A classical pilgrimage through Eastern Germany delights, surprises and shocks

If you love classical music, I can’t think of a better holiday destination than the Berlin–Dresden–Leipzig triangle. These cities are steeped in musical history, were home to some of the greatest names in the canon, and still boast a rich performance scene playing to packed houses of people who know their stuff. We were both amazed and delighted to see the diversity of ages in the audience. Younger people are rare at operas and orchestral concerts in England, but not here.

If you can only visit one place, history probably demands that it’s Leipzig. Bach called it home for more than 25 years, and Schumann and Mendelssohn also lived here. Wagner was born here, and Handel entered the world just up the road. But if your goal is to pack in the most performances in the shortest time, Berlin is your best bet. For opera, however, I’d head to Dresden’s sumptuous venue—even if the acoustics are, sadly, a bit dodgy.

Since this trip revolved around celebrating my husband’s birthday, we built in a lot of music. He was a good sport about agreeing to Tosca as one of our operatic choices, despite his antipathy towards Italian opera. (Performance schedules suggested that modern Germans are far keener on Verdi and Puccini than my husband is.) Here’s a round-up of what we saw. And where we saw it, since for me the venue is as important as the music.

Bach’s Easter Oratorio in the Frauenkirche, Dresden
There’s nothing quite like hearing music in the setting for which it was composed, and I doubt it gets much better than experiencing Bach’s Easter Oratorio on Easter Sunday in a church he both knew and performed in. The Frauenkirche’s stunning architecture—essentially a circular tower with three tiers of seating looking down on the altar—is as much a performance space as a house of worship.

But it is very much a church. And a very special one. Completely levelled in the bombing of Dresden, its ruins stood as a silent protest against DDR modernism for 45 years. Locals refused to let them be swept away. After unification, the church rose again, meticulously reconstructed using salvaged pieces where possible, like an enormous jigsaw puzzle. Sitting inside this symbol of resilience, listening to Bach’s soundtrack for a holiday centred on hope and rebirth, brought tears to my eyes.

Tosca at the Dresden Semperoper
This is one of the buildings in the world actually named for its architect, and Gottfried Semper earns the honour. While the Sächsische Staatsoper Dresden is one of the world’s leading companies, it’s the building that elevates the experience to something truly special.

Outside, it’s a palace: a bit like the Colosseum given a Baroque makeover. Inside, soaring neoclassical corridors are held aloft by marble columns and painted with frolicking gods and grotesqueries. It’s a common decorative scheme for an opera house, but Semper’s genius was restraint. High ceilings, giant windows and subtle colour make the space feel light and expansive.

All the famous opera houses have grand staircases, but here there are two, cleverly tucked to the side to make room for a magnificent reception hall curving around the front of the building. Its windows frame glorious views of Dresden’s historic centre. The auditorium features stalls and four horseshoe-shaped tiers. I liked the formality of ushers unlocking the door to your section when it was time to sit down.

The performance? A traditional, visually bold Tosca, with a standout soprano. But from our seats—second tier, right side, near the pit—the orchestra usually overwhelmed the singers. As glorious as the music was, it’s a pity not to hear Scarpia’s baritone in all its villainous grandeur.

Bach Cello Suites, Berlin Kammermusiksaal
This, unexpectedly, was my favourite performance of the trip. I’ve always considered the cello a mournful instrument. Bach’s suites are known as academic exercises for virtuosos; they have a reputation as being more admirable than enjoyable. But three things conspired to create a magical evening.

First, the performer: Jan Vogler, one of the world’s finest cellists, playing an early 18th-century Stradivari. (Top photo) He was electric. Second, the venue: Berlin’s Kammermusiksaal, a purpose-built chamber music venue built in the 1980s specifically to show off this quite intimate style of music. It only seats 1,136 maximum and combines excellent acoustics with a striking, futuristic design. The seating bays jut into the space at angles, giving it a sci-fi aesthetic. The lobby continues the look, with walls of coloured glass circles casting cathedral-like light into broad white plazas.

Third, I had my AI concert buddy—ChatGPT—on hand. With no one nearby and lights dimmed but not dark, I could quietly use my screen to get context. It told me about the venue, Vogler, and the pieces. When I confessed I sometimes struggle with instrumental concerts because there’s nothing to look at, my digital companion suggested scenes I could imagine for each movement, aligned with Bach’s intentions. It transformed the evening.

Don Giovanni, Berlin Komische Oper at the Schillertheater
When I booked this, I was unaware of two key facts: First, the Komische Oper’s usual jewel-box theatre is closed for renovation. (I had been more interested in getting inside than in seeing yet another production of a very familiar opera, much as I like it.) Second, Berlin’s opera scene is infamous for avant-garde, often bizarre reimaginings of the classics.

I was sad to miss the regular venue, though the Schiller Theater’s late art deco vibe had its charms. And this was Don Giovanni, after all—surely one of the most reliably entertaining operas ever written. It couldn’t push the envelope more than the challenging production we’d pushed through at Longborough Festival Opera. Ha!

It wasn’t just Giovanni, but an edited and re-arranged Giovanni mashed up with the Requiem. Instead of the usual finale, where the ensemble reflects on the villain’s fate, we skipped directly from the Don’s descent into hell (on an acrobatic harness, with flames) into the Requiem. Musically magnificent, dramatically muddled. Giovanni started off on a hospital gurney and was resurrected … making me wonder if he’d already died and the whole thing … not just the famous dinner scene with the ghost … was his journey to hell. There was a lot of nudity, including blurry visuals of orgies. Donna Elvira was a man, thus turning the Don into a pan-sexual predator. Zerlina was heavily pregnant already when meeting the Don, who developed a disturbing fascination with her baby. There were dancing skeletons. Strange interpretive dance, some naked with luxuriant pubic hair. A narrarator wandering about injecting poetry from Far Eastern philosophy, and occasionally showing up in a box as some kind of Zen priest.

I could spot brilliance in the madness. I suspect fragments of this production will be recycled elsewhere. But as a whole, it left us dazed—and in need of a stiff drink. The DJ spinning retro ‘80s classics in the rooftop Monkey Bar gave me a much-needed safe space that night.

Brahms and Elgar at the Gewandhausorchester, Leipzig
These composers aren’t our favourites. We’d have preferred more local fare: Leipzig hero Bach or a night of Wagner overtures. But Piers was keen to hear the Gewandhausorchester— the oldest civic symphony orchestra in the world—and this was the most appealing concert on offer across our three nights.

Brahms’ Symphony No. 3 and Elgar’s Violin Concerto in B minor are lushly romantic, string-heavy works dripping with emotion. But to my ears, they’re classical music’s equivalent of binging on empty calories: rich while consuming, forgettable afterwards. Other than one theme in the Brahms, nothing lingered in your ears.

What did stick was the building. The Gewandhaus is, hands down, the ugliest concert hall I’ve ever seen. The performance space is fine. It’s the public areas that stun—for all the wrong reasons.

A brutalist relic of the East German era, it’s a steel-and-glass shell with no warmth. You enter to find yourself in a vast lobby, faced with an enormous three-storey curtain wall. Upon it, a German Expressionist mural depicting the power of music. But to me, it looked like a gallery of goblins: instruments menacing, faces twisted in anguish, colours evoking night, mud and blood. I know the cultural ideals of communism viewed art as duty, not joy. And I support preserving the past. But honestly, the best thing Leipzig could do to improve this venue would be to whitewash the dementors and paint something cheerful.

