I used to have a theory that if it was cold and rainy for the first Glyndebourne dress rehearsal of the season, the rest of the summer would be heavenly. Yesterday at the Onegin dress, the weather was so horrid and miserable that we picnicked in the car with some soup. Bodes well? Hmm. Last year we did exactly the same thing, for Macbeth, and then it didn't stop raining for a year. Somehow I don't think I'll be getting Michael Fish's weather job at the Beeb.
Will write about Onegin in detail once it opens - for now all I can say is it's a total treat. Meanwhile mad props to Clive Davis at The Spectator and Brian Micklethwaite at Samizdata (a Libertarian blog - !?) for their kind comments and links, and to Gert for staying for the whole of Simon Boccanegra the other night and reporting that eventually Simone gave up and was overdubbed in his death scene by, er, Paolo the villain!
And hat off to Stephen Pollard who tells it like it is about the BBC's coverage of its own recent Young Musician of the Year competition. It was won by a 12-year-old trombonist called Peter Moore, and the reason I didn't write anything about it is that I didn't even know it was on, which seems rather to prove Stephen's point. Sue Tomes has similar words in The Guardian. More of that when I can control the rage-induced tremor in my hands.
