Renowned opera producer Ellen Kent is bringing Bizet’s Carmen and Puccini’s Madama Butterfly - by Ukraine’s Opera International Kyiv - to Woking’s New Victoria Theatre tonight and tomorrow respectively at 7.30pm.

Carmen promises passion, sexual jealousy and death starring Mariia Davydova (mezzo-soprano), and sopranos Elena Dee and Viktoria Melnyk. Sung in French with English surtitles, it features The Toreador’s Song, Habanera and the Flower Song.

Madama Butterfly stars Elena Dee, Viktoria Melnyk, Yelyzaveta Bielous (mezzo-soprano), and tenors Oleksii Srebnytskyi and Hovhannes Andreasyan. Sung in Italian with English surtitles, it tells the story of a Japanese girl who falls in love with an American naval lieutenant. Highlights include Humming Chorus, One Fine Day and Love Duet.

Ellen, 76, spoke to the Woking News & Mail as she was about to leave the Oxford Travelodge - “my favourite Travelodge” - the morning after a Madama Butterfly show at the New Theatre in Oxford.

She has lived in India, Spain and Moldova, but currently resides in the county of her surname, in the countryside near Dover.

Ellen said she was “quite fond” of Woking because it felt closer to home when in the middle of a long tour.

She believed the weekend dates would encourage a packed house: “They’re good days of the week to do it, they should do well.

“I like Madama Butterfly but it’s not my favourite. But it’s the most popular opera in the world and the public love it. And Elena Dee is a class act.”

Ellen said Madama Butterfly was a “very tragic story”.

She added: “It’s a classic tale of a little geisha girl of 16 who meets a naval officer and is led up the garden path.

“He leaves her with a child. It’s the callousness of the American sweeping back, having heard about the child, with his American wife to take the child away when they’re two or three. She commits harakiri, sticking a knife in her stomach. It’s dramatic.”

Ellen said she also liked Aida and Turandot, but Carmen was her “very favourite”.

She explained the oddity of Carmen, an opera set in Spain, being sung in French: “Bizet was French and didn’t speak a word of Spanish!”

Ellen was born in India in 1949 - and still speaks hindi - because her father was the British High Commissioner there. He took the Queen around the country in 1952.

He retired to Andalusia in Spain towards the end of 1961, the family settling in the mountaintop village of Ronda near Malaga.

Ellen said: “Carmen matches my past, my whole background. I grew up in Spain so my Carmen has a very authentic feel to it. The set is like small town Spain with a small town bullring. It’s the first set I built.”

After a spell as an actress, Ellen moved into production with a children’s stage show in France.

Her opera career began in 1992, after a lot of work behind the scenes, with Nabucco in front of 7,000 people at Rochester Castle.

Ellen said: “They wanted something for one of their big outdoor gigs. I said you won’t get thousands for a children’s show, but opera might work - and they said ‘oh yeah’.

“I asked a friend. They said they had contacts in Bucharest. The Romanian National Opera said they were interested.

“I knew Richard Morrison, the chief opera critic at the Sunday Times, and I asked him if he wanted to see Nabucco.

“We trotted off to Bucharest. I said ‘What do you think?’ He said ‘It’s pretty good’ and it went from there.”

While in Romania, Ellen was introduced to the country’s Communist president Nicolae Ceaușescu - who was executed in 1989.

She said: “I always get into these dramatic situations! It took a while to put the Rochester event together, and I met Ceaușescu. He was tottering on the edge.

“Ceaușescu overdid it and he and his wife were hung. I thought it was getting more exciting than I ever intended! We opened with Nabucco in Rochester in 1992 and it sold out.”

Ellen was also the only promoter to bring the Bolshoi Ballet to Britain.

She said: “I met Yury Grigorovich, the master of the Russian ballet. He said ‘I’m in Turkey.’ I was in Izmir, so he said ‘Shall we meet in Istanbul?’, and we brought the Bolshoi to play the biggest theatres in Britain - and they all sold out.”

Ellen, who went to boarding school at Cromer in Norfolk, reckoned she was “terribly spoilt” as a child. Her parents are buried in the British cemetery in Malaga, and she said her father thoroughly enjoyed his retirement.

She said: “When Dad was High Commissioner he couldn’t drink, so when he went to Spain he let it all hang out!

“He built a lovely villa with olive trees and Moroccan floors. He would sit on his verandah drinking lots of gin and tonic, smoking his cigarettes and reading the Daily Telegraph. He had a happy life.

“The bread man would bring him back in his van when he was drunk. Everyone in Ronda loved my father. They all came out for his funeral as the coffin went through the village, they all stood out on the streets for him. He was a people person - like me!”

Tickets for either Carmen or Madama Butterfly cost from £23. To book visit www.atgtickets.com/venues/new-victoria-theatre/