Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Mark Stone

Amy Lane’s production of Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette at the COC is eye-catching and enjoyable but doesn’t offer the same level of insight as her Faust last season. 

From the chrysalis of a Broadway play and then to film, David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly turns full cycle into an opera by composer Huang Ruo. 

The National Symphony Orchestra's nautical theme includes merry Mendelssohn, the spiteful storminess of Britten’s Four Sea Interludes and the yearning of Vaughan Williams' A Sea Symphony. 

 Longborough Festival Opera’s ongoing Ring cycle returns to its fully staged form with a triumphant new Siegfried.

Lindy Hume's new production works reasonably well in allowing the story to be told with sufficient emotional weight.

Wagnerites can get their fix in London this week, where Die Walküre opens the Grimeborn Festival in Julia Burbach's new production of the adaptation by Graham Vick and Jonathan Dove. 

Barry goes for out-weirding Carroll at a fast and furious pace. There's plenty of fun and it's beautifully staged – but is that enough?

Daisy Evans' take on Verdi's iconic tale of love stymied by the cruelty of others is characteristically innovative and insightful, while also blessed with a remarkable central performance from Anna Patalong. 

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.

Written on Skin is a cold but effective opera full of musical and dramatic energy. Opera Philadelphia's new staging and talented young cast do it justice.

Elena Langer's gorgeous and tongue-in-cheek Figaro Gets a Divorce shines in Geneva, despite David Pountney's boxy libretto. 

WNO's excellent revival of John Copley's 2011 staging of Die Fledermaus is a delight. 

Garsington's latest Rossini buffa is on the nail orchestrally, mixed vocally and one of the best pieces of acting and stage movement you'll see in opera.

Adès brought a freshness and originality to Beethoven's earliest symphonies, and a sharp portrait of the composer was given courtesy of Gerald Barry.

A strong, compelling staging – coherent in aesthetic and philosophy, if a little restrained in performance. 

Lewis Carroll's Alice: so crazy that all Gerald Barry can do is make it crazier.

Thomas Adès conducts three pieces on the subject of death, concluding with his own Totentanz. Despite the lugubrious subject matter there was a great sense of joy in the music making.

An old instrument, a veteran star singer, and a late rose all bloom at Oxford's annual songfest.

Deep in Dorset, Anna Patalong gives a powerful Tatyana, ably supported by a well-taught chorus in an English translation of Tchaikovsky's opera of hearts and friendships broken.

The combined forces of various LSO and Guildhall ensembles come together in an evening that was, in turns, poignant and thrilling to perform Peter Maxwell Davies's last work. 

Elena Langer and David Pountney's new WNO opera Figaro Gets a Divorce did not disappoint. Langer's new refreshing score had flair and imagination in a memorable performance.

Lothar Koenigs conducted a musically excellent and dramatically straightforward performance of Mozart's Marriage of Figaro in Cardiff.

Somewhere in the region of 180 singers and instrumentalists faced Andrew Manze as he took the podium at Birmingham’s Symphony Hall. Could he handle them? There was never any doubt.

At Garsington Opera, Richard Strauss' Intermezzo presents an utterly compelling picture of a mature marriage with its joys and trials; Mary Dunleavy brings it to life with a top class piece of acting.

Edward Gardner and Edward Caswell offered the British choir tradition in the form of Elgar's The Kingdom as a refreshingly programmed alternative to the many Bach passions. The combined choirs excelled together with an impressive Edith Haller.

Two seasons after his Met Opera debut, Thomas Adès is back at Lincoln Center making his conducting debut at the New York Philharmonic, including his own tremendous orchestral work, Totentanz.

Lincoln Center' White Light Festival presents Benjamin Britten's Curlew River with an excellent ensemble of singers and musicians. 

A mixed evening, more notable for the efforts of the cast than for Brodie's modern Don Giovanni concept.

A superb concert performance of Der Rosenkavalier with the CBSO and Andris Nelsons receives a rapturous reception. 

Daniel Harding and the London Symphony Orchestra again paired Schubert with a late Romantic, this time Richard Wagner, and the second act of Tristan und Isolde. The orchestra were on a form it would be hard to match.

Peter Grimes may deserve the place it has gained in the operatic canon, but it’s not a work without problems.

Of the various themes that make up Britten’s Gloriana, written to celebrate the coronation in 1953 and being given a rare outing at Covent Garden to mark the work’s 60th anniversary and Britten’s 100th, the most effective by far is a sort of operatic expansion of Shakespeare’s line “uneasy lies the head that wears the crown”.

When choosing a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta to be performed at the Proms in a year firmly branded as "London 2012", The Yeomen of the Guard had obvious appeal, being set in one of the capital's most famous landmarks, and giving the opportunity, even in semi-staged form, to deck the hall with Beefeater uniforms.

On Saturday night, Antonio Pappano and his Roman orchestra and chorus, the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, brought us the first opera of the 2011 Proms- Gioachino Rossini's William Tell.

Easter wouldn't be complete without a performance of the St Matthew Passion, Johann Sebastian Bach's epic and intense interpretation of the crucifixion.

La Forza del Destino isn't performed nearly as often as Verdi's most popular works: this year's production at Opera Holland Park is the first time it's been staged in the UK for several years.

À la tête de l'Orchestre de Paris, le chef colombien propose une lecture énergique de l'œuvre de Carl Orff, au détriment des subtilités de la partition. Les solistes se distinguent.

Un duo formidable et une mise en scène efficace : porté par Petra Lang et Michael Weinius, le Crépuscule des Dieux de Dieter Dorn est venu clore la tétralogie genevoise avec panache.

La presentación de La flauta mágica de Vick en Les Arts prometía una intensidad subversiva que resultó tan solo una sucesión de clichés trasnochados.

Dimanche 7 juin 2015, le Royal Philharmonic Orchestra et le Bach Choir donnaient l'oratorio Elias de Mendelssohn au Royal Festival Hall, sous la direction de David Hill. Une grosse déception : pas d’émotion et pas de sens du sacré.