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Radio 3 Breakfast: The Nation's Favourite Aria

The aria is arguably the most emotive, powerful and memorable element of any opera. It has the power to transcend the opera that contains it and remain with a listener long after the final note has disappeared.

From 17 May to 14 June, ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Radio 3 invites listeners to text and email their favourite arias to Rob Cowan and Sara Mohr-Pietsch on Radio 3 Breakfast to discover The Nation's Favourite.

The Top 10 will be revealed on 2 June and played leading up to unveiling The Nation's Favourite Aria on 14 June.

From Monteverdi to Mozart, Bellini to Bernstein, Radio 3 listeners will have their chance to share their own passions and favourites. Listeners can go to bbc.co.uk/opera to hear clips and vote for their favourite arias from a Top 10.

Suggestions for the Top 10 can be sent by email: 3breakfast@bbc.co.uk; text: 83111; or in writing to ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Radio 3 Breakfast, Room 1015 Broadcasting House, Portland Place, London W1A 1AA.

³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Radio 3 Breakfast Daily, 7am (The Nation's Favourite Arias feature at 9am each day)

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In Tune: The A-Z Of Opera

A is for Aria; Z is for Zarzuela. And in between, for every letter of the alphabet, is a whole universe of opera.

From Wednesday 19 May for 26 days (a letter a day) ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Radio 3's In Tune will showcase the world of opera in a series of features, building an A-Z of opera that will offer an approachable and demystifying guide to this wonderful art form.

Each programme will feature an aspect of opera in interviews with people who have made it their way of life, including the legendary British bass Robert Lloyd, the conductor Sir Mark Elder, voice coach Mary King, tenor Rolando Villazón and many others.

In Tune 5-7pm, Monday-Friday (A-Z of Opera features at 5.45pm each day and online as a free download).

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In Tune: Live From The Royal Opera House

In Tune presented by Sean Rafferty comes live from the Paul Hamlyn Hall of the Royal Opera House with a programme featuring performances from some of the opera stars currently performing there, as well as from members of their Jette Parker Young Artists Programme.

There'll be interviews with Music Director Antonio Pappano, and Monica Mason, Director of the Royal Ballet, and from some of the other people who work behind the scenes.

Tuesday 18 May, 5pm

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Opera On 3

BC Radio 3's Opera On 3 presents specially recorded operas each Saturday, beginning with Rossini's Il Turco In Italia from the Royal Opera House on 15 May.

The Royal Opera House forms the backbone of the Opera On 3 season, with productions including Prokofiev's The Gambler, starring Sir John Tomlinson and Roberto Saccà (22 May), Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier starring Soile Isokoski (5 June), and Massenet's Manon starring Anna Netrebko and Vittorio Grigolo (10 July).

Other highlights include English National Opera's production of Janácek's Katya Kabanova, with Patricia Racette in the title role (12 June) and Opera North's production of Donizetti's Maria Stuarda starring Sarah Connolly as Mary Queen of Scots (19 June).

Opera On 3 Saturdays, 6.00pm

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Operas In The Afternoon

BC Radio 3's Afternoon On 3 will be broadcasting operas from around Europe via the European Broadcasting Union, including Rossini's Zelmira from Pesaro, starring Juan Diego Flórez (27 May); Wagner's Tristan And Isolde from Vienna, starring Robert Gambill and Violeta Urmana, conducted by Sir Simon Rattle (10 June); and Beethoven's Fidelio from Barcelona, starring Karita Mattila (17 June).

Afternoon On 3 Thursday afternoons, 2pm May to July, continuing September

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The Pleasure Telephone

Edward Seckerson tells the remarkable story of the use of the early telephone to relay live entertainment and news direct to subscribers' homes in the late 19th/early 20th century.

The gasps of admiration at Alexander Graham Bell's 1876 invention had barely died away before the new medium was being seen not just as a means of conversation but as an instrument for relaying live music.

As soon as 1881, live performances from two Paris opera houses were being transmitted to a great electrical exhibition at the French capital's Palais d'Industrie.

The big, bold sound of opera was particularly suited to overcoming the technical shortcomings of the earliest telephone equipment.

