Susie Stranders

Marching on …

Finally after all the gloom of the year to date we had a few days of sun and I was able to plant some vegetables – broad beans and parsnips so far – check on the onions and garlic planted last autumn and do the annual hack and slash of all the dead brush from last year’s flowers. Then as I turned to go indoors the sunset showed me my next big task. The tree in the left foreground is my quince which has given us so much membrillo and jelly over the years but has lots of overlapping branches and needs a really good prune. A start has been made.

My rather aching limbs picked up some energy on Monday evening as I set off fot the Wigmore Hall to hear the Irish Baroque Orchestra play The Trials of Tenducci as the first part of a tour to Dublin, Limerick, New York and Virginia. I’m a great admirer of Peter Whelan who leads the IBO and the energy and clarity the band brings to the repertoire.

Tonight’s was an interesting programme based around the exploits of one Giusto Fernando Tenducci, a famous eighteenth century castrato singer. Born in Siena he came to London in 1758 and later moved to Dublin where he met and married Dorothea who later bore two children but later sued him for divorce for non-consummation. He became something of a celebrity – he was painted by Gainsborough, was friends with J C Bach and a singing teacher to Mozart. He was also to spend eight months in a debtors’ prison in London and later in Ireland. One admirer wrote of his voice: ‘neither man’s nor woman’s but it is more melodious then either’. Tenducci by Gainsborough in the Barber Art Gallery in Birmingham.

Having heard last week Mozart’s last three symphonies, each half of the evening began with two of his earliest ones, numbers 1 and 4. Short, sharp and lively, they set the sense of fun for the evening which involved works which Tenducci had sung or were by his friends and contemporaries. Tenducci’s role was taken by the excellent countertenor Hugh Cutting who expressed his delight that high range male soprano voices were no longer the result of mutilation. He sang arias by Gluck, Thomas Arne, J C Bach and Mozart and as an opera singer he filled them with expressiveness and drama. The orchestral playing in an oboe concerto by Johann Christian Fischer and the symphonies and a rollicking version of Tommaso Giordani’s Overture and Irish Medley which contained well-known Irish folk tunes was brilliant with a small orchestra filling the hall with an eclectic and delightful programme. And afterwards I was able to catch up with violinist Jenna Raggett as she and fellow violin players were taking a selfie. And the IBO conveniently posted photos of the rehearsal and the final bow.

Later in the week my favourite orchestra the OAE held a session to launch its Southbank Programme for 2026-27, Held in the elegant hall of Acland Burghley School in Tufnell Park and hosted by Radio 3 and Proms star Katie Derham, the evening had music from a string quartet with vocals from tenor Hugo Hymas who was one of the OAE’s ‘Rising Stars’ in the 2019 cohort. While discussing each of the concerts with long standing players Annette Isserlis (viola), Cecelia Bruggemeyer (bass) and Martin Lawrence (horn), we also heard the fascinating story of the band’s formation back in 1986 when a number of players decided they were doing all the work and others were getting all the plaudits so they formed an orchestra that was run by its players not by a single celebrated conductor. It’s proved a great success for forty years and has allowed for concerts with a wide variety of conductors and several directed from within the orchestra itself. Another very pleasant evening in the company of friends and with some excellent music from Vivaldi, Bach, Handel and Mozart.

Friday brought a real surprise. Ace pianist and dear friend Susie Stranders invited me to a gala evening with St Paul’s Opera in Clapham. Well if Susie’s involved it will be good so off I set in a convoluted cross Sarf Lunnun jaunt with a bus, two trains and a walk to a wonderfully simple church, St Paul’s Clapham, to meet my friend Jadwiga who was coming from Putney. I’ve been previously to similar evenings in Fulham Palace and the Blackheath Halls and it appears that there are many occasional opera group and societies all over London and indeed the country. It’s great that there are so many opportunities for talented young singers to engage with diverse audiences in different locations. St Paul’s Opera has a dynamo at its heart in Tricia Ninian and the evening was billed as David Butt Philip and Friends. David has been associated with St Paul’s Opera since 2017 and gathered some great friends to perform arias and songs from Handel and Mozart through Wagner and Bizet to Britten and Bernstein. David was joined by soprano Ellie Laugharne, mezzo Marta Fontanals-Simmons and bass Liam James Karai. As accompanists for the four singers Susie was reunited with Eric Melear with whom she had been on the young artists programme at the Grand Opera Studio in Houston back in 2000. Both experienced repetiteurs, they managed to make the piano sound like a full orchestra in the fine acoustic of the church. I can’t make St Paul’s production of La Traviata this summer as I’m out of town at a wedding but I’m sure it will be worth a trip.

