En direct, Vidéo: Rechercher des critiques de musique classique, opéra et ballet | Guildhall School Musicians

A BBC day of talks and concerts yields delight and revelation in equal measure. 

The Australian Chamber Orchestra brings music from Indie rock stars and the Polish composers who inspired them, with superb contributions from Guildhall students.

Ullmann's one act opera, written in the concentration camp at Terezin, receives a powerful performance from the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

On the cusp of the Summer Solstice, Sir Simon Rattle, the LSO and suitable orchestral reinforcements celebrate the heritage of folk music and the attractions of rusticity.

Under Sir Simon Rattle’s baton, Andrew Norman’s children’s opera struggles to find either terrene or otherworldly land.

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. 

Opera school productions are designed to provide experience for their students and showcase their talents to an audience sprinkled with casting directors. Clearly, the Guildhall School have decided to extract maximum value from their current production by staging not one opera but three, with different casts and even different orchestral musicians.

Britten’s only Shakespeare opera was a last-minute commission to celebrate the opening of the refurbished Jubilee Hall at the 1960 Aldeburgh Festival. Despite the narrow timescale, Britten and his collaborator and partner Peter Pears notoriously strove to adhere to the sixteen-century dramatic text as closely as possible. Only a handful of Shakespeare’s original lines were substantially modified.

Otto Nicolai’s very German take on Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor was a big hit in the mid-19th century but has been infrequently performed since then, largely because Verdi’s version, Falstaff, completely eclipsed it.