Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Hilary Summers

The French premiere of the British composer's opera will be the undisputed high point of the Grande Boutique's season: a perfect confluence of music, staging and cast.

Barry goes for out-weirding Carroll at a fast and furious pace. There's plenty of fun and it's beautifully staged – but is that enough?

Poor diction and lack of heft from some principals mar the composer's last great oratorio. 

What to put with Beethoven's greatest statement on the universality of the human spirit? The BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, Sakari Oramo, Neil Ferris and Andreas Haefliger make a case for renewal.

Never before has human impotence been so cruelly portrayed on stage.

Anna Devin's Cleopatra moved with complete conviction for scheming minx to mature woman in love.

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

Peter Nardone directs the Three Choirs Festival Chorus and Philharmonia Orchestra in a problematic yet thought-provoking opening concert at Worcester Cathedral.

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.

Lewis Carroll's Alice: so crazy that all Gerald Barry can do is make it crazier.

Gerald Barry’s deliciously anarchic operatic setting of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest returns to the London stage.

Richard Ayres's Peter Pan, in a new WNO production, leaves J.M. Barrie's story dangling. 

Roman mythology bumps into Buddhism, not always comfortably, in Zhang Huan’s production of Handel’s Semele at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

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...

Lean yet nuanced performances from Oliver Knussen and the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group in commemoration of Harrison Birtwistle's 80th birthday

An impressive performance of Oedipus Rex under Sakari Oramo, demonstrating that his rapport with his new orchestra has grown rapidly. 

Not the typical Cinderella fairytale: Cecilia Bartoli brings Cenerentola to a present day Whitsuntide by cleaning the tables of a diner.

Annie Proulx's love story between two men in rural Wyoming sees its opera première. Strong casting and an irregular score turn Spain into the capital of the opera.

After the epic grandeur, sweep and immersive quality of Gesang der Jünglinge at this summer’s Proms, this performance as part of Southbank Centre’s The Rest is Noise festival had a lot to live up to. In many ways, however, this far less ostentatious outing overseen by Sound Intermedia got even closer to the work’s disturbing essence.

Interviewed at the Barbican Centre last year, Stephen Fry described Gerald Barry’s score for The Importance of Being Earnest (2010) rather unfavourably as “taking a machete to a soufflé”. However, this zany opera based on Oscar Wilde’s classic play of 1895 has already emerged victorious from concert premières in Los Angeles and London.

“All music – smiles the minister – is incidental.” So says one of the two singers in George Benjamin and Martin Crimp’s Into the Little Hill, performed to perfection in Wigmore Hall by Birmingham Contemporary Music Group this Saturday.

Unlike the rest of of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra's Proms thus far, this concert was not a sandwich. It was more of a chocolate cupcake, with a creamy topping of Beethoven and a strong, substantial body made of Boulez. Not one for the dieters, but a wonderful late-night snack before the next day's roast dinner of Beethoven 9.

Claude Debussy’s only opera, Pelléas et Mélisande, calls for a spring in a forest, scenes in a palace, a well in a park and a scene in the palace vaults. Ever since its premiere in 1902, it has been a difficult work to stage, and indeed to appreciate. Its complex symbolism, impressionistic music and lack of any memorable melodies were not a good recipe for a runaway hit.

The Importance of Being Earnest is Gerald Barry’s fourth full-length opera; his previous three have set texts much more at home in the opera world than this ambitious libretto from Wilde’s famous play.

The Holland Festival boasts quite an impressive relationship with Britten and his works. Tonight’s chamber opera, The Rape of Lucretia was first performed at the festival in 1947 with Britten, Peter Pears and Kathleen Ferrier (for whom the opera was written) and the English Opera Group. Tonight’s performance with Oliver Knussen at the helm is another proud continuation of this tradition.

Accompagné de l'Insula Orchestra, l'ensemble fondé et toujours dirigé par Laurence Equilbey a proposé un programme réjouissant qui a mis en avant les différentes facettes de l'œuvre de Mendelssohn.

Tras haberse programado solo en Milán y Ámsterdam, llega a España, propiciado por Les Arts, el estreno de Fin de partie, de Kurtág.

Nuria Rial brilla en este Rinaldo de momentos preciosos y un ingenuo espíritu de fantasía, muy adecuado para una tórrida noche en un festival de verano.

Eine etwas zu besinnliche Messias-Tradition verhindert ein spannenderes, abwechslungsreicheres Erlebnis, das aber vom Ensemble hervorragend musiziert wurde.

Tras décadas de olvido en Europa, la obra maestra de Ginastera llega al Teatro Real con una nueva producción de Pierre Audi y la enérgica batuta de David Afkham