A business bagged up for shredding! 30 years of my various company documents all on their way to be shredded. Because many of the call sheets and contact lists, invoices and (remember them?) cheque stubs contain the names and details of several rather well-known names I’ve been lucky enough to work with over the years, they can’t just go into my Lewisham Council recycling bin. So off they go to Restore Data Shred for secure and certified destruction.

After that it was a visit to Langley Park Boys School for an ‘Evening of Jazz’ in which my granddaughter was playing flute in the big band numbers. The evening opened with a quintet featuring Sam on tenor sax who had guested with Soulstice last week at Off the Cuff. They were very good as were the big band that played a few standards. Then to my surprise after Soulstice lead singer Bea had sung Round Midnight, Trixi (Daisy) stepped up to the mic to sing Dream a Little Dream for Me. Her parents had failed to inform proud grandad that she was a featured soloist as well and she gave an emotional rendition of a fine thirties song imbuing Gus Kahn’s lyric with a real sense of longing. The whole evening was a further confirmation of the immense depth of talent that is produced when the arts in schools are properly respected and resourced. Soap box suspended for now!

Next to the Donmar for Anna Ziegler’s Evening all Afternoon – a tense two-hander with Anastasia Hille as Jennifer, a suspect new stepmother and Erin Kellyman, making her stage debut, as Delilah, the suspicious and resentful daughter. Both actors are superb – Hille is all internalised emotion, with staunch British values, stiff upper lip and sense of decorum, responding stoically to the taunts thrown at her. I really can’t believe that this was Kellyman’s stage debut – apparently she’s well-known on screen but not in shows I’ve seen. (I also note now that Erin will be in the TV show 2026 – the successor to the 2012 and W1A satires that lit up our screens with [presentation of wondrous, pretentious incompetence.)

Jennifer is a young, bolshie, opinionated half Brit, half Brooklyn tornado who rages at her mother’s early death and her father’s gall in replacing her. The play revealed many ideas of grief, loneliness, age differences, relationships and an eventual uneasy and tentative rapprochement. With some scenes of dialogue between the two characters and others where they address us the audience directly the revolve stage worked really well against a dark blue brooding set. Lots of food for thought in a dramatic short play.

The next night at Hampstead downstairs we saw R.O.I. (Return on Investment) another short new play by Aaron Loeb which examined the releationship between creator and investor in the context of big pharma. Paul, Lloyd Owen, runs a venture capital fund with which he intends to change the world. His colleague May Lee, played by Millicent Wong, is on the hunt for a unicorn – a start up company with a $1billion valuation which will gain her a partnership and personal wealth. Along comes Willa, Letty Thomas, with a cure that will eradicate cancer from the entire world. I wondered if she was the real deal or another Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos ignominy – who did get a mention in the script. We were left to wonder throughout as the wonderdrug trials progress through successful initial stages into really murky territory to avoid scrutiny by the FDA. Add an affair between Paul and Willa, gaslighting May Lee, questionable views about ethnic types and a Congressional tribunal – there’s a whole lot going on in there, including a late appearance of The Woman (Sarah Lam) perhaps showing where May might be heading. It’s very sharp and witty in its dialogue and there are many moments of humour among the sad implication that power and money will always corrupt even the most well-meaning of souls.

Willa, (Letty Thomas) Paul (Lloyd Owen) and May (Millicent Wong) at the tribunal.

