Ariadne auf Naxos, Glyndebourne, 19 June 2026

Images: © Glyndebourne Productions Ltd. Photo: Tristram Kenton

Music Master – Michael Kraus
Major Domo – William Relton
Lackey – Oliver Williams
Officer – Owen Lucas
Composer – Samantha Hankey
Tenor, Bacchus – David Butt Philip
Wigmaker – Hector Bloggs
Zerbinetta – Alina Wunderlin
Prima Donna, Ariadne – Rachel Willis-Sørensen
Dancing Master – Ru Charlesworth
Naiad – Anna Denisova
Dryad – Ekaterina Chayka-Rubinstein
Echo – Eirin Rognerud
Harlequin – Mikhail Timoshenko
Scaramuccio – Caspar Singh
Truffaldino – Lian James Karai
Brighella – Liam Bonthrone

Director – Laurent Pelly
Set designs – Massimo Troncanetti
Lighting – Marco Giusti

London Philharmonic Orchestra
Robin Ticciati (conductor)

 

Strauss and Hofmannsthal’s Ariadne auf Naxos should in many ways be the ideal Glyndebourne opera. It is indeed pretty much the ideal opera for any opera house, given its metatheatrical treatment not only of the genre itself, but of almost any aesthetic standpoint anyone in the audience might care to adopt (including none at all). All are fondly mocked and cherished; all can see and hear themselves. The question of art as ‘entertainment’ in a ‘country-house opera’ setting in which the picnic can take almost as long as the performance, itself increasingly prey to what the late Michael Tanner christened the ‘Glyndebourne guffaw’, is especially keen here. So too, for many of us, is the necessity for it to be more than merely entertainment, for the authors’ twin, arguably conflicting ideas and strategies of transformation (Verwandlung) to come into play. It is an opera, then, to be treated with good humour and seriousness, affection and critical distance, these and the opera’s other binaries all informing one another and reminding us why we might have fallen in love with the genre in the first place—even to the extent of catching trains, buses, and more in the madness of decamping to rural Sussex with hampers and the like for an afternoon in the uncharacteristically burning sun. Thinking and writing about opera are part of that joy and madness too, not least since one is almost inevitably setting oneself up to be lampooned in this context (that is, in the unlikely event anyone should really care what one has to say). Without hedging or situating further, I am somewhat saddened to say that it was only in the realm of vocal artistry and individual dramatic performances that this new production shone, staging and conducting leaving much to be desired, even to the extent of coming across in unduly provisional form. 

Let us start with the good news then. Our artists – and artistes – acquitted themselves with excellence ‘as themselves’ in the Prologue and, where relevant and appropriate, as something more in the Opera. Rachel Willis-Sørensen resisted any temptation there may have been to present the Prima Donna as a mere caricature; this was a singer who knew her worth, certainly, but without seeming silly or monstrous. Her seriousness – that word again – in preparing for Ariadne was genuine, as was her achievement in a splendid ‘Es gibt ein Reich…’ and beyond. One might say much the same of David Butt Philip’s Tenor/Bacchus, whose keen attention to words as well as music ensured uncommon depth, not least in furthering our appreciation of where (and whom) he was coming from, in Circe’s guise. Given the enormous technical and other demands placed on Zerbinetta, it is striking how few fail. It is really one of those roles one does not consider attempting unless one can. Alina Wunderlin proved no exception, whether as immensely likeable artist or purveyor of pinpoint coloratura thrills that yet did not mask a necessary sadness behind them. Samantha Hankey’s Composer was a sincere, similarly likeable portrayal, offering an unmistakeably human trouser role in various of its complexities and possibilities. There was much to admire elsewhere, too, the cast assembled in depth with vivid cameos from a world-weary Michael Kraus as Music Master, and Ru Charlesworth as his overtly camp, yet similarly professional opposite number in the world of dance. A haughty Major Domo (William Relton), a fine trio of Rhinemaidens or Naiad, Dryad, and Echo, and a spirited desert island troupe offered other highlights.

