March 2020 before lockdown – as doom approached, the main things I went to in March musically were the Opera North Marriage of Figaro and Kurt Weill’s Street Scene. I enjoyed the Weill piece a lot. It’s a kind of missing link between Porgy and Bess, and Bernstein/Sondheim – still with some of the Weimar Republic ‘Cabaret’ sort of sounds, but also with something more bluesy and ‘American’. Some very good singers – including Robert Hayward, who I’ve heard singing Wotan…the story was a bit silly but the staging made the best of it. The Opera North Marriage of Figaro on March 14^th was my final live musical event before lockdown, and it will probably be 18 months to two years before I see anything of comparable size and scope again live. Although the audience was already thinning out  – various cautious people understandably feeling they were vulnerable and ought to stay away, and despite the fact that the volunteer attendant sitting near to me had a racking  cough and a streaming cold and indeed might have been suffering from the onset of Covid, I did enjoy this – sung in English, 70% of which was understandable, lots of laughs, good singers and also a conductor/orchestra who got the right spring into the music – fastish but not gabbled. The orchestra was  conducted by James Hendry , who I’ve never heard of and I hadn’t heard of any of the singers –  Irish soprano Máire, Flavein (Countess), Welsh soprano Fflur Wyn (Susanna), Dutch baritone Quirijin de Land (the Count), and, from New Zealand, baritone Philip Rhodes (Figaro).This had a real company feel to it. It was broadly 1920’s in décor but that seemed to work fine – with and not against the music. A great event to see and hear before embarking on the bleakness of lockdown

February 2020 – still oblivious of the impending lockdown and of months without live music, I went to the Halle’s performance of Beethoven 9 with Mark Elder conducting. I thought the finale was super, but the slow movement was, I thought, too fast and the first two movements neither had the energy or the power they should have ideally done. But the Halle Choir etc sang brilliantly, and the orchestra played extremely well. Overall it was a good evening with some Beethoven rarities in the first half. I was listening the other day to a Beethoven 9 conducted by Furtwangler – the one that opened the Bayreuth Festival in 1951 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHDXdbSWu0E. Furtwangler is the only conductor I have EVER heard getting a slow enough tempo for the slow movement – it is marked ‘adagio molto’ but no-one seems to perform it like that. He’s an interesting case study in how art can never be ultimately divorced from politics – he tried to remain apolitical in Nazi Germany, but only succeeding in compromising himself (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2itdv1aEpG4   ). Of course he was in frequent conflict with Goebbels, personally rescued from certain death a number of Jewish people by calling in favours with 3rd Reich bigwigs, and in no way was a card-carrying Nazi (unlike, famously, I read, Karajan and Schwarzkopf) but nonetheless his continuing presence was an important positive point for the regime….He was lucky in the timing of his de-Nazification trial, which was when the Cold War was beginning to bite, and the Americans needed ‘solid’ Germans in the West. Reggie Goodall, who conducted the ENO Ring in the 70’s, was of course was a member of the British Union of Fascists before the war, and I believe was briefly interned as an enemy of the state in 1939 – it seems to me that people shouldn’t be demonised for their political beliefs, but one should know where they are coming from, and what that might mean in terms of their approach to the music. In the case of Furtwangler, right-wing views combined with a tendency to arrogance and not to listen to the views of fellow musicians, perhaps, and also to idealise one particular musical tradition – Bach, Beethoven, Brahms – at the expense of others. With Reggie, I am less sure…….And, of course, that’s a whole debate in relation to Wagner himself, but that perhaps is for another time…..