Next was a trip to Richmond for Vincent in Brixton which I missed at the NT in 2002 but this seems to be a time of revivals what with Teeth and Smiles and Copenhagen on the horizon. Nick Wright’s imagined revelations of van Gogh’s year in lodgings in Brixton, while working as an art dealer in Covent Garden, was a delight. The amazing Niamh Cusack led a cast in which three of the four were making their stage debuts – quite a week for debuts! It’s a quiet domestic piece in which we are treated to the kitchen odours of cooking on a working stove and later shared Niamh’s pride at her separation of egg yolk and white done in real time. It’s like a mystery story where you know the outcome but the characters don’t. Vincent was scathing about the work of fellow lodger Sam but we didn’t see any of his own work or sense his promise. He was a confused young man in a foreign country experiencing strong emotions and desire for the first time. Initially attracted to the daughter Eugenie, it was to landlady Ursula that we are led to believe he lost his virginity. It’s a play about grief, Ursula still in widow’s black, restless relationships and passion and everyday life gently unfolding in the Orange Tree’s intimate space.

Niamh Cusack as Ursula with Jeroen Frank Kales as Van Gogh.
Photograph: Johan Persson/Orange Tree

The next day Fran invited me to join her for a technical rehearsal of Copenhagen at Hampstead Theatre. This time I had seen the original production of Michael Frayn’s play back in 1998. The staging was very similar with a sparse set with three chairs. At Hampstead there is the addition of a spectacular set back wall which I won’t describe so as not to spoil your gasps when you see it. It’s fascinating to see how lighting, sound and movement blocking subtly affect your understanding of what is taking place. Can’t wait to see the whole thing in a couple of weeks’ time. It’s a real festival of Michaels – Frayn, Blakemore the original director and Longhurst this revival.

Thursday was the Watford Community Sports & Education Trust’s Annual Gala Dinner and so the usual suspects assemble at Vicarage Road for an evening celebrating what the charity has achieved against the gloom of the economy, through the dedication of staff and volunteers. It came as a pleasant surprise to me to discover that Frances’ sister Rose (second from right) has been asked to succeed Simon Macqueen as chair of the trustees. Well deserved for her energy and enthusiasm for the work it does. We all had a great time chatting to former and current players and meeting young people the Trust has helped over the years.

As it was a late finish, Rose had kindly invited Fran and me to stay with her and husband Mark in Bovingdon. This proved a great boon for me as I planned to catch my friend Kristina Ammatil giving a lecture/recital in Henley-on-Thames the next morning. So I set off for a pleasant drive through the Chilterns and made it in good time to hear Kristina discuss allegory in opera with the title: Love, Gods and Mortals. It was a well argued essay supported with slides and illustrated with excerpts from operas old and modern in Kristina’s powerful, melodic soprano accompanied by Jack Redman at the piano. She is particulary keen to perform contemporary repertory and introduced us to several pieces I didn’t know. I was very pleased to have the serendipitous chance to attend from nearby rather than making the trip from London.

Christ Church Henley – wonderful woodwork

I had a chance to chat with Kristina and her boyfriend Luka after the event for a catch up before dashing (I wish! Thanks M25.) back home to park and unpack the car and catch a train and bus to Shoreditch for a performance of Handel’s Tamerlano from which I’d heard excepts but never seen the whole of this great opera. Part of the annual London Handel Festival this was taking place in a completely new venue for me – the splendid Shoreditch Town Hall.

The orchestra under Laurence Cummings were superb and the production was delivered in a witty English language update of the original Italian. The design and concept led one to rename the opera Trumperlano since a blue suited, red tie wearing golfer Tamerlano, a Tartar emperor, tries to impose his will on the traditionally-costumed Turkish sultan Bajazet and grab his daughter Asteria who is in love with a Greek prince Andronico. It’s convoluted but hey it’s opera from 1724 and the London crowds loved it.

The year 1724 was a good one for Handel as he wrote Rodelinda and Giulio Cesare in the same year. I’ve now seen all three in the space of the last two years. They are all full of great tunes and high drama mixed in with a sense of humour which makes them very appealing. Certainly the Shoreditch audience loved the whole thing given the ovation the singers and players received at the end. A very varied musical day!

