Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Patricia Orr

Alice's story in a sparkling outdoor production for families, which will not disappoint mainstream opera enthusiasts.

Whatever Puccini’s Madama Butterfly has going for it, it isn’t suspense – everything that’s going to happen is spelled out the first few pages of the score, as Pinkerton chuckles that the marriage contracts in Japan are as flexible as the property leases, renegotiable on a monthly basis, and toasts the day he gets married “for real” to an American bride.

Is it possible for us to feel a shred of sympathy for Lulu, surely one of opera’s most notorious anti-heroines, even when she meets her grizzly demise at the coda of Berg’s eponymous masterwork? I think it speaks volumes about the astonishing quality of soprano Marie Arnet’s performance that my answer to this question after seeing Welsh National Opera’s new production of Lulu is a most definite “n

After their Mascagni debut last year, with L’amico Fritz (the composer’s first post-Cavalleria opera), Opera Holland Park have set out to uncover more music from the so-called ‘one-hit-wonder’ – still known to most for his smash verismo opera alone.

Pietro Mascagni was catapulted to enduring fame in 1889 when his Cavalleria Rusticana won a competition. But the problem with all Italian opera composers at the end of the 19th century was simple: if you weren't Puccini, it was more or less impossible to avoid his shadow.