Over two weeks in Germany, the variety of music we experienced—and the places we experienced it—was magnificent. We could have done more, but we needed to leave some time for dinners and quiet evenings. Tickets were about 30% cheaper than similar events in England, which made indulging even easier.

If you’re a classical music fan, this part of Germany is well worth the trip. Go to Dresden for old-world opulence, Berlin for the avant-garde, and Leipzig for a bit of everything. Just… if you choose the last, walk briskly through the Gewandhaus lobby without looking up.

Palermo’s Teatro Massimo is an ideal place to see opera on a grand scale, at modest prices

Opera is a global art form, with more than 1,000 major companies around the world and grand opera houses scattered across every continent but Antarctica. These days the lead singers are as likely to be from Africa or China as Europe. Italy, however, still has quite a proprietary relationship with opera.

It was invented here, after all, and many of the favourites in the repertoire are sung in Italian. Italians feel a sense of ownership when it comes to the most popular arias; my grandfather used to belt out Puccini like other people did pop songs. Even small towns in Italy have opera houses. In the cities, they’re usually an architectural centrepiece, on par with … and often next to … palaces. The biggest of them all is in Palermo.

The Teatro Massimo is the largest opera house in Italy, and the third largest in Europe after Paris and Vienna. When it opened in the 1890s it was intended to hold up to 3,000 people in its seven tiers and ground floor. Despite the cavernous proportions, it’s reckoned to have perfect acoustics. These days a desire for more personal space and fire safety has reduced audience size to just 1,381. That’s 875 fewer than London’s Royal Opera house.

The smaller audience lets you luxuriate in more elbow room, and the company here still puts on productions on a traditionally grand scale. Yet tickets at Teatro Massimo are far cheaper than in London. We splurged on £120 a ticket for amazing seats in the stalls (the ground floor of the auditorium). We were on the horizontal aisle that divided the front and back blocks of seating, so had no heads in front of us for 10 feet and the ability to stretch our legs full length during the production. Instead of your typical flip-bottom theatrical seating, the stalls are all individual bucket-shaped arm chairs in classic style with generous upholstery. I’ve never been more comfortable, and rarely had a better view, in an opera house. The same location in London would cost more than £250, and in our recent experience any seats cheaper than £170 put your so high up, or give you such restricted sightlines, they’re not worth buying. At Teatro Massimo, had we wanted to spend less, I could have bought seats with clear views in the lower tiers for £60.

It’s the escalating price of London tickets, paired with the increasingly streamlined sets and choruses there, that has us looking to the continent for more of our opera experiences. The Teatro Massimo didn’t disappoint. In addition to those comfy, excellent value seats we got an excellent production of Turandot. None of those modern, cost-slashing stagings here. We were served up architecturally impressive sets, dazzling costumes and a full chorus.

Admittedly, I was somewhat perplexed by the set design. Turandot is set in Ancient China, something conveyed perfectly in this production by a chorus in identical, earth-coloured uniforms standing in seried ranks in pits built into the stage floor. Just like the terra cotta warriors. But the architecture told us we were in the ancient Middle East, with double-bull columns framing the palace. The Emperor was dressed as the Shah of Iran, circa 1950, while the bloodthirsty princess rocked a Grace Kelly in ballgowns vibe. Our victorious prince at least dressed Chinese, though more Kyng Fu monk that romantic hero. Oddest of all were the three advisors, each wearing a different shockingly bright primary colour and dressed in a series of hip hop mogul designs.

Some little girls turned up occasionally, obviously projections of Turandot’s memories, implying that her willingness to send all of her failed suitors to execution was the result of childhood sexual abuse rather than Puccini’s story of some wronged ancestress. Later, the production had Turandot seeing a vision of the slave girl she’d tortured to death as a trigger point to her character transformation at the end of the opera.

I don’t think this mash-up of concepts was entirely successful. They were just trying too many disparate things and probably would have delivered a stronger whole if they’d stuck to one big idea. But it was great to look at, all of the performers were solid and it’s always a thrill to hear “Nessun Dorma” performed live, in its original context. Most memorably in this production, the little girls and the ghost suggested what was going on in Turandot’s head, thereby giving some sort of logic to one of the most ludicrous endings in all of opera. Puccini might not have written it, but it worked.

Beyond the production itself, part of the fun of going to a new opera house is exploring the building. While its amphitheatre is a classically grand space .. all white and gold with plush red upholstery and frolicking gods painting on the ceiling … the foyers are actually a bit gloomy. The colour schemes out here are browns, beiges, dusky pinks and dark greys. The great hall you enter upon coming through the front doors actually feels like they’ve brought Palermo architecture in, but toned down the colours. The marble walls, with their engaged columns and architectural details, felt like the exteriors of the city’s palazzi, and this enormous space like a piazza between them. A browse through online photos indicates there are lots of interior spaces we didn’t see, including a rather spectacular rotunda that I suspect may be under the dome up top. In hindsight, it’s probably worth taking one of the tours of the building during the day to see more than you do as an audience member.

Downstairs is a brighter, more modern and very elegant cocktail bar, but by the time you get served you won’t have long to enjoy the atmosphere before you have to swig your drink and return to your seats. Locals clearly knew the fastest route to the bar and headed there the moment the curtain fell for intermission. Next time, so will we.

We discovered there’s also a restaurant outside, but within the area closed off from the piazza beyond by ornate railings. On a return visit, I’d go early and enjoy my aperitivo there before the show.

The neighbourhood around the opera is highly attuned to the crowds pouring in and out of here every night, with scores of cafes facing the building and lining the little lanes leading away from it. Our B&B, L’Olivella, was just 200 metres down one of these … the Via Bara All’Olivella. It’s a great place to stay for the opera and the street between it and Teatro Massimo is lined with restaurants.

At less than three hours’ flight time from Heathrow, Palermo offers opera lovers an easy weekend alternative to London. While flights will add to your costs, opera tickets and food will be less expensive and accommodation is reasonable. Head to their website for a long-range view of productions and get planning.

For another operatic excursion in Italy, see my article about our visit to the Verona Opera Festival last summer. It was a much weirder performance, but still a great experience.

Opera's most daunting experience is actually like binge watching Netflix with your mates

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away … or about 30 years ago, before the advent of streaming and social media … television provided an enormous amount of social cohesion. Yes, there were recorders to capture and play back shows if you weren’t home, but in general when something big was going on, everyone gathered in their living rooms to watch it live. Who shot JR? How many gold medals would Nadia Comăneci earn? How would all of our friends in that MASH unit in South Korea get home?

Everyone gathered around their televisions at the same time to get the answers. And then, because the majority were doing the same thing at the same time, everyone would be talking about it the next day at work or school. Building community. Today, the media we consume tends to divide us. Back then, it brought us together.

I start here because that community-building world of shared experience is the best metaphor I can come up with to describe what it’s actually like to watch a Ring Cycle. 

We are just back from a week in the Cotswolds consuming Wagner’s epic Der Ring des Nibelungen. I will leave it to the professionals to review the actual performances. (The production is earning universal adulation, especially for Paul Carey Jones’ Wotan and Lee Bisset’s Brünnhilde, pictured right.) I thought it would be more useful to write about what it’s actually like to attend opera’s most famous marathon. 

It’s a lot easier, less stuffy, and far closer to other forms of popular entertainment than you might imagine.