My last cultural outing of March also celebrated, by a weird coincidence, the year 1724 which just happened to be the date of Bach’s St John Passion which the OAE were performing in the Queen Elizabeth Hall. As a ‘friend’ I was also invited to attend the rehearsal with German conductor Johanna Soller making her debut appearance with the orchestra. She knows how to get asked back – she cut Sunday’s rehearsal by an hour – always goes down well with musicians! This rehearsal may have been brief but it was also fascinating. Ms Soller is clearly a producer as well as conductor, keyboard star and singer. She started by having the QEH staff move the rostra about so that the chorus formed a shallow horeshoe rather than a straight line; she moved soloists’ seats to better catch the hall’s lighting and during the course of the rehearsal frequently skipped off the stage, ran up the aisle to listen from the cheap seats and make sure we’d all get the best possible experience in the evening. She gave a number of notes and we could hear their immediate effect on volume, phrasing, pronunciation and diction. All very impressive but did it work?

Emphatically, yes! Her energy and dramatic timing made this one of the most operatic readings of the mass and that includes Peter Sellars’ staged version with Simon Rattle and the OAE in 2019. The orchestra have played both Bach passions many times but sounded fresh and engaged last night. The score is so melodic and dramatic – the build up to scene 33 “And behold, the curtain in the temple was torn in two pieces from top to bottom. And the earth shook, and the cliffs were rent, and the graves opened up, and many bodies of saints arose.” shook the entire hall. This is in contrast to the beautiful alto aria “Es ist vollbracht – It is finished” sung by the wonderful Helen Charlston continuing her long assoctaion with the OAE having been one of its early Rising Stars. All soloists were excellent James Way as the evangelist, Peter Edge – one of the current cohort of Rising Stars – as Christus, Hillary Cronin, Jonathan Hanley and then Tristan Hambelton as Pilate was outstanding in his empathetic reading as the representative of Roman law. Johanna Soller congratulated all areas of the orchestra in turn and selflessly stood to one side as the band and soloists took their bow, A fine debut and let’s see much more of her in the UK.

News

And Feb ain’t started slow …

My goodness – we’re not yet halfway through the month and there’s all this to write about!

Following the rehearsal I attended last month at Acland Burghley School for the OAE’s planned concert featuring Mozart’s clarinet concerto, February started with the actual performance at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. It was fascinating to see how the subtle changes that had been suggested during the rehearsals had made their way firmly into the final version – except that no version is ever final as the room, the audience and the moment make every performance unique. The interplay between Kati Debretzeni as leader and Katherine ‘Waffy’ Spencer on her beloved basset clarinet ‘Grace’ was moulded into an outstanding piece of music. The concert opened with an overture by Juan Crisostomo Arriaga – often dubbed the Spanish Mozart for his precocity and the fact that he and WAM were both born on 27 January, albeit 50 years apart. This was written when Arriaga was 14 and who knows where he might be in the pantheon if he’d lived beyond the age of 20. At least there’s a theatre named after him in his home town of Bilbao where we saw a not very good zarzuela production in 2008. Each half of the QEH concert concluded with a mad encore devised by Waffy of arias from Die Enführung aus dem Serail with ‘Grace’ as Konstanze and bassoons as the males, Belmonte and the Pasha, with Acland Burghley students displaying large card captions to tell the story. The OAE as well as being great musically are also great fun (see below).

One of the things that endears me to this band – apart from their musical excellence – is that at the end of every OAE concert the audience are handed a ‘Thanks for coming card’ from a different member of the orchestra. It’s a really pleasing gesture that makes you feel properly involved in the evening’s entertainment. Tonight’s card of course was from Grace herself.

