Die Zauberflöte review – a visual feast of eccentricity
This magical, witty, irreverent production updates the action and politics to 1900s Vienna but still strikes some wrong notes
The week in classical: The Hunting Gun; Tenebrae; Cendrillon; Don Carlo – review
Everything is in the sinewy detail of Thomas Larcher’s superb 2018 opera
The week in classical: Donnerstag aus Licht; La Damnation de Faust; By Voice Alone – review
Stockhausen’s five-hour opera stuns with a cosmic cornucopia, while Berlioz is underdone at Glyndebourne
The Damnation of Faust review – seductive, beguiling and sinister
The new Glyndebourne season opens with a striking, albeit nihilistic and anti-Romantic staging by Richard Jones of Berlioz’s dramatic legend
The week in classical: Other Worlds; Cendrillon; St Matthew Passion – review
John Luther Adams’s end of the world proves strangely consoling. And out on the road with Cinders and Bach
Cendrillon review – Cinderella entrances her gender-fluid Prince
Fiona Shaw stages Massenet’s flawed yet astonishingly beautiful opera as a surreal, modern-dress phantasmagoria
The week in classical: Il barbiere di Siviglia; Siegfried; Vanessa review – a tale of two Barbers
Rossini leaps off the actual page, the Hallé and Mark Elder are on fire in epic Wagner, and Samuel Barber’s Vanessa proves more than the sum of its parts
Vanessa review – Barber’s opera finds its time with intelligent, gripping staging
Keith Warner’s new production features a compelling performance by Emma Bell at its centre, with the London Philharmonic under Jakub Hrůša also very impressive
The week in classical: Pelléas et Mélisande; OAE: Schiff’s Surprise – review
A concept-heavy new production of Debussy’s masterpiece leaves little to the imagination. Plus heavenly Haydn with András Schiff
Pelléas et Mélisande review – crashing symbols overpower doomed lovers
The many layers of Stefan Herheim’s staging prove detaching distractions from the twisted mystery of the Debussy tragedy
The week in classical: Madama Butterfly; Britten Sinfonia/Adès – review
The summer opera season kicks off with Annilese Miskimmon’s perceptive staging of Puccini’s heartbreaker.
Madama Butterfly/Der Rosenkavalier review – Glyndebourne openers perplex, provoke and charm
Annilese Miskimmon’s stripped-back Puccini update and an admirable but uneven Strauss revival opened this year’s summer festival
Quartet for the End of Time; Meta4 and Alasdair Beatson; Belongings – review
An awesome foursome hold their own in Messiaen’s cataclysmic masterpiece. Plus, an intense Finnish-Scottish fling
Hamlet; Oxford Lieder festival review – love at second sight
David Butt Philip leads a marvellous new cast in this fine-tuned touring production of Brett Dean’s masterly opera
Hamlet review – careers are made in a ferociously powerful trip to Elsinore
Brett Dean’s returning adaptation is a formidable achievement, and David Butt Philip is a revelation as Shakespeare’s tortured prince