English Touring Opera has been coming to Brighton ever since it was Opera 80, bringing with it lively productions of well-known operas.

Last week's visit was no exception.

It opened with La Traviata. This was updated to Paris in the Thirties, which certainly gave a fine excuse for some lavish and saucy party scenes.

Scantily-clad ladies of the chorus lent themselves to become card and roulette tables and there were appearances of transvestites, gays and lesbians - all highly entertaining stuff.

But away from that, the intimate story of love and hypocrisy was smoothly done.

Violetta was beautifully sung by Elena Ferrari who sang everyone else right off the stage.

She dominated the whole show and, even though she didn't look consumptive, she managed a fine deathbed scene.

The combination of her voice and Verdi's music brought a tear to my eye.

The updating of Mozart's Don Giovanni to Franco's Spain seemed most unnecessary but it certainly did not detract from the story.

This is the most straightforward production of Mozart's masterpiece I have seen in a long while, almost a textbook example and none the worse for it.

Here, the singing honours went, once again, to the women.

Catherine Hegarty's Donna Anna was forceful with a voice like spun gold and Lydia Marchione's Zerlina was beautifully silky and appealing.

Hakan Vramsmo's Don Giovanni was nicely cruel and seductive but, as ever in this opera, Leporello (Nicholas Todorovic) stole the show.

Both operas were superb examples of how to present opera on a shoestring but without compromising any of the story or the singing.