1 - Modigliani and his models

Long, lean and serene - everyone knows those Modigliani girls with their tapering faces. But the poise of his art was created out of chaos; Modigliani was a drunk, a junkie and a philanderer who abandoned his pregnant mistress. This first British show in 40 years looks at both kinds of models: Modigliani's women and his fascination with classical and African art. LC

· Royal Academy, London W1, from 8 July

2 - The new Frasier

Still suffering from Dr Crane withdrawal on Friday nights? The wonderfully witty Out of Practice is the latest sitcom from the Frasier team. Stockard Channing and Henry Winkler star as the divorced parents of a family of doctors. The plotlines may be predictable but the repartee is like the best French farce. Channing steals the show with her acerbic putdowns, and just to keep it in the family Kelsey Grammer directs the first episode. LH

· C5, from mid-May

3 - Red Hot Chili Peppers

Can one of the most popular bands on the planet get any bigger? Their albums certainly can. Stadium Arcadium, successor to the eight-million-selling By The Way, is a 28-track epic in two suites, 'Jupiter' and 'Mars', due out 8 May. The Californian funk-rock perennials' UK tour kicks off in Ipswich on 30 June and takes in two Manchester MEN Arenas and four London Earls Courts. KE

4 - New fiction

The summer is awash with great new fiction, including David Mitchell's much-anticipated Black Swan Green (Sceptre £16.99), a tale of adolescence and stammering; Will Self's ambitiously satirical The Book of Dave (Viking £17.99), in which a ranting East End taxi driver spawns a new religion; and Douglas Coupland's paean to geeks everywhere, JPod (Bloomsbury £12.99). Monica Ali's follow-up to her bestselling Brick Lane takes her to a small Portuguese village. Alentejo Blue (Doubleday £16.99) is due out in June. AC

5 - Cartoon crackers

Animation heavyweights go head to head as Pixar launches Cars against DreamWorks' Over the Hedge. Pixar head John Lasseter directs for the first time since Toy Story 2 in the story of cocky stock car Lightning McQueen (voiced by Owen Wilson). Over the Hedge has Bruce Willis as RJ the racoon as a bunch of forest creatures (voices include Avril Lavigne and Nick Nolte) fend off suburban encroachment. Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts provide voices for 3D Imax offering The Ant Bully, about a boy shrunk to ant size as punishment for flooding an ant colony with his watergun. JS



6 - Hodgkin at the Tate

Now in his mid-seventies, Howard Hodgkin's reputation could hardly be diminished, which is maybe why Tate Britain has decided to enlarge it a little more with this fullscale, lifetime retrospective. Friends, homes, emotional experiences, memories of Morocco, India and Egypt - all the inspirations for this quasi-abstract painter will be explored, and all the influences of other artists such as Matisse, Vuillard and the Indian miniaturists Hodgkin collects. LC

· Tate Britain, London SW1, 14 June-10 Sep

7 - Nixon on stage

Peter Morgan, author of The Deal, dramatises David Frost's post-Watergate interrogation of Richard Nixon, the most-watched TV news interview ever, for Frost/Nixon at the Donmar. Michael Sheen is Frost; Nixon has yet to be cast. ENO, meanwhile, is reviving Peter Sellars's production of John Adams's Nixon in China. SC

· Frost/Nixon, Donmar, London WC2, 10 Aug to 7 Oct. Nixon in China, ENO, London WC2, from 14 June.

8 - Bumper Russian Ballet

London hosts two Russian dance gems this summer. First, a rare opportunity to see historic Soviet ballet productions of Leningrad Symphony and The Bedbug, plus a new full-length production of The Golden Age. Valery Gergiev conducts, dancing is by stars of the Mariinsky (Kirov) ballet including the peerless Uliana Lopatkina. Then, marking the 50th anniversary of its first visit to Covent Garden, the Bolshoi's season opens with Petipa's reconstructed extravaganza The Pharaoh's Daughter and includes director Alexei Ratmansky's much-praised The Bright Stream. LJ

· Mariinsky Ballet, Coliseum, London WC2, 25-29 July. Bolshoi, Royal Opera House, London WC2, 31 July to 19 Aug.

