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

Pierre-Emmanuel Rousseau propose une lecture sociale cruelle du conte des frères Grimm, non sans quelques approximations. Christoph Koncz dirige en revanche une lecture musicale très juste de cette belle partition de Humperdinck.

Mariame Clément is a popular director at Glyndebourne, and her new production of Figaro shows her trademark approach to hardhitting comedy.

Miskimmon's relocation of the action to Ireland is unsparing in its evocation not of some tearjerking melodrama but of an almost documentary reportage on real events. 

Who wouldn't relish the chance of seeing a Ring cycle at close quarters? Longborough's Die Walküre isn't perfect, but it consistently delivers on the story and on character interpretation.

David Alden's production is a vivid telling of Janáček's devastating village drama. With a terrific cast and a splendid performance from the pit, this revival is an unalloyed artistic success.

Margaret Atwood’s dystopic novel, masterfully adapted for the operatic stage, is strongly performed at ENO and rings even truer today than it did when it was written.

After a rare treat to hear Tippett's commemoration of King Charles' birth and Alina Ibragimova's Mendelssohn, the crowning achievement of this concert is Edward Gardner's majestic reading of Janáček's Glagolitic Mass.

Martyn Brabbins conducts an excellent ENO orchestra and consistently good ensemble cast as Richard Jones delivers a wealth of narrative detail to introduce Wagner's Ring.

 Poul Ruders’ The Handmaid’s Tale comes home to English National Opera after 20 years in a powerful new production by Annilese Miskimmon.

Three performances in five days take their toll in a tight schedule of this concert production run in the Cotswolds. 

The tears of a clown behind the public mask? Glyndebourne's first ever production of Rigoletto takes the audience to Hollywood in the silent film era. 

Geraint Bowen directs the Three Choirs Festival Chorus and Philharmonic Orchestra at Hereford Cathedral in two works once unfairly dismissed.

Continuing its interesting series “Myths and Fairytales”, the Royal Philharmonic gave colourful interpretations of the Hänsel und Gretel overture and Peer Gynt.

A sensational Die Walküre from Sir Andrew Davis and the RSNO at the Edinburgh Festival that will be talked about for years.

Gloriously sung and stylishly played, this Rosenkavalier is a feast for the ears and eyes and should be heard without delay. 

It was here in Manchester, only a stone’s throw from the modern Bridgewater Hall, where Hans Richter gave the first – and by all accounts, highly acclaimed – performance of Elgar’s First Symphony.

Jonathan Miller's production remains a work of brilliance, but poor conducting amongst other things keeps this revival from getting off the ground.

The Hallé's oddly-ordered Ring arrives at the beginning with Das Rheingold.

Crowning this cycle came a truly magnificent performance of Götterdämmerung, centred very much on Richard Farnes and his orchestra.

In Anna Russell's wittily deadpan analysis of Wagner's Ring cycle, she describes Wotan as “the head god” – pausing for dramatic effect before adding “and he's a crashing bore too.”

Opera North's cycle offers a form of personal Wagner therapy: all four music dramas in concert performances, but with carefully choreographed video and lighting effects. 

Mahler's epic setting of the final scene from Goethe's Faust is so demanding of musical resources that any performance is a special occasion: what better work to conclude the Orchestra Of Opera North's triumphant 2015-2016 season? 

A riveting account of Handel's Samson in Dublin, with Katherine Watson, James Gilchrist and Madeleine Shaw shining as soloists. 

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.

The Welsh National Opera took to the Hippodrome stage for the Bristol leg of their UK tour ofCarmen. This was a revival of Welsh National Opera’s production in the late 1990s, co-produced with Scottish Opera.

A brilliantly successful performance of Götterdämmerung by Opera North to bring its four-year Ring to a fiery close. 

Capitalising on their success with Verdi’s opera Rigoletto during the Aix-en-Provence Festival in the summer, the London Symphony Orchestra and conductor Gianandrea Noseda chose to open the 2013/14 season last night with the same work.

Celebrating the Wagner centenary in 1913, the Hallé Orchestra gave a concert performance in Manchester of Acts II and III from Wagner’s epic final masterpiece Parsifal.

It’s so good to hear Tippett’s ravishing opera, The Midsummer Marriage, performed in full at the Proms, particularly in Britten’s centenary year. Tippet’s work is like an antidote to Britten’s drier, more literal operatic style – so overflowing with warmth, colour and hope.

Carmen has always been in my head as a “pretty” opera: lovely tunes, colourful setting, exotically alluring gypsy brushing up against hunky bullfighter and handsome soldier - not exactly French Grand Opera, perhaps, but a far cry from gritty verismo.

If you've been brought up with the Judaeo-Christian ideal of an all-powerful, all-good God, Norse mythology can come as a bit of a shock. Wotan, the father of the gods, is philandering, deceitful, power-hungry, sentimental, violent and ultimately weak - the gamut of human frailties writ large.

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.

It's about time someone wrote an opera about the internet. And who better than Nico Muhly - snarky blogger, snappy Tweeter, and according to the Daily Telegraph "the hottest young composer around"? Add seasoned playwright Craig Lucas, top Broadway director Bartlett Sher and some of Britain's finest singers, and you might expect them to cook up a success.