Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Christine Rice

Sacred and secular, operatic and symphonic dimensions united in a thrilling climax to the London Philharmonic Orchestra's season. 

Two individual works worth seeking out with outstanding performances in each.

With gloriously inventive sets and costumes, Alex Esposito’s splendid Four Villains drive a wonderfully entertaining new production.

Miskimmon's relocation of the action to Ireland is unsparing in its evocation not of some tearjerking melodrama but of an almost documentary reportage on real events. 

Christopher Alden, Chris Hopkins and an excellent cast send us a comic roller coaster ride with Verdi’s ultra-rarely performed second opera.

In the first and last acts, ladies entered with a train still attached to a bolt of cloth, which was then cut to length by an attendant. Was this production brought to the stage in a great hurry, allowing no time for costume fittings? 

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.

English National Opera opens its new season with a revival of David Alden's masterly production. 

Incest, family secrets, murder… this is a fiercely compelling evening of dance, drama and song.

Charles Edwards' ambitious production is well served by a strong cast as Grange Park Opera opens its season in the Theatre in the Woods. 

Martyn Brabbins conducts an excellent ENO orchestra and consistently good ensemble cast as Richard Jones delivers a wealth of narrative detail to introduce Wagner's Ring.

When done as well as this, a "concert staging" is not oxymoronic, but a precise term for a valuable mode of presentation.

A mixed bag of performances at Covent Garden, but with an outstanding Butterfly who brings ample rewards to an evening where the emotional temperature eventually soars.    

It's taken two years for Jack Furness' new production of Dvořák's greatest opera to reach the Garsington stage, but it is entirely worth the wait, with a breathtaking performance from Natalya Romaniw in the title role.

Christine Rice gives an astonishingly performance in an evening of four powerful chamber pieces.

Verdi and Schiller lose out to Barbora Horáková in a new staging for English National Opera. 

Edward Gardner conducts a richly entertaining account of Berlioz's masterpiece in Birmingham

The French-Sicilian tenor shines in Sir David's McVicar's pristine take on Umberto Giordano's slice of verismo. 

Challenging and vivid Bach in the first UK showing of Peter Sellars' staging of Bach's great liturgical masterpiece.

In Germany, the Christmas Oratorio is performed with the same frequency during the holiday season as Messiah in English-speaking countries. In Boston, the BSO gives its first performance!

Awkard programming but fine musicianship from the Nash Ensemble and Christine Rice as part of its 'German Romantics' series.

Selectively unearthed from current critical editions, this fabulously performed new Hoffmann plumbs the murky depths of its antihero’s psyche.

David Pountney’s 2014 staging was revived in Naples with good singing and empathetic conducting.

Adès opera resists explanation, and the ambiguity of the story drives much of its compelling nature. 

On a golden afternoon on the Wormsley estate, not everything on stage necessarily glittered, but there’s plenty of spirit in Annilese Miskimmon's production to entertain.

Luis Buñuel's derision at the sense of entitlement of over-privileged, self-righteous prigs shines through a high quality operatic adaptation.

In a rare performance of Bach’s Mass in B minor, Andris Nelsons and the BSO brought forward the music’s gravitas.

When an enormous black gondola creaks and shudders its way across the stage in the “Giulietta' act of the Royal Opera's Tales of Hoffmann, it acts as a metaphor for John Schlesinger's venerable production.

Verdi’s masterpiece dazzled a packed Festival Hall on Thursday night. 

Richard Jones' new production is original and thought-provoking, while a commendable cast soars under the capable baton of Mark Wigglesworth.

The Salzburg Festival audience warmly applauded Thomas Adès, Tom Cairns and all musicians for a rounded and gripping première.

Happy Birthday, Mozart! An incisive Gran Partita from London Winds, a spirited Sesto from Christine Rice, and a memorable and arresting Concerto from Collins and the City of London Sinfonia.

Director Ole Anders Tandberg's production of Monteverdi's Il ritorno d'Ulisse expertly balances the line between irreverent humour and human tragedy.

The BBC Concert Orchestra and Barry Wordsworth were joined by Stile Antico, Jack Liebeck and Christine Rice in an exploration of the musical mind of fictional detective Sherlock Holmes. 

The Rape of Lucretia may be something of a problem piece, but Fiona Shaw's production is an excellent piece of ensemble theatre set around some very fine performances of music of rare beauty.

From its stunningly filmic opening to its faux-Golgotha finale, the Royal Opera House’s new production of Weill’s Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny demands our attention. 

The Metropolitan Opera’s five-year old production of Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann returned to the repertoire with a remarkable undertaking of the title role by Vittorio Grigolo.

The Met's holiday special, Hänsel und Gretel, is a treat not only for young children but for adults with its sophisticated music, excellent singing ensemble and orchestra playing, as well as its witty production.

A star-studded Alcina delights at the Barbican, though remains less than the sum of its considerable parts. 

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.

Prom 23 contained a mixed programme of McLeod, Beethoven and Mozart. Whilst each piece was enjoyable in its own right, and some truly outstanding musicianship was evident throughout the evening, the lack of connection between the pieces left a feeling of unsettledness.

There’s nothing like a bit of Mozart to help you unwind… and this was far more than a bit of Mozart, as part of the CBSO’s “Relax and Revitalise” series. 

Così fan tutte in a 1950s carnival setting. Visually spectacular, and with plenty of laughs. Not everything works, but still worth seeing, especially for Roderick Williams' spivvy Don Alfonso.

The ROH's revival of Carmen doesn't bring anything new to the opera, but a stellar cast and stylishly traditional production make it a very enjoyable evening.

The 2013 Britten centenary celebrations are now well under way with every major and minor musical institution, British and foreign, scheduling a broad range of works in honour of Britten’s birth.

Revivals of 21st century operas on the stages of major houses are rarer than hens' teeth, so the Royal Opera were making a strong statement when they announced the revival of Harrison Birtwistle's 2008 The Minotaur, with the original director and much of the original cast.

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.

Here’s a pertinent fact for a classical music website: in 1991, when the wonderful World Wide Web was poised to ensnare anyone with computer access, Birmingham’s Symphony Hall opened its doors to the concert-going public for the first time. It quickly won critical acclaim with artists from across the globe and it’s known as one of the best anywhere.

Verdi's Rigoletto is a work of contrasts. The Duke is equally at home in a glittering palace or a tawdry brothel (a historically accurate characterisation of King Francis I of France, on whom his character is based); his romantic ballads are juxtaposed with the musical depiction of violent storms. Pretty courtly dances share the stage with powerful orchestral evocations of impending doom.

Sir, Madam, do you like your opera quirky? A singing mechanical doll? A giant shaving mirror? The Evil Eye itself in a piano? Then welcome to the inebriated, fantastical, phantasmagorical world of E.T.A. Hoffmann, brought to you by Mr. Richard Jones with a delightful musical accompaniment by M. Jacques Offenbach.