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Olena Tokar's assured coloratura made an immediate success of the waltz with her convincingly adolescent appearance, rhythmic verve and stylish phrasing.

Director Jo Davies' staging of Mozart’s dramma giocoso for Nederlandse Reisopera is a high-spirited  affair packed with humour, where the emphasis is decidedly more on giocoso than on the dramma.

Everything is right in this Gothenburg production of Mozart's Figaro that exceeds all expectation and offers high-level entertainment up until the very last chord.

Mozart and Mendelssohn are surely two of the most popular composers for both the seasoned elitist and the irregular classical listener; tonight’s offering of time-tested favourites wrapped in the summer breeze of familiarity, coupled with the rare and exciting prospect of hearing Mendelssohn’s complete incidental music for Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, was likely to be a draw – and it w

The programme had been changed. No Montsalvatge, but this gave space for a lovely performance of Grieg's varied and characterful Haugtussa (Maid of the Mountain) cycle. Both performers had clearly worked at it intently, and took us with great authority through its twists and turns. The Larsson songs must be some of the strangest lyrics ever set.

The Holywell Music Room in Oxford, with its bright and reverberant sound, was purpose-built as a concert hall, and opened in 1748. To hear four experienced and top-class singers last night, all of whom were able to work the specifics of this unique and historic room, to sing to it and use it as their instrument, was sheer joy.

For a long period, Charles Gounod's Faust was one of the most frequently performed operas, its popularity due to a lusciously romantic score which contains a series of showstopping set-piece arias, many of which have found their way into popular culture (to give just one example, the Jewel Song in Act III has a starring role in the Tintin story The Castafiore Emerald).

Il sera bien malaisé pour le spectateur de trouver dans ce morne tableau la ferveur conjuguée d’Eros et de Thanatos, ou encore, comme souhaité, le désespoir des années SIDA. Ni gaie, ni triste : la chair, ici, indiffère. 

Incohérences scéniques et aplatissements du livret mettent en question la lecture du mythe proposée par la production normande.