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Meanwhile that ever-enterprising other Welsh company, Music Theatre Wales, under joint Artistic Directors Michael McCarthy and Michael Rafferty, will pioneer Nigel Osborne (composer of Glyndebourne and MTW's The Electrification of the Soviet Union) and librettist Amanda Holden's The Piano Tuner, based on Daniel Mason's bestselling novel, whose hero, the introspective Edgar Drake, is commissioned by the British War Office in the year 1886 to journey from smog-ridden London to distant, mysterious Burma, and becomes involved in the complexities of local politics and amours. MTW's staging is at the Royal Opera House's Linbury Theatre (world première) on 8-9 October 2004, then tours Wales (Aberystwyth, Cardiff, Mold), the Midlands (Birmingham, Oxford) and Yorkshire (Sheffield and the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival). Giles Davies sings the title role, and the cast will also include some beguiling South East Asian dancers and singers performing in the local idiom.

Another ensemble with a penchant for unusual repertoire -- although of a different era -- is the highly imaginative Chelsea Opera Group, now more than half a century old.

Operas performed by this capable and seasoned ensemble, whose recent conductors have included Mark Shanahan, Brad Cohen and ENO's versatile Dominic Wheeler, who conducted their recent Lucrezia Borgia (Donizetti) and will conduct their performance of Verdi's Giovanna d'Arco (Joan of Arc) on Sunday 5 June 2005, include Strauss's Feuersnot, Ambroise Thomas's Hamlet, Bellini's Il Pirata, Verdi's I Lombardi, a double bill of The Miserly Knight and Francesca da Rimini (both by Rachmaninov), Anna Bolena (Donizetti), and Catalani's La Wally conducted by David Lloyd-Jones.

Now Chelsea, exciting as robust as ever, is to perform Glinka's masterpiece A Life for the Tsar (Ivan Susanin), which launched (virtually single-handedly) the tradition of Russian National Opera taken up by Dargomizhky, Tchaikovsky and the 'mighty handful' (including Borodin and Rimsky-Korsakov), and which informed the 'Socialist Realist' efforts of many more pedestrian composers of the Stalin and even Krushchev eras. It's very rarely heard in the UK, and (when heard full length) of almost Wagnerian duration: top marks, then, for the company prepared to challenge it even in concert form.

Chelsea's Ivan Susanin can be heard on Saturday 27 November 2004 in the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London at 7pm.

Few would deny the demise of Kent Opera due to an Arts Council axing some years ago was a dire blow to opera lovers throughout England. Now, by miraculous rebirth, more modest New Kent Opera has arisen -- like Venus from her seashell -- to take Kent Opera's place.

While their neighbours, New Sussex Opera, tour Verdi's Falstaff round the south (Southsea, Eastbourne, Brighton, Sevenoaks and Basingstoke) from 22 October to 24 November, New Kent Opera will be staging the nineteen year old Mozart's youthful Serenata Il Re Pastore at their new base, the wonderfully atmospheric Georgian Theatre Royal in seaside Margate, between 30 October and 7 November. Out in the sticks? You bet; but it should be worth the journey. Bucket and spade obligatory.