Opera was to have an honoured place in entertainment-by-telephone history. In London, for example, Covent Garden performances could be accessed live in private homes, gentlemen's clubs and hotels. Opera was standard fare for telephone subscribers in Budapest. In the USA, one piece of educational expertise saw subscribers 'taught' operas by an interweaving of spoken libretto and recordings of arias.

The Pleasure Telephone also looks at the breadth of other entertainment offered via the telephone at this time.

The most astonishing developments took place in Budapest, where the Telefon Hirmondo company offered what we would now fully recognise as a radio station.

Sunday Feature Sunday 16 May, 9.30pm

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The First English Opera

First performed under Cromwell in 1656 when the theatres were still officially closed, The Siege Of Rhodes bewitched the ears of the great diarist Samuel Pepys and remains one of the most important works in the history of both English literature and music. And yet – like its creator, the noseless poet laureate Sir William Davenant – it is almost totally forgotten today.

The neglected Davenant was actually one of the most innovative forces in the history of English theatre – not only did he 'invent' English opera, he was also very instrumental in the creation of the idea of Shakespeare the National Poet.

Travelling from Cromwell's House in Ely via Pepys's Library in Cambridge and Shakespeare's Globe to the site of the old Cockpit Theatre in London where the Siege was performed, presenter Claire van Kampen traces the complicated genesis and afterlife of this lost operatic treasure.

Sunday 30 May, 9.30pm

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Why Do Women Die In Opera?

Be it suicide, murder, asphyxiation, drowning, execution, consumption, leaping off a balcony or dying in an avalanche, a significant proportion of female characters will meet a miserable and often gruesome end by the final curtain call.

Ahead of Radio 3's evening broadcast of Aida in Opera On 3, this special feature will look at the curious habit of the perishing prima donnas.

Saturday 26 June, 12.15pm

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A Passion For Opera

For Radio 3's The Essay, five people whose lives have, in various ways been shaped by opera describe some of the ways in which they have interacted with the operatic world as critics, performers and commentators.

Michael Chance, one of the world's foremost counter-tenors, ponders the life of an itinerant performer.

Reviewer Tom Sutcliffe argues for the relevance of opera while his fellow critic Robert Thicknesse wrestles with the operatic demons that tell him it's all a lot of nonsense.

Editor of Opera Now Magazine, Ashutosh Khandekar, recounts his entry into the opera world via student opera.

And Matt Peacock, the originator of Streetwise Opera, reflects on the way opera has changed the lives of people he's met through his work with the homeless.

The Essay: Monday 31 May-Friday 4 June 11.00pm-11.15pm

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Private Passions

³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Radio 3's Private Passions will be talking to a wide range of contributors about their passions for opera, including composer John Adams on 16 May and Sir Thomas Allen on 27 June.

On 30 May there will be a special operathemed compilation edition of the programme featuring a variety of past contributors including Jonathan Miller, Joanna Lumley, the late Anthony Minghella, Maureen Lipman, Stephen Fry and Quentin Blake, who all share their top musical choices from the world of opera.

Sundays, 12noon-1pm

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Opera Profiles

Each month, from May to December, ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Radio 3's Early Music Show will be focusing on a key work by major operatic composer of the baroque.

From Johann Adolf Hasse, regarded as one of the finest opera composers of his day, but now largely unknown (1 August), to The Beggar's Opera – John Gay and Johann Pepusch's 1728 riposte to the operas of Handel (11 September), presenters Lucie Skeaping and Catherine Bott will offer listeners an insight into the background and impact of early opera – its music and ideas – and introduce notable performers to share their passion for the music.

The Early Music Show Saturdays and Sundays, 1pm, 8-part series, May to December

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Composer Of The Week

Composer of the Week features operatic composers throughout 2010.

The big names of the nineteenth century – Verdi, Wagner – have whole weeks to themselves.

Added to this, Donald Macleod explores the history of opera through locations and groups of composers spread across the year.

There's a week on 'verismo' opera of the 19th century, with Professor Roger Parker explaining exactly what that means (17-21 May).

We spend a week listening to the glorious repertoire of the French Opera Comique (23-28 August), and another at the opera house in Drottningholm, just outside Stockholm, a wonderfully preserved eighteenth century theatre, complete with the original mechanics for moving sets and creating effects – beware the wind machine and thunderbox (22-26 November)!

And we travel east to discover the story of Russian opera (27-31 December).

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