the celebrated castrato Senesino, it’s an emotionally powerful ten-minute monologue.

The father-daughter exchanges between Dmitri Platanias's jester and Sofia Fomina's Gilda prove the highlights of an evening which doesn't always catch fire.

Rattle conducts Janáček's glorious score with unerring skill and barely concealed adoration, but is let down by his regular collaborator's muddy vision. 

Iván Fischer's minimalist staging of Don Giovanni makes a triumphant return to Mupa, Budapest.

A strange evening: superb Mozart playing from Rousset, plenty of fine singing, staging and costumes that one certainly isn’t going to forget. But what’s the point of it all?

At 71, Radu Lupu continues to amaze. No one gets so much out of a piano with such a light touch and minimum of effort. 

The Czech Philharmonic brings The Epic of Gilgamesh to life with audacity and flair.

Despite the beautiful sensitivity of La Nuova Musica, coupled with some truly sublime singing, the silliness of Cavalli’s opera is sometimes overplayed in this semi-staged production; less is, sometimes, more.

Sir John Eliot Gardiner conducts an evening where much pomp and circumstance does little justice to the multifarious aesthetics of a great composer.

Although Ács Ákos gave an excellent performance of Mozart's Clarinet Concerto, Iván Fischer's innovative Requiem didn't quite work.

The legendary Kings College Choir, Cambridge, conducted by their very own Stephen Cleobury, was accompanied by the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment on period instruments at the Royal Albert Hall.

A bird's-eye view of Gustavo Dudamel's opening concert in the LA Phil's Mozart-Pärt cycle.

A revival of Simon McBurney's 2013 production of The Magic Flute reaches new heights under Mark Wigglesworth's baton.

Juan Diego Flórez turns in a tour de force in the title role of a consistently attractive and inventive performance of Gluck's ballet-laden Orphée et Eurydice.

With the help of a star-studded cast, Barrie Kosky's imaginative staging delivers a production of Handel's Saul which has just about everything going for it: choreography, voices, acting. A must-see.

Traditionally at the Proms, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is reserved for the penultimate prom slot in September, but this year, they have made an exception and given it to the CBSO and Andris Nelsons.

“The very incarnation of vice” was how one critic described Célestine Galli-Marié’s Carmen at the opera’s 1875 Opéra Comique première. That description could equally be applied to Stéphanie d’Oustrac in Glyndebourne’s revival of David McVicar’s terrific production.

Lucy Crowe and Tim Mead give a thoughtful rendition of Pergolesi's Stabat Mater at a Lenten concert by La Nuova Musica at St John's Smith Square.

The English Concert play beautifully, the chorus is in superb voice, but a disjointed cast of unconvincing singers mean Hercules never reaches heroic heights.

In Peter Sellars' reconstruction of Purcell's unfinished semi-opera The Indian Queen, fine vocal performances are spoilt by indifferent staging and choreography and an embarrassing retelling of the Conquistador story.

While still a charming production, a touch more warmth and bel canto style are yet required to bring some authentic Italian sunshine to L'elisir d'amore in Bow Street this November.

Sir John Eliot Gardiner conducts the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique and the Monteverdi Choir in a late night performance of Beethoven's Missa Solemnis at the BBC Proms.

From the insistent, driving opening to the sublime transcendence of the closing chorale, Norrington, the Zurich Chamber Orchestra and James Gilchrist give us a St John Passion to remember.

Esa-Pekka Salonen conducts the Philharmonia in a fine account of Mahler's mighty “Symphony of a Thousand”, culminating in a dramatic realisation of Faust's redemption.

Whooping horns, a single yellow rose and a velvety cushion of strings set the scene for a sumptuous tranche of highlights from Der Rosenkavalier in the London Symphony Orchestra’s latest concert commemorating Richard Strauss in his 150th anniversary year.

What happens when a hero comes home? The exploration of this question forms the basis of director Peter Sellars’ new production of Hercules at the Canadian Opera Company.

At one point in the classic 1950 film All About Eve, the inimitable theatre critic Addison DeWitt speaks reverently of his art as critic: “I have lived in the theatre as a Trappist monk lives in his faith. I have no other world; no other life – and once in a great while, I experience that moment of revelation for which all true believers wait and pray.

If Count Almaviva (to say nothing of Don Giovanni) were alive today, he might perhaps enlist Richard Dawkins to defend his behaviour. We know from evolutionary biology that the male stands the best chance of passing on his genes if he has many partners, the female if she can keep the male around to help raise the children he’s had with her.

Andris Nelsons and the CBSO brought their superb Beethoven cycle to a close with fine performances of the Eighth and Ninth Symphonies at Birmingham’s Symphony Hall.The Eighth Symphony suffers from sitting in the shade of the Seventh and Ninth, but Beethoven’s “Little” F major symphony has a great deal to offer.

This concert was a triumph of smart programming, combining the third symphonies of Sibelius and Lutosławski, as well as works for soprano and orchestra by these composers – both modernists in their own ways. It was also an ambitious showcase for British soprano Lucy Crowe, who sparkled in every sense (her striking peacock-green dress, finished with gleaming gems, never threatened to upstage her).

In the celebratedly short time in which Rossini wrote The Barber of Seville, he got into a time capsule and took a short trip to twenty-first century London; on his return to 1816 Rome, he wrote the part of Rosina for Lucy Crowe's voice. Or at least, that's what it felt like at ENO last night, as Crowe turned in a performance which outstrips my ability to find superlatives.

Read our review of Jean-Pierre Ponnelle's production of Mozart's La Clemenza di Tito in its 2012 broadcast from the Met Opera in New York.

As I walked to this concert by the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique and the Monteverdi Choir, I wondered what might have changed in Sir John Eliot Gardiner’s Beethoven in the two decades since he first recorded these symphonies.

If I were to describe Janáček's late opera The Cunning Little Vixen as a bit of a one-off, I could be accused of severe understatement. It's the only opera in the mainstream repertoire to be based on a cartoon strip, it mixes animals and humans at will and it incorporates dance and mime routines, all against the backdrop of the setting of ancient forest so beloved by middle European romantics.

Verdi's Rigoletto is a work of contrasts. The Duke is equally at home in a glittering palace or a tawdry brothel (a historically accurate characterisation of King Francis I of France, on whom his character is based); his romantic ballads are juxtaposed with the musical depiction of violent storms. Pretty courtly dances share the stage with powerful orchestral evocations of impending doom.

The ‘semi-opera’ was an English musical and spoken theatre hybrid which by the end of the 17th century had begun to scrape the bottom of Restoration drama’s literary barrel, and by the 18th had been rendered obsolete by efforts to introduce the English to formal opera from the continent.

It's the most spectacular entrance in opera: the giant stone statue bursts in to join Don Giovanni at the dinner table; a pair of sweeping downward octave swoops in D minor fills the audience (and the hapless Leporello) with terror at the rake's imminent descent into hell.OK, that was a spoiler, but then we all know the story: a production of Don Giovanni is all about how you tell it.

A true highlight of this year's London Handel Festival was a performance of the dramatic oratorio Saul, featuring a large cast of young soloists, including several previous finalists of the Festival's annual singing competition, all now getting well established in their solo careers.

When I was young, I often wondered what it would be like if an angel came down to earth. I mused that, if such an angel came, she would be a pretty, middle-aged lady with a slender figure, blonde hair, and, most importantly, a gorgeous, ethereal voice.