It will be shown on the same wall as the artist’s second celebrated full-length portrait of The Queen commissioned by the Gallery in 1969, the first time these portraits will ever have been seen together for over a quarter of a century and only the second time ever.

Since it was first shown at the Royal Academy in 1955, the painting has only been loaned twice, in 1958 and 1986, by its owners The Fishmongers’ Company, one of the City of London Livery Companies, from Fishmongers Hall, where the painting occupies a prominent position. This refined painting in tempera, oil and ink on paper on canvas, reflects the artist’s fascination with Italian renaissance techniques. When shown at the Royal Academy, it drew crowds said to be ten-deep with viewers fascinated by the portrait’s idealised yet penetrating character.

This spectacular new addition to the Gallery’s touring exhibition – opening in London tomorrow, 17 May 2012, ahead of The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee weekend celebrations – will be displayed alongside some of the most remarkable and resonant images of Elizabeth II across 60 years of her reign, including those by Lucian Freud, Gilbert and George, Cecil Beaton, Andy Warhol, Annie Leibovitz and Lord Snowdon.

Annigoni’s grand, full-length painting Queen Elizabeth II, Queen Regent, shows the recently crowned, 28-year-old Elizabeth wearing her magnificent Garter robes, and depicted against a pastoral landscape. The painting was prompted by an observation made by The Queen while the artist was making a preparatory sketch in Buckingham Palace:

When I was a little child, it always delighted me to look out of the window and see the people and traffic going by.

The resulting work shows a monarch in a sylvan idyll yet outward looking and connected to her surroundings.

It is seen next to Annigoni’s life-size 1969 commission for the National Portrait Gallery depicting the monarch again in ceremonial robes but now standing against an ambiguous, spare and gloomy, plain background. While both portraits were greeted by enormous public and press interest, the later work adopted a radically different approach from the romantic view of the earlier portrait. Annigoni said:

I did not want to paint her as a film star, I saw her as a monarch, alone in the problems of her responsibility.

Left: Queen Elizabeth II, Queen Regent by Pietro Annigoni, 1954–5 © The Fishmongers’ Company
Right: Queen Elizabeth II by Pietro Annigoni, 1969 © National Portrait Gallery, London

THE QUEEN: ART & IMAGE - National Portrait Gallery, London
From 17 May until 21 October 2012
Tickets: www.npg.org.uk/thequeen

Never has a story been narrated as often, and has crossed as many geographic, cultural and class boundaries, as Romeo and Juliet. In our day, the myth crosses the social categories of the western world, and is probably the most well-known story of our culture. Aterballetto’s take is very modern and high-tech in Fabrizio Plessi’s design and Bigonzetti’s choreography.

From the May 24 a double bill of Absolutely Free and H+ will take the stage.  In Absolutely Free Bigonzetti allows the entire Company maximum generosity of interpretation and maximum creative freedom; a collection of old and new works, assembled without a real plot… free!

H+ is inspired by, not surprisingly, water: “Origin and mother of all, purifier of souls and bodies, instigator of wars, an inalienable right contended as an emblem of wealth. Its significant symbolic character has oriented this work.”

Serata Stravinsky winds things up, opening on May 31 for four days. Les Noces from ten years ago and Le Sacre from last year will be joined by the world première of a new creation Intermezzo. The work is for 4 pairs of dancers and uses the music of Suite Italienne.

Milan has an extraordinary lack of alternatives to the ballet company at La Scala, and the Piccolo Teatro’s initiative is warmly welcomed.

Photo: Romeo and Juliet -  A. Anceschi e R. Cavalieri

Tickets: platea €33, balconata €26 — Discounts with www.piccolocard.it

Booking and information: 848800304 — www.piccoloteatro.org

Around Andrea Bocelli’s family home in Lajatico, in the province of Pisa, Andrea and his brother Alberto, who is more directly involved, are pursuing work to improve the wines and the family tradition. A work done, as Andrea says, in honour of the memory of their father, Alessandro, who in his time passionately cultivated the vines planted by his grandfather in the Tuscan region bordering that of Chianti. The wine, mainly sangiovese red, is called Le Terre di Sandro.

