From Walküre to Tannhäuser on Zoom

 What a spectacular parade of greats we had to visit across 10 Monday afternoons on Die Walküre, which completes my Wagner Ring on Zoom (we started with Siegfried when lockdown meant I couldn't go to Gartmore for my annual course for the Wagner Society of Scotland, moved on to Götterdämmerung, Tristan, Meistersinger and Parsifal before going back to Rheingold). A Siegmund came first (the adorable Jay Hunter Morris, previously welcomed to talk Siegfried and Tristan), then two Sieglindes (Linda Esther Gray and Natalya Romaniw), a Wotan (John Tomlinson, just before we watched the big Act 2 monologue in the Kupfer Bayreuth production, still peerless alongside Chéreau's) and a Brünnhilde (Anne Evans, ditto before the final scene in the same production).  

Natalya's visit was a first. And of course she was a delight, sure of where she's going now but doubtful of the Wagnerian path before Sieglinde came her way (I remember a student from continental Europe who said she was cancelling her Royal Opera visit because Lise Davidsen, expecting twins, had pulled out - I told her the replacement wouldn't be second best). 

Of course the Royal Opera isn't looking too good now, having gone for former Putin supporter Anna Netrebko as Tosca to launch Jakub Hrůša's first season as Music Director in September when it could have highlighted La Romaniw, a Welsh-Ukrainian exponent of the role worldwide. Natalya is in any case singing Tosca for Welsh National Opera, so that's where to see it. I've decided I'll cover the Royal Opera version for The Arts Desk when Aleksandra Kurzak takes over. 

We've now plunged into the Venusberg in the first Zoom class on Tannhäuser, with six more Wednesdays to go. Irish soprano Jennifer Davis, who made such an impact as Elsa in Lohengrin at the Royal Opera, is preparing her first Elisabeth for Geneva Opera, and I hope she'll join us. In dealing with the background for the first class, I compared the original 1845 Overture (Klemperer) and the 1860 elision with a big Venusberg ballet for Paris, very much post-Tristan. John Neumeier's choreography for Gotz Friedrich at Bayreuth is very impressive. I have it on DVD, but it's all here on YouTube with English subtitles.

It's still not too late to join, since I can send the first class on video (and indeed you can always get the instalments that way if live attendance is difficult). Details below (click to enlarge).

Opening the shrine, then down into the Rhine

Ten glorious Wednesday afternoons on the Wagner opera that always leaves me feeling whole have flown by, dovelike. I'll confess that musically I can do without the final transfiguration; it doesn't really take us any further, and unless you have a production where Parsifal moves on, feels a bit 'here we go again' in the non-action, too. But tears always come to my eyes in the Good Friday Magic music, whether in the opera or in the concert. It took the visit of John Tomlinson to drive home how beautiful and unusual the words are. The gist is that humans may look to God, but nature looks to humans to treat it kindly. Wagner's ecological thoughts, which permeate the Ring, chime so strongly with us today.

The oboe solo gave me my first big emotion a day or so after the big operation in July - my wonderful students Janet and Ian Szymanski sent me a Jacquie Lawson card which begins right there: total surprise. It starts above at 41m45s in what remains my favourite recording of Parsifal since I undertook to listen to every one from start to finish for BBC Radio 3's Building a Library. Kurt Moll and James King sing, where necessary, with such tenderness. You may well want to listen to the whole act, and indeed the complete recording is up on YouTube - it's otherwise too expensive to buy second-hand as a CD set. 

Our more recent visitors could not have been more generous in their time or human warmth. Linda Esther Gray (two below me in the second from right row vertical-wise pictured above - click on the image to make it bigger) not only went back to the notes she'd taken when working with Reginald Goodall for the Welsh National Opera Parsifal - our loss that she felt it wasn't right to participate in the EMI recording - but also provided fresh tales which don't feature in her autobiography (which she intends to update, and I'm cheering her on, will help where I can). One of my American students asked her about the Dallas Walkure - preserved in not at all bad sound here on YouTube - 

and we got the extraordinary history of a visit to one of the generous wealthy Friends of the Dallas Opera, who greeted her with 'oh gee, it's so good to have you. Pavarotti was here last week and when he went away the poodle was dead.' 'I said to her, what are you talking about? And she said, "well, he didn't come at the beginning, he came about 2 o'clock in the morning, and sat down in a chair, and when he left, the poodle was dead." He thought it was a cushion. This is absolutely true, I've just remembered it...I told the Friends, now what you all need to remember is that my aria in Act One begins "Du bist der Lenz", and at the end of it you've all got to clap. They thought I was being serious - it had in fact got very serious - and the President of the opera house had to stand up and say, "now, Linda has a very strange sense of humour - don't clap" '. It's a treasurable two hours. And of course there was plenty of time for seriousness. Here are a few of us, including Linda, listening to Astrid Varnay and reacting.