Next up was a visit to the Young Vic as a proxy for patron Frances who was in Hull for a football match. I’ve pretty much given up on long distance away games, especially midweek. This was an insight session into Arthur Miller’s Broken Glass which previews from 20 February so the cast are half way through rehearsals. The director Jordan Fein joined us with cast members Eli Gelb, Juliet Cowan, Nigel Whitmey and Alex Waldmann. The play covers the literally paralysing effect on the main character of the news of the infamous massacre of Jews on Kristallnacht in 1938. It was interesting to hear about the directorial and design decisions and to discuss the relevance of the play today with genocides taking place in several parts of the world. At these events it’s always interesting to see all the research material provided in the room for the cast to be fully informed of the subject matter. In this case the walls were covered with lots of photos of Brooklyn in the 30s with newspaper headlines and cuttings about Kristallnacht. All this and a glass of wine and a chance to spend an hour chatting to the team – cast and development executives. In a fun insight into the actor’s life, Alex Waldman said that after being in rehearsal all day with Americans and doing an American accent he often got told to drop it by his kids when he got home.

Jordan Fein courtesy Young Vic Theatre
Steve Gregson

The next day saw me head off to the British Museum to see the Samurai exhibition which had just opened this week. It’s a comprehensive review of all aspects of the samurai era from 700 to their dissolution in the 1870s. And it’s not all about war and weaponry although there are some magnificent examples of armour, swords and bows. There are displays on art and culture, domestic life and, a surprise for many, me included, the important role of women samurai. The spread of samurai and shogun myth and history into modern films, anime and artworks is also featured. I went in at 2.30 expecting to spend an hour or so and was kicked out when the museum closed at 5pm. Time very well spent among elegantly displayed objects with excellent explanations and a lot of learning about the samurai.

As it was one of the few days so far this year in which it didn’t rain (yet, don’t speak too soon)- and the National Gallery has no scaffolding at the moment so I snapped this on the way in from Charing Cross station. Given the surprise rain remission I decided to walk to the Jugged Hare pub near the Barbican where our first week of each month City Orns group of Watford FC fans was to meet to discuss our managerless team and a whole range of other unrelated topics. It was only a couple of miles and took me through Red Lion Square, along Holborn, through Smithfield and past St Bartholomew the Great before the final stretch through the Barbican tunnel. Pub, food and company were well worth the walk. But I did get wet on the way home.

Thursday saw me again at the Southbank Centre for an experimental evening called the Classical Mixtape Live. All six resident orchestras were presenting short concerts over the course of two and a half hours. First up was the London Philharmonic Orchestra in the Royal Festival Hall who played the first movement of Beethoven’s Fifth – possibly the best known opening of any musical work – and then a suite from Howard Shore’s music for the Lord of the Rings. It was hosted by an Irish presenter Vogue Williams who gushed and stuttered from her notes up by the organ desk. Not quite sure why. She opined that the players must be exhausted after playing like that – for 7 minutes – perhaps ignorant of the length of many symphonies and concerts, let alone opera.Then came the fun part. Four orchestras were repeating the same 20 minute set in four locations around the centre. It could have been good except that someone didn’t really study the logistics of getting 2,700 people from the RFH into the four other venues despite inviting the Green Side and the Blue Side to head to different locations. So there was more queueing than listening. I only got to two of the four.

In the Clore Ballroom off the main foyer members of the Chineke! Orchestra were perched on podiums around which we all milled. It was a bit like a promenade performance at the Bridge Theatre without the stewards to guide us. Now Chineke! is admirable in being a largely BAME band giving opportunities to musicians who might not have found their way to a classical orchestra. They looked a bit nervous and the conductor probably struggled to see everyone given the set up – very dramatic lighting! They played Montgomery Variations by Margaret Bonds but it was difficult to get a sense of the piece while being on the move. In the Undercroft, a storeroom under the QEH, the London Sinfonietta played Steve Reich. Unfortunately the space is so small that there was a one out one in policy and I didn’t make it to the head of the queue. Nor did I ever get to the end of the lengthy line trying to get into the Purcell Room to hear the Aurora Orchestra performing music from Mahler’s time in the Alps.

