Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Aoife O'Sullivan

Bampton’s “mission to rescue unjustly neglected classical period opera” is vindicated once again with a fresh, fun account of the near-lost original source for Rossini's La Cenerentola: Isouard's Cendrillon. 

Two little-known 18th-century operas are given inventive new productions featuring some promising young singers.

This small, fun, fast-paced comedy, probably the UK première of Salieri's neglected fairytale, makes for a glorious garden opera evening at Bampton (and touring). 

Opera North revives a brilliantly successful production of Carousel directed by Jo Davies at the Leeds Grand Theatre.

A fine new edition of Mozart's Requiem recieves its UK première, overshadowed by a trenchant Sibelius Fourth from Opera North under Jac van Steen.

A beautiful evening of rare and royal music by Gluck, in the year of his 300th anniversary, and even an even rarer setting of Orfeo by Bertoni: it was just a pity we couldn't follow all the words, as well as all the notes, at St John's Smith Square.

A very welcome and triumphant revival of Peter Grimes begins Opera North’s Festival of Britten season, soon to be followed by A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Death in Venice. The work has often been described as Britten’s greatest, the paeans of praise beginning soon after its first performance just after the Second World War, often involving the word “enigma”.

Bampton Classical Opera is a company dedicated to performing rarely-performed 18th-century operas, and every summer they stage a new production with a cast of young and upcoming singers at their base in Bampton in Oxfordshire. This year’s production was a double-bill of French opéras comiques by Philidor and Grétry, which they brought to London’s St John’s Smith Square last week.