En direct, Vidéo: Rechercher des critiques de musique classique, opéra et ballet | Kathleen Wilkinson

Julia Burbach's new production lacks poetry in spite of an admirable cast led by Samuel Dale Johnson in the title role. 

The Philharmonia and Garsington Chorus deliver great performances, as do Natalia Tanasii and Fleur Barron as the two Larina sisters.

Director Louisa Muller overcomes the problems of opening a ghost story in natural daylight to deliver plenty of operatic chills. 

A decent cast was unable to redeem a fundamentally dull opera that lacks the psycholgical complexity and tension of both the original Graham novel and its famous Hitchcock adaptation.

With a combined age of 161 years, John Copley and Steuart Bedford certainly bring ample experience to Grange Festival's new production of Britten's Albert Herring. 

Michael Boyd's stylish new production is broadly traditional, apart from beyond-the-grave appearances by Lensky. 

James MacMillan has honed his first opera Inés de Castro into an unmissable evening:  unspeakably gory but utterly thrilling.

When you think chic, black-tie country house opera, you probably don’t also think sixteen barefoot nuns being executed. Grange Park Opera’s fusion of these two contrasting ideas, however, has a lot going for it: their production of Francis Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites combines its minimal but effective staging with some impressive singing.

The scene in Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin where the peasants, weary from gathering in the harvest, sing and dance for the woman who owns the estate (and, for that matter, owns them) is perhaps not the best example of gritty social realism in opera.

Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin is one of the most beautiful scores in the operatic repertoire, and I don’t blame people who come to it looking forward to immersing themselves in the warm bath of the familiar story and music.