Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Nick Pritchard

The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment under Václav Luks are joined by their own choir and strong soloists for a fresh and colourful performance of Haydn’s Die Schöpfung.

The Academy of Ancient Music poses the question what might have been in Leipzig with stunning performances of Bach and his competitors to be the new Thomaskantor. 

Vigour and vibrato: Les Arts Florissant bring gallic refinement to Bach’s Christmas Oratorio at the Philharmonie de Paris. 

Laurence Cummings and the AAM serve up Messiah-shaped serenity at the Barbican. 

Henry Neill gives a devastating performance as Sam in Trouble in Tahiti in The Royal Opera’s Bernstein double bill in the Linbury Theatre. 

The Gospel according to Peter Sellars: an intermingling of Bach’s cantatas and American spirituals depicts an environmental message that the impending end won’t be personal, but global.

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

Dinis Sousa conducts the combined forces of the English Baroque Soloists and the Monteverdi Choir in L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato.

At the Göttingen Handel Festival, Handel's English oratorio features a choice array of soloists in a more than satisfactory outing under artistic director George Petrou. 

Whether surrounded by lanterns and weapons, or musicians and fellow congregation members, one is deeply involved in this work.

How do you conduct the same over-familiar work for the 200th time, and make it sound quite new?

Alcina also disappoints as a showcase for sustainable opera, despite that being Opera North’s pledge for this production. 

The world premiere of Gabriel Jackson’s ambitious but inert The World Imagined and a complacent Enigma Variations are outclassed by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s gorgeous Solemn Prelude at Worcester Cathedral.

A thoroughly satisfying, entertaining production of Mozart's Die Zauberflöte from Irish National Opera. Anna Devin delivers a delightful Pamina and Nick Pritchard a convincing Tamino. 

Competent if underwhelming Handel from the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Maxim Emelyanchev.

As the two sisters, Eleanor Dennis and Kitty Whately ideally complemented and blended with each other.  

A series of ill-advised staging choices leads to a disappointingly drab performance of Monteverdi's Homeric epic.

A newly-orchestrated version of Jonathan Dove’s chamber opera drew some impressive performances from Heritage Opera in this pared-down adaption of Jane Austen’s third novel.

Netia Jones' new production taps into Britten's silvery underworld in a staging dominated by video wizardry which is hypnotically beautiful, but comes at a price.

ETO's charactistically clear, simple production conveys Homer's story with clarity, confidence, and charm – and even humour – from a fine cast, making an exciting start to fully-staged opera at Saffron Hall. 

Clever staging and a high standard of acting does much to happily while away the three hours of this baroque opera in the second of ETO's Baroque extravaganza.

So many things are right about Mark Simpson's new opera Pleasure, receiving its London debut at the Lyric Hammersmith.

Francesca Caccini’s La Liberazione di Ruggiero dall’Isola di Alcina, performed at the Medici court in Florence in 1625, is said to be the first opera composed by a female composer.

The laughs keep on coming in Liam Steel's glorious 1950s Albert Herring in an English village where pretensions rise as morals decay, while Nick Pritchard shines as our modest eponymous hero.

J.C. Bach's opera Adriano in Siria, set to a popular libretto by Metastasio, was first performed in London in January 1765 when the nine-year-old Mozart was in town.

A world première of Gabriel Jackson's The Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ proved an exciting event for those one hundred or so people who made the effort last Friday evening to attend the opening concert of the fifth Merton College Passiontide Festival.

The Secret Marriage has been a hit from its earliest days. At its 1792 première in Vienna, King Leopold II was so delighted by the performance that he ordered the whole company to repair to his mansion, be treated to a magnificent dinner, “and then play the entire opera through again, immediately”.

Production director Daisy Evans welcomes her audience to Così fan tutte set in October 1943 in Sicily. The set (designed by Katharine Heath) is intriguing, with three propellers along the back wall of the performance space and a small stage at the side set up for an Ensa troupe. However, concerns about the pitfalls of “concept” productions were confirmed from the start.

Mit zeitlich-örtlicher Zufälligkeit leitet Luks das Paradewerk ganz so, als wollten die Ebenbilder des Herrn die Schöpferkraft herausfordern wie geradezu gleichsam zu Haydns geschriebenem und vermitteltem Energieboost verblüffungsreif demonstrieren.

Christian Curnyn feierte mit seinen Musikern und Mr Purcell ein würdiges Ehrenfest.

Bevor Roussets Gesamteinspielung 2026 endet, schnürte er Proserpine durch Les Talens Lyriques in ein effekt- und affektrigides Korsett, in dem sich Namur-Chor und Solisten ganz überwiegend formidabel entfalten konnten.

Menschlichkeit und Drama der Passion in der Lesart des Dirigenten sowie die Ausdrucksfülle von Chor und Solisten sind unschlagbar.

La Pasión es ante todo una narración, que en su arcana lejanía, desciende sobre los receptores y se hace presente para ellos. Se trata de una emotividad alejada del entusiasmo que a veces buscamos en las salas de concierto.

Le jeudi 4 juin, l'ensemble La Nuova Musica de David Bates interprétait l’un des plus grands oratorios de Haendel, Israël en Egypte (1739). Une restitution décapante, pleine d’énergie et d’ardeur !