Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Dan Shelvey

The Linbury re-opens its doors to opera with a new work whose libretto is superbly crafted by Francesca Simon, featuring a tour de force performance by Marta Fontanals-Simmons as the Norse goddess Hel.

Glyndebourne's second Traviata cast of the summer saw the festival field three principals worthy of any major international opera house. 

Tom Cairns' production feels empty and distracted, but Kristina Mkhitaryan was a sensational Violetta, strongly reinforced by an impressive Germont from Igor Golovatenko.

In the first of its opera productions this season, the Guildhall School of Music and Drama presented an interesting combination of Stravinsky's odd little comedy, Mavra and Tchaikovsky's tale of the blind princess, Iolanta.

Bleak and uncompromising in vision and intention, Britten's The Rape of Lucretia gets a suitably dark, discomfiting outing at Guildhall. 

Shostakovich’s 1959 operetta Moscow, Cheryomushki (“Paradise Moscow”) is to date one of the most uncomfortable evenings I have ever spent in a theatre, though, I hasten to add, not because of the performance.

Since its inception in 1972 the Royal Northern College of Music has gained a reputation for excellence in the field of opera, having often staged extraordinary productions of repertoire familiar and forgotten.

If you’ve never been to a grand-scale choral work at the Royal Albert Hall, I’d urge you to do so at the earliest opportunity. This wasn’t my first visit to the Proms, and I’ve experienced oratorios, requiems and passions galore in other places, but to hear hundreds of accomplished singers filling this vast circular space was new territory for me. The hall seemed made for the occasion.