Victoria and Albert Museum

Lesley Garrett is one of the nation's most popular opera stars and joins Katie for a discussion of how opera brought together all the different art forms into one.

The V&A exhibition explores this history and the great cities of Europe which embraced opera.

Lesley is passionate about opera being the single most powerful art form.

She's back at 2.30 for a live performance of the Song of the Moon from Dvorak's opera Rusalka.

Victoria and Albert Museum

Katie Derham's with Kate Bailey at the V&A looking at some amazing artefacts including the original score of Verdi's Va Pensiero, which became an anthem for the Italian people and the movement for the unification of Italy into one nation.

Verdi became a national hero with hundreds of thousands lining the streets for his funeral.

Image source, Image: Victoria & Albert Museum, score from the Archive Storico Ricordi, Milan

Victoria and Albert Museum

The latest blockbuster exhibition at London's V&A Museum takes visitors on an exhilarating journey through 400 years of opera - and blows its conservative image clean out of the water.

Image source, The Richard Avedon Foundation. Photo: Robbie Jack, Corbis/Getty

Image source, Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Image source, Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Put your feet up, get the kettle on and make sure the biscuit tin's stocked... it's going to be a fun packed day. Here's what's coming up (don't forget we're live, so timings might drift a little)/. Up first:

11.00 - Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Katie Derham and Lesley Garrett show us round the V&A's new opera-inspired exhibition: Opera -Power, Passion and Politics.

Everyone's gearing up for our live day celebrating Opera across the UK.

Image source, Manchester Museum of Science and Industry

Image source, Northern Ireland Opera

Image source, Opera North

Image source, Welsh National Opera

Image source, Scottish Opera

Follow updates and join in with the day using the hashtag #OperaPassion

Lindsay Chapman is at the Manchester Museum of Science and Industry all day for a series of exciting operatic experiments.

Katie Derham is checking out Mozart's piano at the V&A. Why? Find out at 11am as Katie kicks off #OperaPassion Day with a live tour of the Museum's latest blockbuster exhibition - Opera: power, passion and politics. See it here...

BBC Radio 4

It's #OperaPassion Day! Kicking off the morning on BBC Radio 4's Today Programme David Sillito visited Heritage Opera to find out what opera (traditionally performed in Italian, German or French) sounds like in a northern English accent.

Take a listen...

BBC Arts Digital has brought together eight leading UK opera companies and major cultural institutions to work together on an unprecedented day of live streaming which will transport audiences to every corner of the UK.

Through interviews, archive, innovative technology and exclusive performances, the companies will take you behind the scenes to explore and demystify opera in a celebration of its raw emotive power and engaging an ever-wider audience for opera.

#OperaPassion Day will conclude on BBC Radio 3, where there will be the chance for listeners to vote for the opera of their choice to be broadcast in full that evening from four Royal Opera House production recordings. Find out about the vote here.

Full running order:

11:00: Join Katie Derham and curator Kate Bailey at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London for a walk around the landmark exhibition Opera: Passion, Power & Politics.

11:15: From Manchester’s Museum of Science and Industry, the BBC Tomorrow’s World team perform a live experiment to find out just how loud an opera singer can sing.

11:30: DJ Nihal discusses the joy of opera from the Royal Opera House with guests including George the Poet, plus sword fighting with Erwin Schrott and music from Lisette Oropesa who makes her debut in the title role of Lucia di Lammermoor later this month.

12:30: At Glyndebourne, Alexandra Coghlan explores how music can convey the emotion of a story, illustrated by extracts from Brett Dean’s operatic version of Hamlet, which premiered at the Sussex opera house earlier this year, and Shakespeare’s unadorned words performed by Samuel West.

13:00: Opera North present Opera in a Nutshell, live from Dock 29 in Leeds, featuring extracts from Tosca, Carmen, The Magic Flute and La Traviata plus music by Bernstein, Lehár, Ravel and Gounod.

13:45: In their second experiment of the day from Manchester, Tomorrow’s World find out whether an operatic soprano really can shatter glass using just her voice.

14:00: From the Isle of Islay in the Inner Hebrides, Scottish Opera present live performances of arias from The Pearl Fishers, The Coronation of Poppea and The Gondoliers.

14:30: We return to the V&A to chat to one of the UK’s favourite sopranos, Lesley Garrett, and see her exclusive performance of the enchanting Song to the Moon from Dvorak’s opera Rusalka.

14:45: Welsh National Opera are appearing tonight in Southampton and, live from the Central Baptist Church, the WNO Chorus perform extracts from Die Fledermaus by Johann Strauss II. You can put yourself in the middle of the chorus by watching and listening in 360⁰ via Facebook, external.

15:00: English Touring Opera reveal in a series of films how their current shows - Rameau’s Dardanus and Handel’s Giulio Cesare - were created and present a song from their children’s opera Bessie’s Wings performed live by children from South London primary schools.

15:45: Live from the Teatro Real in Madrid, General Director Ignacio García-Belenguer explains how he’s opening up Spain’s leading opera house to new and younger audiences.

16:00: BBC Radio Ulster’s The Arts Show, presented by Marie-Louise Muir, goes behind the scenes of Northern Ireland Opera’s production of Mozart’s Cosi Fan Tutte in Belfast’s Grand Opera House to see how opera has become a vital part of the city’s cultural make-up.

16:30: Back in Manchester, Tomorrow’s World’s final experiment aims to reveal how the human body responds to live opera. Volunteers from the audience will be wired up while a soprano and a baritone sing two different arias and the team analyse the results.

16:45: Joan Matabosch, Artistic Director of Madrid’s Teatro Real, marks the theatre’s 200th anniversary by discussing its past achievements, contemporary challenges and the future of opera.

17:00: Backstage at the London Coliseum, Jamal Edwards, grime impresario and founder of SB.TV, joins English National Opera singers Eleanor Dennis and David Webb to meet the breadth of artistic talent working together to put on tonight’s performance of Verdi’s grandest opera, Aida.

18:05: We return to Southampton, this time to the Mayflower Theatre, for a live ‘touch tour’ of the set for WNO’s production of Die Fledermaus. Touch tours enable blind and partially-sighted audience members to get to know what’s on stage before the performance begins.

18:30: To round off this operatic marathon, members of the Royal Opera Chorus perform the Anvil Chorus from Il Trovatore and Va Pensiero from Nabucco, live at St Pancras International Station in London.

19:30: Switch to Radio 3 to hear a complete performance of an opera voted for by listeners: either Mozart's The Magic Flute, Gounod's Faust, Wagner's The Flying Dutchman or Puccini's Tosca, in a live recording from London's Royal Opera House.