The libretto for Ruggero Leoncavallo's Pagliacci, based on a newspaper crime report, perhaps has resonance for a London audience — the city saw four young lives taken over the new year holiday in fatal stabbings.

The Sicilian peasants in Pietro Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana may be struggling in the grip of poverty with little hope of escape — just as the poor actors in Pagliacci are trapped in a nomadic round of performances in grimy village halls — but there is no despair.