Cheers, Ollie! 

One day, when I have the time (how often do I use that phrase at the moment), I'd like to learn Russian/ read cyrillic. I've heard it's not too difficult to work out, but...

пять баллов ("five points") to Mr Sudden - May(-ish) Night it is indeed  

You've copied the cyrillic letters in correctly, IGI, so you are already well on the way!  It's not complicated - or I couldn't do it   There are only 33 letters (of which two are "modifiers" of other letters, and have no sound of their own).  The Russian word for "comet" contains all the letters which are the same as in latin alphabet - КОМЕТА.  This leaves you with just 27 to learn - at one-per-day you could knock the whole thing on the head within a month   Try little games like writing out your own name (Ил Грандэ Инкуйзиторе), the name of your street, town, county etc using cyrillic letters, until you can do so without using the crib-sheet?

Here are a few more operas to decipher using Ollie's cribsheet...  these are the Russian names used for these operas (ie what you'll find on cd-liners etc) - a little resourcefulness will turn your transliteration into a title you know

ТРУБАДУР
ВАЛьКИРИЯ
ЧО-ЧО-САН
ПИТЕР ГРАЙМС
БАЛ ПОД МАСКЫ
ИОЛАНТА
ДИАЛОГИ КАРМЕЛИТОК
БОГЕМ

Another important tip: H often turns up as a G, as in ГАМЛЕТ...

Excellent progress going on here, I see...  well done 

Speaking of "authority" in this context, I endorse your sentiments here by saying that I have it on reasonably good authority that Mr Shuker is not as adept as he might be at paying for CDs that he has ordered and been sent; however, if his seminar on Russian music was successful, perhaps he will have been paid some money for it and then be able to (I say "be able to" rather than "will") settle for those CDs for which he still owes money. A relatively minor (sorry!) issue by comparison to letting a pianist down at the last minute over a performance date, to be sure, but the cap would seem to fit...

Best,

Alistair