On Feb 27^th I had a lovely day – I saw my two grandsons in the morning in Sale, had a long lunch with an old friend in Manchester which went on till about 6pm, then went to a Halle Beethoven concert and finally, before getting the train back home, bumped into an old British Council colleague, Andrea, who’s a member of the Halle Choir, in the Briton’s Protection pub. The concert was the Halle performing Beethoven 8 with Ben Gernon conducting, and Mark Elder conducting Act 2 of Fidelio with an all-star line up of Simon O’Neill  – true heldentenor sound  0 as Florestan, Brindley Sherratt as Rocco, and Rachel Nicholls as Leonore, Rachel Nicholls, who gave us a talk a couple of years ago at the Wagner Society, was a wonderful Leonore, her powerful voice soaring across the Bridgewater Hall – it was altogether a very powerful 50 minutes or so and I rated it very highly

I had another packed weekend in London at the end of January 2020 / beginning of February with Mitsuko Uchida as pianist and director of the Gustav Mahler Chamber Orchestra performing Mozart Piano Concerto No. 17, K453, Widmann’s Choralquartett , and Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 22, K. 482. This was just about as superlative as it gets – definitely one of my high 5 stars for the decade. Mitsuko as a player was nuanced, sensitive, made every note count and making every note both live and be placed, clear and lyrical – words fail to me. And as an encore, a superlative account of a Schubert Impromptu. It can’t get much better than this, I thought (and for the rest of the year it didn’t)…..

And – as if this was not enough – the next day was Wagner’s Siegfried, part of the projected LPO Jurowski Ring cycle, meant to have been rolled out in Feb 2021 (I had tickets, grrrrr, but which has now been abandoned because of COVID). This was very good, with a few reservations . The good bits first: – the orchestra and Jurowski were superb – fastish tempi but not too hard-driven and giving an appropriate sense both of menace in Act 2 and grandeur at the beginning of Act 3; Adrian Thompson (I found myself sitting next to him over lunch having another meeting on something else entirely and wondering who he was) was a superb Mime. Elena Pankratova , who I heard as Kundry at Bayreuth in 2017, was an outstanding Brunnhilde (with the oddity that she chose not to sing the optional High C at the end of Act 3, which was a bit offputting). Robert Hayward as Alberich and Brindley Sherratt as Fafner did all that was required of them. Some of the critics seemed to have it in for Evgeny Nikitin as the Wanderer, but, speaking personally, I loved the sonorities of his voice, even if his acting was a bit wooden. The main questionmark was over Torsten Kerl as Siegfried – his physical presence would have been less of a concern if this had been a fully concert-based performance, but, as is common these days, ‘concert performance’ seems to now mean a modicum of acting, and, let us say, acting Siegfried is not Kerl’s strong point. On the positive side I found his singing sensitive at points and – at the end of the day –  he was still there at the end of the third act, belting forth, and doing the top note that Pankratova opted opted out of – so kudos to him. I wasn’t that taken by the elements of staging or the video design.

And on the Sunday I had a reunion lunch with an old friend, in memory of another friend who died in 2013 – RIP, Mick

I started the year off with an extraordinarily weekend of music in mid-January. After a meeting I had to go to in Borimingham I was able to catch the CBSO Mahler 8 with their chief conductor Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla,. I have only heard Mahler 8 infrequently over the years – Davis and Boulez at the Proms in the 70’s, and also Charles Groves at Alexandra Palace (!) – plus in Manchester Kent Nagano conducting the Halle in the late 90’s. But the CBSO/Mirga performance was the finest I’ve ever heard live – Mirga is an amazing conductor, who led a performance that was never over-blown, but always alive, hard-hitting when needed, and totally memorable. It was quite fast in the opening movement but she totally justified the approach – as ever with this work, part of the impact is the public spectacle of so many singers and the CBSO certainly achieved that  – ‘surround sound’, almost as the choir stretched right round three sides of the hall. I am not always convinced by some of the second half, but the CBSO gave it their all with total commitment

