GO: CLASSICAL: Mobile phone Verdi still rings true; REVIEWS.

La Traviata, Welsh National Opera, Birmingham Hippodrome.

VERDI intended his opera of love, sacrifice and tragedy to be contemporaneous, although the censors in 19th-century Venice wouldn't allow such a scandalous story to be set in the modern dress of the time.

Welsh National Opera have gone along with the composer's wishes and offer a modern version which sees Alfredo singing down a mobile phone and the sounds of the carnival in the final act coming from a TV.

Purists may not approve, but such modern touches do nothing to dampen the power and passion of this fine production. Violetta is portrayed as a model turned "It" girl. Soprano Alexia Cousin offers a magnificent stage presence with huge voice, full of emotion.

Tenor Peter Wedd, as her lover Alfredo, and baritone Christopher Purves, as his father Germont, who breaks their relationship, are also first-class.

The disappointment was the curtain call. Due, I imagine, to 21st-century cost cutting, not just the chorus but also Douphol and Gaston (Alfredo's rival and chum) had presumably gone home. Verdi would not have approved of that.

La Traviata is on again tonight, with Carmen tomorrow.

WNO are back in Birmingham in November with Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos, Gluck's Iphigenie en Tauride and Puccini's Turandot.

Amici forever - Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry.

YOU'D be entitled to wonder what to expect from a quintet billed as the world's first Opera Band.

Opera, of course, but what about the band bit? Crashing guitars, banging drums?

Fortunately there's none of that - just five magnificent voices doing real justice to their reworked arrangements of classical classics with the occasional pop song mixed in.

So we have Carmen followed by Cliff, Rigoletto ranged up against Elvis and, what else, Nessum Dorma to round off a rousing evening.

With their classical training and youthful looks, the three guys and two girls who make up Amici forever may look like a pop group and upset the opera establishment but they sound like a dream. Catch them at Warwick Castle next month when they will be supporting Sir Cliff Richard.