Wagner suffers from an undeservedly negative reputation. If most people know him at all, it’s for parodies of shrieking, fat sopranos, an unfortunate stint as the Nazis’ favourite composer, or for one of The Ring's tune’s repeated deployments as a soundtrack to brutal combat. (The Ride of the Valkyries, set within its original context, is so much more interesting than those derivative uses.) What those who listen to him for any length of time realise is that he’s a composer of immense emotion, beauty and action.

If you enjoy the sweeping, romantic film scores of John Williams, Hans Zimmer or Ennio Morricone, you already like Wagner. Because he’s the guy who pretty much invented what they do, telling stories through the music and giving particular characters themes … he called them leitmotifs … that are a musical shout out to “look at me” when a particular character is doing something important.

If you’re the kind of person who likes grand, multi-generational sagas and has found yourself binge-watching Succession, the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, the Harry Potter films or Game of Thrones, you already like Wagner. In the hands of a great director (and Amy Lane, who’s been working on this for nine years of her life, is certainly that) The Ring is a binge-watchable epic that explores greed, love, ambition and tricky relationships within dysfunctional families. This is the stuff that keeps the streamers in business. The Ring just does it to music.

Yes, there are some issues with the plot. Avid haters of the fantasy genre may dislike the numbers of magical creatures and Norse gods on stage. There’s a small but important bit of incest that makes everyone uncomfortable. Most female viewers are frustrated by how one of drama’s greatest heroines can fall head over heels for a thick, self-obsessed lug of a hero and completely loose her mojo for a couple of acts. Thankfully, she rediscovers herself and drives the plot to a thrilling conclusion. She’s so central to the plot arc, in fact, the cycle could have been called The Brünnhilde rather than The Ring. Those plot issues fade to minor irritations, however, within the opulent big picture. 

So what does it mean to do a whole Ring Cycle? 

You’re committing to four operas, stretching across about 15 hours of performance time, in one week. The first one, Das Rheingold, is just under two hours and is generally performed without an intermission. The rest … Die Walküre, Siegfried, and Götterdämmerung … run between three and four hours each and usually have two intermissions. Performances are generally held every other day to give both the audience, and most importantly the singers, some time to rest. Delivering Wagner’s demanding, powerful scores is hard work, and a specialism restricted to a subset of opera singers. 

It would be possible to work through the week, taking some afternoons off for early starts of the weekday performances. But that's something you're probably more likely to do if it's being performed in a city where you live and work. Because Longborough is in the rural idyl of the Cotswolds, 90 minutes from home, we decided to take the week off and enjoy the delights of the area outside of the performances.  

The multiple intermissions increase the similarity to binge watching a compelling series. You’re taking breaks at logical places before rolling the next episode. It’s with these frequent intermissions that country house opera really comes into its own. Gates open 90 minutes before the show kicks off, giving you time to establish your picnic set up, pop a bottle of bubbly and have some nibbles. At Longborough, performances tend to start mid-afternoon so you’re kicking off just after lunch. If you’re on holiday all week in the Cotswolds, as we were, you’ve probably slept in and had a late breakfast, meaning the operatic progression of dining breaks will fill in for both lunch and dinner. 

A half-hour break between parts one and two gives you time to finish that fizz and have your starter. The main dining interval is between parts two and three, which generally starts between 6 pm and 7 pm, and runs for 90 minutes. This gives you time for a leisurely main course and dessert, plus the opportunity to use the loos and stretch your legs with a stroll around the gardens. Performances tend to end just just after 9pm, when the Cotswolds hills are bathed with golden twilight. You can hang around the grounds for a nightcap, but with such a small audience traffic moves quickly and we were back in Stow by 9:30. In time to catch the magnificent sunset on the longest day of the year.

Four performances gives you a chance to mix up those picnics. We started with a German-themed spread of sausages, cheese, and dark, seeded bread to honour the national origins of the story and composer. Other nights featured roast chicken and a particularly delicious roasted-then-chilled salmon with an Asian glaze. In past years I’ve cooked up al fresco delicacies for opera picnics, but having to assemble four of them in a week skews you towards the store-bought. Luckily, Stow is home to D’Ambrosi, an upscale deli and caterer who will assemble a basket of delights for you with no effort beyond waving your card in front of their reader. There are two restaurant options on site if you don’t want to do your own thing, but you have to book them when you buy your tickets as space is very limited. 

These dining breaks transform the overall experience. Fifteen hours of continuous opera does indeed sound like a marathon to be endured rather than enjoyed. Spreading that over a week, when you’re never in the opera for longer than the run of a typical film, and intersperse it with an equivalent amount of time swanning about country house grounds in formal wear eating and drinking nice things, and you have a very different thing. 

Four performances also gives you a chance to mix up your operatic outfits. Longborough is not as formal as Glyndebourne, the grandfather of all country house opera, and its web site emphasises coming in something that is celebratory and comfortable for you. For at least 60 percent of the crowd that’s still dinner jackets (tuxedos) for the men and the equivalent for the women. But we saw lots of variety. A subset of men went for magnificently patterned jackets from luxurious … often oriental … materials that brought a touch of Oscar Wilde to proceedings. (Wagner and Wilde were contemporaries, so that's rather appropriate.) 

Some alternated velvet smoking jackets with traditional black DJs. Long, embroidered or dyed silk jackets over neutral bases were a go-to for the women, with a few turning up in some fabulous ball gowns. If you like getting dressed up, a Ring Cycle is a tremendous excuse to take a circuit through your whole formal wardrobe in a week. 

Longborough’s sartorial flexibility meant that we went for a Bavarian interpretation of formal wear for opening night, fitting for an opera cycle with its heart in that part of Germany. It was such a hit with fellow guests we decided to bring it back for closing night as well. 

Opening night, however, was not as planned. We’d popped out to the grocers to pick up a few things for our picnic and returned to discover that our 12-year old spaniel had climbed onto a table, snatched the slide of his heart medicine and consumed 10 days’ dosage at one go. On a Sunday, when almost all vets are closed. A call to our own vets' emergency service confirmed this was a life-threatening emergency; the longer the drugs were in his system, the more danger he was in. So instead of getting dressed and swanning off to watch some Rhine maidens get their gold stolen, I was desperately searching for a vet open on a Sunday, driving an hour to get there, then holding a bowl while my beloved but stupid dog emptied his stomach multiple times, triggered to do so my special drugs. I’ve had better afternoons. The dog recovered quickly, though his little adventure added a significant expense to our holiday. We found a version of Das Rheingold on YouTube, spread our picnic on the coffee table and enjoyed an alternative kickoff to our Cycle. The dirndl and lederhosen made their debut for Die Walküre two nights later. 

The opera house at Longborough holds just 500, and for a Ring Cycle it’s the same people in the same seats for every performance. If you’ve reserved a dining spot, the people at your neighbouring tables will also be the same all four days. With only 500 in total, you start recognising people in Stow during the week and feel like you know most attendees on sight by the final performance. This all adds to that communal viewing experience, because you’re sharing opinions about the performance throughout the week. The further in you go, the deeper the conversations get.  

