Nigel Jarrett casts a cultured eye over the next few weeks to help you plan your days and nights out in MaySUPERLATIVES only stick when the thing being described lives long enough to justify its excellence.

This applies in all manner of ways to the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition, which takes place next month.

Not only does it attract entrants from the best of the world's young professional singers - the sifting process guarantees that - but also it has achieved a worldwide following.

Several, but not all, of the winners have made almost immediate international reputations, including our own Bryn Terfel and Neal Davies, on the opera stage.

This year has special interest for Gwent because the Welsh entry is Camilla Roberts, winner of the annual Kenneth Loveland Gift, an award made in memory of the former music critic and editor of this newspaper.

The competition is often criticised for being one created to find a new operatic talent, despite its separate prize for piano-accompanied song - for which all the contestants must demonstrate an affinity - and the fact that many singers make a career out of singing on the concert platform without treading the operatic stage.

Like the overall name of the competition, a lot has changed over the years. The involvement of the BBC is the most obvious one, and the separate song award is now called the Rosenblatt Recital Song Prize after its new sponsor.

Judges this year include operatic titans Dame Anne Evans, Siegfried Jerusalem and Marilyn Horne, The BBC National Orchestra of Wales and the Orchestra of Welsh National Opera will be accompanying, and the competition runs from June 11 to June 19, with nightly heats culminating in a glittering final.

Box office 02920 878444.

Lower Machen Festival kicks off on June 21 at St Michael's and All Angels Church. It's a wonderful setting to match the intimacy of the music, which this year includes young musicians (June 21), the Bingham Quartet (June 22) pianist Ashley Vass (June 23) and the Welsh Sinfonia (June 24). Box office 08700 13 1812.

Next month also sees the start of the ever-more-popular summer concert series at the idyllic Wyastone Leys headquarters of Nimbus Records beside the Wye in Monmouth. Weather permitting, music lovers are encouraged to use the grounds for pre-concert and interval picnics. A pavilion restaurant next to the concert hall serves excellent food.

English Touring Opera start the season on June 3 with Mozart's Cosi Fan Tutte, followed the next evening by the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio, playing Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Shostakovich.

Other visitors in June include Julian Lloyd-Webber (June 10), pianist Grigory Sokolov (June 17) and the 2004 National brass band champions, Black Dyke Band (June 25). Season's programmes are available from the Nimbus box office on 01600 891090.

Not to be missed at the Riverfront, Newport, on June 23 is a visit by award-winning jazz singer Stacey Kent, following an appearance by Cleo Laine and John Dankworth on June 2.

Dankworth's recent series of BBC radio programmes on band arranging - he's one of the best - reminded listeners of his huge contribution to British and international jazz. Cleo Laine's voice is quite simply one of the great vocal phenomena of the music.

The Riverfront will also be presenting Frederick Knott's Dial M for Murder for a week from June 7. The play was filmed to great accclaim by Alfred Hitchcock. This performance will be by the excellent Middle Ground Theatre Company (box office 01633 656757).

Wales Millennium Centre will face another big test of its popularity in June when the West End hit Miss Saigon begins a month's residency at the main Donald Gordon Theatre following Welsh National Opera's early summer term there with The Magic Flute and Rigoletto.

The last long-running show at the WMC, Kiss Me, Kate, ran into trouble on its later travels around the UK due to poor box office sales.

These are early days for the WMC. Like the capital's other big venues, the CIA and St David's Hall, its programmes will ultimately be determined by the kind of response shown by punters. It cannot be expected to present what people will not support. (Box office 08700 40 2000).