And then on to London with the last train more or less from Birmingham the same evening to an LSO Day in London. It started with Simon Rattle rehearsing Beethoven’s Christ on the Mount of Olives with the LSO – very interesting to see Rattle’s rehearsal approach; long stretches of performance and then picking up on specific points. I couldn’t help wondering whether these were points he had determined in advance, as things he knew to be tricky, or were actually prompted by specific performance issues. Anyway – I suddenly found this was a fascinating work I didn’t know at all, with real Beethovenian energy at points. The soloists were very good – particularly Else Dreisig – and one just wondered why the work wasn’t better known. Then to an LSO chamber music in the afternoon, where I heard one of Beethoven’s Op 104 cello sonatas for the first time, and then the actual performance of  Christ on the Mount of Olives, preceded by the Berg Violin Concerto. A fantastic, if exhausting weekend…………

In mid-December 2019 I went to a keenly awaited concert  – Omer Meir Welber conducting his BBC Philharmonic in Bruckner 7 and Sofia Gubaidulina’s Triple Concerto for violin, cello and bayan. A greatly interesting programme choice, with a religious element to both of them – Gubaidulina focuses in her piece on the number 3, obviously representing the Trinity. I really liked her piece – it’s not easy listening but constantly, glitteringly, absorbing and never boring. I felt I wanted to hear it again, and indeed did so via I-Player. On the Bruckner I was less sure – particularly when I had heard the massive and – by the sound of it – overwhelming VPO Bruckner 7 with Haitink from the Proms, albeit on my inadequate alptop speakers in the South Hebron Hills on the West Bank. I thought the first movement, though fastish, was poetically and sensitively conceived, but the slow movement was too fast, particularly the rocking second theme. The third and fourth movements were bright and forward-moving. I thought the reading interesting, but it didn’t grab me.

Before Christmas, of course, there were lots of carols…. I am always struck by the contribution of Vaughan Williams to the carols’ tradition – On Christmas Night (Sussex carol), O Little Town of Bethlehem, This Endris Night, are all based on folk tunes collected by Vaughan Williams. There is an exciting tradition around where I live in the Peak District and also particularly around Sheffield – of local carols. They’re usually sung in pubs in the weeks leading up to Christmas – and, although there is a core of carols that are sung at most venues, each particular place has its own mini-tradition of carols handed down by word of mouth, and often quite competitively cherished and guarded. I have been to one or two of these in different places – the repertoire at two nearby places can vary widely -some are unaccompanied, some have a piano or organ, there is a flip chart with the words on in one place, a string quartet (quintet, sextet, septet) accompanies the singing at another, some encourage soloists, others stick to audience participation, a brass band plays at certain events, the choir takes the lead at another; but, whatever the occasion, there is always a warm welcome and a willingness to help the newcomers with words and tunes. A lot of them seem to be mainly of 18th century origin but some go back much further – e.g. the Castleton Carol, again collected by RVW – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-wqg-9bJV0.  I find the continued existence of these traditions really exciting . There are quite a few places with regular weekly sing-alongs before Christmas in the area: Castleton, Hathersage, Eyam, Foolow, Bamford and Upper Denby. ….

Once back in the UK my first live musical event was in mid-November – Opera North’s Giulio Cesare, at the Lowry. Trying to remember it 14.5 months later, the main things that stick in the mind are the excellence of the singers and the sheer fertility, variety and inventiveness of the musical numbers – almost like ’The Messiah’, every number is a ‘hit’ and a joy to listen to. I think I saw Swedish contralto Maria Sanner as Cesare and, without being Janet Baker (and I have an MP3 of JB singing extracts from this from the ENO production in the 80’s), was impressive and varied in her tones, as well as having the necessary dexterity of voice, if that’s the right word. Coloratura soprano Lucie Chartin was Cleopatra, and she, I recall, was a star, her arias delivered with power and precision. The others I don’t recall so well, nor do I remember much about the production