If this weren’t enough community building, Longborough put on additional events on the off days to for those who wanted to learn more about the production. Back to the binge-watching analogy … these were like tapping into the extra features on the director’s cut DVD. On Friday we attended two lectures in Longborough’s parish church. The first was a Master Class in which two singers who played smaller roles were performing bits and pieces and getting coaching from Rachel Nicholls, who played Brünnhilde the first time Longborough did The Ring. Underlining the intimate nature of this opera festival, current Brünnhilde, Lee Bisset, was sitting in the pew behind us and happily chatting to audience members. I don’t think I’d be able to get out of bed the day after delivering a performance of such power, much less enjoy chatting with strangers.

The second session featured director Amy Lane and Longborough’s Ring Conducting Fellow Harry Sever talking about the challenges of putting on the Cycle. The behind-the-scenes view into the complexities of something this monumental, yet staged in such a small space, was fascinating. In between, all the audience members … who’d now seen three of the four operas together and were all mates … rolled into the local pub for a few pints and more Wagnerian bonding.  

To be honest, I doubt I’d enjoy the experience as much at the major urban opera houses. There are more than 2,200 seats at Covent Garden, far too many to build the same kind of community with fellow audience members even if you are sitting together for 15 hours. While I’ve come to love these operas, would I enjoy them as much without all those dining and drinking breaks in a pretty garden? I’m not sure. Sadly, I can’t recommend any other country house operas at which you might try a Ring Cycle, as this has traditionally been considered impossible for small companies to deliver. Longborough is unique. They’ve done it twice in their thirty year history and are now regularly called “The English Bayreuth”. (Bayreuth being the Wagner-built opera house in Bavaria where The Ring was born.)  

But I do recommend sampling Wagner, and caution you against thinking that attending a Ring Cycle is something strange and foreign. It’s as modern as binge-watching Netflix with your mates. And if you’re lucky enough to do it at Longborough, it’s magnificent fun.

Not even Longborough can save Siegfried from himself

Great film series tend to have at least one instalment that lets down the side. Who can forget, or forgive, how Temple of Doom sullied the original Indiana Jones trilogy? Thus it is with Siegfried within Wagner's legendary Ring cycle. It is still undeniably Wagner, so we have captivating music, compelling themes and high drama. But the hero is a thoroughly unlikeable brat who, after subjecting us to hours of alternating complaining, bluster and self-obsession, implausibly wins the love of one of the most magnificent female characters in all of opera within just one scene. 

Not even Longborough, now proudly ordained as “the British Beyreuth”, can save this opera from itself. It is the penance one has to pay to get through to the heartache and beauty of Götterdämmerung.

That's not to say that I didn't enjoy a great deal about this production. First, and always to be expected at Longborough, the cast was magnificent. In this most masculine of Wagnerian outings, it was the three small female roles that impressed most. Julieth Lozano's woodbird ... the first friend Siegfried has ever made once he is able to understand its language … was an absolute delight, guiding the hero with cheerful enthusiasm, delicately avian movements and a pure soprano voice worthy of the morning chorus. Mae Heydorn emerges from the mist as Erda, her one scene almost stealing the whole show. She is a majestic, all-knowing goddess … had Judi Dench been an opera singer, her performance would have had this gravitas … yet also as confused and lethargic as you’d expect while struggling to consciousness from a centuries-long sleep. And Lee Bisset's return as Brünnhilde after last summer's turn in Die Walkure was a joy tarnished only by how little stage time Wagner gives her in this instalment. The heart of her section … where she’s emotionally torn by her joy at evading eternity’s curse and finding out the child she struggled to protect has grown into a hero versus her terror about losing her supernatural powers and being subjugated to a man … was powerful. The bits on either side where she’s in giddy love with her much-younger brat of a nephew who woke her from her curse? Preposterous. But Bisset’s a soprano, not a miracle worker.

Bradley Daley, in his Longborough debut, had the unenviable task of trying to make Siegfried likeable and credible, all the more challenging by Longborough's intimate, 500-seat theatre. The character works only if you understand him as an undisciplined, unloved, immature, hormone-ravaged teenaged boy, experiencing an abrupt coming of age due to extraordinary circumstances. While the costuming and Daley's acting did an admirable job of characterisation, no illusion at those close quarters can hide that the singer is old enough to be Siegfried's father. Of course, I don't believe any human young and buff enough to give us a great physical Siegfried could ever deliver his voice. (Jonas Kaufman probably managed it a decade ago, but I’ve never seen him in this role.) Only a singer of of deep maturity could hit the range, power and endurance Siegfried requires, and Daley delivers. Another of the irreconcilable contradictions within the opera itself.

Sets and costumes were particularly good. I might have been easily impressed simply because we haven’t seen a full staging since 2019 (thanks, Covid), but memory suggests this was pushing even Longborough's impressively creative envelope. A multi-level set and the most sophisticated use of light and video projection I can remember here really maximised the limited space within this tiny theatre. Erda's scene was the best example of everything coming together, with her ethereal grey and diamond costume materialising as if from nowhere and returning to the mists, her on a distant mountain top while Wotan occupied a lesser plain. We were going to praise the cleverly integrated stilts that allowed Wotan to tower over everyone else with a commanding presence, until we realised Pauls Putnins is simply that tall! 

They even won me over with Alberich's “dragon”, not a dragon at all but a bitter and twisted human on crutches. I continue to dream of a production that gives me a properly winged, scaled, clawed and fire-breathing dragon of Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones quality, but the idea of a man destroying his physical well-being with excessive greed was far more palatable than the robotic extensions, towers or cherry pickers that modern, abstract productions have leaned towards. Perhaps the best bit of creativity on the night, however, was Freddie Tong stepping in to sing Alberich from one of the front boxes while Mark Stone, suffering from throat problems, lip synched and “walked the role”. Another stretch of credulity that delivered.

A fresh, young conductor was also thrilling. The orchestra, returned to glorious full strength and packed back into the usual crowded, under-stage pit with no social distancing required, was still very much under the direction of Anthony Negus. The great man is now clearly acknowledged as one of the world’s greatest Wagner interpreters, but Longborough plans to be around for a very long time and it’s always promoted young artists. Thus they’ve appointed a Ring Cycle Conducting Fellow, the promising Harry Sever, to work alongside Negus, share the load and develop the next generation.

Above, below and backstage, it’s clear Longborough is in safe hands for the future. I’m looking forward to my first ring in 2024 (Longborough’s second) when we sign up to binge watch all four episodes in one week. No matter how much they improve this one … and there’s not that much to improve … they’ll still have their hands tied by Wagner’s characterisation and plot. But you need to trudge through The Two Towers to fully appreciate the magnificence of Return of the King. 

Bold and thought-provoking, this Giovanni is worth experiencing. Once.

I've experienced a lot of powerful emotions in opera houses. But never shock. Not, that is, until about 10 minutes into Longborough Festival Opera's new production of Don Giovanni, when I was recoiling with it.

By that point, the Don had violently raped three women, driven the handle of a broken squash racket into an adversary's stomach and was easing his victim's bloody entrails out in an almost loving caress while singing his first aria. In English. (Which was almost as shocking as everything else.) The men in the locker room health club where this was all set were turning complicit blind eyes, casually loafing in their terrycloth dressing gowns while groping the professionally-dressed female assistants who kept popping in to try to get them to focus on some work.

Longborough, the little company that defied expectations to become a Wagnerian powerhouse, has always made the point that it's not the typical country house opera. But they really threw down the gauntlet with this highly topical interpretation steeped in gender politics and rebellion against the patriarchy. At first I thought we were slamming Harvey Weinstein and celebrating #MeToo, especially when the masqueraders covered their faces with giant emojis. And then Giovanni's servant Leporello (sung by Emyr Wyn Jones in probably the strongest performance of the ensemble) laid the table for the final banquet scene with hamburger and pizza boxes and we were in Donald Trump territory. The U.S. president did, after all, justify abusive things he'd said about women as "just locker room talk."