Insofar as Laurent Pelly’s production offered a framework, or at least setting, for those performances it functioned well enough. Too often, though, the lack of an evident directoral hand was felt: conceptually, but even in imparting much beyond the sense of bringing the cast together. Was this in some sense the Composer’s dream, suggested by his/her return to view proceedings? If so, that seems a workable, even promising idea, but little was done with it, beyond presenting a Prologue set that combined Rococo and modern, and an Opera wilderness around which characters walked, more or less directed. If Pelly did not get in the way of the work’s dramatic themes, nor did he seem interested in bringing them out either. There is much one could do here to suggest more than the sum of its parts, yet any attempt to do so passed me by. Likewise when it came to Robin Ticciati’s painting-by-numbers conducting, notwithstanding the strengths of the London Philharmonic in itself. We lumbered from section to section, with little to suggest connection between them. A strangely motoric opening intrigued, as if Stravinsky – who openly despised this opera, or claimed to – had been set the task of reinterpreting it, perhaps in the light of Pulcinella. That was soon binned, though, another, arbitrary idea come to replace it for a minute or two, and so on. Again, it gave an impression of what the work might be, but little more than that. A sense of magic beyond the vocal remained stubbornly elusive.

Lohengrin, Deutsche Oper, 10 September 2017

Deutsche Oper, Berlin

Images: Marcus Lieberenz, from the 2012 premiere (different cast)

King Henry the Fowler – Marko Mimica

Lohengrin – Brandon Jovanovich

Elsa – Rachel Willis-Sǿrensen

Friedrich von Telramund – Thomas Johannes Mayer

Herald – Dong-Hwan Lee

Ortrud – Anna Smirnova

Brabantian Noblemen – Ya-Chung Huang, Andrew Dickinson, Byung Gil Kim, Dean Murphy

Pages – Saskia Meusel, Andrea Schwarzbach, Cordula Messer, Martina Metzler

Kasper Holten (director)

Steffen Aarfing (designs)

Jesper Kongshaug (lighting)

Claudia Gotta (revival director)

Chorus and Supplementary Chorus (chorus master: Jeremy Bines) of the Deutsche Oper, Berlin 

Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper, Berlin

Donald Runnicles (conductor)

The last time I had seen Lohengrin at the Deutsche Oper it must have been one of the final performances of the old Götz Friedrich production. It had worn well; indeed, I wrote that ‘it would be better to retain Friedrich’s production for a while longer than to err by rushing into replacing it.’ On the basis of seeing this, already the twenty-fourth performance of Kasper Holten’s production since it was first staged in 2012, there was no rushing, although the pace of change was nevertheless swift. Holten’s staging at its best, especially in the second and third acts, has something pertinent and – to me, at least – new to say. It has made me think about a work I know reasonably well, which is surely precisely what we should hope and look for in new stagings of repertory works.

Holten’s production has three main strands, in which Steffen Aarfing’s designs and Jesper Kongshaug’s highly dramatic lighting, play, as one would hope, an integral part. The first seems to me less successful, although it is always difficult to know how much of that is a matter of changes made once a work is in repertoire and rehearsal time available. The wartime setting of the work is highlighted, but intermittently. I tend to think it should either be more present or less; as it is, the slight coming and going of what seems almost to be a Konzept proves a little distracting or even confusing. It is certainly to the fore in the First Act Prelude – conducted, by the way, with magnificent breadth and depth by Donald Runnicles: perhaps his very finest moment here – when we see a battlefield, strewn with corpses, which women then visit in grief, one emitting a very loud scream indeed at orchestral climax. (It will be echoed by Elsa when she sees Gottfried’s corpse at the close: a powerful moment indeed.) Holten says that he views the Prelude as a kind of requiem, which seems to me a misunderstanding of both music and mass, but anyway. Uniforms are to the fore throughout, suggesting soldiers from different eras, the light mixing of eras intentional, so as not to fix, although again I am not sure to what end precisely. War between Germany and Denmark over Schleswig-Holstein, appropriately enough, seems to have formed part of Holten’s inspiration, even though it came some time after Lohengrin’s genesis and first performance. There is certainly particular resonance in Berlin to the heavy royal-imperial imagery of Prussia-Germany, not least in the Tiergarten’s Siegessäule, albeit purely in the memorial sense, rather than as the queer emblem it has since become: perhaps a missed opportunity.

