Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Alastair Miles

Director Francesco Micheli undersells Handel in this Glyndebourne debut, but there's plenty of froth to keep the audience entertained. 

Edward Gardner brings out the Wagner influence in Massenet's opulent score, Juan Diego Flórez give a persuasive performance in the title role.

Michieletto presents an engaging new production where magic and reality reflect each other through a mirror, and humans are exposed in all their vulnerability.

In Bérénice, given its world première at the Opéra Garnier, composer Michael Jarrell revisits Racine's refined tragedy with the help of the inspired voices of Barbara Hannigan and Bo Skovhus.

The latest revival of Jonathan Miller's The Barber of Seville has everything you could want; strong direction, a strong orchestral performance, and a cast that's universally strong. No close shaves there!

The musical glories of Schreker’s glistening, late-Romantic score are laid bare in the Bavarian State Opera’s first production of Die Gezeichneten since 1919.

Opera North's concert version of Puccini's Turandot in Leeds Town Hall, conducted by Sir Richard Armstrong, is magnificent

Sir David McVicar’s new production of Pelléas et Mélisande for Scottish Opera is stylish and lit like a painting. 

Opera North's production of Benjamin Britten's Billy Budd, directed by Orpha Phelan, is a tense psychological drama which puts the emphasis on issues of democracy and attitudes to dictatorship. 

Strong vocal and orchestral performances and a tour-de-force staging of Act II light up Grange Park's production of Verdi's political thriller of the dark days of the Spanish inquisition.

“Honour your masters!” Sachs instructs Walther in the final scene. Wagner's spirit was honoured well as Glyndebourne's festival opened, but did the song contest necessarily crown the right winner?  

Daniel Harding's love for Schumann's genre-defying work brought some strong playing from the LSO and deeply moving singing from his soloists and chorus.

Opera North's The Barber of Seville directed by Giles Havergal at the Grand Theatre Leeds is supremely theatrical and a classic in all senses of the word.

A thrilling evening at Poole’s Lighthouse with the BSO and Chorus plus a quartet of superb soloists, conducted by Kirill Karabits in an unforgettable performance of Verdi’s Requiem. 

The Met's revival of Lucia di Lammermoor was a collaborative success, with singers, orchestra and chorus cohering well.  

Gaetano Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor is a coloratura soprano vehicle and this season’s Dutch National Opera production felicitously starred Jessica Pratt, an internationally celebrated Lucia and a favourite of the Italian public.

Every opera poses an acting challenge to its prima donna, but Massenet’s Manon, whose 2010 production by Laurent Pelly started its first revival at Covent Garden last night, is particularly harsh on the singer of its title role. Ermonela Jaho rose to the task magnificently.

The new Netherlands Opera performance of Richard Wagner’s only comic opera Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg was an absolute success. Spanning a daunting four-and-a-half hours, the evening kept us wanting more rather than searching for the clock.

Andris Nelsons followed up his 2012 Tristan und Isolde with a stirring performance of Wagner’s breakthrough work, Der fliegende Holländer, with a fine array of soloists and the CBSO in Birmingham. At a little over two hours, The Flying Dutchman is one of Wagner’s shorter operas, but it shares its supernatural themes with many of his other works.

The second collaboration between Opera Rara and the BBC Symphony Orchestra brought a starry cast to the Barbican Centre on Sunday evening for a revival of Donizetti’s tragic opera Belisario. Written in 1836, immediately after the triumph of Lucia di Lammermoor, it was an instant success following its première at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice and remained in the repertoire for several decades.

Director Alessandro Talevi’s imagination, wit and audacity meant that Don Giovanni, which has just launched Opera North’s new season, was a huge success. The production was enthralling throughout, never dragging or disappointing, even in the second act. It works much better than others I have seen, because the emphasis is placed firmly on the comic rather than the pathetic.

Written in the late 1740s, Judas Maccabaeus was a clever attempt by the ever-wily Handel to capitalize on recent successes, both his own – in the form of the now-established oratorio concert – and that of the nation, in the wake of the recent victories over Bonnie Prince Charlie’s Scottish rebels.

Christmas may have inspired much of the greatest holiday-related popular music, but in the Classical tradition, Bach’s St. Matthew Passion (to say nothing of his St. John Passion and Easter Oratorio) points toward the influence of Easter.

A work scheduled to last nearly two hours could be excused for starting with a long slow build up, but Havergal Brian’s massive Gothic Symphony (the longest symphony ever composed) bursts onto the scene with a brisk and bustling march-like flourish, contrasted briefly with a delicate violin solo that reminds us that this is very much an English composition.

The ENO's production of Donizetti's "melodrama in a prologue and two acts" Lucrezia Borgia is notable for two reasons. Firstly, it's a new production of an opera by a major bel canto composer, but one that isn't performed all that often. Secondly, it's the operatic debut of acclaimed film director Mike Figgis.

L'orchestre et la cheffe se distinguent dans une version de concert où la distribution n'a pas été à la hauteur de l'événement.

Bildgewaltig inszeniert Floris Visser Jules Massenets Oper; Elsa Dreisig und Piotr Beczała erobern als unglückseliges Liebespaar Herzen und Ohren.

L’Orchestre de la Suisse Romande sous la baguette de Jonathan Nott aura relevé le défi d’un Schoenberg coloré et éruptif et l’Ensemble Vocal de Lausanne quant à lui aura desservi un Schubert d’une incarnation terne de la Messe en mi bémol majeur : dommage. 

Robert Schumanns zu Unrecht vergessenes Hauptwerk in einer luxuriösen Traumbesetzung unter der Leitung von Daniel Harding.

Eine Rarität der Sonderklasse eröffnete die diesjährigen Münchener Opernfestspiele. Claude Debussys Pelléas et Mélisande war in einer neuen Produktion im Prinzregententheater zu sehen, konnte aber schlussendlich leider nur musikalisch punkten.