9 - Terfel in Tosca

Angela Gheorghiu leads the first cast opposite Bryn Terfel as Scarpia and Marcelo Álvarez as Cavaradossi in Covent Garden's first new staging of the Puccini favourite in 40 years. Directed by Jonathan Kent, conducted by Antonio Pappano, it's currently sold out, but the second cast is led by Catherine Naglestad, Samuel Ramey and Nicola Rossi Giordano, conducted by Paul Wynne Griffiths. AH

· Royal Opera House, London WC2. Opens 16 June

10 - The return of Lost

The story of the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815 continues. Jack's mistrust of Locke grows, we find out the fate of Sawyer, Michael and Jin whose raft was blown out of the water by 'the others', and discover a new survivor of the crash - Ana-Lucia (Michelle Rodriguez). LH

· C4, May.

11 - Bruce Nauman

The biggest ever British exhibition of this US wildcard, one of today's most influential artists, covers all his shocking ideas. From alarming television-set pieces to outsize installations, it is a show in two halves: the first examines his extreme use of language and wordplay in video, neon and text; the second his frightening depictions of humans and animals. LC

· Tate Liverpool, 19 May to 28 Aug.

12 - Blockbuster tours

Radiohead stumble back into the limelight at intimate UK and European venues in May. At the end of April, Take That hit the nostalgia circuit one man short - Robbie Williams is touring in Europe ahead of September UK dates. In June the Black Eyed Peas arrive for a handful of UK gigs. Pink Floyd founder member Roger Waters plays The Dark Side Of The Moon in Hyde Park on 1 July. And in case you are one of the few people alive who haven't seen the Rolling Stones, they romp home in August. And Madonna steers her Confessions tour through Cardiff and Wembley in July and August. KE

13 - Must-read memoirs

Five years after the candid A Round-Heeled Woman, Jane Juska delivers another dispatch from her search for the perfect lover in Unaccompanied Women (Chatto £12.99). It's a quest she seems loath to relinquish even at 72. Toby Young updates us on his progress in The Sound of No Hands Clapping (Abacus £11.99), returning to London from New York and still trying to make everyone like him. AC

14 - Constable deconstructed

It's never a clear day in Constable - but who cares? His vast preliminary oil sketches painted outdoors are hung for the first time alongside the finished six-footers, as they are known, including The Hay Wain, Hadleigh Castle and Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows - some of the most famous images in British art. LC

· Tate Britain, London SW1, 1 June to 28 Aug

15 - Indie boy follow-ups

With the festival season comes a slew of second runs from the elegantly wasted ranks of rock. Keane's second album Under The Iron Sea, expected 12 June, is said to be more muscular than their rather popular debut. Razorlight are in the studio finishing the follow-up to Up All Night due 17 July. And Sunderland hotties The Futureheads prove they're not just one-hit wonders on their second album, News And Tributes, out 29 May. KE

16 - Non-fiction heavyweights

If you want to know the stories behind the films, look no further than Paul Rusesabagina's An Ordinary Man (Bloomsbury £10.99), in which the man at the heart of Hotel Rwanda tells how he sheltered 1,200 refugees at the height of the genocide. In City of God (Bloomsbury £8.99), Paulo Lins lifts the lid on gangs, violence and drugs in the housing projects and favelas of Rio de Janeiro, where he grew up, drawing on his experiences and Fernando Meirelles's 2002 film of the same name. AC

17 - The Line Of Beauty on TV

Saul Dibbs's first film, Bullet Boy, explored gun crime in Hackney. His latest project, a BBC drama adapted by Andrew Davies from Alan Hollinghurst's Booker-winning novel, The Line of Beauty, couldn't be more different. The gay coming-of-age tale is set among the Tory elite of the 1980s. Nick Guest (played by newcomer Dan Stevens) is the gay student adopted by the family of a rising star in the Thatcher government. As for rumours that Davies would be too squeamish to tackle all-male sex scenes, don't believe it. They're hot. LH

· BBC2, starts 17 May

18 - Cosi Fan Tutte

Glyndebourne's 250th birthday present to Mozart is this new staging by NT director Nicholas Hytner. With the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment conducted by Ivan Fischer, and designs by Vicki Mortimer, it features Miah Persson and Anke Vondung as Fiordiligi and Dorabella, with Topi Lehtipuu and Luca Pisaroni as Ferrando and Guglielmo, and Nicolas Rivenq as Don Alfonso. AH

