About 125,000 people tried to get tickets for this surprise show, announced by the savvy British DJ on the day – and the result was a direct hit to the brain’s pleasure centres

Our critic enjoys a masterly, socially distanced first night of the Proms, a new series by Opera North made to listen as you walk and a striking Met performance by Lise Davidsen

Daisy Evans’s delightful update of The Telephone crowns engaging online treats from Edinburgh and Salzburg festivals, while our critic looks ahead to live, audience-free Proms

This week, our critic reveals a constant craving for Alban Gerhardt’s Bach, hears a pastor attempting an operatic heart-to-heart with God over Zoom and remembers Julian Bream

This week, Opera Harmony’s new socially distanced mini-operas, streaming from a scaled-down Salzburg, and the Proms revisits BBCSSO’s five-star Vaughan Williams

This week, our critic takes a musical journey to the US east coast, breathes the Swiss mountain air with Schubert’s Trout Quintet from the Gstaad digital festival and catches a glimpse of pianist Stephen Hough as Napoleon

This week, our critic cues up Opera North’s podcast, takes in Ryedale’s streaming festival and revisits an archived Proms performance with Riccardo Chailly

This week, live performances from Glasgow are energising and powerful, Sheku Kanneh-Mason returns to the concert hall, while Barenboim’s Wagner and the late, great Mariss Jansons are among the highlights of the archived Proms season

This week, Andrew Clements gets his teeth into Barenboim’s festival of new music, looks back in wonder at Wunderlich, and looks forward to looking back to the Proms

This week, Flora Willson watches homemade Britney, La Traviata’s backstage travails, finds in Ethel Smyth the missing link between Tristan and Peter Grimes, and enjoys the aural equivalent of a vigorous massage

This week, Tim Ashley finds freshness in locked-down Hugo Wolf, takes a whistlestop tour of European opera houses, and applauds the young singers showcased in the last of the ROH’s galas

This week in our series in which critics tell us what they’ve been listening to at home, Rian Evans luxuriates in heady Szymanowski and Schoenberg, smells the brine in Aldeburgh and is impressed by an end-of-year double bill

This week, in our series in which critics tell us what they’ve been listening to at home, Andrew Clements shares Schoenberg, takes a seat at the Royal Opera House, and looks forward to a narcissistic fish

Each week our critics tell us about the music they’re listening to at home. Today, Flora Willson moves from the Kanneh-Mason family sofa to an empty Wigmore Hall

In our new series, critics tell us about the music they’re listening to at home. This week, Tim Ashley returns to live concerts and is overwhelmed by Strauss

In our new series, critics tell us about the music they’re listening to at home, from symphonies to live streams, grand opera to guilty pleasures. We begin with Andrew Clements, who’s been in search of the elusive Carlos Kleiber