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5 MAI

A monthly selection of forthcoming events recommended by The Spectator's regular critics

OPERA

La Boheme, Grand Theatre, Leeds (0532 459351), from 16 April. Rather soon after an excellent Production by David Freeman, Opera North invests in a new staging of Puccini's infallible masterpiece. This time the director Will be Phyllida Lloyd, the designer Anthony Ward. Jane Leslie Mackenzie sings Mimi, and the Promising young tenor David Maxwell Anderson is Rodolfo. Sung in Italian, conducted by Roy Laughlin.

Norma, Theatre Royal Glasgow (041 332 9000), from 24 April. Ambitious production of Bellini's Druidic opera, to be conducted by Scottish Opera's outgoing musical director John Mauceri, with the Young but ample-voiced Jane Eaglen in the impossibly challenging title role. Ian Judge directs.

Ariodante, London Coliseum (071 836 3161), from 29 April. One of Handel's more fantastic operas, based on Ariosto. As usual with this cOmposer, some glorious melodic highlights may or may not Compensate you for episodes of less impressive inspiration. English National Opera has assembled a superb cast, led by Ann Murray in the title role and Amanda Roocroft as the headstrong Ginevra. David Alden directs, with a brilliant new designer, Ian MacNeil.

Rupert Christiansen

DANCE

The Turning World 1993, at The Place Theatre (071 387 0031), features nine events selected from Europe and more far-flung continents. Season kicks off with One of Montreal's most established and athletic troupes, 0 Vertigo, in La Chambre Blanche (27 and 28 April), followed by Belgian choreographer Michelle Anne De Mey and company in her playful and joyous Sonatas 555 (30 April).

ItaYal Ballet, Covent Garden (071 240 1066), 7 April. New production of Mikhail Baryshnikov's Don Quixote, staged by Anthony Dowell, With Viviana Durante as Kitri next to Irek Mukhamedov's Basilio. Month concludes with a triple bill featuring Balanchine's Ballet Inn1Perial, Bintley's 'Still Life' at the Penguin Café and MacMillan's Gloria.

Sophie Constanti

GARDENS

The fund-raising season for garden charities of all sorts is upon us. There will, for example, be a plant and garden sundries sale in the grounds of Hatfield House, Hatfield, Herts, in aid of the Museum of Garden History at St Mary-at-Lambeth, on Sunday, 25 April, from 12 midday. The Marchioness of Salisbury's private garden, the East Garden, will be open on that day. Entrance to the sale, Hatfield Park and gardens is £2.50 for adults, £2.30 for 0A1P5 and £1.90 for children.

Ursula Buchan

EXHIBITIONS

David Hoclmey: Grimm's Fairy Tales, Royal Festival Hall Foyer Galleries, from 1 April. Stories of old-fashioned fairies interpreted imaginatively by well-known modern person.

'Inside the Castle; 1969, by David Hockney Joseph Beuys: the Revolution is Us, Tate Gallery, Liverpool, from 7 April. Artist described in gallery publicity as among 'foremost of this century'. Try to guess why.

Elinor Bellingham Smith (1906-1988), Bath Spa Hotel, Bath, from 3 April. Lyrical painter of Suffolk landscape.

Georgia O'Keeffe: American and Modern, Hayward Gallery, from 8 April. First retrospective of long-lived American artist (1887-1986) outside United States. Odd and evocative.

Giles Auty

MUSIC

The excellent London International Orchestral Season at the Royal Festival Hall concludes this month with the New York Philharmonic under Kurt Masur on 12 and 13 April. They will play Brahms (Second Symphony), Mozart and Strauss (Till Euknspiegel) on the 12th and Barber, Bright Sheng and Dvorak (Ninth Symphony) on the 13th.

The BBC Symphony Orchestra, under a variety of conductors, will be giving their own series of concerts at the Royal Festival Hall: 8th with Lazarev (Taverner's Protecting Veil and Tchaikovsky's Sixth Symphony); 16th with Gunter Wand (Schubert and Bruckner); 26th with 1Cnussen (Copland and Holloway);

29th with Simon Joly (Skempton, Ives, and Bryars); 9 May with Andrew Davis (Berg and Mahler).

Peter Phillips

POP MUSIC

Suzanne Vega, touring 1-18 April. Few albums of 1992 were as adventurous, enjoyable or outrageously underrated as 99.9r (A&M). It will be interesting to see if her subtle, personal songs can survive the wide open space of the Hammersmith Apollo (5 April).

Also recommended: Deacon Blue, touring 31 March-24 April; Sting, rescheduled from March (Royal Albert Hall, 19, 21, 22 April); the few surviving members of Lynyrd Slmyrd (Hammersmith Apollo, 18 April.

Marcus Berkmann

THEATRE

Macbeth, National (071 928 2252), 1 April. Richard Eyre directing Alan Howard in the Scottish one.

The Beggar's Opera, Barbican (071 638 8891), 7 April. Over the hills and far away at Stratford last summer, but now into London; John Caird's rousing revival of the first classic British musical, Arcadia, National (071 928 2252), 13 April. Felicity Kendal and Bill Nighy in Trevor Nunn's staging of a long awaited new script from Tom Stoppard.

Love Song for Ulster, Tricycle (071 328 1000), 18 April. All-day premiere for three new plays from Ireland by Bill Morrison, Sheridan Morley

CRAFTS

Gordon Baldwin, Contemporary Applied Arts, 43 Earlham Street, Covent Garden, till 17 April. Startlingly beautiful sculptural ceramics.

A 25th Birthday Celebration, Oxford Gallery, 23 High Street, Oxford, till 21 April. Large diverse exhibition celebrating a quarter of a century of enlightened curator- ship. Ceramics, jewellery, glass, wood.

Visions of Craft 1972-1993, Crafts Council Gallery, 44a Pentonville Road NI, till 9 May. 200 works from the Crafts Council's impressive collection. A revelation.

Tanya Harrod

CINEMA

The Ox (12), a directorial debut by the world famous cinematographer Sven Nylcvist, is based on an actual event during the famine in Sweden in the 1860s, when people were starving to death and many were forced to emigrate to America. It tells the story of a poor young couple (Max Von Sydow and Ewa Frowling) who stay behind.

Body of Evidence is a new erotic thriller starring Willem Dafoe and Madonna, as a woman accused of murdering her lover.

Vanessa Letts