Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Rory Macdonald

Dvořák's Cello Concerto takes star billing after Rory Macdonald conducts the RLPO in Wagner's Siegfried Idyll.

Brilliant playing and thoughtful interpretations bring new life to familiar music. Every element of this concert was a triumph.

The Mediterranean setting of Auber's work is recreated by director Giorgio Barberio Corsetti with its intriguing teatro-immagine, where video projections and virtual reality are predominant.

Setting the opera in the backyard of a suburban house feels refreshingly honest: the ridiculous and simplistic tale of the evil witch, the prince and the maiden is rightfully returned to the arena of children's games, and adults look on indulgently, with a wink.

Conductor Rory Macdonald and violinist Angelo Xiang Yu present an uneven walk through 20th century Russia

Julie Taymor's production maintains the magic of The Magic Flute at Sydney Opera House. 

The National Youth Orchestra of Scotland's Symphony Orchestra is touring to China, a momentous event for our young musicians. The Bon Voyage concert presented their touring programme to a home crowd before setting off.

Intelligent and arresting Dvořák, warm and confident Humperdinck from Rory Macdonald's debut with the LPO, marred only by disappointing Chopin.  

Simone Lamsma returned to the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra to perform Dvořák's Violin Concerto, a highly lyrical and rich work. Also in the programme was Sibelius's triumphant and dramatic Fifth Symphony.

Last night’s concert by the Hallé, this season’s first guest orchestra to visit Sage Gateshead, was all about youth: a young conductor, a young soloist, a young composer, and music written for a young audience. There were even a few young faces in the large audience.

Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra’s “Bach to the Future” promised to be a highlight of their season this year. This orchestra has repeatedly shown its mettle in 20th-century repertoire and had taken part in an absolutely stunning B minor Mass last year. And how appropriate to have a young Scotsman conducting Mendelssohn’s “Scottish” Symphony.

In keeping with its summer season of novelties, San Francisco Opera have produced a new English-language production of Mozart's The Magic Flute. Advertisements for the production showed baritone Nathan Gunn in a green, full-body leotard as a sort of frogman of a Papageno, leaping in the air and wearing a manic expression.

For all their eagerness to embrace the new and radical, ENO are often at their best in more traditional fare. Jonathan Miller's delightful production, first seen last season, charms more than it challenges with a candy-coloured evocation of a more innocent age. The apple pie America of a 1950s prairie diner replaces the 19th century Italian village of Donizetti's original.

Rossini's The Barber of Seville has been his most enduringly well-loved opera. It's in the top ten of operas performed worldwide today, and it has stayed at the top of the most-played lists even when many of his other works were little played.

This reviewer fully expected not to enjoy today’s matinee, having read the recent Guardian review and heard mixed reports from friends who saw it when it first came out.

Bizet's The Pearl Fishers contains one of opera's best known scenes, the "friendship duet" between the fishermen Zurga and Nadir. The opera's proponents, of which Hector Berlioz was one, praise it for a string of wonderful musical numbers; its critics deride it as a "one aria opera" (or, in the case of the critics at its première in 1863, as "sub Wagner").