ARIAS OF BLOOD

Bargain-basement impresario George Sinclair's Floria Tosca Opera Company (Death at the Opera, 1996), engaged by horsey Lady Janet Tabley on a week's notice to perform La Traviata as a fund- raiser at London's historic Mansion House, is upstaged once again, this time by an assassin calling himself Solomon, who's announced his intention of killing the guest of honor, the Lord Mayor. Complementing the usual romantic complications and pratfalls of the Floria Tosca are the Lord Mayor's checkered present as a buccaneer embezzler, George's ex-lover/half-sister Isabelle's dalliance with a titled, randy businessman, and Solomon's inventive and sanguinary rehearsals for the main event. All the hustle and bustle makes for a giddily enjoyable round of intrigue it would be churlish to take any more seriously than the plot of a bel canto opera.