For there seems little doubting Lohengrin’s agenda. Whatever it is he is hiding, it is not in pursuit of anything other than what we should expect. He acts in unusually predatory fashion towards Elsa in the third act – quite chilling, in fact – and treats her with utter contempt thereafter. If he is not going to have her, then what is the point? Otherwise, he is, quite simply, a politician: a charismatic politician, yes, but one we can see through immediately and do. I do not think I have seen so unremittingly negative a portrayal of the ‘hero’ in this work, and it works very well indeed, confronting one with questions one might prefer never to have been asked, let alone answered. The angel wings – an angel, a memorial, a swan? – are taken off once in private. The crowd loves them, though, and he responds in kind, snake oil salesman, perhaps even thaumaturge, that he is. Does this disregard the text unduly? I do not think so, for what he says gains new meaning in such a context. Is he lying? Is Wagner? Or is he at least deluded? The legacy of the charismatic hero, not least in the wake of war, is after all a problematic one, to say the least, especially in Germany. (It is in that respect that I wished the wartime idea had been pressed further, since it comes across a little unclearly in the crucial final scene.) If only Wagner’s original ‘Führer’ had been retained, as it was, for instance, in Peter Konwitschny’s celebrated staging, which I saw in Leipzig. None of this, of course, would have been possible without a fine performance in the title role. We certainly had that, however, in the case of Brandon Jovanovich, whose engagement with complexities of work and production was unquestionably one of the finest I have seen and heard. This was no unearthly hero; this was preening, fatally attractive man and politician, whom we knew would lead us to rack and ruin, although we felt unable to stop him. Jovanovich’s range of vocal colours proved far greater than in many assumptions of the role: never, however, for its own sake, but always in the service of the drama.

Elsa’s self-realisation is the other main strand – or at least was for me. Perhaps it was a matter of execution, or my own reception, but I did not feel that her role, where she was coming from, and what quite was going on came across strongly enough in the first act. Yes, she is blindfolded, and will soon begin to see, but her progress through the crowd, intriguingly led by Ortrud, seems a little confused, and not in a good way. Thereafter, though, the idea, familiar through Holten’s Copenhagen Ring, of viewing the work from a heroine’s standpoint has much to recommend it, especially when the tragedy truly becomes hers. The crowd remains in Lohengrin’s thrall, but Elsa has discovered disillusionment, even the abyss. Rachel Willis-Sǿrensen’s performance in the first act proved somewhat disappointing, her shrillness of tone extending into sections of the second too. However, she picked herself up commendably, and ended up giving a splendidly engaged performance, meriting the character’s shift into the dramatic foreground.

There was much to enjoy in other performances too. Thomas Johannes Mayer was suffering from a heavy cold, but did a sterling job under the circumstances. Some, I suppose, might have found the vibrato of Anna Smirnova as Ortrud a little much. I did not, for there was always a centre to her singing. Moreover, if there were occasionally a little of the pantomime villainess to her stage action, I suspect that was part of the point; if not, it nevertheless grabbed the attention. She was certainly giving the performance her all, and that was really what mattered. Marko Mimica proved a subtle King Henry, the competing demands of role and production – not for the first time, we are moved to ask ‘how does he fit into all of this?’ –questioningly, fruitfully balanced. Choral singing, as one might expect at this house, was excellent, as was the playing of the Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper, very much in its element throughout. Runnicles paced the work well, its ebb and flow apparent without being forced upon one’s attention. There was something attractively self-effacing, although far from anonymous, to conducting that was clearly born of deep knowledge of Wagner’s score.

