Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Brendan Collins

Paul Curran's production of Carmen is entertaining and slick, with Paula Murrihy as a feisty heroine.

Byrne is stunning in the title role while a strong cast of singers, orchestra, classic sets and dramatic acting make this a thoroughly enjoyable performance. 

Tom Creed's take on Offenbach's opéra fantastique works best in the Olympia act in this new production in Dublin. 

Fine singing all round, sensitive continuo musicianship and dramatic action make for a thoroughly enjoyable Return of Ulysses by Monteverdi.

Another masterful, sprightly and unstuffily fun production of Handel at Iford: Christopher Cowell's Partenope is erotically charged, well cast and comically compelling. 

Based on Irish mythology, Opera Theatre Company deiver a compelling concert performance of an exceedingly rare Irish opera Eithne 

Roddy Doyle's new translation is ingenious more often than incongruous; John Molloy's Leporello steals the show in the Opera Theatre's Don Giovanni.

This Yeomen of the Guard was one of the best sung G&S performances I have heard. The traditional but inventive production will appeal to novices and enthusiasts alike.

Stellar singing and excellent acting makes this a brilliantly satisfying and amusing 1970s take on Rossini's classic The Barber of Seville. 

Producing one of the most well-known and popular operas in a fresh way on a limited budget is a challenge for anyone. Longborough Festival Opera show how it can be done. 

A very concise, two-act opera which tells a bleak wartime tale of sacrifice, rarely performed and never realised to the satisfaction of its own composer. You could be forgiven for thinking I was describing something from 20th-century Germany, perhaps an expressionist work taking after Berg’s Wozzeck or similar. You’d be wrong.

Scottish Opera and Northern Ireland Opera's new version of Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld has been touring Scotalnd and Northern Ireland: it's now arrived in London for a short run at the Young Vic in London, in its 150-seater Maria hall alongside the main theatre.