The grounds cover a surface area of around 120 hectares, of which a small part is wooded. Cereals are grown in rotation with fodder and, most importantly, the vines as well as olives. In 2000 the brothers planned the development of the wine sector.

Says Bocelli:

My brother and I have begun to try to make a serious wine, and the first results are extremely encouraging. We do it in memory of babbo, who had continued the work of my grandparents and who had so much passion. And I like wine, when it’s good. Wine is a universal remedy when we’re tired, and full of problems to solve. I call them bottles of happiness.

When I return home from my long work trips away, a bottle of wine from my land, placed there, in the centre of the table, gives almost unparalleled joy. It takes me back in time, brings back the memory of my father, his strong, calm voice, praising the fruit of his vineyard and his work, savouring that nectar with almost religious respect and fervour. What I would pay for him to be able to appreciate the results achieved over these past few years. I’m certain he would be immensely proud. I will always find peace and serenity mongst the rows of vines, at that table where I drank our wine in the company of my father so many times, with Alberto, my brother, my mother and all those dear to me.

Bocelli Family Wines has expanded their production to introduce Bocelli Prosecco and Bocelli Sangiovese to the US where it’s now available in states like New York, Texas, Illinois, Washington and Oregon. Bottles sell for around $20.

Bocelli is not the first celebrity to put his name on a wine bottle. Others who have entered the winemaking business include Drew Barrymore, Antonio Banderas, Francis Ford Coppola, and even AC/DC. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s home in the South of France, Chateau Miraval, also comes with a winery that produces white, red and rosé wines!

As the concert’s producers coughed up the trip expenses, Tanya Gold’s piece is, not surprisingly, reverential. She enthuses about Florez’s “gleaming teeth, wide eyes and naughty curls. He is so ­handsome, wholesome and ridiculously joyful, I ­wonder if he is followed around by an orchestra of cartoon rabbits.” Or maybe she really is besotted by the tenor’s looks.

The easy, vibrant top of his voice has made Florez a fixture in all the important opera houses in the world. Gold recounts his appearance in Donizetti’s La Fille du régiment at Milan’s La Scala in 2007 when, after bringing down the house with Ah! Mes Amis and its nine high-Cs, he decided to encore the aria.

 The audience loved it, so he stopped the orchestra and sang it again. Who wouldn’t?

Well, hardly anyone, especially at La Scala. It’s not done.

Arturo Toscanini banned solo encores at La Scala in 1933. Florez’s reprise made Le Figaro and The New York Times. “One newspaper said, ‘He spat on Toscanini,’ ” Florez says. “Many singers said, ‘Thank you very much.’ ” So he did it again at the Met.

And as someone who was there, it was certainly thrilling: the audience went wild. Adolfo Wildt’s famous sculpture of Toscanini in La Scala’s foyer was presumably turning on its plinth.

But Juan Diego’s a nice guy. People like him, and incidents like the La Scala ‘bis’ arise from his boyish enthusiasm. This has not only made him popular in the industry, but he has a huge fan base. When he married his German-born wife, Julia, in 2008, he returned to his family in Peru for the occasion.

They had a huge wedding in Lima’s cathedral… a royal porridge of glitz, televised live, with the president waving at people; they even cancelled the football, which is a big deal in South America, because there weren’t enough police.

Gold asks whose idea it was to get married in the cathedral.

My agent’s. He says, ‘You should marry in the cathedral,’ I said no. The cathedral is where the prince marries in England… I tried not to have it on TV. I got overwhelmed. It was like a fairy-tale wedding. For women — for some of them — this is their dream.”

His agent, fellow Peruvian tenor Ernesto Palacio, has been with Florez from the first days of his career. Palacio had just retired as Florez arrived in Italy heading to Pesaro to sing a small role in the 1996 Festival’s Matilde di Shabran. The main tenor fell ill and the unknown 23-year-old stepped in to the spotlight. He’s not looked back. He has fans everywhere,

They follow you in the street, running, in Japan. In Vienna, they can be quite wild.”

His easy-going Latin nature can turn into laziness. He tells Gold that he is always late for rehearsals.

