En direct, Vidéo: Rechercher des critiques de musique classique, opéra et ballet | Madeleine Pierard

Wotan's predicaments provide Sydney's victory: Chief Conductor Simone Young has her musicians on some of their best form in recent years, with only a few question marks over an excellent concert performance.

Centred around Scriabin’s mystical Poem of Ecstasy, a thrilling journey through the byways of twentieth century music takes in New Zealand, Finland and France.

English National Ballet appears refreshed and revitalised under its new artistic director.

Unseen since the 18th Century apart from one night in Germany, Legrenzi's Giustino deserves to re-enter the repertoire after its revival by Pinchgut Opera's Erin Helyard.

Simone Young  is made of stern stuff. With 30 hours to go before the concert performance, her Leonore falls ill. Can the show go on? 

Conceived for television and first seen on BBC2 in May 1971, Owen Wingrave should lend itself to creative staging and the small screen. Does this new film convince? 

Astonishingly vivid performances from an ensemble cast made it one of the most outstanding of their recent productions, an auspicious sign as de Mallet Burgess takes over the General Directorship of the company.

A fine cast, orchestra and production make English Touring Opera's new production of Verdi's Macbeth a must see. 

Stephen Medcalf directs a coherent staging of Mozart’s opera seria in which Idomeneo’s inner demons are to be battled. 

The fashion for reviving Mozart's teenage operas brings a vocally dazzling production of Lucio Silla to Buxton, nevertheless hampered by the work's own lack of believable drama and some fairly flat staging. 

For the latest revival of Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier's candy-striped production, the Royal Opera serves up the operatic equivalent of stodgy semolina.

Gustave Charpentier's Louise, revived and in excellent form at the Buxton Festival.

Both new works by Michael Williams and James Ledger rose to the challenge of marking Anzac Day admirably with personal and intense responses to the tragedy of war.

Celebrating 20 years as Artistic Director of Birmingham Royal Ballet, David Bintley brings the company to London, where Balanchine’s Serenade acts as a delicate sorbet before the excesses of Bintley’s own Carmina burana.  

A rendition of The Creation in Auckland that had one marvelling anew at Haydn’s ingenuity and spirit. 

Perhaps it was the prospect of a brand new composition or the idea of an evening of two full symphonies that put people off, but the Auckland Town Hall was very sparsely attended indeed for the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra’s ‘Voices of Youth’ concert, featuring works based on texts written from children’s perspectives.

The Auckland Philharmonia’s choice for their opera in concert this year, The Rake’s Progress is a curious beast indeed. Loosely based on a series of paintings by William Hogarth, the libretto was penned by the great Anglo-American poet W.H.

The year 2012 marks the 100th birthday of Arnold Schoenberg’s seminal Dreimal sieben Gedichte aus Albert Girauds “Pierrot lunaire”, more commonly known as Pierrot lunaire. To celebrate this, Stroma New Music Ensemble engaged one of New Zealand’s foremost young singers for Pierrot, and prefaced it with two works by Schoenberg’s pupils.

Auckland Opera Studio’s offering this year was an ebullient rendition of Mozart’s immortal comedy Così fan tutte. The recitatives were mostly replaced by English dialogue, though the accompanied recitatives were maintained. No composer makes more of recitative than Mozart so it was a shame to lose them, but the cast delivered the dialogue clearly and it contributed to a fast-paced, thrilling show.

The Tenth Anniversary of the Royal Opera House’s Jette Parker Young Artists Scheme is a landmark of no small size. This summer performance brought back some of the best singers it has produced for a semi-staged rendition of Rossini’s one-act 1825 opera Il Viaggio a Reims. It was a celebratory display of virtuoso held together with a generous dose of self-indulgence.

A split-level stage featuring an ornate stairwell and scaffolding was the setting for this the tenth Jette Parker Young Artists’ Summer Performance. Entitled ‘Veneziana’, the specially compiled programme embodied the visions of Venice dreamt by Rossini, Donizetti, Britten and Offenbach in six sets of Opera Scenes.

I once heard a lecture by Gérard Mortier, then head of the Paris Opera, contrasting the twin operatic traditions starting from Monteverdi's serious and affecting dramma per musica and the lavish court entertainments of Lully. A couple of centuries on, there's no need to ask the side of the fence on which Massenet's Cendrillon falls.