The whole thing seethed with so much hatred towards establishment men, you could have knocked me over with the proverbial feather when I found out that the director was a bloke named Martin Constantine.

Giovanni is traditionally played as loveable rogue. He is a charming seducer, and it is usually implied that the women are complicit in his seductions. They only turn on him when he leaves them, breaking their hearts. In most versions I've seen, Giovanni's early murder of the Commandatore (a father who discovers and drives off Giovanni from seducing his daughter, Anna) is a mishap he would rather have avoided. Making him a sociopath is a bold move, and no doubt a taxing one for Ivan Ludlow, who not only has to sing this Giovanni (which he does well) but do far more acting than usual (successfully; this Don is hateful).

It's an audacious choice, well executed to make its political points. This is probably the bravest production Longborough has ever put on and the first I've thought the BBC might be interested in broadcasting for the way it updates a very old ... and supposedly elitist ... art form to take on critical modern issues. But it doesn't entirely work.

No matter how blackly they painted him in Act 1, too many plot elements of Act 2 hint at Giovanni's redeeming qualities to make him all bad. (His former lover Elivra's continuing devotion and belief she can bring him to a righteous life, Giovanni's impish refusal to become a monogamist because it wouldn't be fair to all the women he's yet to give pleasure to, and ... bluntly ... Ludlow's chiseled good looks.) The locker room set gets old and is less effective in later scenes. Most problematic is the ending, where the women grab microphones, karaoke style, and exult over their victory while the men resume the gym dressing gowns that had been discarded earlier and step to the front at the last minute, seeming to say they've given the women the impression of triumph but the abusive patriarchy embodied by the Don will continue.

Don Giovanni is usually a "feel good" opera. This interpretation sent me away angry and depressed, which I'm guessing was the director's intent.

The music, sadly, doesn't fare as well as the artistic impact. In Don Giovanni, Mozart gives us some of the most sublime and joyous music in the operatic repertoire. But, in much the same way your sense of taste goes when your sinuses are blocked up, the ears were deadened here by the political hijacking of the story and its translation into English. More than any other language, the musical nature of Italian makes the words themselves part of the score. Amanda Holden's translation is clever, at times funny and tells the story well. But it can't compare to the original. "Là ci darem la mano", probably the most exquisitely seductive duet ever written, becomes prosaic and clumsy when we understand the words as something closer to a teenager's fumbling attempts than beautiful love poetry. Leporello's attempt to dissuade Elvira with a catalogue of Giovanni's conquests "Madamina, il catalogo è questo" is a playful flight of fancy in Italian. Here, it's crude and coarse.

English, like all the director's other choices, makes the story ugly. As part of the overall political statement, it works. But, sadly, it also diminishes a great work of art.

I enjoyed how this production pushed me to think. Giovanni is one of the most frequently performed operas in the world; I've seen it live at least four times and I'd assume most people in the audience have consumed multiple productions. So it makes sense for companies to try something new. I applaud Longborough's innovation. As a "one off" it was stimulating, intriguing and provoked post-performance analysis far into the evening.

But would I ever want to see it again?  No. In giving the story modern political relevance, Longborough stripped the opera of its beauty. It was a worthy experiment, but I hope they don't make a habit of this kind of thing.

Damning with faint praise? Poppea is ... interesting.

The last outing of this year's country house opera season was all about experimentation. New accommodation, new opera, new pitch for the marquee. The last was probably the most successful.

After more than two months of dry, hot, still weather, a thunderous cold front driving torrents of rain came ripping through England on the night we were due to be dining al fresco on the Longborough Opera Festival's lawns. Fortunately we'd brought our marquee, though the space we've erected it on for years has been taken over by the patrons' dining tent. Not having reserved a spot within, we set up in the patron's parking area, where we discovered that the marquee fits precisely within a small grove of trees and that lashing two of its legs to their trunks kept the whole thing from going airborne in the worst of the gusts. The new location lacks the expansive views over the valley you get from the top of the meadow, but was just 20 metres from the entrance to our box. Add four gorgeous courses meandered through before, at the interval of, and after the opera, and you have the delight of the evening.

The Coronation of Poppea was more interesting than enthralling. Monteverdi's tale of the rise of Nero's second empress is still in the modern repertoire for two main reasons: it was one of the first operas as we know it, so an important ancestor of all to come, and it closes with one of the most beautiful love duets in classical music. (Second only, I believe, to Mozart's La ci darem la mano.)

Pur ti Mio, Pur ti Godo (I gaze at you, I possess you) perfectly captures the passionate ache and ecstasy of a relationship in its early glory, and is almost worth sitting through the 2.5 hours before it just to hear it live. That's not to say the preceding opera was bad, it's just very much of its time. There's a lot of ponderous harpsichord, undeveloped characters and vocal fireworks in search of a more memorable tune. I suspect that had it been performed as written ... essentially a court masque with outrageously lavish sets, costumes and special effects ... those irritations would have been less noticeable. But nobody does traditional anymore, and Longborough's small stage and tight budget couldn't finance a Baroque treatment even if they wanted it.

Instead we got a strange mix of Roman, Viking and modern "Street" costume with brutalist pillars and a few curtains as the only stage setting. The gods wore high tops, backpacks and neon-illuminated hoodies, and punctuated the action by scrawling graffiti on the central wall. When they scrawled GRIME, and then later preceded it with LA, was I supposed to read the Italian word for tears or as a fashion commentary that helped me understand the characters? The programme added little, asking us to consider not the historic Nero but a metaphorical one who lives in a "cubist, splintered hall of mirrors, that allows us to explore the perilous brevity of time and instability of place and history." Don't let years of brilliant reviews go to your head, Longborough. You're in danger of disappearing up your own backside here.

This was the young performer's production, which Longborough always uses to go experimental on staging. Often, it works. (Rinaldo set in an early 20th-century carnival was a triumph.) This one didn't. My bigger problem, however, is with the opera overall. Monteverdi is playing with morality, turning some of history's most awful people into heroes. It's hard to get excited about the main characters when you know that Nero divorced, exiled and starved to death his first wife, Ottavia ... sung here with stoic dignity by Maria Ostroukhova... then presented her head in a box to the gleeful Poppea. Or to take that final duet seriously when you know that an unhinged Nero kicked his pregnant new wife to death six months later. (And then forcibly castrated a slave boy who looked like Poppea and had him pretend to be the dead woman, returned to life. Seriously, this guy was bad news.)

 The voices and music, however, lived up to Longborough's usual standard. Anna Harvey's Nero, Sofia Troncoso's Poppea and Matthew Buswell's Seneca all gave particularly strong performances. There's a pleasing sub-plot between Ottone (Matthew Paine) and Drusilla (Lucy Knight) that's the most dramatically engaging part of the opera. Jeremy Silver's orchestra, with a full complement of period instruments and him conducting from the harpsichord, brought our ears the Baroque lusciousness that our eyes were denied.

We'd seen Harvey as Bradamante in Longborough's 2016 Alcina, and Knight as one of the spirits in The Magic Flute last year. It's great to see familiar faces progressing into bigger roles. And equally exciting to see all the Longborough debuts. Crazy staging aside, there's no question this is becoming one of the foundries for operatic talent in Europe.

