AN OLIVIER award-winning opera company is returning to Durham’s Gala Theatre with a new Italian season.

The English Touring Opera will stage Puccini’s masterpiece La boheme followed by a rare Donizetti title, The Siege of Calais - both sung in full costume, in Italian with English subtitles, accompanied by ETO’s chorus and 25-piece orchestra.

One of the greatest and most moving operas of all time, La boheme is a story of young love, starting on Christmas Eve in a Parisian garret. On this festive, snowy night the lovers Mimì and Rodolfo draw close, but poverty and ill-health force them apart.

ETO’s production features a group of 12 young singers from Harton Primary School in South Shields, recruited especially for ETO’s tour to sing a children’s chorus of street urchins.

La bohème, performed at the Gala on Monday May 18, is sold out.

Donizetti’s The Siege of Calais (L’assedio di Calais) tells the story of the citizens of Calais who offer up their lives to save their city from the besieging English army.

Their sacrifice culminates in one of the most moving ensembles in all of opera, the momentous O sacra polve, o suol natio (O Sacred Earth).

The opera combines Donizetti’s sparkling score with a gritty depiction of the harsh realities of a city gripped by siege.

The Siege of Calais was acclaimed as one of ETO’s greatest achievements when it had its first ever UK professional tour as part of the company’s spring 2013 season. It is being performed in Durham this Spring for the first time. It will be staged at the Gala at 7.30pm, on Tuesday May 19.

ETO general director James Conway said: “This spring ETO’s opera productions are both Italian, and both sung in that beautiful language – even though neither one is actually set in Italy.

“‘La bohème is the ideal first opera, and one to which everyone loves to return - a nostalgic look at the pathos and folly of youth.

“The Siege of Calais is a testament of extraordinary power and beauty to those who resist and recognise value in a city or a family under threat.”

Tickets are £26 (conc £24.50 Box office: 03000 266 600 / www.galadurham.co.uk.

Meanwhile, ETO’s season continues the company’s record of work for younger audiences, with two new productions touring to schools in the North-East.

Shackleton’s Cat, designed for children aged 7-11, is based on the true story of the tabby cat that accompanied Ernest Shackleton’s 1914-16 Antarctic expedition, and incorporates elements of the geography and history curriculum.

Waxwings is a new interactive opera for children with severe special educational needs, based on the story of flight and the myth of Icarus.