Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Leah-Marian Jones

A solid Figaro in Cardiff, in which individual performances are a joy, and humour abounds. 

It’s a small miracle that the production has been recreated so well in such a short time frame.

A daring double bill from Opera North and Phoenix Dance Theatre pairs Jeanguy Saintus' new choreography for The Rite of Spring with a revival of Christopher Alden's production of Gianni Schicchi. 

WNO make a compelling case for Prokofiev's gargantuan War and Peace.

Stellar voices and orcheatra and some inspired staging choices elevate an otherwise heavy-handed production of Pelléas et Mélisande from the WNO at the Hong Kong Arts Festival.

Netia Jones' new production taps into Britten's silvery underworld in a staging dominated by video wizardry which is hypnotically beautiful, but comes at a price.

The Hallé's oddly-ordered Ring arrives at the beginning with Das Rheingold.

A youthful Bellini opera able to stand on its own two feet? Perhaps not, as Adelson e Salvini gets the Opera Rara treatment. 

Anthony McDonald’s Rusalka looks and sounds wonderful in a traditionally told production, with Anne Sophie Duprels returning to the role.

Mélisande as Lulu in David Pountney's unfulfilling production of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande at Welsh National Opera. 

A colour-coded Mosè in Egitto uses the paintings of Marc Chagall to inspire the costumes for the Jews and the Egyptians in this production of a Rossinian rarity.

Welsh National Opera's new production of Rossini's William Tell shows off orchestra and chorus to their full under Carlo Rizzi's baton

Paradox is unsurprising in the works of a composer who said: "The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one's self of the chains that shackle the spirit." The often distancing neoclassical idiom seemed unable to deny Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress (1951) emotionally engaging and affecting music.

It has become customary to give recent productions of Hänsel and Gretel a modern and often murkier twist, perhaps mirroring the current surge in popularity of darker stories, and the appetite for Nordic noir in particular.

The Hallé Orchestra, led by Sir Mark Elder, followed their award-winning 2009 Götterdämmerung with a concert performance of Die Walküre over two nights, prefaced by Gerard McBurney’s new work, The Madness of an Extraordinary Plan. With an array of famed soloists, Elder masterminded a triumph, with the magnificent Hallé showing their quality on the concert stage.

Wagner's Die Walküre was split into two concert performances over two days, the first on one evening and the second on an afternoon and an evening. This review is for both. A spot picks out a man in the Bridgewater Hall’s front row, who steps up to stand by a table in front of the Hallé Orchestra, which is ready to begin. He puts on a braided coat to become Richard Wagner.