This is a bad thing I have, and I don’t like it. I say I am coming early, and I always end up coming late. Sometimes I find myself in the last rehearsals of a new opera and I don’t know the words. I am a bit of a lazy kind, and from now on I would like to prepare more. Everything comes easily, but it will not always be like that. That is something I say now, but I don’t know if I can do it.”

Mmm…

Maestro Masur was very touched by all wishes for speedy recovery and support from orchestras, friends and fans, and thanks everybody for the love and attention that he received after his fall from the podium in Paris on April 26, 2012. While he is grateful to have escaped more serious injury, a further scan of the Maestro’s left shoulder has now indicated that his shoulder blade is indeed fractured. Therefore Maestro Masur has to withdraw from all his scheduled concerts through the end of June 2012 and hopes to resume his conducting activities at the beginning of next season in September 2012. Doctors at the Parisian hospital where Maestro Masur has been treated for the past three days are confident that he will make a full recovery.

He was due to be in the US for a six concert tour with the Orchestre National de France until tomorrow, an Italian tour in mid-May, and further concerts in Tel Aviv and Paris during June.

We wish him well.

Photo: Sasha Gusov

An unpublished photograph of Carla Fracci and Rudolf Nureyev in Giselle at Milan’s Teatro alla Scala in 1974

In today’s Sunday Times, Adam Cooper - ex-Royal Ballet dancer, and currently tip-tapping in the West End — talked about the places where he and his elder brother, Simon, grew up. Until their teens they lived in a ‘poky’ flat in Tooting.

The flat was much too small for two energetic boys with a musician father who had instruments, keyboards and sheet music everywhere. Music was so much part of our lives. We used to sing in choirs when we were seven and eight years old.

But when he was thirteen the family moved to a house in Norbury. Just as well since the growing boys had started to dance:

Suddenly, I had lots of space, which gave me the opportunity to make up routines for us. I created different choreography and spent hours mimicking Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly. They were our idols when we were growing up. We were also into Michael Jackson and Prince. We learnt most of their routines. I was usually Michael and Simon was Prince.

His father’s passion for music was contagious:

I had a record player in my room. Simon had a TV. I listened to Vaughan Williams’s The Lark Ascending, the soundtrack from Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet or Bach violin concertos. Through the walls, I could hear that Simon was next door, glued to the TV.

By the time he was sixteen his Madonna posters had given way to images of his ballet idols:

My bedroom became a shrine to the dancers who were my heroes — Anthony Dowell, Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov. I added lots of dancers from the Kirov, too, because that year I was lucky enough, as a student, to spend a summer with them at the Royal Opera House.

Adam Cooper is currently starring in Singin’ in the Rain at the Palace Theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue.

The first World Hunger Day took place 15 months ago at the Apollo Victoria theatre with Dionne Warwick among a star-studded cast, and she is back to lend her support again to an event which will aid the work of The Hunger Project. This year she will be joined by Alexandra Burke, Boy George, Katie Melua and many others, with rising stars such as Caro Emerald and Rumer, as well as golden oldies Sandie Shaw and Cliff Richard. Tony “Downtown” Hatch will conduct the orchestra. Proceeds from the concert will directly benefit communities in 20,000 villages across Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Latin America all of whom experience chronic and persistent hunger. This is not due merely to lack of food. It occurs when people lack opportunity to earn enough income, to be educated and gain skills, to meet basic health needs and have a voice in the decisions that affect their community. World Hunger Day is about raising awareness of this situation.

The Hunger Project is a non-profit global organisation founded 35 years ago which, by empowering communities the world over, strives to give people a voice that is heard and seen, impacting on decision-making from ‘the bottom up’
alongside ‘the top down’ – in full support of Millennium Development goals.

The Project’s UK Director, Tim Holder, says

Speaking on behalf of everyone at The Hunger Project, we are absolutely delighted that Sir Cliff and so many musical talents have agreed to appear as special guests in our extraordinary artist line-up — fusing diverse backgrounds, generations and genres — and, for those of us who can remember, some of the original artists who performed at Live Aid in both London and Philadelphia almost three decades ago in response to the terrible famine in Ethiopia at that time.

which goes to underline how hard it is to resolve this desperate situation. A generation after Live Aid with all the Christmas singles, gala concerts, and telethons that have come in between, and with the work of many charity organizations including the Hunger Project itself, the Gates’ Foundation and official injections of aid from the international community, there is still a long way to go.