I had to be in London for a week at the end of November 2019 and rather gluttonously (and also anti-socially, given that I was meant to be with a group of other people debriefing on Palestine), I went to three operas in a row – Gluck’s Orpheus, Glass’ Orphee and Death in Venice  Glass’ Orphee was I recall quite a good evening but to be frank 14.5 months later I have almost totally forgotten what it was about or the details of the impact it made. Gluck’s Orpheus was more memorable – some excellent singing from Alice Coote and Sarah Tynan and above all the dance work / direction of Wayne McGregor, which made for some very striking images on stage. Having said that, it is rather a stationary work – classical unities, I suppose – and the music with the obvious exception not that memorable. Of the three Death in Venice is the undoubted masterwork. I heard it during its first London run in the early 1970’s – maybe there was a Proms performance then as well – both with Pears. This was a new production by David MacVicar which was unobtrusive and true to the work. Mark Padmore was the excellent Aschenbach and Gerard Finley the Traveller / Elderly fop / Old gondolier / Hotel manager / Hotel barber / Leader of the players. I was entranced and gripped by the different colours Britten produces in the orchestra for the different scenes, and just thought this was 5 star material – Mark Elder was the conductor.

On November 30^th I went to see the CBSO performing Falla’s Three-Cornered Hat Suites and Stravinsky’s Petrushka – good vibrant performances – and a rarity Strauss  Duett-Concertino for Clarinet and Bassoon. Jaume Santonja Espinós was the conductor

August 2019 All the blogs about live events from here on are memories after the event and not written at the time. Anything in 2021 and going forward is live!……….

Late August 2019 I went to Jerusalem for a break from Yatta and the South Hebron Hills, the surrounding villages of the West Bank, and the never-ending tension of the Israeli occupation of that area –  it was nice to be able to sit in the hotel room and listen to the Proms on I-Player and read as long as I wanted to, and I enjoyed that almost as much as any of the tourism – although the Temple Mount is very special; calm, beautifully landscaped, and lovely to sit in (or would be if the temperature weren’t 30+ degrees).  I managed to listen to the Proms I-Player Rattle Belshazzar Feast, which I thought was a bit fidgety, wayward in tempi, and not quite ferocious enough in the bits that need oomph; the Nelsons Bruckner 8 with the Leipzig Gwendhaus was, I thought, very fine indeed, though I notice some critics weren’t so enthused; I also enjoyed the Mirga CBSO Elgar/Weinberg concert. Critics were a bit sniffy about Sheku’s Elgar performance but I thought it was very sensitive, perhaps introverted, but that’s a perfectly reasonable reading of the score) – and I really enjoyed the Weinberg 3^rd Symphony. I listened on I-Player to Stuart Skelton and Das Lied von der Erde – this was a little earlier on my last night in the UK – I toyed with the idea of checking into my hotel at Luton Airport in the mid-afternoon and then going back down to London to see the concert live. In the end I thought it was too much hassle and that I would listen in the hotel room. I listened to about 10 bars, but the whole experience sounded so painful I switched the music off and went to another sort of bar…I listened to the Martha Argerich Tchaik PC 1 too – great if wayward performance!…….

Later in October, again on a 3 day break, I went to Nazareth – wonderful fusion food, I gorged myself, and again had lots of beer, something  we’re not allowed in the West Bank – and played Bruckner on Amazon Music

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Normally I would go to 8-9 Proms but I only saw a few Proms this year, as I was starting my 3 months volunteer human rights observer work in Palestine from 2 August 2019. I got to see:

