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A solid Figaro in Cardiff, in which individual performances are a joy, and humour abounds. 

It is a thing of wonder that Roberto Devereux is one of Donizetti’s lesser known works. Whether on account of its challenging soprano part, or its fussy Tudor setting, it is rarely performed, but contains some of the composer’s most beautiful – and indeed memorable – arias and duets.

Poor Ravel: even in death his significant talents are overshadowed by Debussy. Barely had the ink dried on his orchestrated Rapsodie Espagnole before it was eclipsed by the emergence of his iconoclast friend and rival’s equally Hispanic-tinged suite Iberia and, over 90 years on, the programme notes to Prom 48 contain a detailed discussion on whether Ravel’s legacy has been obstructed by his contem

Who says life isn’t a dress rehearsal? Saturday night at the Proms was just that for New York-born Marin Alsop, for when she returns to the Royal Albert Hall in two weeks’ time she will make Proms history as the first female conductor to preside over the Last Night.

It can be a strange experience to listen to Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto no. 2 without the visuals of Celia Johnson’s doe-eyed sadness and Trevor Howard’s tortured half-smile to go with it, so synonymous is the work with Brief Encounter, Noël Coward’s celebrated paean to 1940s English morality and thwarted love.

Few venues do “faded grandeur” better than the Royal Conservatoire of Brussels. The auditorium of Belgium’s premier music college is a venerable grande dame of a concert hall – all off-white paint peeling from cracked walls and heavy red velvet curtains coated with dust – making it an elegant and alluring place in which to while away an evening, its imperfections lending a certain sepia-tinged spa

Most musicians with an arresting stage presence tend to command attention with an awe-inspiring magnetism. There are, however, a handful who possess a rare ability to mesmerize an audience just as much with a calm and phlegmatic demeanour.

Brussels’ Palais des Beaux-Arts occupies the site where once stood the Pensionnat Héger, the school where Charlotte and Emily Brontë lived during their sojourn in the Belgian capital – an appropriate setting, as it is not difficult to imagine Bruckner’s mighty Fourth Symphony underscoring one of the sisters’ Gothic tales of unrequited love.