Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Harry Bicket

The London Handel Festival offers a chance to hear rarely performed music for Passiontide, with Harry Bicket conducting the English Concert. 

Sir David Pountney directs a satirical take on dictatorship and the climate crisis inventively set to the music of Purcell. 

The COC revival of its 2016 production of Le nozze di Figaro is still rooted in Claus Guth’s gloomy Scandinavia but it’s lightened up to become much sexier and funnier.

The five female voices in the opera's main roles complement each other wonderfully in this more-than-concert performance in New York. 

Harry Bicket brings verve and distinctiveness to a stellar cast in Stephen Wadsworth's production, which is neither conventional nor daring.

Superb singing from Joyce DiDonato and Jakub Józef Orliński lights up a curate's egg staging from Katie Mitchell.

A selection from L'estro armonico performed in the Music Room in the Rosen House at Caramoor.

Phelim McDermott’s Coney Island Così fan tutte returns to The Met, in sparkling vocal performances. 

A concert performance of Handel's not-quite-an-opera proves a hit on tour in New York. 

A revival of Richard Jones’ production of Handel’s emotionally probing opera. 

Harry Bicket’s Mozart program traversed a sampling of the composer’s works in various forms, including the Prague Symphony and Exsultate, jubilate with Kiera Duffy.

Harry Bicket leads Royal Northern Sinfonia and Chorus and a fine line-up of soloists in a performance that moves effortlessly between the human and eternal time lines of Bach's St John Passion.

Even without stage machinery or sets, The English Concert’s performance of Handel’s Rinaldo was enchanting. 

There were plenty of vocal fireworks in this concert performance of Handel’s opera. 

Under elegant leadership of conductor Harry Bicket, the Met's revival of the "Marriage of Figaro" succeeds with a strong ensemble of cast.

Dance takes center stage in Lyric Opera of Chicago's bold season-opening co-production of Gluck's Orphée et Eurydice.

David Alden's staging of Alcina mines the rich theatricality of one of Handel's best-loved operas with enchanting but also perplexing results. 

A probing, exultant and musically tireless performance from The English COncert.

Guest conductor Harry Bicket transformed the chameleon-like Cleveland Orchestra for this program of Handel, Rameau, and Purcell.

The Lyric Opera’s new production of Carmen is lusciously embodied, with expressionistic splashes of colour against a quasi-modern backdrop. 

Santa Fe Opera presented Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette in Stephen Lawless’ mid 19th-century staging, a co-production with Barcelona's Liceu. Before the overture, General Director Charles MacKay came onstage to announce that Stephen Costello was ill and would be replaced by Joshua Guerrero, a graduate of the Los Angeles Opera Young Artist Program.

The English Concert give us a truly exceptional concert performance of Orlando, starring Iestyn Davies in the title role, with a strong cast and glorious singing: but it's begging for a proper staging. 

Antonín Dvořák’s Rusalka, moving between the worlds and rooted in myth, is a shivering opera to experience with its opulent music and its fantastical plot. 

This production proves that even Mozart’s best-laid plans can be undone.

Mark Padmore gives a matchless demonstration of English singing as he and the English Concert follow 18th century historian Charles Burney on his travels around Europe.

Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Chorus were on top form, joined by a team of Baroque soloists under Handel expert Harry Bicket to produce a memorable Theodora.

Two sparkling performances by the Oslo Philharmonic and Harry Bicket of dance suites from Rameau's Platée and Les Boréades framed at times brilliant singing from countertenor David Hansen.

The new season at Wigmore Hall launched with a sensitively programmed selection of Handel arias, intelligently played by some of the country's finest Handelians.  

Mozart himself might have pulled a few weeds from this early opera. Lovely voices and sprightly playing can't overcome an overgrown plot in Santa Fe. 

Harry Bicket's eclectic, Baroque-centered program shows the many side of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

The English Concert play beautifully, the chorus is in superb voice, but a disjointed cast of unconvincing singers mean Hercules never reaches heroic heights.