· Glyndebourne, from 19 May

19 - Royal Ballet's New Beauty

It used to be their signature ballet, but recent Royal Ballet productions of Sleeping Beauty have disappointed. To mark the company's 75th anniversary, director Monica Mason reclaims the heritage in a full-scale production with traditional choreography and Oliver Messel's sumptuously beautiful 1946 designs. L J

· Royal Opera House, 15 May to 3 June

20 - Summer blockbusters

While the World Cup dictates blockbuster release patterns everywhere except in the US, this summer's big films read like football results: Pirates of the Caribbean 2, starring Keira Knightley; X-Men 3; Mission Impossible 3; Omen 666. There's even Patrick Vieira footy-style personnel intrigue: Superman Returns (with Kevin Spacey as Lex Luthor) is directed by Bryan Singer, formerly the midfi eld anchor for the X-Men franchise. Last year's box office slump has hardly led to more originality from studios. Michael Mann has turned his own Eighties TV series Miami Vice into a thriller starring Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx, and even the season's big disaster movie is a remake: Poseidon, directed by Wolfgang Petersen who, after The Perfect Storm and Das Boot, has at least proved he can handle water. JS

21 - Camille

With her vocal acrobatics, experimental edge and persona drifting from angry waif to dreamy lover, Camille is inevitably compared to Bjork. The French performer is a warmer presence, her songs more structured. Cult debut Le Fils (EMI) is being re-released for a long-awaited London show (Jazz Café, 3 May). NS

22 - Cyrano de Bergerac

After three months offstage with voice troubles, the longest break of his career, Plácido Domingo returns for six performances in the title role of Francesca Zambello's staging of Alfano's rarely heard opera about the guy with a nose as big as his heart. Sondra Radvanovsky sings Roxane and Mark Elder conducts. AH

· Royal Opera House, from 8 May

23 - Kandinsky

Wild ideas about the spiritual properties of colour, mad notions of art's potential for saving the soul - Kandinsky remains the great hippy of early 20th century art. This show focuses on the first half of his career, from Russia via Weimar to the Bauhaus, while neatly avoiding some of his craziest works. Look out, while you're there, for a rearranged Tate Modern collection, with new focus on Abstract Expressionism, Cubism and Conceptualism. LC

· Tate Modern, London SE1, from 22 June

24 - Jarvis Cocker's art school series

The bespectacled national treasure presents a three-part radio series on the relationship between British pop and art schools. Cocker is a product of St Martins College, where he became interested in Outsider Art and met the girl who inspired Common People. MS

· Radio 4, July

25 - To Reach The Clouds

In 1974 Philippe Petit slung a high wire between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre and early one morning walked across it, 1,350 feet above the ground. He had spent six years planning his illegal adventure. Nick Drake has based his play about the experience on the tightrope artiste's own book. 'When the towers again twin-tickle the clouds,' Petit has declared, 'I will offer to walk again.' SC

· Nottingham Playhouse, 17 June to 8 July, 0115 941 9419

26 - Stoppard's new play

Rock'n'Roll - Stoppard's first play for the Royal Court - examines Czechoslovakia between the Prague Spring and the Velvet Revolution. Events are seen from the perspective of a Cambridge Communist, and from Prague, where a rock band stood for resistance to the regime. The cast includes Brian Cox, Sinead Cusack and Rufus Sewell. Trevor Nunn directs.

· SC Royal Court, London SW1, 3 June to 15 July

27 - British Rom Coms

Still trying to shake the ghost of Four Weddings And A Funeral, British film goes rom com crazy. Ol Parker's directing debut Imagine Me and You has two girls (Lena Headey and Piper Perabo) falling in love. Debbie Isitt's Confetti uses comic talent including Martin Freeman, Jessica Stevenson and Jimmy Carr to tell the story of three couples competing for a bridal magazine's Wedding of the Year. Things To Do Before You're 30 follows lads from five-a-side footballers Athletico Greenwich and their attempts to score, on and off the pitch. Jimi Mistry, Billie Piper, Dougray Scott and Emilia Fox are the flat back four. JS

