En direct, Vidéo: Rechercher des critiques de musique classique, opéra et ballet | Colin Judson

Handel's oratorio is staged by Olivia Fuchs and conducted by Johanna Soller in Opera North's latest successful collaboration with Phoenix Dance Theatre. 

Richard Jones' 2009 production returns to Glyndebourne after a long absence, but the 1940s comedy scrubs up fresh. 

Amid the rough winds of late May, Julia Burbach directs Opera Holland Park's first venture into Wagner – The Flying Dutchman. 

Conducted by Christoph Konz and directed by James Brining, Opera North’s revival of The Magic Flute remains an inventive reinterpretation of Mozart’s classic opera. 

Upcycled and recycled, a green production of Verdi's final opera is directed by Olivia Fuchs. 

Using Jonathan Dove and Graham Vick's distillations of Siegfried and Götterdämmerung, the company concluded its miniature Ring cycle in under five hours, without sacrificing musical or dramatic tension.

Michael Grandage's vivid production of Mozart's comic masterpiece is fast becoming a classic and is revived here to a very high standard.

In the expert hands of both director Warlikowski and conductor Kent Nagano, the sequel to Bernstein's Trouble in Tahiti proves to be even darker and more dramatic.

Natalya Romaniw, a diva to her fingertips, proves an ideal Floria Tosca in ENO's open-air performance at the South Facing Festival in Crystal Palace Bowl.

Outstanding singing from a beautifully chosen cast led by Miah Persson and Hanna Hipp. 

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

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

Benjamin Britten's final opera hasn't been staged by The Royal Opera in over 25 years, but his setting of Thomas Mann's Death in Venice receives a great new production by Sir David McVicar. 

A welcome return to the Glyndebourne Festival for Melly Still's staging, which brings out the full emotional range of Dvořák’s fairytale of denial, heartbreak and forgiveness.

Philip Glass' hypnotic opera returns in Phelim McDermott's outstanding production that respects the solemn, statuesque grandeur and epic ritual of the score. 

Bruno Ravella's fast-paced Falstaff for Garsington still has crucial space for pathos amid the comedy, with a notably subtle central performance from Henry Waddington.  

Fiona Shaw's production doesn't always get everything right, but Lucy Crowe's debut as the Countess is the defining success of the this revival.

Semyon Bychkov turned in a magisterial account of Mussorgsky's rugged score, aided and abetted by some strong vocal performances.

A fresh, yet traditional Magic Flute at Longborough uses puppetry to bring an atmosphere of fairytale onto the stage, with fine singing from a strong cast. 

This Peter Grimes was a tale of two talents: the conductor and the star.

“Out of this wood do not desire to go!” Tytania orders Bottom. Glyndebourne's revival of Peter Hall's classic production of A Midsummer Night's Dream is eerily enchanting, weaving its spell right from the queasy double bass glissandos, which slither into Britten's score.

Melly Still returns to revive her 2012 staging at Glyndebourne, laying nature bare. Cartoonish, but never sentimental, it presents Vixen red in tooth and claw, 

“Honour your masters!” Sachs instructs Walther in the final scene. Wagner's spirit was honoured well as Glyndebourne's festival opened, but did the song contest necessarily crown the right winner?  

Phelim McDermott tackles Philip Glass's ancient Egypt in a production that's totally absorbing visually and aurally, with a star performance by Anthony Roth Costanzo.

Barrie Kosky's production, revived for the tour, turns Handel’s 1739 Old Testament oratorio Saul into a gripping psychodrama. 

David Alden’s muddled clichés failed to convince all the time, but Edward Gardner steered us through a thrilling musical account of Tchaikovsky’s terrific opera.

With its latest incarnation of Die Zauberflöte, the Royal Opera ticks all the boxes in a strongly cast revival. 

Full of physical comedy, joyous and enthusiastic, Fiona Shaw's vision of Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro makes the most of its taut and energetic plotlines, intense charactisation and beautifully balanced music. 

This BAM production of Benjamin Britten’s Billy Budd, imported from Glyndebourne, achieves the rare distinction of making a great performance out of a decidedly mediocre work.

The silence at the end of the concert said it all. To have plunged the attention of the entire Royal Albert Hall into utter silence for a whole minute after the music has finished was an impressive feat. Such was the audience response to Mark Padmore’s closing walk down the back of the stage, as Captain Vere.

“Community, exclusion, rejection and desire”, writes director Christopher Rolls about English Touring Opera’s production of Albert Herring. “Doesn’t sound like a recipe for an uproarious comedy does it? And the key thing about Herring is that it is very very funny.

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.

Paradox is unsurprising in the works of a composer who said: "The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one's self of the chains that shackle the spirit." The often distancing neoclassical idiom seemed unable to deny Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress (1951) emotionally engaging and affecting music.