The year began with a Mozartian bang as Radio 3 gave us – or subjected us to, depending on your point of view – every note Wolfgang Amadeus ever wrote. This was the indulgent start to a rich, surprising, and only occasionally nauseating smorgasbord of a year.
The orchestral highlights stick in the memory most, starting with the BBC Symphony Orchestra's revelation of Brian Ferneyhough's La Terre Est un Homme in Martyn Brabbins's astonishing performance in February; Brabbins was also at the helm for a record-breaking performance of Havergal Brian's gargantuan Gothic Symphony at the Proms, a work that requires 1,000 musicians and singers.
The City of Birmingham Orchestra's concerts with their irresistibly energetic music director, Andris Nelsons, put them on a par with Mark Elder's Hallé as the pick of the country's orchestras, while in London, Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Philharmonia and Vladimir Jurowski and the London Philharmonic proved the most consistently creative.
All were given masterclasses by great European ensembles, first by Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic, and most of all by Claudio Abbado and the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, with two visionary, transcendent performances of Bruckner's Fifth Symphony.
ENO hit the headlines with big ideas and bold productions: Terry Gilliam's wildly imaginative Faust, and Christopher Alden's devastatingly dark Midsummer Night's Dream among them. Covent Garden brought Rolando Villazón's career back from the brink with his performances in Werther, turned Anna Nicole Smith into an operatic icon in Mark-Anthony Turnage's overhyped new work, and hit its stride with Richard Jones's production of Puccini's Trittico.
Opera North annoyed many with Daniel Kramer's savagely cut Carmen, the beleaguered Scottish Opera flickered into life for Handel's Orlando, and Welsh National Opera produced a rather conventional new Don Giovanni. Glyndebourne was the best of the rest of the operatic year, especially David McVicar's deceptively traditional staging of Wagner's Meistersinger.
Despite all the sound and fury, there's a feeling that the big institutions are saving themselves for 2012. Let's hope it's worth the wait.
Best bearded operatic performance: John Tomlinson in ENO's Parsifal.
Best non-bearded operatic performance: Rolando Villazón in Werther at Covent Garden.
Best unconducted orchestral performance: Spira Mirabilis's Beethoven at the Aldeburgh festival.
Best conducted orchestral performance: Claudio Abbado's Bruckner with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra.