The whole production team deserves special praise for coping with an opening night disaster: the storm that didn't take our marquee did blow out the sound board, forcing an early dinner break and putting the whole production an hour behind schedule. The show continued to that magnificent concluding duet without throwing anyone off their stride.

And there, at last, came a bit where the strange setting worked. As Poppea's and Nero's voices entwine in the majesty of love, the gods link words together on the graffiti board to say "Words mean nothing anymore". In light of the karmic justice awaiting the couple (Nero only makes it three years after murdering Poppea before he's forced to suicide), it's a profound, ironic and hugely depressing way to end the story.

I'm thankful to Monteverdi for helping to create one of my favourite entertainments, and was intrigued by this exploration of operatic roots, but I admit to breathing a sigh of relief that his cynical celebration of anit-heroes didn't become a staple of the art form.

Longborough's Dutchman is a perfect introduction to Wagner; if only more could see it

I've written before about how the intimacy of Longborough Festival Opera's 500-seat theatre transforms the dynamics of a performance. When even the worst seat is a stone's throw from the stage, you pick nuances of facial expression and production design lost in a bigger theatre, and the music flows over you in waves.

Who does Senta really love? It takes death to tell for sure. Photo: LFO

Never, in my experience, has the intimacy effect worked with more power than at last weekend's performance of Der Fliegende Holländer (The Flying Dutchman). I'd seen it only once on stage before, at the Royal Opera House in London, and while my review of that performance attests to my appreciation for both the story and the music, I found Longborough's version vastly better in terms of characterisation, emotional punch and drama. Most significantly, the ROH version set the scene in a grim, almost dystopian world where anyone would do anything to escape ... making our heroine's actions more understandable. Here, Senta's home town is a cosy Scandinavian place full of friendly people, hospitality and hygge. There's no need to run. In fact, the home town boy who loves her while she fantasises about the Dutchman is very much a man to stay for. Sung and acted admirably by Jonathan Stoughton, young Erik tore at Senta's allegiances and gave us a proper love triangle with far more emotional complexity than I could pick up from the upper reaches of the Royal Opera House.

Senta's character blazed with passion, brought to life by the impressive voice of Longborough newcomer Kirstin Sharpin. In fact, there were times her powerful delivery seemed too big and bold for such a small venue ... but it was only the second performance and she's no doubt getting used to the place. I'd certainly put a good wager on her showing up as Brunhilde somewhere in Longborough's upcoming ring cycle. Simon Thorpe as the haunted lead took us credibly from doom to hope and back again in his classically Wagnerian bass. I particularly loved the staging at the end where ... unlike the traditional conclusion of the Dutchman sailing away while Senta throws herself into the sea ... he returns to take the dying girl in his arms, torn between the tragedy of her end and wonder that she's broken his curse. Just as important for this production, however, was the chorus. It was probably the biggest I can remember for any opera here and brought every scene they were in to glowing life. Particularly excellent was the party near the end, where they're trying to convince the Dutchman's cursed crew to join them. In a particularly clever twist, rather than turning up the outsiders are only heard over an old radio, adding to the spookiness of the ghost story while letting the whole chorus bulk out the stage as revelling townspeople.

Photo: LFO

This was an approachable, well-paced, highly-entertaining Dutchman that would have been ideal for any first-timers who wanted to dip their toes into Wagnerian waters. This being Wagner at Longborough, however it's unlikely that any but serious fans managed to get the limited tickets. But it's a nice thought. I live in hope that someday some communications or tech company will sponsor a web broadcast of Longborough productions like this, so a broader audience could partake of the magic.

The rest of the weekend brought other flashes of delight. We're still looking for a new regular place to lodge since the owners of Windy Ridge, our beloved old bolthole, decided to stop doing B&B. This weekend we decided to check out Stow-on-the-Wold, the closest town to the opera. It's a very different vibe from the pastoral country places we've been staying, but there are advantages to that. Primarily a wide range of pubs, restaurants and shops within easy walking distance. Rather than worry about prepping the opera picnic in advance we could just wander local delis to assemble goodies. Stow also has one of England's best clusters of high-end antique shops. While I couldn't afford most of what I admired, it's good to know where I can to turn once I win the lottery and need to kit out my new manor house in a hurry.

All of Stow's businesses are housed within classic Cotswold stone architecture that makes this one of the most picturesque towns in England. And, frankly, calling it a town is a bit grand. There's a large market square, one other main street, and if you venture much beyond that you're back into countryside.  It's also remarkably dog friendly, allowing us to have our boys with us for breakfasts, dinners and pubbage.

With such a broad choice it's not easy to pick a dining spot. Lured by the words "wood fired oven" and "St. Louis-style ribs" we chose The Sheep. The classic Cotswold architecture outside might say old world, but the interior design screams hip modern bistro with a long bar, premium cocktails and that oven on prominent display. It was a beautiful evening so we ended up in an exterior courtyard where a live band did a cheerful and highly proficient delivery of most of the classic covers you'd want at your wedding disco. Plenty of people were on their feet dancing. Who knew the sleepy Cotswolds could deliver such a Friday night party?

And then, much to my surprise, I was not disappointed by the ribs. I was delighted. A full rack, trimmed as St. Louis style should be (with plenty of meat left on the bones), slow-barbecued to extreme, smoky tenderness and slathered in sweet and spicy tomato sauce. Blindfolded, nobody from my home town could have identified these as "foreign". (Given that the Brits have really only started to take barbecue seriously in the past decade, that's staying a lot.)

This dinner and its musical accompaniment is a strong argument for moving our regular accommodation to Stow. But the hunt continues, and there are two more Longborough weekends ahead to offer comparative experiences. Stay tuned for more.

V&A's opera show is a wonder of modern storytelling

There was a point so outrageously fabulous during the V&A's new opera exhibition that I found myself quivering with the pure, unadulterated joy of a small child on Christmas morning.

It's in the section devoted to Handel's Rinaldo. The exhibit displays wrap around a disused stage with early18th century scenery piled in the wings, ropes and pulleys hanging from the rafters. Suddenly, you hear the hubbub of crowd noise, the tap-tap-tap of a baton, and scenery moves into place. As the overture rises, layers of canvas-on-wood waves ... one behind another to a painted horizon ... churn in a circular motion, creating a remarkably convincing illusion of a swelling sea. Rinaldo's boat crosses from one side, a sea deity rides from the other, while scenery clouds part to reveal a sun shining down on a glittering foreign city. It is magical. And exactly the way the London audience would have seen it upon its debut in 1711.

It's one of many moments in this blockbuster show that stirred powerful emotions from glee to dread. Great opera should make you feel, and this masterful collaboration between the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Royal Opera House does that with aplomb. This is a great exhibition because of the way it sheds light on its topic, and because of the objects it brings together, but mostly because it has combined design and technology to give us an immersive experience that embodies the very best of modern storytelling.

You know you're in for something special when you get given a set of top-quality wireless headphones with your ticket, head towards a lavish red curtain and find Tony Pappano, music director of the ROH, welcoming you in. From there, you wander through seven operatic experiences, exploring each production in tandem with the city in which it premiered and thus the political and social trends of its time. These spaces spiral around a final, central area where a series of large screens show off the state of opera in the modern world.

