Italy - a sun-soaked land of olives and cypresses, of art, culture and civilisation, where wine flows freely and passions run high. The land where everyone sings, and where opera was born.

From the sparkling wit of Rossini - a man who enjoyed his food even more than his music, to Verdi's sophisticated world of triumphal marches and glittering balls, ladies of easy virtue and men who love and leave them; from Puccini's doomed heroines - fiery Tosca, fragile Butterfly and consumptive Mimi - wh...