Donizetti's Belisario at the Barbican

A new edition of Puccini's score springs to life in a meticulously prepared Opera Rara concert performance at the Barbican. 

This is the 27th Donizetti opera given the Opera Rara treatment and their ability to spot a hidden gem remains as adroit as ever. 

A youthful Bellini opera able to stand on its own two feet? Perhaps not, as Adelson e Salvini gets the Opera Rara treatment. 

Offenbach’s wrongfully neglected masterpiece has returned to us at last, thanks to the concerted efforts of Opera Rara, the Orchestra of the Age of the Enlightenment and Sir Mark Elder; and, above all, because of the tireless, lifelong devotion of one man: Jean-Christophe Keck.

Yeol Eum Son’s Britten Piano Concerto formed the evening’s centre of gravity, played with lucid line, structural command and sudden fire. In Brahms’ Second Symphony, Sakari Oramo found conviction, proportion and a warmth that felt earned rather than applied.

Yeol Eum Son's superb performances of Bartók and Finzi are matched by intense and heady readings of Stravinsky and Weir by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Sakari Oramo.