John Tom (second from right, secon row down - again, click to enlarge) was equally generous with his time, and voice - he sang a great deal of Gurnemanz's part in Act Three for us. 

His anecdotes included one about being summoned by Barenboim to step in as Gurnemanz in Vienna the day after he'd sung Hans Sachs at the Royal Opera = 'and when Daniel asks, you don't refuse'. At Vienna Airport there was a police car on the runway, lights flashing. They drove to the Opera House with the siren goinga. They arrived at the stage door 20 minutes before curtain-up. He hadn't ever sung Gurnemanz in this Vienna production. It's a role he could still do at 77, but more physically demanding ones with six-week rehearsal periods, obviously not - 'my legs won't let me'.

Another phenomenon, and so generous with his visits: he'll be back to discuss the Rheingold Wotan now that we've started Opera in Depth Mondays in the depths of the river, and we'll see him in the Bayreuth Kupfer production (pictured above), the greatest experience of his life. After the talk, we watched him in Kupfer's Berlin Parsifal, which followed on almost immediately from the last year of that Bayreuth Ring; so meaningful in every line, and moving to tears (pictured below with Waltraud Meier and Poul Elming). 

Other guests are lining up this term: Christopher Purves, who's sung the Rheingold Alberich twice recently, in Zurich and at the Royal Opera (so much to ask him), and, when we move on to Iolanthe, conductor Chris Hopkins and a return visitor, John Savournin, who's promised to gather other singers from Cal McCrystal's funny and beautiful ENO production. 

Mahler Part Two has kicked off, and so far I've asked Catherine Larsen-Maguire, who pulled off a triumph in the Seventh Symphony with the National Youth Orchestra of Scotland (one of our Arts Desk folk in the north raved about it; rehearsal pictured above by Ryan Buchanan), and Edward Gardner, who has elected to talk about Das Lied von der Erde. Rich times ahead.

Zooming Das Rheingold, Iolanthe and Jephtha

The summer course on Parsifal in association with the Wagner Society of Scotland won't have quite ended when I descend to the bottom of the Rhine for my Autumn term Opera in Depth Zoom course on 9 October. But thanks to Paul Schofield's excellent book The Redeemer Reborn, proposing Parsifal as 'the fifth opera of Wagner's Ring', I feel halfway back in the world of the tetralogy already. Scholfield's tenet is fortunately merely a peg on which to hang his perceptions about the links between Wotan and Amfortas, Siegfried and Parsifal, Brünnhilde and Kundry, Alberich and Klingsor. 

A practisiing Buddhist, Schofield is plausible on how intensely Wagner studied the religion at the time when he was embarking on an eastern version of the Parsifal theme, Die Sieger - and I'm grateful to him for fuller outlines on that. In fact, all Wagner operas connect, from the redeemable curse for blasphemy shared by the Dutchman and Kundry, the parallels between Tannhäuser's Venusberg and Klingsor's realm, onwards, and while the reincarnation idea is interesting, it's not the most potent aspect of the book, which is beautifully and clearly written. As usual in most studes of Wagner, there's nothing about the music of this infinitely rich swansong- though Schofield proves himself capable of writing about it in his description of what happens at the end of Götterdämmerung, but as far as it goes it's provided good food for thought. The comparisons between different mythologies are especially enlightening.

We had the most marvellous Kundry/Act 2 class with Linda Esther Gray, but I'll write about that in a separare post. John Tomlinson, a generous supporter of the courses, will be coming to talk about Gurnemanz next week, and we'll watch part of Act 3 with him in Harry Kupfer's production. Meanwhile, Barrie Kosky's Rheingold has offered plenty of food for discussion. My review of it is here, and I'll add another of Monika Rittershaus's images. This one is of Sean Panikkar's handsome Loge with his toad-in-a-bag, having tricked Alberich in Nibelheim.