Götterdämmerung, Royal Opera, 9 October 2012

Royal Opera House, Covent Garden

First Norn – Maria Radner

Second Norn – Karen Cargill
Third Norn – Elisabeth Meister
Brünnnhilde – Susan Bullock
Siegfried – Stefan Vinke
Gunther – Peter Coleman-Wright
Gutrune – Rachel Willis-Sørensen
Hagen – Sir John Tomlinson
Waltraute – Mihoko Fujimura
Alberich – Wolfgang Koch
Wellgunde – Kai Rüütel
Woglinde – Nadine Livingston
Flosshilde – Harriet Williams

Keith Warner (director)

Walter Sutcliffe (associate director)
Amy Lane (first assistant director)
Stefanos Lazaridis, Matthew Deely (set designs)
Marie-Jeanne Lecca (costumes)
Wolfgang Göbbel (lighting)
Mic Pool, Dick Straker (video designs)
Claire Gaskin, Michael Barry (movement)                        

Royal Opera Chorus (chorus master: Renato Balsadonna)

Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Sir Antonio Pappano (conductor)

 

I am not at all sure what is meant by the claim on the Royal Opera House’s website that ‘Keith Warner presents a bravura production of the fourth opera in the Ring cycle’. Anyway, ‘bravura’ or otherwise, here came Götterdämmerung, or should it have been Wagner-Dämmerung? If this is the level of Wagner performance to which we can look forward in 2013, his bicentenary, then it would be better to shut up shop now. Siegfried had had a good few virtues, as well as failings; I had blithely assumed that Götterdämmerung would have been vaguely comparable. Pride, as Wotan discovers, comes before a fall.

 

Little had changed in terms of Keith Warner’s production, problematical in a number of ways in 2007, though the production was far from the weakest link in the performance as a whole. Warner’s staging lays claim to a number of positive features. The role allotted to the gods, whose twilight we are supposed to be enacting, is a particular strength. They appear, as they ought yet seldom do, during the second act, as statues, vain objects of sacrifice. This was recognisable as  the decaying Gibichung society Patrice Chéreau so rightly characterised as ageing, pointing to the increasing desperation of its rituals — rituals which would seek some sort of moral code in a post-religious society that knows no morality, indeed finds it impossible, as Chéreau put it, to ‘know’. (See  Pierre, Boulez and P. Chéreau, ‘Commentaires sur “Mythologie et Idéologie”,’ in Programmhefte der Bayreuther Festspiele, 1977, VI, p. 81.) Wotan, I think, reappears from afar to view Siegfried’s death ; Loge summons and is consumed by fire at the end ; the statues are burned. There is also a nice – well, provocative – suggestion of incest between Gunther and Gutrune.

 

Alas, a great deal of incoherence remains. Why Grane is represented by a mere skull I cannot imagine. The ultimate indignity is suffered when Brünnhilde’s trusty steed is passed around as if the characters are worried that, when the music stops – one is tempted to add: ‘if only...’ – one of them will suffer a forfeit. It would be perfectly possible to have an off-stage horse, but a dead one seems pointless. Why does Waltraute appear in ‘civilian’ guise, dressed as Brünnhilde is now ? Is not the whole point of the scene the contrast between inhuman Valkyrie and Brünnhilde as human being ?

