A graduate of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (RCS), Max Fane, has successfully crowd funded a small opera company of RCS students that sets off this summer, in a van, to tour small towns in Italy.

He is calling his tour Raucous Rossini.

Mr Fane is a tenor and will graduate from RCS next week, before going on to Strathclyde University to study an MSc in Business and Management.

He presented his opera project and his long term plans for a touring opera company to the academics at Strathclyde and was awarded a prestigious European Visionary Scholarship.

Raucous Rossini will be touring to Tuscany and Umbria in late July.

There are pre tour performances at the CCA in Glasgow on July 15 and Kippen Parish Church on July 17.

http://www.raucousrossini.com

Historic Scotland have announced their intention to officially recognise a formation of quartz stones in Argyll as a monument of national importance.

'The Tinkers' Heart', will become the first site relating to traveller people in Scotland to be officially recognised as a place of "high cultural significance" on the schedule of National Monuments.

Dr George Findlater, who led the consultation for Historic Scotland, said: "Although permanent physical monuments of Scottish Travellers are quite rare, I hope that this particular case paves the way for a wider recognition of traveller culture."

The site is still going through the process of being added to the schedule of National Monuments.

An announcement is expected by August.

www.historic-scotland.gov.uk

A decorative trophy made up of swords form the battlefield at Waterloo will be sold at Lyon & Turnbull's Waterloo Sale in Edinburgh on June 24.

The trophy is valued between £8,000 - £12,000 and hung for many years in the Officers' Mess of the Coldstream Guards.

It is comprised of radiating blades of French and British light cavalry sabres, in the shape of a palm frond which were taken from the battlefield.

The Coldstream Guards form part of the Brigade of Her Majesty's Foot Guards in the Household Division.

They are the oldest regiment in the British Army in continuous active service, originating in Coldstream in 1650 when General George Monck founded the regiment.

www.lyonandturnbull.com

A new exhibition by Phyllida Barlow at the Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh is to be revealed this week.

Born in Newcastle in 1944, and with a career spanning five decades, Barlow is known for making monumental sculpture made from materials such as plywood, cardboard, fabric, plaster, paint and plastic.

Barlow's exhibition sets out, in her own words, to 'turn the Gallery upside down'.

It opens to the public on June 27.

www.fruitmarket.co.uk.