McCarthy is currently supervising final rehearsals for the world premiere of Michael Berkeley's opera Jane Eyre, which will be given by his much admired company Music Theatre Wales at the Cheltenham International Music Festival on June 30.

The production moves on next month to the Buxton Opera Festival where Lang is the new artistic director.

Jane Eyre hit the headlines two years ago when a briefcase containing the draft manuscript was stolen from Berkeley's car. It was never recovered and the composer and well-known broadcaster had to start working on it again from scratch. Michael Berkeley is the son of the late Sir Lennox Berkeley, one of Britain's leading 20th century composers.

The finished work is described as a taut psychological chamber opera with great singing roles.

Major

It will be one of three operas to be staged at Buxton where Aidan Lang is directing the major title, the first British production in modern times of Schubert's Fierrabras.

Lang's appointment as artistic director for the Buxton Festival, which has the Earl of Harewood as president and Roy Hattersley as chairman, follows his guest production there two years ago of Mozart's La finta semplice. The Schubert opera will, he says, be "a rare chance to experience an opera by one of the very greatest composers for the voice".

Michael McCarthy, who attended Richard Challoner School at New Malden, is the son of John McCarthy, former chairman of Kingston Arts Council. Aidan Lang is an Old Tiffinian and his family home is in Wingfield Avenue, Kingston.

Jane Eyre will tour England and Wales in the autumn with London performances at the Royal Opera House's Linbury Studio Theatre.