A Tits Di/arff

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

OPERA

Das Rheingold, Covent Garden (071 240 1066), 16, 21 September. Gritz Friedrich's production, new to the Royal Opera, of Wagner's most radical, scratchy and witty work. James Morris sings Wotan, Helga Deresch Fricka, Bernard Haitink conducts.

L'Etoile, Grand Theatre, Leeds (0273 541111), 17, 21, 27 September. First of a brave series of novelties from Opera North this season - an unknown gem of the French comic opera tradition, produced by Phyllida Lloyd in a new translation by Jeremy Sams.

Idomeneo, New Theatre, Cardiff (0222 394844), 18, 21, 25

September. Howard Davies directs WNO's new production of Mozart's inexhaustible opera seria. Amanda Roocroft, Suzanne Murphy, Dennis O'Neill and John Mark Ainsley lead a strong cast: Sir Charles Mackerras conducts a score on which he has original textual views.

Rupert Christiansen

CINEMA

September is the month of the Black Movie, with Spike Lee's drugs violence Jungle Fever (18) being the best known and Forest Whitaker's A Rage in Harlem (18), set in the 1950s and taken from a Chester Nimes thriller, the most accessible and underrated.

On a different note, Stephen Poliakoffs Close My Eyes (18), starring Alan Rickman, Clive Owen and Saskia Reeves, is about summertime incest between a brother and sister.

Humour is provided by Mel Brooks in Life Stinks (12), in which a rich old man sets out, for a bet, to prove he can live on nothing. And unexpectedly Sylvester Stallone plays comedy in Oscar. He is a Mafia boss trying to go straight.

Harriet Waugh

DANCE

Moscow City Ballet, Sadlers Wells (071 278 8916), 9-21 September. During its first London visit the company will perform The Sleeping Beauty, Giselle, Swan Lake and a triple bill of Carmen Suite, Anna Karenina and Romeo and Juliet. Guests include Ludmilla Semenyaka and Galina Mezentseva.

Indian Summer, The Place (071 387 0031), 9-14, 23-28 September. A season of South Asian dance and music featuring, among others, Nahid Siddiqui, Malika Sarabhai and Pushkala Gopal. Umewaka Kennokai: Nob Theatre, Queen Elizabeth Hall (071 928 8800), 19-22 September. A welcome visit from one of the oldest Noh companies in Japan as part of the Japan Festival.

DeirdreMcMahon

EXHIBITIONS

Brian Brake's New Zealand, Commonwealth Institute, W8, from 6 September. A nostalgic look at his remarkable homeland by celebrated news photographer.

W.J. Muller, 1812-1845, Bristol Museum and Art Gallery, from 7 September: 180 works by prolific, well-travelled painter famous for depiction of Bristol riots.

Objects for the Ideal Home, Serpentine Gallery, from 11 September. fop Art is September's flavour of the month in London. A tribute to original and second-hand practitioners.

'Winter Bears, 1988, by Jeff Koons Hortus Cambrensist Decay and Revival in the Gardens of Wales, Davies Memorial Gallery, Newtown, Powys, from 7 September. National Trust invites artists to react to Welsh gardens.

Giles Auty

THEATRE

Hedda Gabler, Playhouse (071 839 4401), 3 September. The Abbey Theatre Dublin's acclaimed production of Ibsen's powerful melodrama arrives in London. A strong cast is led by Fiona Shaw as Hedda.

Our Town, Shaftesbury ((071 379 5399), 5 September. Thornton Wilder's classic 1938 Pulitzer Prize- winning play about small-town America receives a starry revival led by the American actor Alan Alda.

The Winter's Tale, Young Vic ((071 928 6363), 5 September. David Thacker directs this revival of Shakespeare's play with a very attractive cast that includes Rudi Davies (Hermione) and Trevor Eve (Leontes). Christopher Edwards

CRAFTS

Clive Bowen, Contemporary Applied Arts, from 6 September. Fine potter working in the county slipware tradition in Shebbear, Devon.

Organic Design, Design Museum. Biomorphic shapes come and go in 20th-century design, a history that spans art nouveau, surrealism, Pop Art and 1980s 'soft' design.

Visions of Japan, V & A, from 17 September. In the North and South Courts, a major new exhibition space at the V & A. This seems more spectacle than exhibition: models of Godzilla hovering over Tokyo and optical fibre recreations of a Buddhist paradise.

Tanya Harrod

MUSIC

Festivals this month include: Bradford (5-22), Salisbury (7-21), Cardiff (14-12 October), Windsor (17-5 October), St Asaph (22-28), Swansea (30-26 October).

The Georgian State Symphony Orchestra under their conductor Jansug Kakhidze is making a debut tour of the UK with programmes which include music by Prokoviev, Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich. They appear in Croydon (16), Brighton (17), Birmingham (19), Bristol (20), Hanley (21), Aberdeen (22), Glasgow (23), Dundee (24), Edinburgh (25), Hull (26).

The Nash Ensemble give a 20th- century music series on 16, 19, 24 .ind 26 September in the Purcell Room. Each concert includes a new work by a British composer, respectively David Matthews, Robin Holloway, Nicholas Maw, Mark Anthony Turnage and Richard Rodney Bennett.

Peter Phillips

POP MUSIC

Dire Straits, touring, 2-20 September. As their first album for six years is finally released, Mark Knopfler's band embarks on a world tour that will take two years to complete, encompass more than 250 shows and satisfy 7.1 million paying customers. Oh to have a percentage stake in all that....

Beverley Craven, touring, from 18 September. This year's most unlikely pop success starts her first headlining tour, living proof that there's still a market for niceness in pop. Don't forget the Zippo.

Marcus Berkmann

GARDENS

The finest examples of cultivated vegetables that you will see anywhere will be on show in South Wales on 31 August and 1 September. For this year the National Vegetable Championships will be staged at the Llanelli Flower Show. Particularly impressive are the 'collections': six varieties of spotless, unblemished, uniform vegetables displayed in time- honoured fashion. Ursula Buchan