While opera combines many art forms, the music comes first. So giving this exhibit a stirring soundtrack is the foundation of its success. The sound quality is excellent, the choice of musical excerpts beautiful and the technology that shifts you automatically from one audio element to the next is almost flawless. (There were a few times when I stood too close to a section divider and had the next opera cutting in prematurely, but you quickly get the hang of coming back into the main path.)

There are plenty of fascinating things in cases to look at, from beautiful instruments to lavish costumes and original scores. Set design has always been a critical part of opera, and it plays a significant role here. In the Marriage of Figaro section, they've brought in a whole wall from the set of the ROH's highly acclaimed production. In the bit on Strauss' Salome, heavy with Freudian associations, you can take a seat on an oversized version of Freud's famous, Turkey-carpet covered couch to watch the action. Labels on the walls of each section capture key points in snackable bites; design for the social media generation. A risky move ... it could have seemed a cheap attempt to get down with the "yoof" ... but it was actually a beautifully conceived way to get essential facts across quickly and simply. This is worlds away from the dry, academic labels that usually accompany worthy museum shows.

In each case, there are videos of real performances to add to your understanding. Beyond the exhibition, the BBC has produced a two-part show with Lucy Worsley on the same topic. The V&A's web site is full of additional information and short films. The seriously keen can even sign up for classes at the museum. This is the embodiment of the modern, multi-media, multi-channel exhibition.

It's not all perfect. The format of seven premiers in seven cities is an interesting concept, but ultimately creates a rod for their own backs. It works beautifully for the early operas. We experience Monteverdi's Coronation of Poppea at the same time the decadent opulence of Venice gives birth to the art form. Handel's Rinaldo in London sees opera grow up and move beyond Italy as the English capital grows to world prominence, while Mozart's Marriage of Figaro puts Enlightenment trends in Vienna on stage. Verdi's Nabucco premier in Milan is unquestionably linked to the Italian unification movement, but we start to lack balance here as this part of the show becomes more about the politics than the opera. (Although I found one of my favourite displays here: a photographic wall of 150 Italian opera houses, backlit and shining like precious jewels.)

We really slide off the rails when Wagner's Tannhauser gets paired with Louis Napoleon's Paris. True,  a quirk of history did throw this opera and city together; but it's an uncomfortable forced marriage. Wagner and his work was so inextricably linked to Germany, and the role of "Mad" King Ludwig is one of opera's greatest off-stage stories. To do Wagner and his enormous impact on the art form justice, we deserved one of the Munich premieres. Instead, it felt like the curators wanted to avoid the troubling German nationalist legacy, and needed to wedge Paris in somewhere, so pushed the two together.

Then it's on to Dresden, where I actually enjoyed exploring Strauss' Salome more than I thought I would. Though the Dresden tie seemed completely incidental; most of the trends we were talking about here came out of Vienna. While I'm still not enough of a convert to want to see a full production of this challenging (both musically and topically) production, linking it to the world's growing awareness of female sexuality and teenage angst was fascinating. Oscar Wilde's play and Beardsley's prints (beautiful but disturbing) show how Salome's story was so much bigger, and on trend, than the one opera.

Unfortunately, the final section on Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk (paired with Leningrad) risked destroying all the joy that had come before. The plot is distressing, the political reality of Stalin's Russia horrible and the music so discordantly awful that I had to take off my headphones. Porgy and Bess would have been a much more satisfying, and palatable, take on the move toward modern opera, but I assume its launch in Boston ... hardly a world-renown opera town ... took it out of contention.

Sadly, I was so disturbed by the Shostakovich that I didn't have the mental energy to spend much time in the final room with the screens exploring opera since 1945. Having resumed my headphones, I entered to a blast of discordant notes, violent images and ugly, industrial set design that reinforced my ingrained prejudices that the art form has steadily gone to hell since the death of Puccini. I would have liked to have been convinced otherwise. My greatest complaint about the otherwise wonderful show is that they didn't use this fantastic opportunity to change my mind.

Instead, I slipped quickly back into the Wagner section, closed my eyes and listened again to the overture to Tannhauser. Then I took off my headphones and walked through the modern bit in silence.    Emotional equilibrium recovered, my final verdict remains overwhelmingly positive. This unique exploration of the art form will intrigue anyone who's even mildly interested in opera, while the topic, format and design will delight people fascinated by how we tell stories.

Opera: Passion, Power and Politics is on at London's Victoria and Albert Museum through 25 February. It's a good idea to book tickets in advance, especially on weekends or for Friday night openings.

National Theatre's Amadeus revival is heart-stoppingly brilliant

The National Theatre's current production of Amadeus is one of the best things I have ever seen on stage. Definitely one of the top 10 theatrical experiences of my life. Probably in the top five. The whole run is sold out, but they're doing a live broadcast to cinemas on 2 February.

Clear your diary. Find your nearest venue. Book a ticket. Now.

Most readers will be familiar with the 1984 film version that won that year's Best Picture Academy Award and a host of other prizes. I love the film. But the play is much, much better. And very different.

The film is a fairly straightforward, fictionalised biography of Mozart's life. The play is more complex. It's  not only much more about Salieri, but explores more internal conflict. What happens when you work all your life to be good at the thing you love, and someone who hardly tries is better at that thing than you'll ever be? How does jealousy warp the soul? What happens to children when the parent (in this case, God) loves one more than the other? Much like the greatest of Shakespeare's plays, Amadeus uses this story to explore the mingled tragedy and joy of the human condition. The Salieri v. Mozart plot is a conduit to far deeper themes.

I love the film's opera scenes, which show us Mozart's great works in the lavish costumes and settings of his time. I assumed there wouldn't be as much music in the stage play. I was gloriously wrong. The Southbank Sinfonia is on stage most of the time, not just providing music but actively participating in the story. They walk as they play. They're the crowd on the streets and the guests at opulent parties. For the operas, they coalesce back into a traditional orchestra under Mozart's baton. Several top operatic soloists join the cast, so when we get the excerpts from Figaro, the Magic Flute et al, the sound is magnificent. (No matter how good your sound system is, nothing touches the soul like live music.)

The staging is remarkable. For the operas, the whole scene flips with the emperor and his court at the back of the stage, looking towards you. The orchestra is in the centre, in a pit that's sunk into the stage, while the operatic action takes place around an arc projecting into the audience. You find yourself backstage, very much a piece of the action. Later, when we get the musical climax of the requiem, the mingled cast and lights coming up from the horizon create a breathtaking, apocalyptic moment of which you are very much a part.

Lucian Msamati's Salieri is compelling and complex. Despite his evil behaviour, your empathy is all with him and you feel his pain. For the first time, the use of "Amadeus" as the title became clear to me, as Salieri wails the word heavenward. Ama Deus. Beloved of God. Why him and not me? It's a heart shattering moment. I was less enamoured of Adam Gillen's Mozart, who is played as such an obnoxious clown it's very difficult to like him for three quarters of the play. He does pull us in at the end, as we finally understand that he's a scared child, solidly on the autistic spectrum, unable to interact normally with others yet desperately wanting to be loved. Bring plenty of tissue for Mozart's death scene. This is a proper tragedy: nobody escapes unscathed.

Emotionally shattering. Visually beautiful. Soaring music. Remarkable acting. Spiced with witty comic relief and gorgeous costumes. Theatre like this doesn't come around very often. I suspect we might see a transfer to the West End. But don't take any chances. If you're at all intrigued, get to that cinema broadcast.