Haydn’s Creation – which was in some ways the most enjoyable evening, because it was a really joyful performance of a work which I have never really been that interested in; I have a recording of course, but it must be years since I played it. I remember going to one performance about 8-9 years ago at the RFH – starry names (I think the OAE and Rattle) and leaving after the first half because I was so bored. This one was much less starry  – the BBC Phil, soloists who were competent but not outstanding. The people who made the concert special, I thought, were the ad hoc choir, called The BBC Proms Youth Choir, essentially the choruses of various music colleges and universities, and the BBC Phil’s new chief conductor, Omer Meir Welber. The latter directed from the harpsichord (which, mysteriously got changed at the interval, I thought, but a review said it had been changed to a fortepiano – not sure why!) but, despite what I would have thought was a handicap to expressive control, he led a really rhythmically tight, punchy performance that moved sprightly along; he also encouraged some both energetic and, at times, beautifully phrased quiet moments – when moon and stars appear, and when the birds start singing, for instance. Most of the time he was almost using his elbows to conduct, as he bounced up and down doing the continuo bits. The choir(s) – 4 different groups – was/were large, and sounded amazing, and not at all either stodgy (which might have been the case with an older group of similar size) or hesitant (as young singers). I have to say I was totally gripped by this work in a way I never have been before.  Much of it I suppose is standard Haydn, but illuminated by many hundreds of little touches of genius in the accompaniment and inner voices of the orchestra (the strings of which in this performance incidentally seemed to be playing without vibrato). Apparently and I suppose appropriately David Attenborough was in the audience though I didn’t spot him!

The two concerts with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and Yannick Nezet Seguin were on the whole extraordinarily good. The orchestra’s sound is very refined – beautiful woodwind and string playing, with lovely dove-tailing of sound from instrumental group to another. But, crucially – and perhaps this was also the effect of Yannick – it was a beauty that always seemed to be serving the music and the intentions of the composer, not just a beautiful ‘sound for sounds’ sake’ such as I’ve complained about with Rattle and the BPO. At the same time the playing was also very energetic and powerful when it needed to be, particularly in the finale of the Shostakovich – brilliant trumpet and timpani playing. The performance of Beethoven 2 was very good but I thought the conductor was wrong in the (too fast) tempi chosen for the first movement, which the BRSO could well keep up with well enough but (a familiar theme of mine) which diminished the power and energy of the music. Although I seem to have heard a lot of Shostakovich 5’s in recent years – including with Gergiev and his Maryinsky orchestra – this I thought was the best of them – a particularly moving slow movement with the wonderful BRSO strings hardly whispering at times in grief and then building up to an enormous climax (the dynamics of the performance were extreme, but , again, not in a self-indulgent show-offy way but enhancing one’s understanding and appreciation of the piece). And the balance achieved – whether this is Yannick or what the orchestra naturally does I am not sure – was extraordinary; details I had never heard before in the Shostakovitch came across clearly in beautifully layered sound.

Much the same in the second concert – a superb performance of Sibelius 1, a light extremely well crafted Prokofiev VC 2, and a riotous orchestral suite from Der Rosenkavalier (I need to look up who compiled the suite – it had more ‘numbers’ in it than some).

Before the second performance of the BRSO a rather extraordinary thing happened – in the 70’s I used to go to the Proms (and other London musical events throughout the year) with a group of University friends. In particular there were two guys from the same Cambridge college as me. I last saw the one in about 1988 and the other about the same time. Then all of us lost touch with each other, disappearing into domesticity. Amazingly both of them – the two had made chance contact at a concert a few years ago – turned up next to me in the Proms queue. We had a riotous reunion in the pub afterwards, reminiscing (one of them was the other ‘official’ of the Cambridge University Wagner Society apart from me) about the dinner we had with Friedlind Wagner (myfriend reminded me she clammed up when he asked her about what it was like growing up with Cosima, but, as I recall, was fairly open about her mother wanting to murder her), and a Wagner Society coach journey to see the first night of the Goodall Siegfried in April 1973, when someone hit the emergency button on the bus trying to demonstrate Siegfried splitting the anvil….Anyway, we have vowed to keep in touch

