Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Anna Fraser

A rare 17th-century English Baroque spectacular, designed to delight the Restoration crowd, is given a contemporary twist in Sydney. 

Gorgeous music by Mary Finsterer and an evocative setting by Elizabeth Gadsby transport you to the ends of the earth.

Erin Helyard and his cast bring terrifically strong musical values to Charpentier's Médée, but Justin Way's production falters. 

Not quite ready for a full-blown opera, but Sydney's Pinchgut maintains its historically informed purity with a delicately expanded version of Charpentier's Messe de Minuit.

Mary Finsterer has managed a musical melange that crosses effortlessly and delightfully from the Renaissance to today. If only Tom Wright's book and libretto had been a match, this would have been a work worth taking to the world.

For the past ten years, Pinchgut Opera has established a reputation for excellence through mounting one opera production annually in Sydney (the name derives from an island in Sydney’s harbour, established as a prison from the beginnings of settlement). Their focus has hitherto been on lesser-known Baroque works, with a few later 18th-century outliers.