 

Perhaps the most glaring sequence of confusion is seen in the final scene to the first act. What I wrote in 2007 still holds word for word, so I shall save time by repeating myself: ‘Hagen’s continued presence on stage, following the move from the Hall of the Gibichungs to Brünnhilde’s rock, did not augur well. We all know that in a sense he is “still there”: his dramatic shadow hangs over the rest of the act, and the music could hardly make this clearer. Actually to have him on stage added little, except confusion as to where the action was taking place. But this was as nothing to the final scene (in which, needless to say, he remained on stage). Anyone who did not know what was supposed to be going on would have been utterly confused, since we had Siegfried as himself, wearing the Tarnhelm, and Siegfried transformed by the Tarnhelm into Gunther, on stage at the same time. All of the singing came from – audibly and visually – from the former Siegfried. This was logically incoherent, and the whole mess could easily have been avoided by following Wagner’s directions.’ The end is marred not only by having Hagen, Brünnhilde, and the vassals run around like children in the playground. Quite why the Rhinemaidens strip part way through, as opposed to being nude throughout, is anyone’s guess. Conflagration, such as it is, cannot come soon enough. What we are to make of the girl standing in a ring – a belated advertisement for the Olympic Games? – I do not know. The ‘watchers’ are an athletic bunch, though they are not called upon to put that athleticism to use; a rather more mixed sample of humanity might have been more to Wagner’s point. (Chéreau’s conclusion remains an object lesson here.)

 

There were some good solo performances. Mihoko Fujimura, arguably the world’s reigning Waltraute, injected as much passion as Antonio Pappano’s lethargic conducting would permit into her scene. Rachel Willis-Sørensen surprised me as an uncommonly womanly Gutrune, an eminently creditable object of Siegfried’s diverted affections. John Tomlinson’s Hagen had strength where it counted, even if he sounded a little genial to begin with. The scene with Wolfgang Koch’s once-again excellent Alberich was a rare highlight.  And Stefan Vinke’s Siegfried, if hardly perfect, and a little flat of tone to begin with, was far better than one generally hears. The young Siegfried seems more suited to his voice, for whatever reason, or perhaps he was simply on better form a couple of nights before. Nevertheless, there was much to admire in a performance of stamina and considerable strength. The Norns and Rhinemaidens impressed, as did Renato Balsadonna’s splendid chorus.

 

Susan Bullock’s Brünnhilde was by and large a disappointment. Indeed, I am sure that this is the first time I have heard a Brünnhilde who was not considerably superior to her Siegfried. Bullock’s voice, as in Siegfried, sounds strained by the role. The contrast between her struggling and Fujimura’s proud performance was unfortunate, to say the least. Peter Coleman-Wright’s Gunther was worse, however, quite the worst Gunther I have heard. Persistently out of tone, vocally insecure, he sounded at least 103 – and not in a good way.

 

Pappano’s conducting was the gravest problem, reflected in a frequent tiredness sounding from the orchestra. The opening of the Prologue actually began rather well, at least in retrospect. If Wagner’s metaphysical depths remained unplumbed, then at least there was fluency, which one cannot always say with respect to Pappano’s Wagner. From the departure of the Norns, it was, alas, to be mostly downhill. Listlessness, born of an apparent lack of understanding of harmonic motion, made much of the performance seem interminable. Whether the Waltraute scene was the longest I have ever heard I have no idea, but it certainly sounded like it. The Vassals Scene was conducted with rigidity, as if it were a march from Aida. By the end of the second act, so little seemed to be at stake, so little was the score’s richness penetrated, that we might have been listening to an episode of Crossroads, an impression heightened by the shaky platform – was this deliberate? – on which the characters were walking. Lethargy was accompanied by a sound-world somewhat akin to the opaque meaningless people who do not like Debussy ascribe to Debussy. And so it went on and on and on. By the time the final theme – the glorification of Brünnhilde, redemption through/of love, whatever one wishes to call it – sounded, initial near-occlusion of the strings by a bizarrely prominent kettledrum roll seemed neither here nor there.