Though I don't think all the ideas work, the musical-dramatic fusion between singer-actors and orchestra, thanks to Pappano, is absolutely remarkable and minimised the discomfort I had sitting on my special cushion for over two and a half hours. I used to like Rheingold least of the four Ring operas, but I've come to treasure its modernity, its satire, its infinite possibilities for staging. Some folk have already complained that I go on to more Gilbert and Sullivan - some didn't get it even after passionate pleading for The Yeomen of the Guard in two classes - but Arthur certainly knew his Richard, and like all good parodists, he loves what he spoofs so brilliantly. Serse/Xerxes made me fall more in love with Handel, so I'm happy to spend three Mondays on Jephtha. Once again, all details here (click to enlarge and contact me if you want to sign up). 

More Opera in Depth cross-dressing

Hardly surprising if I love the above image by Bill Knight of the sexy-in-any-wear Régis Mengus in Poulenc's Les Mamelles de Tirésias. Laurent Pelly's Glyndebourne double bill kicks off with the most unusual and powerful staging of La Voix humaine I've seen; little surprise if it was one of my top performances of the year in the 2022 Arts Desk 'Best of Opera'. So was the English Concert semi-staging of Handel's Serse at St Martin-in-the-Fields with five classy women (Emily D'Angelo pictured below by Paul Marc Mitchell, Lucy Crowe, Paula Murrihy, Daniela Mack and Mary Bevan) and vivid playing under Harry Bicket.

So I've chosen these three operas along with Poulenc's masterpiece, Dialogues des Carmélites, for summer's Opera in Depth classes. Not least because I hope Robin Ticciati, steeped in Poulenc at Glyndebourne over two seasons, will join us along with some of the singers and Bicket from the EC Serse. The Glyndebourne Carmélites opens on 10 June.

We certainly did well over the seven Rosenkavalier classes. First came Paula Murrihy, one of the best Octavians in the world today, and conductor Fergus Sheil, giving us quality time after a day's rehearsal ahead of the Irish National Opera spectacular.

Then, in the last class, a Marschallin and Ochs for the ages, Dame Felicity Lott and Sir  John Tomlinson, appeared TOGETHER (quite a dream come true; you'll have to click for the bigger picture but I wanted the two to appear as we all saw them - FLott is top left and JT on the right of the second row). 

Students have agreed that FLott's characterisation is the most moving and gracefully real of all; it's a shame there's not more of John Tom's Ochs to be seen.

And in a last-minute bonus, Richard Jones and his inspiring choreographer/movement director Sarah Fahie, whose Glyndebourne Rosenkavalier was the most meticulous and inventive movement-wise of just about any opera production I've seen, were able to join us once their stupendous ENO Rhinegold was up and running, so we got quite a bit on that from them too. 

What had to be cut out of the chat on Richard's request - that Bertie Carvel will be taking the role of Henry Higgins in his (RJ's) Pygmalion at the Old Vic - can now be revealed as it's official. Shaw's play, fascinatingly, was premiered only two years after Rosenkavalier, in 1913, and (very surprising, this) at the Hofburg Theatre, Vienna, in a German translation. 

Anyway, full details of the new term, which starts on Monday (17 April) below - click to enlarge (do join us, from anywhere in the world - if you can't make the live class I always send a video).

Kosky's Meistersinger: falling at a late hurdle

Wednesday afternoon sees the 10th and final class in my Zoom course on Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, and the end should crown the work, as well as our grand finale: our special guest is Ben Heppner, who for me sings the most beautiful Prize Song of any I've heard (on the Sawallisch EMI recording: glorious sound, though my overall favourite on CD is Kubelik's. The below film is clearly from a gala, but it will certainly do). 

We've also spent a wonderful hour with Mark Wigglesworth, who conducted one of the Royal Opera revivals of Graham Vick's splendid production, and while Jane Eaglen (whom I saw as Eva at ENO, one of her first major roles for the company) had to pull out of a chat because of a crucial meeting about fundraising - she'll visit some other time - John Tomlinson will give of his time when he comes back from holiday, a very welcome postscript.

I previously covered Meistersinger when the course ran at the Frontline Club and Richard Jones's WNO production - still the best I've ever seen - was pending; he also came to talk to us. But every time it just gets richer. I don't look at previous course notes; it's important to start from scratch. This time we've been more preoccupied with the question of Wagner and antisemitism because, although I don't think it figures in this work (the comic villain Beckmesser is seen as a target, but that's been ignored by most UK directors, Jones included), Barrie Kosky, as the first Jewish director of the opera at Bayreuth, felt he had to tackle it. And I felt we had to follow some of the scenes in the DVD of his production (it's also on YouTube, by the way, but only with German subtitles). 

