Magic fire is being kindled in the Cotswolds. Its source? The conductor in Longborough Festival Opera’s orchestra pit, plus some of the singers on its stage. Longborough – country-house opera at its most bijou – is marking Wagner’s bicentenary with the complete Ring cycle, having built it up over the past few years with each of the tetralogy in turn. It may sound overambitious, but it proves you can do anything if you try.

He was the Royal Ballet's youngest male principal at 21 and danced with Dame Margot Fonteyn

The Independent joins 1,800 opera-goers on a freezing English beach as Benjamin Britten's opera Peter Grimes competes with the crash of the waves and the whistling wind. The result? Spectacular

Death in Venice, Coliseum, London

Paul Higgins's staging of Madama Butterfly is not easy to watch, and nor should it be.

Although on a label that aims to capture the intimacy and electricity of live performance, only two items in Pérez's seductive programme of French and Spanish song with pianist Ian Burnside were recorded in concert, and they are the corkers: "Je suis encor tout étourdie" and "Adieu, notre petit table" from Massenet's Manon.

The challenge which every designer of opera at Holland Park must meet is that posed by the country-house façade, which constitutes a pre-existing and non-negotiable set. 

Expectant mothers who give birth on the same day as the Duchess of Cambridge can expect an extra delivery - an album of lullabies by soprano Hayley Westenra.

Woman's Hour presenter Jenni Murray has announced that she will be conducting the BBC Philharmonic orchestra - despite not being able to read music.

Why do all female classical musicians have to be thin and sexy?

It was in many ways appropriate that Aldeburgh’s Britten-centenary festival should open with a concert performance of Peter Grimes.

Garsington's 'Maometto secondo' is risibly directed but superlatively sung 

On the eve of his Aldeburgh concerts, the pianist tells Michael Church why he loves to wind up the traditionalists and critics

If only the latest opera from Philip Glass had a squeak of the wit, drama and character of the great animator's creations

The second volume in the Belcea Quartet's Beethoven Cycle extends from the pastoralia of the third and fifth Opus 18 quartets to the tortured interior manifesto of the Grosse Fuge.