Longborough Festival Opera provides a day to remember

Every so often, life brings along a completely magical day, filled with perfection and extraordinary happenings. Days you carefully wrap in the tissue paper of memory, to be taken out, reviewed and burnished for ever after as a reminder of how good things can be.

I was already fairly sure Saturday was turning into one of those days when a crowning moment confirmed it. We'd just emerged from the opera, emotionally drained and moved by the majesty of Wagner's work. Returning to our picnic spot at the top of the hill, with its magnificent views over the Cotswold countryside now dark purple and bronze in the deepening twilight, we opened the flap of the tent protecting our picnic gear and found a watercolour of the two of us dining there earlier in the day, a special moment captured and given to us by local artist Caroline Green. (Do check out her website at www.carolinehgreen.com.)

Frankly, I couldn't have planned for such a wonderful conclusion ... and this was a day that had been planned in great detail. It was my boyfriend's birthday, the first we have spent together, so I wanted to make it special. He loves Wagner, thus it seemed an act of fate when I discovered that the Longborough Festival Opera was putting on Die Walküre on the big day.

Many readers would have heard of Glyndebourne, the country house in East Sussex now world-famous for the summer opera season it hosts in the theatre within its grounds. Longborough is similar; but smaller, newer and lesser known. Thus it actually has tickets available to the general public if you plan far enough in advance (I booked ours in March).

The Longborough Opera Festival started as a shared passion amongst a group of friends who loved Wagner and Mozart enough to try to stage their operas at home. Twenty years later the DIY-show-in-the-barn has evolved into a proper little opera house, hosting some of the most technically demanding shows in the repertoire performed with ... if what we saw is typical ... the same quality and sophistication of major London companies. Inside, the theatre seats just 480, in plush red velvet seats purchased from the Royal Opera House during its last renovation. ("Not the most comfortable; there's a reason they got rid of those", said the birthday boy. Frankly, if you're going to be sitting in one place for five hours, anything can make you a bit stiff.) It's an incredibly intimate setting, with just 18 rows on the main auditorium and one circle of boxes in a balcony above.

Outside, a Palladian facade is painted a classically Italian pink and the two inspiring composers are joined by Verdi as statues on the roof. The theatre sits just a stone's throw across a formal, Italian-style garden from the classic Cotswold gold stone house of Martin and Lizzie Graham, the driving forces behind bringing this madness to life.

But I jump ahead of myself. The magic starts long before the conductor picks up his baton, with the classiest tailgate I've ever seen. In a long, sloping field in front of the house, punters are welcome to pull up, unload their cars and establish their picnic spots from two hours before performance time. There's plenty of room to spread out, thus preserving the pastoral feel despite the 150 or so cars around you. People bring tents, gazebos, tables, lanterns, garden furniture and all manner of accoutrement to settle in for the day. Ladies swan about in cocktail dresses, men wear black tie or the British summer uniform of light chinos, blue blazer and panama hat, while popping champagne corks provide a staccato prelude to the music to come. The view is sublime and classically English: in the foreground the beautiful house, traditional gardens and the opera house as the ultimate garden folly, in the distance a view over a classic Cotswold valley that stretches for miles. It was the fantasy picture of rural England, and for part of the afternoon it was even overhung by a rainbow in another mark of the day's perfection.

We stayed at the neighbouring manor house (review to come tomorrow) and, while we could have walked through the arboretum between the two properties, our B&B host saw the size of my picnic and offered the loan of his golf cart. Thus we arrived in unusual style, breaking cover of the diverse woodland and coming through the hurdle gate in our electric chariot. We were early enough to nab a prime spot at the top of the hill, taking in the best of that marvelous view, and set up our little palatial encampment with a domed tent to cover our picnic (and us, in case of rain) and a carpet spread before it patterned on a 17th century Gobelins tapestry. Time for a bottle of Bollinger and the first course of prawn and crayfish tail salad served on a fan of avocado. At later intervals that was followed by foie gras and fig preserves served with a chilled Sauternes, then cold roast beef with Caesar salad and my renown arancini di riso ... a Southern Italian classic of rice balls stuffed with cheese and deep fried ... with a hearty Sicilian red. We ended up with summer pudding with clotted cream, armagnac for him and port for me. Admittedly, not your typical picnic.

But this wasn't your typical opera. I had to work myself up to my first live Wagnerian experience which, I must admit, filled me with trepidation. Would a magical setting, fine champagne, a luxury menu and great seats be enough to compensate for ... Wagner? Well, my friends, your reporter is always honest. So I have to admit: I liked it. In fact, it was great.

The setting was a modern, sparse one but worked well, giving priority to the singers and a few dramatic lighting effects. Three silent, ghost-like women glided constantly through the background, sometimes observing and sometimes pulling a rope across the stage. They were the three Norns (the fates of Norse mythology) weaving our hero's destiny across the warp and weft of circumstance.

The voices were powerful and compelling, accompanying fine acting. Something you notice when you're only 15 rows back from the stage. Jason Howard's Wotan was a moving portrait of a man torn between duty and love. He'd sung the role before, but it was Alwyn Mellor's first outing as Brunnhilde, and I delighted in her character development from mischievous daughter to passionate rebel to fearful and repentant sinner. The love story between Andrew Rees' Seigmund and Lee Bissett's Sieglinde was played out in both action and voice, and mostly in the soaring majesty of Wagner's music.

And it's that music, frankly, that elevates this to a masterpiece. It's probably heresy to say it, but I found myself thinking that Wagner must be the grandfather of movie soundtrack composers, because his music is so amazingly evocative of what's going on in the plot. The opening prelude is edgy, tense, filled with nervous energy ... you'd probably envision a chase scene even if you weren't aware that's what was coming. The music behind Seigmund and Sieglinde's love story is tender and passionate while the music that accompanies Wotan and his wife Fricka is the soundtrack of a bickering couple. It's the music that tells the story, and the music that takes you through a long, emotional roller coaster.

My idea of perfection? No. While much, much better than expected, Die Walküre was still incredibly long. I must confess to nodding off in both the first and second acts. The plot moves at a snail's pace and, no matter how wonderful the music is, the lack of action for long stretches left me dragging. The worst part, however, is that those beautiful voices sing atop that magnificent music in ... German. I tried to be open minded, but this experience hasn't changed my belief that it's simply an ugly language. Harsh, unmelodic, with a lack of rhyme that makes even the most tender of sentiments jar against the ear. Taking my heresy even further, I will confess that my dominant thought by Act 3 was that I'd love to see an edited version, with about an hour of dead time left on the cutting room floor, and translated into Italian or French.

The Wagner fans amongst my readers will just have to forgive me, and take comfort in the fact that my conversion to appreciating the Germanic genius has begun. We emerged from the theatre awed and content, in agreement that we needed to become friends of Longborough so we can ensure our places at the performance of Siegfried (the next installment of the story) next year. At which point we returned to the tent and discovered that wonderful watercolour, setting the magical seal on our most remarkable of days.