Felt the Wahnfried tableau restricted the scope of the Prelude, and it sets massive problems to solve: Sachs, Walther AND David among multiple Wagners; Cosima as Eva; Pogner as Liszt; Beckmesser as Hermann Levi. To his credit, Kosky makes the scenes between Beckmesser and Sachs laugh-out-loud funny. The ever- brilliant Johannes Martin Kränzle is at his most outrageous in this production. He's not at any point a Jewish stereotype, but Kosky makes the laughter freeze when the crowd turns him in to one. Personally, I'm happier with a view which treats Beckmesser as a Malvolio within a Shakespearean comedy. But I do understand why, in Bayreuth of all places, the peripheral questions need addressing. 

The point where I lose faith is when Eva enters Sachs's study - here the room in which the Nuremberg Trials were held - in Act Three. We lost the sentiment in favour of swift humour in the comparable Act 2 scene, but although I adore Anne Schwanewilms, the silly mock-girlish skipping she's asked to do defuse all the emotion in the situation. And if Michael Volle's Sachs and Klaus Florian Vogt's Walther are both aspects of Wagner, where's the crucial love triangle? I turned back to Lehnhoff's stripped-back production for Zurich Opera, and having doubted the scene's power, the tears flowed again. It was with good reason that Strauss and Hofmannsthal saw in this a blueprint for the Marschallin-Octavian-Sophie triangle in Der Rosenkavalier.

Excellent cast. Real-life couple Peter Seiffert and Petra-Maria Schnitzer keep it real, too. Some find José Van Dam's Sachs too dour, but I like the introspection, the pain is real, and he's very much an attractive older man.

Every class has brought big emotions. As Mark pointed out, every transition is a thing of wonder, and strictly speaking you could say it's ALL transition. I'm especially happy with the two hours we spent on the Act Three Prelude and the Wahnmonolog, with the help of Brian Magee's eloquent words on the Schopenhauer connection in Wagner and Philosophy to help us out. There's also another of the few really good books on Wagner which I re-read with pleasure, because all the elementary points in it are put so well - this brief but pithy journey through the opera by Catholic priest, professor and author of numerous books on literature and music M. Owen Lee. 

The art, ultimately is what matters, and among the many miracles of this great masterpiece is how it bears out all its claims with musical chapter and verse - everything is perfectly executed. Can it really be, as Mark wrote he was inclined to believe, in our initial email exchange, 'western civilization's greatest achievement'? While engaged on it, I'm inclined to believe so, Bach Passions and Mozart operas notwithstanding.

Verdi's Aida, of course, is a different case - the kind of plot all too familiar from early 19th century Italian opera, but ah, the music, the orchestration, the great string of duets! The writing is as masterly as that of its late successors Otello and Falstaff. I've had trouble persuading some students we should spend five Mondays on it, still more that G&S's The Yeomen of the Guard deserves two (I'm splitting the second half of term between that and Britten's The Rape of Lucretia. 

We start tomorrow (Monday 3 October), probably hitting 'Celeste Aida' before we get to 'Morgenlich leuchtend' on Wednesday. Full details here - click to enlarge.

Thursday's non-operatic course this term is devoted to the symphonies of Elgar, Vaughan Williams (the bulk of the classes) and Walton. I thought after the Russians, Czechs, Hungarians and Finns it was time for British - I hesitate to say Engish - music to have a look in. I wanted some words of commendation different to Sue Bullock's for the opera course - and Mark wrote what I'm sure he thinks, so proud of that. Again, click to enlarge.

Onwards! I hope a few more will be tempted to join up; good numbers for the opera course, fewer for the symphonies, but that's always been the case.

Another journey with Tristan and Isolde

Staring next Wednesday afternoon (UPDATE - now 4 August owing to an emergency hospital visit last week), I'm back on Zoom again along with anyone who cares to join me for ten glorious (I hope) two-hour sessions on Wagner's Tristan und Isolde. This course is under the auspices of the Wagner Society of Scotland, for whom I embarked on what should have been four weekend courses at beautiful Gartmore House in the Trossachs on the Ring. We managed Das Rheingold and Die Walküre - that was during a September heatwave, sun burning early morning mists away outside my bedroom window pictured below - 

then Covid struck, so Siegfried had to go online, and I followed up with Götterdämmerung later in 2020. We had hoped to return to live events this September, but apparently the booking for two options fell through. So here we are on Zoom once again, and in my experience it's been a great opportunity to welcome more special guests than we could have done live. On the Wagner front, I've welcomed John Tomlinson to talk about Wotan-as-Wanderer and then again about Hagen; Susan Bullock, Anne Evans and Richard Jones, in what turned out to be a fascinating three-way conversation; Linda Esther Gray (the greatest of all Isoldes? Discuss - we will, hopefully with her); and, belatedly, Jay Hunter Morris, perhaps the best Siegfried currently with us. Who knows who we'll get this time, probably not so easy as artists return to work? But I'm making enquiries. 

