Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Andrew Watts

A superb cast of singers is let down by Christoph Marthaler's cold, stilted staging as Reimann's Lear returns to its birthplace.  

Widmann packs everything into Babylon – from classical arias to dissonant clusters, military marches, film music and a few chamber music moments.

Toby Spence, Matthew Rose and Andrew Watts shine in a fluent semi-staging at the Royal Festival Hall.

Virtuoso modern stagecraft and a fine cast combine in a very enjoyable, present-day Rake’s Progress.

The Staatsoper's new L'incoronazione di Poppea is serious, intelligent but short on fire.

Elena Langer's gorgeous and tongue-in-cheek Figaro Gets a Divorce shines in Geneva, despite David Pountney's boxy libretto. 

Simon McBurney's production of The Rake's Progress for Festival d'Aix-en-Provence begins with the equivalent of a blank page – a simple white paper box onto which he pours his inspiration.

An astringent sorbet between the courses of a heavily sauced Wagnerian banquet.

An excellent performance of Sir Harrison Birtwistle’s The Last Supper receiving its Scottish première, with Roderick Williams and Susan Bickley heading a luxury cast.

Prom 22 was a surreal evening of music, centered around the UK première of Auerbach’s The Infant Minstrel and His Peculiar Menagerie.

Elena Langer and David Pountney's new WNO opera Figaro Gets a Divorce did not disappoint. Langer's new refreshing score had flair and imagination in a memorable performance.

The BBC Symphony Orchestra was on great form in an exciting evening comprising a concerto and three symphonic works.

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

Unsuk Chin's opera Alice in Wonderland is performed by the Los Angeles Philarharmonic, conducted by Susanna Mälkki. This is no Disney movie! 

When compared to the operas of Handel, Vivaldi’s operas are still relative rarities either on stage or in concert. There have been a handful of performances in UK in the last five years...

Revivals of 21st century operas on the stages of major houses are rarer than hens' teeth, so the Royal Opera were making a strong statement when they announced the revival of Harrison Birtwistle's 2008 The Minotaur, with the original director and much of the original cast.

“Affection is an impossibility”, says Harrison Birtwistle, describing how he feels towards his own compositions. After a Kings Place concert devoted entirely to his works last Wednesday, he talks to Tom Service about his music.

There’s usually plenty of hype surrounding a newly written opera performed at Covent Garden, but the carefully placed stories about Judith Weir’s Miss Fortune are on the improbable end of the scale, featuring a flying kebab shop and a team of breakdancers. So I arrived at Miss Fortune without any real idea of what I was going to get.

There can't have been too many concerts ever which have started with a setting of Gertrude Stein and ended with an extra-camp version of 'Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead'. The London Sinfonietta certainly broke a barrier or two on Saturday night, that's for sure.

Last night saw the UK première of Alexander Raskatov's new opera A Dog's Heart, performed by ENO together with theatre company Complicite. The opera, based on a 1925 novella by Russian satirist Mikhail Bulgakov, tells the tale of Sharik, a stray dog who is given the testicles and pituitary gland of a human by an eminent surgeon, the Professor.

Sous la direction précise et dynamique de François-Xavier Roth, l'unique opéra du compositeur hongrois, proposé dans une nouvelle version française, est servi par une distribution excellente.

Jan Lauwers inszeniert Ligetis Le Grand Macabre als durch-choreographierte Komödie mit hohem Unterhaltungswert.

Jakub Hrůša und die Berliner Philharmoniker bieten mit Werken von Olga Neuwirth und Anton Bruckner ein Hörerlebnis voller Gänsehautmomente.

Dans cette reprise d'une production créée en 2016, Bo Skovhus est magistral dans le rôle-titre. L'œuvre s'avère une nouvelle fois un des moments forts de la programmation de l’Opéra de Paris.

Une nouvelle production ambitieuse et saissante du Lear de Reimann à l'Opéra de Paris, qui voit sombrer dans la folie un roi d'Angleterre interprété magistralement par Bo Skovhus.

Countertenor Andrew Watts und das ORF Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien unter Leitung von Cornelius Meister präsentieren Werke von Gerhard E. Winkler und Olga Neuwirth.