The problem is huge. So big that it seems almost easier to bury our heads in the sand and pretend that it doesn’t exist. But we can’t. And if doing our bit means going to the Royal Albert Hall in the company of some of the world’s most popular musicians for an unforgettable evening, that doesn’t seem such a sacrifice, does it.

Holder adds,

I very much hope that those who come to World Hunger Day 2012 at the Royal Albert Hall will appreciate the ‘why’ behind the music as well as our artists’ incredible talent and full pro bono support.

This annual event will have an inspiring and positive impact on so many lives offering a partnership based hand up rather than a reactive hand out. By partnering with those suffering these appalling conditions, individuals and communities are taking action to become masters of their own destiny. Sustainable solutions cannot be achieved by one–
off acts of generosity: World Hunger Day 2012 is just the beginning and we hope that everyone’s support doesn’t begin and end on May 28th.

World Hunger Day 2012 takes place at the Royal Albert Hall on Monday 28th May 2012. Tickets are on sale online or by telephone on 020 7589 8212 - Ticket prices range from £20 to £125.00.

Follow The Hunger Project on Twitter @worldhungerday @hungerprojectuk or on Facebook.

Photo: Dionne Warwick and Natalie Cole on World Hunger Day 2011

Just after Magda Olivero’s 102nd birthday, (on March 25), the Corriere della Sera went to visit her. This remarkable woman still has a lot to say. While many of her opinions are maybe inevitable for someone of such an age (the Milanese are no longer well-mannered; modern opera productions have gone downhill; there are no outstanding singers nowadays), many of her comments contain an element of truth, and are not just the rantings of a fuddy-duddy.

Here is Olivero on listening to young singers:

So far nobody has left me speechless. They sing, but without technique. The problem is that there are many singing teachers, but few of any worth. They don’t teach that to sing you must breath and support the voice: a wonderful rule that isn’t taught. The foundations are not firmly in place when the singer already starts confronting opera arias. We used to spend years doing vocal exercises. Only in this way can a voice become uniform, smooth and increase its range, and you learn expressiveness. Today no-one sings with expression; it seems they don’t understand what interpretation means. And everyone immediately wants to tackle the most difficult composers, like Verdi.

I hope that a young singer manages to find someone who knows how to spot defects, and can explain how to intervene. And when someone tells them that they have a beautiful voice to not be big-headed but understand that they must continue studying, you never stop learning. Today, however, they want to get there fast, which is sad because they end up ruining their voices.

She then she revealed that on the day of her birthday… she sang!

Photo from the Corriere della Sera

He will join presenter Sean Rafferty on Wednesday April 4 for what will be his only UK interview and broadcast performance in advance of his eagerly anticipated and sold-out recital at London’s Wigmore Hall.  Listeners throughout the UK can hear the programme on air, online or via the BBC iPlayer and the Radio 3 website will feature exclusive filmed footage of Vengerov’s performance and interview.

Sean Rafferty says:

As an old friend of the programme, we are delighted Maxim Vengerov is marking his return the concert platform with an exclusive interview and performance for Radio 3’s In Tune. Maxim is a dazzlingly charismatic virtuoso who has blazed a trail for so many young and brilliant players. I am looking forward to talking to him about his journey back to his worldwide audience and playing live in the In Tune studio.

BBC Radio 3 will also record Vengerov’s Wigmore Hall recital for broadcast in Sunday Concert, 29 April at 2pm. This performance takes place almost two decades since he last took to the stage at this most intimate of concert venues and he is joined by pianist Itamar Golan to perform works by Handel, Bach and Beethoven.

Additional live guests in the In Tune studio on 4 April include Wayne McGregor and Mark Ronson discussing their new collaboration, the ballet Carbon Life which receives its premiere at the Royal Opera House on 5 April.

In Tune is broadcast Monday – Friday on BBC Radio 3, 4.30–6.30pm

Photo: Maxim Vengerov, by Mark Allan/BBC