En direct, Vidéo: Rechercher des critiques de musique classique, opéra et ballet | Ann Taylor

Sir Mark Elder conducts The Hallé in a stirring semi-staged production of Madama Butterfly.

Jennifer France stars in Stephen Barlow's staging of The Cunning Little Vixen, set in the perfect surroundings of Holland Park. 

James Conway's production for English Touring Opera returns in a trimmed-down, single-evening guise. 

A convincing revival for Opera North's Madama Butterfly at Leeds Grand Theatre directed by Tim Albery and conducted by Martin Pickard.

Two thematically linked, but contrasting short operas are the final component of Opera North's Little Greats season at the Leeds Grand Theatre.

Swanhunter is a fine retelling of a wonderful yarn, and this rendering of it contains a great deal to enjoy for an audience of all ages, albeit marred by inconsistent intelligibity.

Smetana's The Bartered Bride by Opera North at Leeds Grand Theatre directed by Daniel Slater is a confident revival of an old success. 

Few operas begin as arrestingly as Verdi’s Otello; no overture here – or, indeed, the first act of Shakespeare’s play. Instead, in a single galvanising orchestral outburst a terrific storm is set in motion, underpinned by the most gratingly dissonant of pedals in the lowest reaches of the organ.

The Roman emperor Julius Caesar’s entanglement with the Egyptian queen Cleopatra is one of the best-known love stories of all time, and the operatic re-telling by George Frideric Handel, with its incredible music and universal themes of war, passion and politics, is experiencing a resurgence.

When Giacomo Puccini's Madama Butterfly premiered at La Scala in 1904, it was heavily booed. Few who attended that disastrous first performance could have imagined that, more than one hundred years on, it would have evolved into one of the most enduringly popular and widely performed operas in the world.