Pop-Up Opera, I Capuleti e i Montecchi

Many composers rose to the challenge of setting Shakespeare's great dramas to music, but few were as successful as Bellini, whose operatic Romeo and Juliet, I Montecchi e i Capuletti, is being staged by Pop-Up Opera.

As the company's name suggests, Pop-Up Opera makes a speciality of taking opera into some interesting corners of London, and this Shakespeare story, with its street battles and high passions, should work brilliantly in the capital's nooks and crannies: Off Quay, 1 Clove Crescent, E14 (7 Mar), The Vaults, Waterloo SE1 (20, 21 and 23 Mar), Asylum, Peckham SE15 (2 April), and the Thames Tunnel Shaft, Brunel Museum SE16 (4 and 5 April) – a venue for last year's Il Barbiere di Siviglia.

'This is Romeo and Juliet as you've never seen it before,' said Culture Whisper when the opera was staged last summer. 'More brutal and gruelling than anything Shakespeare ever penned – and performed so close up that the singers' voices and faces full of angst hover just before you. This is an absolute must-see, an "in the know" delight that we would like to go back and watch every night of the week.'

Flora McIntosh reprises her 'trouser role' as Romeo, with Alice Privett as Giulietta and Cliff Zammit Stevens as Tebaldo.

Pop-Up's dynamic musical director Berrak Dyer conjures up Bellini's dazzling score at the keyboard, and the director is James Hurley. This team has an impressive reputation for nibbling to the core of an opera and the results are thrilling for the highly involved audience.

I Capulti e i Montecchi is sung in Italian with a projected text in English, a Pop-Up speciality that goes far beyond the literal translations of traditional surtitles and adds another layer of artistry to the end product. Highly recommended.