Performer: Paolo Battaglia

Traditionally, Italy's most unforgiving loggionisti are reputed to reside at Parma's Teatro Regio. Thankfully for the cast, they appear to be a dying breed.

Quoi de plus cohérent pour une saison versaillaise célébrant le tricentenaire de la mort du plus absolu des monarques français, que de programmer les subversives Noces de Figaro à l’Opéra Royal ?

Torre del Lago is the quintessential setting for Madama Butterfly. The backdrop to the open-air theatre could easily be the gentle hills and bay of Cio-Cio San's own Nagasaki.

Le nozze di Figaro is called Figaro’s Bröllop in Swedish, which sounds quite funny to ‘non-Svensks’. With Marcellina behaving like a total trollop, all that is needed to complete the rhyming triplet are the Wallops at Glyndebourne.

Alzira, Verdi’s eighth opera, is something of a discarded child within his canon, not least because of Verdi’s own dismissal of it as “proprio brutta” (really ugly) after it was poorly received both in Naples and Rome. Perhaps Verdi was stung by a blot on an otherwise successful career: on the basis of last night’s concert performance by Chelsea Opera Group, the score has plenty to commend it.