If you're interested, message me here with contact details; I won't publish them, but I shall respond. It's £100 for the course, which I think is a bargain at £10 per session (which may well be longer than two hours, dependig on interest). If you can't attend all or any of the classes, I can send out Zoom videos the day after.

Once more into the flames with Wotan

I did it - sent Brünnhilde to sleep on the rock surrounded by fire after nearly 20 hours of lectures and screenings for the Wagner Society of Scotland at crumbling but magnificent Gartmore House in the Trossachs near Stirling. For that greatest of final scenes - possibly the richest in all opera - it had to be Donald McIntyre (pictured above) and Gwyneth Jones within the surprising glow of Boulez's interpretation  and Patrice Chéreau's lacerating direction. Die Walküre is the most flawless of his four Ring stagings, starting with pure heat between the best-looking Volsung twins you'll ever see on a stage (Peter Hoffmann and Jeanine Altmeyer; Kaufmann and Westbroek, looking too glossy in Lepage's Met production, don't begin to compare, even though they're second best).

Steeped as I was in Bartók quartets, having finished off the last of the notes for the LSO St Luke's series just before I took the train for Scotland, I wondered if I'd get back into the Wagner world mentally and emotionally. It only took a class... And this year's group, with many faces from last year, was a joy, constantly enquiring and giving back a great deal in their comments - starting with stalwart Joy Millar, who after I'd played Goodall's Sadler's Wells recording of Siegfried's Funeral March (to set up all the Volsung themes) told me that she and friends had arranged to take the first trombonist on that recording to Bayreuth this summer, since he'd never been.

I had a prime view over the grounds from my three-windowed room. Each morning was different, and somehow chimed with Wagner's nature-pictures (how much more so will that be the case when we go into the woods with Siegfried next September). Following on from my end-of-August sojourn in Edinburgh, the Borders and Perthshire/Fife, it was HOT again for the first two days. Morning mists set up the magic

and after breakfast, with 10 minutes to go to the first lecture of the day at 9.15am (ouch!), had withdrawn to this:

We were prepared for rain on the Sunday, but that meant red sky in the morning, a very different and equally captivating scene.

And the Trossachs in the wet have their magic too (Monday morning, just before leaving).

Back in town, Hunding's Watch from Götterdämmerung was the last thing I expected in a charity gala to raise funds for St John's Smith Square in peril. I'll say we got our moneysworth in a stocking full of plums, outstandingly so from my New Best Friend Anush Hovhannisyan and true mezzo-contralto Angharad Lyddon (idiomatic in French songs and arias). Sir John Tomlinson had to, shall we say, crank up his vintage bass to Liza Lehman's 'Myself When Young' in the first half, but the beginning of the second was somewhat more idiomatic, and inky-black scary as one would expect from one of the finest Hagens probably ever. Malcolm Martineau intensified the atmosphere: boy, did he need to be versatile that night.

Dame Felicity Lott only had to extend an arm to exude her natural charm duetting with JT in a nicely pitched 'I Remember It Well', and the evening ended officially with the bass previewing his Mikado, which will be a star attraction of ENO's umpteenth Miller revival. Here are the golden oldies with Anush.

The laurels of the new season so far seem to have been going not to ENO, with fell reports of its first two Orpheus productions, but to English Touring Opera. As I'm spending two Mondays of my Opera in Depth class on it, I had to catch the second Hackney Empire performance last night of The Silver Lake, Kurt Weill's third collaboration with George Kaiser - not quite a Brecht, to put it mildly. The 'singspiel', originally four hours text to 85 minutes' music, didn't work, and even in a better production than James Conway's, which made the mistake of going back to Brechtian Verfremdunseffekt with way too many banners and placards, I don't think one would be totally gripped. In that respect, I'm in agreement with Boyd Tonkin, who went to see it with proper consideration, as always, while I was heading back from Estonia, and wrote it up for us on The Arts Desk. Production images by Richard Hubert Smith.

