En direct, Vidéo: Rechercher des critiques de musique classique, opéra et ballet | Pamela Helen Stephen

The Albanian soprano, who made a spectacular jump-in for her house debut in Richard Eyre's production in 2008, makes a splendid return. 

Any revival of La traviata stands or falls by its principals and their ability to inhabit the roles rather than merely sing them prettily. A good revival director helps. 

“Beware, my Lord, of jealousy” warns Iago, planting the seed of doubt in Otello’s mind. Beware, too, the dangers of preconceptions. Keen anticipation of this new production of Verdi’s Otello was tempered by the prospect of David Alden as director.

A superb concert performance of Der Rosenkavalier with the CBSO and Andris Nelsons receives a rapturous reception. 

Die Fledermaus is as quintessentially Viennese as zithers and Schnitzel. In John Wilson, the Philharmonia and a fine ensemble cast, we should have had all the ingredients for a memorable matinée performance, but a few elements meant the fizz went rather flat.

Peter Grimes may deserve the place it has gained in the operatic canon, but it’s not a work without problems.

It wasn’t surprising that English National Opera’s UK première of The Perfect American was one of the most eagerly anticipated productions of the summer. Based on a fictitious narrative by Peter Stephan Jungk, the opera offers a timely glance behind the plush curtains of Walt Disney’s animated feature films.

Southbank Centre’s The Rest is Noise festival has a number of strands of thought permeating its concerts. It explores the effects of war, sex and sexuality, politics, and race on some of the 20th century’s most important musical output.

The bicentenary of Richard Wagner’s birth is inescapable, and it comes as no surprise that, however brief their offering, an institution as august as the Huddersfield Choral Society (HCS) could not allow the moment to pass without taking advantage of the opportunity to perform one of Wagner’s most impressive choral outbursts – “Wacht auf! Es nahet gen den Tag” (Awake! the dawn of day draws near) f

The evening begins with La Voix Humaine: “Elle” is staring at us fixedly for what seems like a minute, smoke from the cigarette in her fingers providing the only movement. She sits in an oblong frame surrounded by light bulbs, indicating a substantial mirror of the sort you might find backstage. The orchestra begins, and the music is edgy.

Anthony Minghella's famous production of Puccini's Madam Butterfly debuted with ENO in 2005, and has been revived several times since at the Coliseum, as well as travelling to the Met in New York and the Lithuanian National Opera. ENO's latest revival confirms the classic status of this version, with a musical account which goes some way to matching the sumptuous and – yes – cinematic visuals.

The Roman emperor Julius Caesar’s entanglement with the Egyptian queen Cleopatra is one of the best-known love stories of all time, and the operatic re-telling by George Frideric Handel, with its incredible music and universal themes of war, passion and politics, is experiencing a resurgence.

ENO's latest première matches a young theatre director with a reputation for cutting-edge drama to one of the earliest operas in the repertoire, in the less-than-conventionally-operatic surroundings of London's Young Vic. It's an improbable combination, and I wasn't at all sure what to expect.

For a long period, Charles Gounod's Faust was one of the most frequently performed operas, its popularity due to a lusciously romantic score which contains a series of showstopping set-piece arias, many of which have found their way into popular culture (to give just one example, the Jewel Song in Act III has a starring role in the Tintin story The Castafiore Emerald).