Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Susanna Hurrell

Top notch singing, judicious pruning and production which prioritises human drama over camp spectacle make for an illuminating take on Handel's most frequently staged opera.

A Rossini comedy should sparkle, but this new production, starting its tour from Hackney, is decidedly lacking bubbles.

James Conway's production for English Touring Opera returns in a trimmed-down, single-evening guise. 

Ravi Shankar's valiant fusion of East and West is no greater than the sum of its parts.

Mezzo-soprano Rachel Kelly and soprano Susanna Hurrell were the eponymous pair and, my, how they chewed the scenery.

Venables conceived a wealth of acoustic and visual components that constantly overlap and interact.

A young, vibrant cast brings to life a rarely performed Baroque opera, in the production from the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence.

A compelling and energetic debut production from a new opera company in the raddled surroundings of Wilton's Music Hall.

Don't attempt to plough through the synopsis, but enjoy Cavalli's sexy score, persuasively performed in Jean Bellorini's modern staging. 

Five years after the composer's death, his musical collaborator David Murphy ensures that Shankar's only operatic work finally gets heard.

After over a century, Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande finally received its Norwegian première in a fascinating production by Barbora Horáková Joly.

Haydn's La canterina provides cheerful undemanding entertainment from Classical Opera. 

After a sparkling Act I, energy fades slightly on a sweltering night in London, but Opera Holland Park's Die Fledermaus has a lot going for it.

Philip Venables' 4.48 Psychosis is the first musical adaptation of the eponymous play by Sarah Kane, which is the culmination of a three-year programme run jointly by the Royal Opera and Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

A blistering performance of Suor Angelica is the highlight of this strongly performed revival of Richard Jones' 2011 production.

Fine orchestral and singing performances in ETO's Pelléas et Mélisande aren't enough to overcome some of the work's difficulties.

Longborough Festival Opera have opted for Donizetti for the first time, with Don Pasquale.  How successful would the cast be at unleashing the ‘feel-good factor’ of opera buffa?

At carnival time, Cavalli’s mission was to make his audience laugh, wow them with a bit of vocal gymnastics, butter up their romantic feelings with a few delicate cadences, and maybe leave a tear or two in their eye. It’s a potent formula, and it still works.

Former RSC Artistic Director Michael Boyd imparts a distinctly Shakespearean flavour to Monteverdi's L'Orfeo in this first collaboration between the Royal Opera and the Roundhouse.

There is something pleasurably straining, for the big-hall, velvet-accustomed operagoer, about the experience of sitting for three hours on a very tiny bench in a charmingly chiselled, candlelit little theatre that invites contemplation in its own right – beyond the attractions, musical and other, set up within its frame.

If anyone tells you that all opera is highbrow, Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld provides you with a perfect example of the opposite. It's coarse, raunchy, fast, fun, and continually pokes fun at the conventions of grand opera.