Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | David Kempster

Welsh National Opera brings its 1978 production of Madama Butterfly to Milton Keynes.  

Giselle Allen and David Kempster are on good form in a performance of highlights from Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin, conducted by Jac van Steen.

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.

Welsh National Opera may have reached the ripe old age of seventy but it's very much alive and kicking.

A blistering performance of Suor Angelica is the highlight of this strongly performed revival of Richard Jones' 2011 production.

Beguiled, bereaved and betrayed - William Tuckett's Elizabeth imagines the ill-fated romances of the Virgin Queen. Tuckett draws on the monarch's own writings and those of her contemporaries to fashion a full-length work, blending spoken word, dance and music to convey the tumultuous affairs of Elizabeth I. 

Annilese Miskimmon's production of I puritani mixes Royalists with Loyalists - but is musically successful under Carlo Rizzi's baton.

Take an exquisite production of a Puccini tearjerker, cast it attractively… then crush its fragile wings under the weight of the Albert Hall’s vastness.

Employing a new critical edition by Flora Willson, Mark Elder led the forces of The Orchestra of the Age of Englightenment in a concert performance of Donizetti's Les Martyrs, which demonstrates what a tremendous work it is.

Welsh National Opera's new production of Rossini's William Tell shows off orchestra and chorus to their full under Carlo Rizzi's baton

Rudolf Frey's production of Nabucco for Welsh National Opera undercuts the solemnity and beauty of the opera, detracting from some fine performances. 

Treliński’s de-romanticizing of the plot of Puccini's Manon Lescaut makes for a compelling piece of theatre… it’s just not Manon. 

Few operas begin as arrestingly as Verdi’s Otello; no overture here – or, indeed, the first act of Shakespeare’s play. Instead, in a single galvanising orchestral outburst a terrific storm is set in motion, underpinned by the most gratingly dissonant of pedals in the lowest reaches of the organ.

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.

Elgar’s oratorios The Apostles (1903) and The Kingdom (1906) are the manifestation of a fascination that he had held since his childhood in Worcester.