28 - Footie books

Swot for the World Cup with Richard Williams's The Perfect 10 (Faber £14.99) about greats who have worn the seemingly magic number - Puskas, Pele, Maradona and Zidane among them. David Winner's Those Feet: An Intimate History of English Football (Bloomsbury £8.99) is out in paperback; and footie chit-chat will be enlivened by Stephen Foster's The Book of Lists (Canongate £9.99) featuring Players Who Feel No Pain, Sixty-Nine Notorious Sex Scandals and Ten Animals on the Pitch. AC

29 - Da Vinci Code:The Movie

With its premiere as the opening film at Cannes Film Festival, Ron Howard's film will entice the half of the world that has read Dan Brown's book. Readers will be curious to see if Tom Hanks, Audrey Tatou, Jean Reno and Paul Bettany match up; but critical acclaim may be harder to achieve: the Cannes opener is traditionally a stinker. JS

· On general release from 19 May

30 - Miles Davis season

From 6-27 May, Radio 3 marks what would have been the 80th birthday (on 25 May) of the maverick genius Miles Davis. Mixing It looks at Davis from a 21st-century perspective; Jazz Legends takes on his legacy; Discovering Music examines the 1959 classic Kind of Blue; and Jazz File showcases Ian Carr's documentary series about Davis's life and work. MS

31 - Stormbreaker

Britain's biggest box office hope is a £50m production based on Anthony Horowitz's best-selling novels about teenage spy Alex Rider. The film follows the Harry Potter template: an unknown star is born in Alex Pettyfer as the reluctant 14-year-old enlisted by MI6 to save the world. A strong supporting cast includes Ewan McGregor, Mickey Rourke, Bill Nighy, Stephen Fry and - remember her? - Alicia Silverstone. JS

· July release

32 - New musicals

The team who dreamt up the TV series Bad Girls re-create HMP Larkhall on stage. Riots and girl-on-girl romance are promised, as well as the appearance of telly stalwarts Shell Dockley, Denny Blood and the Two Julies. Showboat - the 1929 Jerome Kern-Oscar Hammerstein groundbreaker which includes Ol' Man River - will bring the Mississippi to the Albert Hall for 18 performances in the round. Avenue Q - the comic Broadway hit mixing puppets with people - comes to London following triumph at the Tonys. SC

· Bad Girls, West Yorkshire Playhouse, 27 May to 1 July. Showboat, Royal Albert Hall, London SW7, 10-25 Jun. Avenue Q, Noël Coward Theatre, from 1 June

33 - Shakespeares

The year-long Bardfest has just kicked off at Stratford, where all his plays will be staged by the RSC, by directors from abroad (including Peter Stein) and by young British companies such as Kneehigh. Dominic Dromgoole kicks off his first season at the Globe with Coriolanus (Jonathan Cake), Titus Andronicus and another Cleopatra - Frances Barber. RM

· Coriolanus, 5 May to 13 August; Titus Andronicus, 20 May to 6 October; Antony and Cleopatra, 25 June to 8 October

34 - Market Boys

Nicholas Hytner's National Theatre is mapping recent British history in a series of new plays. The latest, David Eldridge's Market Boy, is set in Romford Market in 1985, and unites the talents that created the magnificent Festen. Directed by Rufus Norris, with a soundscape by Paul Arditti and choreography by members of Frantic Assembly. SC

· Olivier, London SE1, from 26 May,

35 - Reality TV turns to theatre

Want to see your name in lights? After the success of Operatunity and Musicality, Channel 4 is searching for a new British playwright. The Play's The Thing follows 2,000 hopefuls as their scripts are whittled down by a team of three experts - producer Sonia Friedman, literary agent Mel Kenyon and actor Neil Pearson. Also look out for Brief Encounters - 10 low-budget, 15-minute plays produced from scripts from new writers, mentored by the likes of Andrew Davies, Russell T Davies and Tony Jordan. LH

· The Play's The Thing, Channel 4, June. Brief Encounters, BBC1, from mid-May

36 - Robin Ince's Book Club Tour

Acclaimed for reintroducing intelligent, innovative comedy to club nights since its inception last year, the Book Club takes its anarchic badinage on the road. Regulars like Natalie Haynes, Josie Long and Howard Read are joined by famous special guests and compered by Robin Ince, winner of the 2006 Time Out award for outstanding achievement in comedy. SM

· Until 23 June.