Weill's music, though, is uniformly magnificent, and I guess he sussed that, Nazi ban or not, the score wasn't going to take hold, and repackaged a lot of the style and substance into an unquestionable masterpiece, The Seven Deadly Sins.

Even so, there are quite a few numbers which are very much sui generis, and they were all well delivered by a uniformly strong cast including three very different tenors (David Webb as Severin, Ronald Samm as alter ego Olim, pictured above, and James Kryshaw, a Jimmy Mahoney in the making, surely, doubling Lottery Agent, pictured below, and corrupt Baron).

Amazing results, too, from the small orchestra under a master of this music, James Holmes, with special credit to the first trumpet (Ruth Ross, I think). Thanks at least for the opportunity, ETO.

ENO Pirates sail on in style

Never understood those detractors who claim Mike Leigh didn't do enough with Gilbert and Sullivan's first out-and-out masterpiece, The Pirates of Penzance, which I loved on its first appearance at ENO two years ago. Indeed, he taught me that it might, after all, be the best, despite some bigger ambitions in parts of Iolanthe, The Yeomen of the Guard and Princess Ida. Less is more in G&S: get the singer-actors to deliver its topsy-turveyness straight, and the fantastical wit will only seem the stronger.

True, there's some campery, but of the innocent sort: the Pirate King and above all the Major General (Andrew Shore, peerless both times round, pictured with Ashley Riches' Pirate King and chorus above in the first of many production images by Tom Bowles) are big kids who love to romp with, respectively, fellow noblemen-gone-wrong and daughters. The mesh of adaptable set and handsome period costumes seems just as clever second time round (everyone loves the Policemen peeking out around the circle-frame).

I went again partly to introduce the youngest godchild by some distance, seven-year-old Mirabel - the rest are now in their early twenties - to the delights of G&S. She seemed gripped throughout, but what she liked I don't know, because she's gone into a shy zone, head buried in books at tea afterwards (which is delightful in itself, especially as they're not of the electronic variety). But her parents and I adored it - indeed, mum Edsy, who's now a fan of Charles Court Opera's bracing reimaginings, constantly reels at the subversiveness of it all. Like so many folk, she'd thought the Savoy Operas were the provenance of polite home-counties am-dram, whereas when done at the highest level they provide the greatest sheer pleasure of which music theatre is capable.

The many newcomers to the cast were all impressive. I wondered if any Mabel could be as delicious and vocally impressive as Claudia Boyle first time round; welcome Soraya Mafi from Lancashire, a coloratura of high style and engaging stage presence (pictured above).

Ashley Riches brings opulent musical skills to bear on the Johnny Deppesque Pirate King, phrasing in long lines (what a classy singer he is). And I want one of them pirate skirts.

There's promise, too, from tenor David Webb as a Frederic more worthy of those girls' gushing about 'manly beauty' than the excellent Robert Murray. And John Tomlinson is nothing diminished as Chief Plod, doing subtle things with the famous song. Conductor Gareth Jones made a real impression with the ENO Orchestra in the Overture, and kept it all on the boil more skilfully than most audience members will have realised. The chorus actually gets its due for once this season; why do I forget until it arrives that 'Hail, Poetry' is such an a cappella stunner, the centrepiece of an Act 1 Finale that otherwise doesn't do much dramatically (think Katisha's entrance, the Fairy Queen's 'curse', to name but two)?

The one improvement on last time is Lucy Schaufer (pictured above with Riches and Webb), musical theatre pro who always knows the right buttons to press, as a Ruth with a very impressive chest-voice-taken-high and an unflinching delivery of west country vowels and consonants. As I've made her acquaintance, I suggested to Edsy that Mirabel might like to go to the Stage Door accompanied by the skull-and-crossbones-touting bear on loan from her school - truculent elephant Mr Panz, who sings G&S style songs already, had to stay at home - to meet her.

Mum was possibly more thrilled, childlike-fashion, at this proposal than daughter, but back we went, and Lucy was swiftly out, absolutely charming in sitting down and signing the programme before going off for a massage between shows (she's wearing the hat, by the way, to keep her hair flat between wig-sportings). We also got to meet Ms Mafi and young Webb, who of course were models of natural friendliness, as I told the family most British singers are in my experience.

Then it was off to Maison Bertaux for tea and cakes. A pretty good afternoon out, I'd say. If you want to revisit My Evening With Mike Leigh, in the pre-performance talk we shared back in 2015, you can find it on Soundcloud here.