I went to a screen showing of the Glyndebourne Barber of Seville recorded in 2016, in Sheffield. The star of the show was definitely the conductor,  Enrique Mazzola, who produced a very zippy, energised and crisply articulated sound from the orchestra; very different from the slightly ploddy and muddy sound I remember from the Coliseum orchestra in the 70’s. They really energised the performance, and the percussion added to the fun rather than overwhelming it. I do think it is a great work, if escapist and ‘light’, and any performance of this standard is going to be hugely enjoyable – and it was. I did have some question-marks though about some – well one – of the singers, though. Almaviva is a bit of a cypher in Rossini but Taylor Stayton did his best, and he handled the decorative elements of the singing very well. Alessandro Corbelli was brilliant as Bartolo – he is a very skilled comedy performer and every gesture, every facial nuance counted.  The Figaro was Bjorn Burger – I thought a bit pedestrian in nuance but did the articulation of his arias very effectively. The most well known singer was Danielle de Niese as Rosina, and I thought her portrayal of the role was a bit over the top – so arrogant, so cross that she became a not very sympathetic figure. The coloratura elements of the singing were done brilliantly  but there wasn’t much lightness and subtlety. The production was decent, but didn’t really do more than play the obvious gags; it wasn’t really very original. Lots of good ensemble work but you couldn’t help feeling it could have been a bit better

I went to see The Tao of Glass in Manchester. The performance I went to was fantastic!!!  It’s a difficult thing to describe – a play with music is a starter, but the ‘play’ is really more of a set of meditations by the actor and director Phelim McDermott on the nature of his relationship with Philip Glass, and some themes of Buddhist and Dao-ist philosophy. He was obsessed by Glass’s music as a teenager, and had a vision of one day working with him; decades later, directing on Broadway, there was a plan to collaborate with Glass and the children’s writer Maurice Sendak on one of the latter’s stories – but Sendak died before this really could get underway. McDermott then sold Glass the idea that we experienced today in the theatre – 10 scenes, each accompanied by a piece of newly composed Glass music. Some of the scenes relate to stories from the Rig Veda or Dao-ist literature and the writings of Lao-Tsu; some of the scenes are from McDermott’s own life, sometimes funny, sometimes almost trivial, but each with a relationship to the underlying ‘going with the flow’ Dao-ist thinking. The scenes in McDermott’s life are enacted with the help of three puppeteers who operate puppets, but also do wonderful things with sheets of plastic, creating with three sheets for instance a credible image of Lao-Tsu walking through the streets and being challenged by a student. I found the most moving of Glass’ music was in response to McDermott’s friend’s theories about their being three levels of consciousness – an everyday, crowded, rational one; a dream level, and a level where ‘the One’, where some sort of unity in the world, the ‘divine’, in Western language, is manifested. The particular scene envisaged someone in a coma, at that third level, and Glass’ music was responding to that; it was actually very moving, despite Glass’ very limited musical ‘vocabulary’. I attach some photos

There were 4 musicians – piano, violin and clarinet and percussion. There was also a self-playing piano revolving round the stage, towards the end,  playing Glass’ own recording, while the musicians supported.  This attracted a very different crowd from the normal Manchester opera/concert scene, and all the better for it

On Thursday I went to Dvorak’s ‘Rusalka’ at Glyndebourne, which was, I thought, very good indeed – 5 star stuff. It’s a fairy tale, with a mermaid creature giving up her tail and ability to swim to fall in love with a human, who then betrays her. I find  it a very haunting work – the music is understated but quietly and beautifully lyrical, and the translation used in the surtitles made the work sound contemporary-  a damaged young woman looking for affection and being exploited, with some measure of forgiveness for the man at the end that he may or may not deserve. In terms of the production, while there were plenty of directorial touches that expressed an engaged and creative presence, the basic approach was to ‘tell the story’, and leave the implications and undertones to speak to the individuals watching the opera. The only other time I’ve seen ‘Rusalka’ before was at the ENO in the early 80’s when the staging had been as a giant Victorian Nursery, with quite heavy Freudian overtones, from what I can dimly recall. I doubted during the performance if I would ever see it again and felt it was a relief it was a straightforward presentation – but I’ve just realised there’s a new production at ENO in March 2020 – well worth going to see, though how the production will be, goodness knows – the same mezzo sings the Witch in both productions. It is the sort of work Directors can get very carried away with. There were strange echoes – certainly in words and drama, occasionally even in the music – of the Rhinemaidens and Erde (the latter relating to Jezibaba the Witch). Mahler apparently liked the work and conducted it in the early 1900’s – it comes from that Viennese/ Secession / Freudian world, I think. It’s very far removed from the happy folky world of Dvorak’s 8th symphony, say, although there are a couple of folk dances within it.