37 - Shoot The Messenger

BBC2's provocative new single drama promises to reflect current debates in the black community. The screenplay by Sharon Foster (Babyfather) is the latest winner of the prestigious Dennis Potter Screenwriting Award. David Oyelowo (Danny in Spooks) plays Joe, a teacher determined to save black students from gangs, crime and underachievement. LH

· BBC2, starts June

38 - Pop debuts

Many big names are keeping their new records close to their chests till the autumn. But the new blood is up! May sees maiden releases from domestic 'It' band Dirty Pretty Things; Boy Kill Boy, our answer to The Killers; conscious soul-jazz tip Netsayi and former Beta Band frontman Steve Mason's King Biscuit Time. June positively bursts with debuts from MOR buzz band The Feeling, Guillemots, UK hip-hop guitar slinger Plan B and skronk-merchants Forward, Russia! You'll have to wait till July for the tres now 'urchin-punk-reggae-dub-London-calypso kids' (their words) Larrikin Love's long-player. And some as-yet-unsigned band will be the toast of August: things are moving that fast right now. KE

39 - Drama with a twist

Paul Henshall and Mark Benton star in I'm With Stupid a contemporary Odd Couple-style TV comedy exploring disability. Also look out for Drop Dead Gorgeous, a comedy drama by Carmel Morgan. Twin girls Jade and Ashley are approached by a model scout - it's not beautiful Jade they want, but geek goddess Ashley. As her star ascends in the cut-throat world of modelling, family and friends struggle with the fall-out. LH

· BBC3, both begin in June

40 - The Ornate Johnsons

The five-piece sketch troupe has won praise from the likes of Stewart Lee and Jo Caulfield, and been compared to Python and Not The Nine O'Clock News. They have worked together since the Eighties with a sideline writing for TV and radio. A rare opportunity for London audiences. SM

· Soho Theatre, London W1, from 4 May,

41 - BBC Jazz Awards

This annual event spotlights new and established talent. It often surprises, pointing the way to how the jazz world is developing. Hosted by Paul Gambaccini with highlights broadcast on Radio 2 and 3. DG

· Mermaid Theatre, London EC4, 13 July.

42 - Summer festivals

Michael Eavis's cows are having a year off Glastonbury tinnitus, but there are dozens of other contenders to fill the muddy gap. With greenery and nu-folk artists, The Green Man bash is both out-there and civilised. Headbangers should display their sun-fried tattoos at Download, boasting the first Guns N' Roses gigs in aeons. Radiohead and Morrissey make the V Festival a better than usual draw, while the two-site Wireless bash offers The Flaming Lips and Pharrell Williams on one particularly spectacular day. The Isle of Wight's cuddly Bestival has pencilled in Pet Shop Boys, the Fall, Devendra Banhart and the Stranglers. For classical music lovers the enterprising and much-improved Opera Holland Park (6 June to 5 Aug) stages Tchaikovsky's The Queen of Spades and Giordano's Fedora alongside Cosi Fan Tutte, Puccini's Manon Lescaut, Lehár's The Merry Widow and OHP's first ever Rigoletto. This year's Aldeburgh Festival in Suffolk (9-25 June) kicks off with Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress, cast from the Britten-Pears Young Artists Programme. Other highlights include Emily Hall's chamber opera Sante, a love story set in the run-up to the Rwandan genocide, and Raymond Yiu's music-hall piece The Original Chinese Circus.

· For more festival tips, see observer.co.uk/summerfestivals2006. KE/AH

43 - Edinburgh comedy

One of the highlights promises to be Harry Shearer's This is So Not About The Simpsons: American Voyeur, in which the US comic actor acclaimed as the voices of Mr Burns, Smithers and Flanders, and as co-creator and star of Spinal Tap, joins his wife, singer-songrwriter Judith Owen, to observe the current lunacy of the land of the free. Also crossing the Atlantic is Daily Show star Demetri Martin, whose Dr Earnest Parrot Presents is a concept show akin to his Perrier-winning If I in 2003. One of the biggest attractions, though, will be the new UdderBelly venue, a giant purple marquee in the shape of an upside down cow in Bristow Square, the focal point of Fringe comedy. SM