 

There are several Wagner conductors with connections to the Royal Opera who could have made not just a better job of this, but most likely produced great or at least very good performances. It may well now be impossible, but heaven and earth should have been moved to persuade Bernard Haitink to return to conduct, if not the Ring, then at least some Wagner following his 2007 Parsifal. Whatever happened to Christian Thielemann? Whatever it was ought to have been put right. Daniele Gatti and Semyon Bychkov might have been called upon. Simon Rattle and Mark Elder have both impressed in Wagner, if at a slightly less exalted level. At the Berlin State Opera, it is quite understandable that Daniel Barenboim tends to conduct many of the Wagner performances from Das Rheingold onwards; there are few, after all, to match him in this repertoire. It is less understandable that a conductor whose strengths lie elsewhere should monopolise performances of the music dramas in London. Parsifal awaits in 2013.

Le nozze di Figaro, Royal Opera, 14 February 2012

Royal Opera House, Covent Garden

Images: Royal Opera House/Bill Cooper, 2012
Figaro (Ildebrando d'Arcangelo)

Figaro – Ildebrando d’Arcangelo
Susanna – Aleksandra Kurzak
Bartolo – Carlo Lepore
Marcellina – Ann Murray
Cherubino – Anna Bonitatibus
Count Almaviva – Lucas Meacham
Don Basilio – Bonaventura Bottone
Countess Almaviva – Rachel Willis-Sørensen
Antonio – Jeremy White
Don Curzio – Harry Nicoll
Barbarina – Susanna Gaspar
Bridesmaids – Melissa Alder, Louise Armit

David McVicar (director)
Leah Hausman (movement, revival director)
Tanya McCallin (designs)
Paule Constable (lighting)

Royal Opera Chorus (chorus master: Renato Balsadonna)
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Sir Antonio Pappano (conductor)


David McVicar’s production of The Marriage of Figaro, previously staged in 2006 (twice), 2008, and 2010, now returns as part of the Royal Opera House’s ‘Da Ponte cycle’. I cannot help wishing that funds had stretched to commissioning three new productions, preferably from the same director, with a sense of how the works might actually cohere as a ‘cycle’. Nevertheless, and despite a good number of reservations I continue to entertain, McVicar’s production remains preferable to Jonathan Miller’s vulgar Così fan tutte, and, assuming it not to have been overhauled beyond recognition, Francesca Zambello’s vacuous Don Giovanni. Moving the action to the Restoration period does no especial harm, but the motivation remains obscure. If the point be to highlight Talleyrand’s observation concerning the restored Bourbons, that they had learned nothing and forgotten nothing, then it needs to be made, not assumed. The Count’s droit de seigneur is a gross exaggeration in the eighteenth century; in the nineteenth, it merely seems incredible. ‘Absolutism’ was of course a nineteenth-century way of understanding the ancien régime, painting a complex society in the bold, often crude colours of monarchs such as Charles X. A good deal of sophistication would be needed to make the shift coherent, yet here the political seems notable for the most part by its absence. We have neither a society of orders nor an emergent class-based society, merely a house with hyperactive servants in attractive costumes. The result, whatever the intention, seems to be pandering to devotees of mindless ‘costume dramas’. It all nevertheless looks good, and certain moments are very well handled, especially the magical falling of dusk between the third and fourth acts. (Incidentally, when audience members are relentlessly intent upon disrupting the action with mid-act applause, why do they then fall silent at the end of an act? Mystifying!) The servants’ running about during the Overture remains an unnecessary irritant – can anyone really think that Mozart’s music deserves to be drowned out by footsteps? – and Leah Hausman’s revival direction, sadly, tends towards the Carry On school, only encouraging a vocal, puerile section of the audience, about which more anon.