Thursday's performance of Haydn's The Creation got out to something of a rough start, but proved a lovely concert by the end.

A star-studded Alcina delights at the Barbican, though remains less than the sum of its considerable parts. 

What happens when a hero comes home? The exploration of this question forms the basis of director Peter Sellars’ new production of Hercules at the Canadian Opera Company.

Profound, fair and thought-provoking, Handel's Theodora argues for faith as a personal journey, not a political decree. The English Concert brought their rendition to the Barbican Centre in London.

Read our review of David McVicar's production of Handel's Giulio Cesare in its 2013 broadcast from the Met Opera in New York.

David McVicar’s Giulio Cesare is still riotous at the Met, the production having transferred from Glyndebourne. This is a delicious, smart production, then, with interest for the brain, ears, and eyes alike.

Handel’s Radamisto has an improbable plot (although average by Baroque opera standards) which can make it difficult to stage. The most recent staging in London was the ENO production in 2010, which had a largely abstract setting.

Read our review of Jean-Pierre Ponnelle's production of Mozart's La Clemenza di Tito in its 2012 broadcast from the Met Opera in New York.

J.S. Bach’s Mass in B minor was described by its first publisher as “the greatest musical work of art of all times and nations”. It’s also the culmination of one man’s great life of musical creativity, and a great personal statement of faith.

It is not often you find Monteverdi and Stravinsky snuggled side-by-side on the same programme, but that was exactly what was packed into the latest instalment of The Bostridge Project: ‘Ancient and Modern’ series at the Wigmore Hall.

“It’s magic!” Whether through Disney cartoons, renowned illusionists, or smartphones, visual magic continues to delight contemporary audiences. Three hundred years ago in 18th-century London, audiences were stunned by Handel’s all-new operatic extravaganza Rinaldo, which not only featured a top-notch cast, but also the latest and greatest special effects.

Read our review of Stephen Wadsworth's production of Rodelinda by Handel, in its 2011 HD broadcast from the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

Handel, two cracking counter-tenors and Renée Fleming were all the excuses needed for a long-overdue trip to New York to hear Stephen Wadsworth's production of Rodelinda - the very piece which revived interest in Handel's opera following its performance in Göttingen in the 1920s.

17th Century Europe witnessed the rise of Italian opera and French ballet. These forms, and the distinct musical language of their composers, were highly influential on the music of England and Germany. The cosmopolitan music of Henry Purcell made up the bulk of The English Concert’s program, along with two instrumental works by his German contemporaries Heinrich Biber and Georg Muffat.

Piano. Concerto. Opera. The Italian origins of these well-known musical words hint at the enormous influence that country had on the musical world during the Baroque period, when classical music as we know it began to take shape. The scale of this influence was explored last night by Ian Bostridge, tenor and former historian, in the first concert of his year-long residency at the Wigmore Hall.

When I was young, I often wondered what it would be like if an angel came down to earth. I mused that, if such an angel came, she would be a pretty, middle-aged lady with a slender figure, blonde hair, and, most importantly, a gorgeous, ethereal voice.

Ancient Greek superheroes – irresistible. Half god, half man, incredible deeds leave Perseus, Theseus, and of course Hercules enough to rival Superman, Spiderman, and The Incredible Hulk. Small wonder then why these demigods and precursor of the modern comic book superhero have captivated the hearts and minds of many of the world’s greatest writers, dramatists and composers.

This near sell-out concert at the Barbican was intended as a purely vocal programme, ranging from 1710 to 1736 and featuring two female vocalists accompanied by baroque specialists The English Concert. Expertly led from the organ by Harry Bicket, the orchestra played with spirit and their rendering of Handel's Concerto Grosso Op.

Unter der Leitung von Harry Bicket lässt das Orchester La Scintilla die Funken sprühen. Und Jetske Mijnssen bringt das Machtgerangel eines fiktiven heutigen Familienclans auf die Bühne.