· Edinburgh Fringe festival, 6-28 August

44 - Undercover Surrealism

That punning title gets at the creepiness as well as the rebellion. Surrealism expert Dawn Ades curates a huge event - painting, film, sculpture, music, photography, masks, ritual objects - tracing the cross-currents of Surrealism in 1920s Paris. Artists include Miró, Dali, Giacometti, Brancusi, de Chirico, Ernst and a room full of paintings and fetishes by Picasso. LC

· Hayward Gallery, London SE1, 11 May to 31 July

45 - Marcel Breuer

This is the year of the modernist. The contribution from Glasgow's Lighthouse museum is an exhibition of work by Marcel Breuer, the Bauhaus architect who used a pair of bicycle handlebars as the inspiration for a chair, creating a design classic in tubular steel in the process. Returning to architecture, he went on to design such celebrated - and controversial - buildings as the Whitney Museum of Modern Art and the Unesco Headquarters in Paris. DS

· Marcel Breuer: Design and Architecture, Lighthouse, Glasgow, 16 June to 27 Aug

46 - Foreign cinema

The best thing about summer blockbusters is they leave room for creative counter-programming. Heading South is an intriguing film from one of France's most original directors, Laurent Cantet, starring Charlotte Rampling among a group of wealthy women sex tourists at a Haitian hotel in the 1970s. France provides a corking blockbuster of its own, as Gérard Depardieu and Daniel Auteuil duke it out in Heat-like corrupt cop thriller, 36 Quai des Orfèvres. Johnny To's Hong Kong triad drama Election is equally terrific, rising star Mia Maestro excels in the atmospheric Venezuelan kidnap drama Secuestro Express, while Romain Duris, from The Beat My Heart Skipped, charms the girls (Audrey Tautou, Cécile de France and our own Kelly Reilly) in romantic comedy Russian Dolls. JS

47 - Radio 4's Memory Season

Over six weeks this summer, Radio 4 promises its Memory Season will help us improve our, erm, you know ... All we have to do is to log on to Bbc.co.uk and/or listen on Wednesdays at 9am to a series of shows designed to boost our retention of facts. The memory starts to decline at 35 - earlier if pregnancy or illegal drugs have been involved, apparently - and the Memory Season will include a major scientific survey as to the state of our nation's memory, as well as commissions from comedians, short story writers and a new play from Alan Bennett. MS

· Radio 4, from 22 July.

48 - English National Ballet's Canterville Ghost

Oscar Wilde's tale of the spectre driven to distraction by a family who refuse to believe in him (except, of course, for their beautiful daughter) is translated into suitably spooky dance by English National Ballet. Choreography is by the Royal's William Tuckett, whose antic imagination makes this production an excellent bet. LJ

· New Wimbledon Theatre, London SW1, 25 May to 3 June

49 - London Architecture Biennale

Sixty sheep are to be herded across the Millennium Bridge from Borough Market to launch the second Biennale, a reminder that as recently as the 19th century livestock were driven through the city. Continuing the historical flavour will be a day-long revival of the ancient St Bartholomew's Fair (17 June), complete with a promenade performance of Ben Jonson's play of the same name. Other highlights of the week will be 'The World's Longest Architecture Exhibition', with displays along the entire route from Borough Market to King's Cross, pinned on railings and sited at such unlikely spots as St Bart's Hospital and the Merrill Lynch offices. DS

· 16-25 June

50 - Van Gogh and Britain

Everyone knows Van Gogh only sold one painting during his lifetime, but a British collector presciently bought three the year the artist died. Textiles magnates, mining tycoons and golfing Scots came next and a British market for the Dutchman rapidly developed. All of which is really just a pretext for a 40-strong showing of Van Gogh's paintings including some of his latest and greatest works. LC

· Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, 7 July to 24 September

· Words by Susannah Clapp, Alex Clark, Laura Cumming, Kitty Empire, Killian Fox, Dave Gelly, Liz Hoggard, Anthony Holden, Luke Jennings, Stephanie Merritt, Sarah Phillips, Miranda Sawyer, Jason Solomons, Neil Spencer, and Deyan Sudjic