Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Lucy Crowe

Sir David McVicar's classic staging of The Magic Flute, now over 20 years old, shines afresh in a stylish performance conducted by Marie Jacquot, making her Covent Garden debut.  

Ruth Knight untangles Handel's Rodelinda, directing a new staging at Garsington which features a feast of fine singing. 

Robert Carsen's new production of Janáček’s The Excursions of Mr Brouček for the Staatsoper Unter den Linden scores a well-deserved success thanks to a stellar – or rather, lunar – conducted by Sir Simon Rattle.

“Go big or go home!” A new season opens with the CBSO and Chorus giving an epic Beethoven Ninth at Birmingham's Symphony Hall. 

In the first and last acts, ladies entered with a train still attached to a bolt of cloth, which was then cut to length by an attendant. Was this production brought to the stage in a great hurry, allowing no time for costume fittings? 

Schiff takes the long view in Mendelssohn's unfashionable masterpiece. 

The Ninth forms a satisfying sequel to the conductor's mastery of the Seventh, marked by rhythmic spring and sonic splendour. 

A Schumann premiere at the BBC Proms, revived with loving care by Sir Simon Rattle and the LSO. 

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

 It is rare for the LSO to take a literal and metaphorical back seat at one of their own concerts, but they supplied every instrumental need in Haydn's joyous oratorio. 

Stepping in for Sir Simon Rattle, Marc Minkowski's balanced, lyrical approach to Schumann's oratorio proves successful.

The LPO and London Philharmonic Choir are on outstanding form for a new major choral work to tell the Christmas story.

Sir Simon Rattle and the LSO open their 2021-22 season with an eclectic mix of British music that sees the orchestra at its most lustrous. 

Handel’s Messiah is not too re-imagined, thankfully, with an almost Crystal Palace sized choir although not all singing at once!

A veritable Baroque bonanza featuring a top-tier cast and orchestra in an emotionally incisive and handsomely crafted production.

An over-directed, but vivid staging demonstrating political rise and fall in Ancient Rome transported to the present day.

Messrs Rattle and Sellars bewitch the Barbican audience with a sumptuous rendition of Janáček's magnum opus. 

Mahler 2 must be mother’s milk for the CBSO Chorus, though they sang with affecting passion from their soft, seated entry to towering last peroration of the Resurrection hymn.

Simon McBurney's production of The Magic Flute continues to delight and this revival benefits from a strong cast, led by the superb Lucy Crowe as Pamina.

A rare and compelling performance of Beethoven's string quintet was the centrepiece of another instalment in the Nash Ensemble's traversal of German Romantic composers.

Sir Roger Norrington and a strong cast joined a Baroque-style London Philharmonic Orchestra in a highly accomplished Dido and Aeneas, preceded by Handel’s clean and stately Water Music.

Dame Ethel Smyth's Mass in D enjoys a rare outing with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Martyn Brabbins. 

Fiona Shaw's production doesn't always get everything right, but Lucy Crowe's debut as the Countess is the defining success of the this revival.

Handel’s opera Orlando is famous for the great mad scene at the end of Act 2. Specifically written for the celebrated castrato Senesino, it’s an emotionally powerful ten-minute monologue.

Rattle conducts Janáček's glorious score with unerring skill and barely concealed adoration, but is let down by his regular collaborator's muddy vision. 

Iván Fischer's minimalist staging of Don Giovanni makes a triumphant return to Mupa, Budapest.

A strange evening: superb Mozart playing from Rousset, plenty of fine singing, staging and costumes that one certainly isn’t going to forget. But what’s the point of it all?

At 71, Radu Lupu continues to amaze. No one gets so much out of a piano with such a light touch and minimum of effort. 

The Czech Philharmonic brings The Epic of Gilgamesh to life with audacity and flair.

Despite the beautiful sensitivity of La Nuova Musica, coupled with some truly sublime singing, the silliness of Cavalli’s opera is sometimes overplayed in this semi-staged production; less is, sometimes, more.

Sir John Eliot Gardiner conducts an evening where much pomp and circumstance does little justice to the multifarious aesthetics of a great composer.

Although Ács Ákos gave an excellent performance of Mozart's Clarinet Concerto, Iván Fischer's innovative Requiem didn't quite work.

The legendary Kings College Choir, Cambridge, conducted by their very own Stephen Cleobury, was accompanied by the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment on period instruments at the Royal Albert Hall.

A bird's-eye view of Gustavo Dudamel's opening concert in the LA Phil's Mozart-Pärt cycle.

A revival of Simon McBurney's 2013 production of The Magic Flute reaches new heights under Mark Wigglesworth's baton.

Juan Diego Flórez turns in a tour de force in the title role of a consistently attractive and inventive performance of Gluck's ballet-laden Orphée et Eurydice.

With the help of a star-studded cast, Barrie Kosky's imaginative staging delivers a production of Handel's Saul which has just about everything going for it: choreography, voices, acting. A must-see.

Traditionally at the Proms, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is reserved for the penultimate prom slot in September, but this year, they have made an exception and given it to the CBSO and Andris Nelsons.

“The very incarnation of vice” was how one critic described Célestine Galli-Marié’s Carmen at the opera’s 1875 Opéra Comique première. That description could equally be applied to Stéphanie d’Oustrac in Glyndebourne’s revival of David McVicar’s terrific production.

Lucy Crowe and Tim Mead give a thoughtful rendition of Pergolesi's Stabat Mater at a Lenten concert by La Nuova Musica at St John's Smith Square.

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

In Peter Sellars' reconstruction of Purcell's unfinished semi-opera The Indian Queen, fine vocal performances are spoilt by indifferent staging and choreography and an embarrassing retelling of the Conquistador story.

While still a charming production, a touch more warmth and bel canto style are yet required to bring some authentic Italian sunshine to L'elisir d'amore in Bow Street this November.

Sir John Eliot Gardiner conducts the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique and the Monteverdi Choir in a late night performance of Beethoven's Missa Solemnis at the BBC Proms.

From the insistent, driving opening to the sublime transcendence of the closing chorale, Norrington, the Zurich Chamber Orchestra and James Gilchrist give us a St John Passion to remember.

Esa-Pekka Salonen conducts the Philharmonia in a fine account of Mahler's mighty “Symphony of a Thousand”, culminating in a dramatic realisation of Faust's redemption.

Whooping horns, a single yellow rose and a velvety cushion of strings set the scene for a sumptuous tranche of highlights from Der Rosenkavalier in the London Symphony Orchestra’s latest concert commemorating Richard Strauss in his 150th anniversary year.

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.

At one point in the classic 1950 film All About Eve, the inimitable theatre critic Addison DeWitt speaks reverently of his art as critic: “I have lived in the theatre as a Trappist monk lives in his faith. I have no other world; no other life – and once in a great while, I experience that moment of revelation for which all true believers wait and pray.

If Count Almaviva (to say nothing of Don Giovanni) were alive today, he might perhaps enlist Richard Dawkins to defend his behaviour. We know from evolutionary biology that the male stands the best chance of passing on his genes if he has many partners, the female if she can keep the male around to help raise the children he’s had with her.