The basic set was for Acts 1 and 3 a curved set with a symbolic pool at its centre and the second act used a kind of catwalk downstage and a rectangular box at the rear for the marriage celebrations.   Costumes were standard East European folky for the most part, with some almost-can-can dancing wood sprites, but Rusalka had a modern tight short dress and her father glowed an unearthly green. There are some spectacular coups de theatre – eg Rusalka’s sisters, who descend from the flies with 20 ft tails.

Sally Matthews, as Rusalka was a fabulous singing actor  – looking youthful, moving well, and she projected the sexual desire in the role effectively – at one point she rips off her knickers to have sex with the Prince on the floor of the wedding celebrations, before shamefacedly having to put them on again when the guests arrive. A strange aspect of the role is that with the Prince she hardly speaks/sings – her, and the opera’s, most famous aria, The Song to The Moon, comes in the first 10 minutes of the work, when she is still part of the mysterious natural world – and so that puts a big focus on the person playing Rusalka to put across her passion for, her obsession with, the Prince, by body movements alone, for most of the 2nd Act.  Hers was a totally credible portrayal and very moving – also very good was the Witch, Patricia Bardon, thought a bit soft in tone so that the voice didn’t always ride over the orchestra. The other people I hadn’t heard of – Evan Le Roy Johnson a good Prince, though using a bit too much of the ‘head’ tones at the end, and Alexander Roslavets as Rusalka’s Father, a warm and flowing voice.

The house is surprisingly large – it seats 1200, and has a warm acoustic; a lot of wood. I’ve been there only once before – I found that voices come across clearly; the orchestral sound is warm but doesn’t overwhelm the singers for the most part.  I don’t really know the work but Robin Ticciati and the LPO seemed to perform it well, and the music ebbed and flowed in the way it needed to; some beautiful woodwind playing, particularly from the flutes.

I find the Glyndebourne ambience outside irritating – I think for women it’s better; something smart seems to be the only criterion, and that’s fair enough for a festival context. For men, my view is that the emphasis on dinner jackets and black ties is ridiculous – I don’t have a DJ and I don’t want one, and I’m certainly not going to buy one, and there were a few other – though very few – people also, like me, dressed in lounge suits. I am past caring if I stand out….The atmosphere is rather forcedly jolly  – a lot of people seemed rather self conscious and I wondered to what extent they were there for the opera, and how much for being ‘seen’. That said, I did hear some informed comments about this and other operas, and there was a refreshing lack of people taking selfies and scrolling down their phones all the time. My friend, like most people, makes an enormous fuss over the picnic with champagne, glasses, plates, folding table and chairs etc etc; completely over the top, in a good way. My heart went out sympathetically to two middle-aged German women sitting next to us who were sitting on a rug, and eating Pret sandwiches; this struck me as far more sensible (and to be fair, didn’t look particularly eccentric in context – Glyndebourne seems pretty tolerant). The weather was beautiful, which helps, of course; the other time I’ve been there it was cold, with occasional lashes of rain, and the wind was blowing in a way that meant you had to clutch your champagne glass for dear life.

When something is done as well as this, you do feel it’s on a different level from standard repertory performances at ENO or Covent Garden; the cast just has more time to work together and know each other, and that comes across in the unforced detailed nature of the acting and the cast interactions- Bayreuth has that same feel…