The cover, which has been ‘The prophets of doom had a field day over Maury Yeston's musical Titanic when it was launched on Broadway in 1997 ahead of James Cameron's blockbuster cinematic weepie.  Technical glitches during the previews and a rumour-mill drooling with anticipatory schadenfreude convinced wiseacres that the $10 million dollar show, like the eponymous vessel, was on a collision course with disaster.

They met while filming Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber's talent show Any Dream Will Do. But it seems the happy ending has gone sour for judge Denise van Outen and the contest's winner Lee Mead after four years of marriage.

Summertime. And the living is … well, not so easy if you've got a handful of children to entertain. Thankfully, the West End of London has plenty to offer children of all ages; it also has the annual theatre initiative, Kids Week, to help make a trip up to town more affordable. Kids Week has an exciting line-up of shows offering free tickets and activities throughout August.

Likes of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel helped to drive the over-45s to the cinema

Most ‘children’s operas’ are not really that at all, but Holland Park Opera – as its general manager has explained in these columns – is aiming its “Alice” squarely at the youthful end of the market. The background of its composer Will Todd is suitably eclectic, ranging from a jazz Mass, to oratorios, to an anthem for last year’s royal diamond jubilee; its designer Leslie Travers’s most recent exploit was the inspired staging of the Aldeburgh “Grimes on the Beach”; conducting and direction are by Martin Duncan and Stuart Stratford, versatile operators both.

Rival tribute acts will battle it out in court for the right to recreate the band’s music on stage

Watch the videos below to see clips from two celebrity-based operas that have appeared in recent years.

Palladio’s grand buildings are a feature of this northern Italian city

Production chronicles the story of a divisive new toll road scheduled to slice through a village

The big revelation of Britten’s centenary year is turning out to be sheer multifariousness of his creation, generating a multitude of short works alongside the symphonic and operatic masterpieces. Some of those short works are masterpieces too, notably the five Canticles which fit no known category.

Why did Angela Gheorghiu look so uneasy taking her curtain calls at the revived Rondine's first night? It couldn't just have been her unflattering wardrobe for Act 3. One had the sense that there was, for her, some underlying problem with her part, or with the production, or even with the opera itself. Puccini was never satisfied with this un-categorisable hybrid, and he was still tinkering with it at the end of his life.

A curio curated by Haslam – the septuagenarian interior designer – and producer David Ogilvy, MM is a strangely wonderful thing.

Cameron Diaz is set to play Miss Hannigan in a forthcoming film remake of the 1980s stage musical Annie.

Playwright and composer Tim Firth has emerged as inheritor of a British musical tradition laid down by Lionel Bart and Willy Russell. Director Daniel Evans meanwhile, is being seriously talked about as the next artistic director of the National Theatre.