Davis is one of a handful of pre-eminent Berlioz conductors, and, in the Barbican next month, he begins a Berlioz odyssey. It is a long journey, and by the end of it, in 12 months' time, Davis and the London Symphony Orchestra will have performed all Berlioz's operas, plus much of his vocal and symphonic music. This monumental series of 21 concerts is a prelude to the feast of Berlioz's music that will accompany the 200th anniversary of his birth, in 2003. Asmall, framed photograph of Hector Berlioz stands on the radiator shelf behind Sir Colin Davis's sofa. The great French composer stares out, hollow-cheeked, with a head of grey hair, looking like a man who knows all about pain and disenchantment. He has a place in the conductor's sitting room because the "incredible vitality and enormous tenderness" of his music has brought Davis much happiness.

Charles Mackerras conducts.ROYAL OPERA HOUSE GALAROH, WC2(0171 304 4000) Wed & SatHere it is: the grand reopening, with Domingo, Deborah Polaski and the Queen in competition for star billing. Full productions start next week.MAURIZIO POLLINIRFH, SE1 (0171 960 4242) MonSuperleague Italian pianist in all-Chopin programme.CECILIA BARTOLIWigmore Hall, W1 (0171 935 2141) ThursThe fabulous, already fabled mezzo singing Vivaldi Alas, returns only MW. OPERA AND CONCERTS OPENING THIS WEEK ALCINA Coliseum, WC2 (0171 632 8300) Mon to 27 JanMajor new ENO production staged by David McVicar Joan Rodgers stars. And this concert was part of a whole Ceciliatide festival which runs during November in Stationers' Hall and gets more inspired every year.`The Beggar's Opera': Wilton's Music Hall, London E1 (0870 906 3739) to 18 Dec. And though her death was operatically extreme - she proved harder to kill than Rasputin - that hardly explains it either But no matter: she's an inspiration.

She was martyred for reasons of chastity, which is not a musical virtue. And what they sang was fascinating: an imagined Vespers for St Cecilia, the patron saint of music on whose very day we were hearing it: 22 November.No one knows why Cecilia gets the saintly music brief. I'd never heard Chapelle du Roi before - a group of 12 young singers specialising in Renaissance music - and I can't believe I heard them at their best as they tried to float 16th-century Spanish counterpoint through such a dry space They sang with muscle and vitality. They need it.There wasn't much acoustic support for the voices that sang in Stationers' Hall on Monday night. Its 18th-century wit is leaden and its music mostly doggerel - which accounts for a long tradition of later composers tarting it up.

Broomhill's tarting has been done by Jonathan Lloyd, with a commissioned score that's jokily ironic in a raspberry- blowing streetwise way. But as applied to these simple tunes, the invention is counterproductive. It sounds complicated but unfinished, with a sketchy thinness that gives no support to the voices. You don't exactly weep for him, because this Macheath isn't exactly dashing (he looks and sounds like Ken Livingstone).

But you do weep for the injustice that lets one crook swing while a stageful of others survive.The Beggar's Opera in itself, though, is a bore. And Miller makes darker drama than usual by adopting a version of the finale that lets Macheath hang, with no reprieve. And the sharpness of the Miller touch results in one of the less tiresome stagings of the piece I've seen. Not many of the cast can sing, but that's allowable in something written as a knockabout parody of grand opera.The performances are raunchy, bold: not merely in your face but in your lap (beware the front row). It makes a perfect place for Broomhill's new Jonathan Miller production of The Beggar's Opera, which has been done simply but with a period-update to Dickensian London.