Performer: Jonathan Burton

Whenever a relative opera novice or occasional toe-dipper tells me how he or she cried at the end of La bohème, I want to send them to La fanciulla del West. Of course I choke up at the end of Bohème – who doesn't? – but for a good bawling session, the fabulously maudlin finale of Fanciulla is the place to be. The plot doesn't bode well.

Welsh National Opera brings its 1978 production of Madama Butterfly to Milton Keynes.  

For more than half a century since the 1960s, several productions featuring some of the best-known celebrities in the opera world have set high standards for Puccini’s Tosca, that “shabby little shocker,” as a musicologist once called it.