LFO keeps Wagner creds with pleasing interpretation of difficult opera

Some stories tap into the human condition in such a fundamental way, they're eternal. Swap the setting of Macbeth, and it remains a relevant exploration of greed and human ambition. Traviata's Victorian morals may be dated, but the story of a strong woman who sacrifices herself for others still lacerates the heart.

And then there's Tannhauser.

The fundamental elements that drive the plot are so at odds with the modern world ... so incredible (in its literal use), the opera is very hard to take seriously. You'd be hard pressed not to cheer on the bad guys and think the hero is a misguided idiot unworthy of any empathy. In a modern context, the intellectual explorations here barely deserve 15 minutes, much less a Wagnerian four hours. Which makes it all the more extraordinary that Longborough Festival Opera has produced a version that held my interest throughout and provoked many moments of delight. I overheard several true Wagner aficionados saying it was the best production of this work they'd seen. Once again, this little opera company in Gloucestershire has proven its Wagner creds.

Let's get the problematic plot out of the way. Our hero is a musician who, sometime before the start of our story, has left his employer. Wandering the wider world, the goddess of love finds him so beguiling she invites the mortal into her underground kingdom, the Venusberg, where she becomes his lover and indulges him in all manner of pleasures. He's not a captive, and Venus is a strong, sexy, interesting woman. But Tannhauser starts drowning in guilt. He wants to be human again, subject to morals, rules and death. So he chucks everything in to go home. For a short time, things go swimmingly; he's even on track to win the hand of the princess. Until he lets slip that he's been in the Venusberg. At which point his fundamentalist society turns on him and ostracises him without forgiveness. Such is his crime that even after a long, painful pilgrimage to Rome, the Pope won't absolve him. (So much for forgiveness as the basis of Christianity.) The princess dies of grief over her unrequited love. Venus is willing to take Tannhauser back but he choses death alongside the human girl.

Most operas end with everyone miserable and a high body count, but this one is unique in the pointlessness of it all. The arc to Tosca's suicide is poignant and believable; Tannhauser is just a tedious fool.

Enjoying this opera, then, requires ignoring the plot. You concentrate on the music and a few set pieces within the wider story. And this is where Longborough works its magic.

Tannhauser's overture is one of the most monumentally sweeping pieces of music Wagner wrote. It's unusually long, and these days directors use the time to do some scene setting. At Longborough we saw the lead who would go on to play Tannhauser as Wagner himself, seeking creative inspiration amongst the troubles of his home life. I enjoyed the idea of the opera that followed as an autobiographical exploration of the emotional demons driving the composer, though I doubt I would have enjoyed much time in his angst-ridden, morally conflicted company. I was happy to just close my eyes and listen. Wagner is written into the DNA of the Longborough Festival Opera, and hearing this overture live in such close surrounds is an almost religious experience. To hell with Tannhauser. As the strings swell, I'm back atop the Zugspitze, then taking wing over the majestic peaks of the Bavarian mountains.

This overture establishes the leitmotifs that flow through the opera. They appear in delightful arias throughout, with many of the most pleasing tunes coalescing in a song contest in the middle of the story. The LFO's leads were strong as ever, but the real star this year was the chorus. Whether bubbling in excitement before the song contest, massing in condemnation of Tannhauser's sin or processing through the theatre in penitential procession to Rome (a particularly successful piece of staging), their voices combined to deliver powerful emotion.

While I persist in my desire to see Wagner staged in full 19th-century gothic grandeur, I understand that's not the modern way ... nor could the LFO's tiny stage and moderate budget handle it. Instead, they made bold statements with sparse, elegant stage design and clever costumes. The set for the great hall worked best, an angular, Aztec-like temple dressed with blazes of colour from banners and clothing as the chorus filled the stage. Men wore colourful long gowns with women donning earth-coloured clothing and hijabs ... presumably a sartorial shorthand driving home the fact that this is a repressed, fundamentalist theocracy. The flawed plot could have been more credible if they'd taken that idea further, with Venusberg as the West and Tannhauser pulled between the two societies, but that's no doubt too politically incendiary to mess with.

The Venusberg was less successful, as our love goddess worked a swing on an otherwise bare stage. We were, no doubt, supposed to fill in the blanks by conjuring the lush sexuality of Fragonard's famous painting, but it was a demanding leap for the audience. I did, however, appreciate the metaphorical parallel at the end, when the swing of sin was replaced by a giant, swaying incense burner. Religion triumphs over pleasure.

Tannhauser's not an opera I have any desire to see again, but I'm glad I've had the experience. I'm relieved I saw it at Longborough, always a safe pair of hands when it comes to interpreting this challenging composer. If you're unsure of Wagner but want to give him a try, this is the place to do it.

And there will be no better time than next season. Longborough has announced a revival of last year's Tristan and Isolde, my favourite of all the Wagner productions we've seen there. Because so many members have already seen it, it's possible this will open up space for more of the general public to get in. Check their web site later in the year for details of dates and ticket availability.

Welsh baritone invites a few special guests ... and us ... to his 50th

Every so often in the arts, you get lucky enough to be in the presence of greatness. To see or to hear people so remarkable it's simply an honour to share the same air and get to experience whatever it is they do.

Such it was last night with Bryn Terfel.

The world-famous Welsh bass-baritone is the aural equivalent of being bathed in warm honey. His voice seems to resonate within your body itself; I swear my veins were trembling to his thrilling low notes. Don't believe me? Take whatever opportunity presents itself and see him live. The you'll understand.

But Bryn himself was only half the pleasure of the evening. You see, we were guests at his 50th birthday party. Alongside the actor Michael Sheen and Sting. Oh, and 5,000 other punters who thought to book early enough to snag one of the seats in the Royal Albert Hall before it became a sell out.

It was a delightful evening very obviously crafted with enormous input from Terfel himself. His repertoire went from the expected operatic arias to American spirituals to Welsh hymns to show tunes to pop anthems. Terfel is well known for his range of interests, so if you've read anything about him this is no surprise.  He's also regularly lauded for supporting young artists, and he balanced his performances with up-and-comers like the men's a cappella group Only Men Aloud and the Welsh Folk band Calan.  (The last are the ones who have earned my next iTunes download. Toe-tapping delight.) A host of fellow opera professionals brought favourite tenor and soprano arias into the mix. It was all hosted by Sheen (another proud Welshman) with a humour and intimacy that made it feel like we really were friends at a medium-sized do rather than paying guests.

The most amazing part of the whole night, however, was the addition of another legend. It turns out Sting had asked Terfel to sing at his 50th, and now the Welshman was returning the favour. Those two stars doing an improvisational riff on Roxanne was one of the most astonishing things I've ever heard in a theatre.

They were filming and I expect that somewhere, sometime soon, this will turn up on TV. Don't miss it. Terfel's voice doesn't quite wrap itself around your heart over the screen as it does live (I know ... we've watched him in a lot of Wagner) but it will still be remarkable.

And a reminder for next time: You should ALWAYS book into one of the restaurants inside the Royal Albert Hall at the same time you book the tickets. This is a rare venue in that it's NOT surrounded by dining options; you really are stranded if you want to get something within a stone's throw. I thought we'd be clever and pick up something light at one of the bars that didn't require booking. There are few seats, the pre-packaged fare is indifferent and we still spent £68. (Half of that on wine, admittedly.) For perhaps £20 more we would have had proper food and civilised seating.