Sir Mark Elder was back on the scene of past triumphs last night as he returned to the Hallé at the Bridgewater Hall – and he has not lost his taste for the slightly unexpected.

Georges Bizet was born on this day in 1838. He died at the tragically early age of 36, 150 years ago, and the anniversary year has brought forth for the most part only multiple productions of Carmen, his greatest masterpiece, with a spattering of Pearl Fishers (though not in the UK). Despite the promise of so much more, he left behind plenty of other gems, and Palazzetto Bru Zane, lavishly well-endowed “Centre for French Romantic Music”, has been at the forefront of illuminating them with a revelation in Paris and four CDs of relative rarities.

Phyllida Lloyd’s production of La Bohème for Opera North is over 32 years old but still feels young. And for its audiences it still has the ability to capture – as the opera is designed to – the experience of youthful love and separation, its ecstasy and its heartbreak.

Guillermo del Toro strains every sinew to bring his dream film to life, steeping it in religious symbolism and the history of art, cannily restitching Mary Shelley’s narrative and aiming grandly high. He can’t sustain Frankenstein’s heartbeat over two-and-a-half hours which try to justify a lifetime’s devotion to the subject. There are, though, marvellous passages where the ages of reason and magic meet.

Kahchun Wong’s second Bridgewater Hall concert of the new season was partly an introduction to the Hallé’s artist-in-residence for 2025-26, Anna Lapwood. The star organist brought a new piece by Max Richter for organ, choir and orchestra and a recent one by Olivia Belli for organ solo – both on the theme of space travel.

The Royal Northern College of Music was in celebratory mood last night for the opening of its new season, in a joint promotion with Manchester Camerata that marked the 50^th anniversary of the start of the RNCM’s Junior Fellowship programme.

Concerts need to have themes, it seems, today, and the BBC Philharmonic’s publicity suggested two contrasting ideas for the opening of its 2025-26 season at the Bridgewater Hall. One was “Fountain of Youth” (the programme title and also that of Julia Wolfe’s nine-minute work that began its orchestral content) and the other “Grasping pain, embracing fate” (used as a kind of strapline).

It’s weird, if wonderful, that vibrant young composers at the end of the 19th century should have featured death so prominently in their hero-sagas. Assume their inspiration came from Wagner’s Siegmund, Siegfried and Tristan. But Sibelius, Mahler and Richard Strauss took very different paths on the route to obliteration. That’s only one of many things that helps to make Hannu Lintu’s three-year exploration of Sibelius in the context of his predecessors and contemporaries so fascinating.

Alexandre Dumas’ novel has been filmed an immeasurable number of times (there was a new French version only last year) and televised even more frequently (a Mexican incarnation materialised in 2023). Yet the world still can’t get enough, so here’s another one, this time a French/Italian production with a polyglot Euro-cast.