En direct, Vidéo: Rechercher des critiques de musique classique, opéra et ballet | Andrew Shore

Janáček’s satirical opera The Excursions of Mr Brouček may not be among his greatest dramatic works, yet it earns its place in the limelight for its musical, visual and dramatic wit at Grange Park Opera.

WNO finally emerges from the pandemic with a performance of The Barber of Seville full of emotion and elation.

Grange Park Opera's revival of its 2015 production of Puccini's La bohème hits some high notes with a very contemporary feel and some excellent singing from its leading ladies.

A witty, insightful production at the Coliseum fizzes with comedy and pathos. 

ENO's Merry Widow is big, brash, and more than a touch juvenile – but it's the most fun one can have at the opera.

Aa fitting tribute to the 20th anniversary of State Opera of South Australia’s ongoing romance with the music of Richard Wagner.

An affirmation of the importance of cultural values in the face of the abyss, or Richard Strauss fiddling while Europe burnt? Tim Albery's production leaves it to us to decide.

Cal McCrystal goes long on the ham and keeps the gags flowing in a visually stunning production that will delight G&S lovers.

Netia Jones' new production taps into Britten's silvery underworld in a staging dominated by video wizardry which is hypnotically beautiful, but comes at a price.

There’s nothing new or inventive about Leigh’s revived production, which in itself is not a crime, but neither is there an abundance of energy; it's all a bit nice. 

Martin Lloyd Evans returns to Scottish Opera direct a visually rich and lively Mikado. Richard Suart is a veteran Ko-Ko with no-one safe from his Little List as it changes for every performance.

“If music be the food of love, play on, give me excess of it.” There was certainly plenty of Shakespeare-inspired music on the bill for the London Philharmonic Orchestra's celebration of The Bard. 

Welsh National Opera's new production of The Barber of Seville disappoints in an uncoordinated performance in Bristol. 

Calixto Bieito’s new production of Verdi’s The Force of Destiny for English National Opera is – for him – a tame affair. 

A wittily staged, but variably sung twelfth revival of Jonathan Miller's production at the Coliseum. 

As director of the film Topsy-Turvy, Mike Leigh seemed like a natural choice to turn his hand to The Pirates of Penzance at English National Opera. Sadly, this proved not to be the case. 

With ENO having been in the news for all the wrong reasons last week,  it needed Richard Jones' The Mastersingers of Nuremberg to be a great production. Lit up by a towering performance by Iain Paterson, it is.

ENO's revival of Jonathan Miller's 2009 production is musically solid, but falls short of the dramatic intensity achieved in previous years.

The production of Die Fledermaus currently onstage at the Lyric Opera is smart, goofy and not too fussed about keeping all its parts under tight control.

This autumn is Strauss and Freud season in London: while the Royal Opera are showing Charles Edwards’s searingly Freudian take on Richard Strauss’s Elektra, ENO have opted for the polar opposite mood with Johann Strauss’s Die Fledermaus: Christopher Alden’s production is just as Viennese, just as laden with dreams and sexuality, but filled to the brim with gags and frivolous decadence.

In his program note, conductor-director Iván Fischer describes his Mostly Mozart Festival production of Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro as a staged concert. His agenda sounds serious: “This is my attempt to bring theater and music closer to each other, to create a new natural harmony.” He asks for a new era in opera production, seeking “organic unity” between music and theater.

Premièred in 1973, Death in Venice was Britten’s last opera and therefore his last chance to create a big starring role for his lifelong partner Peter Pears.

In the celebratedly short time in which Rossini wrote The Barber of Seville, he got into a time capsule and took a short trip to twenty-first century London; on his return to 1816 Rome, he wrote the part of Rosina for Lucy Crowe's voice. Or at least, that's what it felt like at ENO last night, as Crowe turned in a performance which outstrips my ability to find superlatives.

The music of Bradford-born composer Frederick Delius (1862–1934) is a love or hate affair. Whether you bask in the romantic lushness of his godless and nature-influenced ramblings, or find yourself drowning in a poor-quality school soup consisting of unappetisingly vague harmonic shifts, he is a composer that inspires passionate discussion.

For a Parisian, the accordion is the musical instrument most redolent of memories and dreams. So for Bohuslav Martinů's surrealist opera Julietta, written in Paris and infused with a discombobulating jumble of memories and dreams, Antony McDonald's sets were masterpieces: in each of three acts, the stage is dominated by a giant accordion which is more or less the size of the whole stage.

Every year, Glyndebourne brings an opera from their festival to the BBC Proms and adapts it to the Royal Albert Hall stage. This year they brought their hottest production of the summer, The Marriage of Figaro (directed at Glyndebourne by Michael Grandage and adapted for the Proms by Ian Rutherford), and it was wonderful to see the Albert Hall packed to rafters.

In the cosy confines of a packed Hampstead Theatre ENO’s English adaptation of Jacob Lenz produced an exciting, entertaining and emotionally draining 70 minutes of opera. Premiered in 1979 this is Rihm’s account of Sturm und Drang writer Jakob Lenz’s descent into madness.

English National opera's first première of 2012 is a revival of David McVicar's 2008 production of Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier, in splendid rococo period setting. They pulled out all the stops in casting: the four lead roles were all sung and acted wonderfully by English singers at the very top of their game.

For all their eagerness to embrace the new and radical, ENO are often at their best in more traditional fare. Jonathan Miller's delightful production, first seen last season, charms more than it challenges with a candy-coloured evocation of a more innocent age. The apple pie America of a 1950s prairie diner replaces the 19th century Italian village of Donizetti's original.

From the opening glissandos of Britten's opera, we know this is not Mendelssohn's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Where the Mendelssohn / Balanchine ballet is romantic, dreamy and reminiscent of an illustrated fairytale, Britten's opera borders on the nightmarish and eerie.

“Off with their heads!” I vividly recall being terrorized as a preschooler hearing Walt Disney’s sadistic, loud-mouthed Queen of Hearts thunder these signature lines. I have since learned that decapitation as capital punishment is not exclusive to the fictional Queen of Hearts of Lewis Carroll and Walt Disney, but rather grim historical reality.

In Janáček's opera The Makropulos Case, the operagoer must accept a single premise of implausible fantasy: from then on, the action flows inexorably and logically to its conclusion. It's a device used by a great deal of fantasy literature, from the low-brow of The Day of the Triffids to the high-brow of Janáček's compatriot Kafka's Metamorphosis.