Susanna (Aleksandra Kursak), Figaro, Marcellina (Ann Murray)

The greatest surprise of the evening was perhaps Sir Antonio Pappano’s conducting. There were problems: too often, he seems to view Mozart as aspiring towards Rossini, and the consequent motor rhythms have no place whatsoever in Mozart’s music. Certain aspects of phrasing also suffered in that respect, perhaps most glaringly in the Overture; articulation, where desperately needed, came there none. The use of natural horns was at best questionable; their rasping at the conclusion of Figaro’s fourth act aria was unpleasant in the extreme. That said, and with the notable exception of the end of the second act, Pappano did not harry the score; indeed, there were moments when he clearly communicated his delight in its subtleties. Woodwind might not have ravished in the way they did for Sir Colin Davis in 2010, but they seduced nevertheless. Tempi convinced for the most part, and there was little of the tendency towards mere ‘accompaniment’ that has often held back this conductor’s work previously. I seem to be the only person who regrets the 'traditional' cuts in the fouth act, but regret them I do.

Casting Figaro successfully seems trickier than one would expect. Even in 2010, a simply astounding male team of Erwin Schrott (Figaro) and Marius Kwiecien (the Count) had to endure sub-par contributions from their Susanna and Countess. Here the undoubted star was Aleksandra Kursak’s Susanna, ever musical, ever lively, and above all ever alert to the twists and turns Da Ponte and Mozart lovingly throw her way. One could not, for the duration of the performance, imagine it being done better any other way. Phrasing was telling but unobtrusive, likewise her sideways glances. Ildebrando d’Arcangelo has never lacked stage presence, and his voice at its dark-chocolate best remains as attractive as his handsome visage and figure. There were, however, a good few moments, especially earlier on, when his delivery lacked focus. Lucas Meachem’s Count suffered similarly, though he also lacked his valet’s presence – a serious drawback, alas. Rachel Willis-Sørensen’s Countess was a serious disappointment: I have never heard ‘Porgi, amor’ so ill-tuned, nor so squally. She improved as time went on, but throughout lacked grace and, straightforwardly, character. The Cherubino of Anna Bonatatibus also disappointed: ill-focused and short-breathed. Even the Marcellina of a stalwart such as Ann Murray, an artist I admire greatly, sometimes sounded out of sorts. And would directors please cease their fixation with turning Don Basilio into a camp monstrosity? It is entirely unwarranted in either libretto or score, and has simply become a tedious cliché.

Finally, alas, a character that was all too present on this occasion: the audience, or at least a considerable section thereof. I had been tempted to open with the words, ‘more in sorrow than in anger,’ but that would have misled, for both emotions ran to the surface dealing with so disruptive a crowd. All manner of disruption was present, unremittingly so. Barely a bar went by without a cough or two. Objects were dropped left, right, and centre – and I am not referring to the stage business. A watch alarm made a charming accompaniment to ‘Porgi, amor’, though we had to wait a little longer for telephones to make their first appearance. Worst of all was the incessant, moronic laughter, perhaps to a certain extent elicited by more dubious aspects of the production; but really, if one finds someone walking onstage with a dog intrinsically hilarious, then one may need to seek treatment. The slightest reference – via the surtitles, be it noted – to anything sexual was met with all the maturity of a convention for non-recovering Benny Hill Show addicts. I should say that those people needed to get out more, except I should much rather they stayed at home. Most unforgivable was the laughter that greeted those words: ‘Contessa, perdono’. McVicar’s production brings a true sense of revelation at that point, the show-stopping appearance of the Countess, ravishing and in more than one sense graceful, fully in tune with Mozart’s approaching benediction. What is even remotely hilarious about seeking a forgiveness that goes beyond even the humanity of the Countess to the Almighty Himself, that ‘peace … which passeth all understanding’? Even if somehow one were to find that hysterically amusing – presumably one would then guffaw through King Lear or the Missa Solemnis – one might have some regard for fellow members of the audience, those who might have come to hear Mozart’s score. As the gentleman seated next to me commented during the curtain calls, it made one long to be Ludwig II, alone with one’s art. None of this is, of course, in any sense the fault of the Royal Opera House, but perhaps an announcement requesting silence during performance and the occasional summary execution, pour encourager les autres, might be in order.