The last present-season satellite transmission is this Saturday, featuring Donizetti's La Fille du Régiment.

Nearer to home, Sheffield City Opera have a concert at St John's Ranmoor on May 10 and are looking for toreadors and soldiers for a production of Bizet's Carmen at the University Drama Studio at the beginning of October.

The company is holding three Sunday afternoon workshops during May and June which will concentrate on the men's chorus parts in Carmen prior to rehearsals starting.

You don't have to be a latent Terfel, Pavarotti or Domingo, just have some enthusiasm for singing.

Further information can be obtained by contacting Pauline Andrews, paulinemandrews@hotmail.co.uk or (0114) 281 5588.

Debbie Michaels and Ernesto Correa are pencilled in as Carmen and José but Micaela and Escamillo remain to be cast and the company would be delighted to hear from potential understudies in all roles.

SCO's Spring into Opera concert at St John's is part of the church May Music Festival.

Operatically, arias include Casta Diva (from Bellini's Norma), Softly Awakes My Heart (Saint-Saëns' Samson and Delilah), When I Am Laid in Earth (Purcell's Dido and Aeneas) and a chorus from Verdi's Nabucco.

In lighter mode are Mancini's Moon River, Gershwin's 'S Wonderful, Bernstein's On the Town and a selection from Les Miserables.

Tickets, £8 or £6, can be purchased from Laraine Turner (0114) 269 4958.

La Fille du Régiment from the New York Met at Cineworld will look familiar if you saw BBC4's recording of Donizetti's comic opera from the Royal Opera House over Christmas.

It's the same production and cast of principals in New York as in London.

The staging, by Laurent Pelly, seems to have gained mini-cult status, so much so that the matinee performance being beamed from the Met is a sell-out there.

In its original form, despite being written by an Italian, La Fille (The Daughter of the Regiment) is a French opera penned, as a number of others were, by Donizetti for Paris.

If you haven't encountered it so far, French soprano Natalie Dessay is Marie, the adopted daughter of a regiment of soldiers led by Sulpice, sung by the celebrated Italian bass-baritone Alessandro Corbelli.

Among their number, Spanish tenor Juan Diego Flórez is Tonio, he of the famous aria with nine Cs in it, and British mezzo Felicity Palmer is the Marquise of Berkenfeld who hides an embarrassing secret about Marie.

As well as Verdi's Macbeth, which has further performances this Saturday and next Friday with Robert Hayward and Italian soprano Antonia Cifrone as the Macbeths, Opera North's spring season also includes Gounod's appealing Roméo et Juliette.

Although we didn't get it in Sheffield because Cineworld lacked a suitable satellite dish at the time, this was the first of the operas relayed from the Met last December.

Directed by John Fulljames and conducted by Martin André it opens on May 17 with Italian/ American tenor Leonardo Capalbo and Slovenian soprano Bernarda Bobro as the star-crossed lovers.

The Leeds-based company's third spring opera is also a new production and another Shakespeare-inspired work, Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream which is unveiled next Saturday (May 3).

Martin Duncan directs it with James Laing and Jeni Bern as Oberon and Titania, Elizabeth Atherton, Frances Bourne (City Hall Messiah alto soloist last December), Peter Wedd and Grant Doyle as the lovers.