City Chamber Orchestra and Die Konzertisten perform Britten at the Hong Kong Arts Festival

Stellar voices and orcheatra and some inspired staging choices elevate an otherwise heavy-handed production of Pelléas et Mélisande from the WNO at the Hong Kong Arts Festival.

L’Opéra de Baugé est né d’un pari un peu fou : celui de créer, en Maine-et-Loire, un festival dans la lignée de celui de Glyndebourne, dans le Sussex. Champêtre, propice à d’élégants pique-niques à l’entracte, joyeux et tous publics, le festival n’en est pas moins exigeant et porté par une vraie passion pour le genre.

Handel’s Messiah is not too re-imagined, thankfully, with an almost Crystal Palace sized choir although not all singing at once!

Emily Howard's new opera, an Aldeburgh Festival commission, takes an ambitiously modernist approach to a dystopian story of loneliness: a tough, but thought-provoking work. 

Between them, Mozart and Bach wrote what is to my mind some of the happiest music in the repertoire, and the works performed in this concert by Northern Sinfonia and Chorus reminded us that great music doesn’t have to be solemn, or deliver a serious message – sometimes it’s about having as much fun as possible.

Probably no other work in the repertoire has such mystical status as Bach's Matthew Passion. Phrases like "The Greatest Work in the Western Canon", trip glibly off the tongue while failing to illuminate its greatness or acknowledge its strangeness. It is the sacred cow of sacred cows.