However the delight of the night was the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in the Queen Elizabeth Hall foyer presenting a programme of Bavarian Oompah music including the Tristch Tratsch Polka and a selection from The Sound of Music. The Guardian gave the whole evening a two-star rating but noted that the OAE team were “having a whale of a time using beer glasses as percussion and proving they are most definitely game for a laugh.” They were led by Adrian Bending who noted, rather cheekily, in his intro that if people wanted to hear the fifth symphony as Beethoven might have heard it himself, they should come to the QEH on Sunday to hear the orchestra’s historically informed performance. Seeing them in lederhosen, dirndl skirts and with Adrian using tuned beer glasses as percusssion and Waffy Spencer singing ‘Do Re Mi’ it was something to behold. You can take a look at them here:

Finally we all reconvened in the RFH for the Philharmonia to take us into space with Mars and Jupiter from Holst’s The Planets and some of John Williams’ music for Star Wars. It was an interesting evening somewhat marred by the logistics but I hope they do it again with a bit more planning. It was good to see four of the six orchestras in a different light.

The next evening brought an altogether different experience. My granddaughter has a prominent gender-switched role as Arvide Abernethy in Guys and Dolls, the annual musical production at Langley Park Boys School where she is in the sixth form. I’m not a huge fan of musicals but had to admire the incredible professionalism of this young cast. Great set and costumes, singers all mic-ed up and fully commited to both lusty and subtle performances. At several points there were over 100 performers on the stage a testament to the depth of music and drama talent across the entire school. It is billed as the ‘whole school musical’, and what with all the people involved behind the scenes, it really was. The band, the lighting, sound and performances were of astonishing quality. As my son said after seeing it next day, it makes you rethink what is meant by ‘school play’ these days.

Saturdays seem to bring drama around Watford FC. I watched a narrow defeat at Southampton on TV and then learned a little later that the club has replaced Javi Gracia who resigned last week with a completely unknown manager. We’ll see. So on Sunday I was pleased to be back on more secure territory. The Hungarian conductor Adam Fischer is a long time and frequent collaborator with the OAE and being able to go to both the rehearsal and the performance of Beethoven symphonies 4 and 5 was a real privilege. I wondered how different the conversations with Fischer would be compared to the self-directed rehearsal for the Mozart last month – in truth not very. There was still lots of consultation with members of the orchestra, comments discussed and annotations made on their scores for dynamics, expression and so on. The two symphonies are very different with the fourth being much less familiar. It was a delight to see them shaped by a maestro with a top orchestra and then enjoy the end result a little later.

Player list and the view from the stalls

Between the rehearsal and the concert was a talk with Adrian Bending, Phil Dale (not in lederhosen today) and Christopher Rawley They talked about the differences in self-directed and conducter-ledconcerts and agree that Adam Fischer is someone who excites them with his interpretations which often catch them by surprise. They clearly have the greatest respect and affection for him. The session also featured a wonderful contrabassoon and three trombones about which Christopher and Phil talked. The contrabassoon was made by a maker well-known to Beethoven and might have been used in the early performances of the fifth and ninth symphonies. There is a campaign to keep this instrument which bears the number 001 in the country as it is currently up for sale. Christopher demonstrated the deep notes this piece of wood can deliver and Phil expressed his delight at Beethoven scoring for three trombones in the fifth symphony – a pattern followed by many other composers keeping trombonists gainfully employed.

Pre-concert talk with Adrian, contrabassoon, Christopher and Phil

On Monday I had a lovely Zoom call with Daisy Scott in Boston, Mass to discuss theatre, music, retirement, families and lots more – but not world affairs as there is not much to say except mutual despair. It is a real pleasure to be in regular touch with our Boston family.

Tuesday evening featured a trip to Watford for a thank you party from the council for the work several of us have been doing with the relocation and redisplay of Watford Museum. It was a nice gesture to thanks us volunteers and we all look forward to the opening of the museum next year after a major building refurbishment. The group I was with had focused on the football club so it was good to see the work of other teams looking at grassroots sport, the diverse community and entertainment and to meet up with old and new friends. It rained in Watford too! Heavily, but one of our team Alan kindly gave me a lift back to the station.

In Bangladesh in 2009, Manzur E Mawla was co-presenter with Eeshita Azad of the pilot television programmes I made for the BBC World Service aimed at encouraging young Bangladeshis to learn English as a Foreign Language. He later relocated to the UK and we have been in touch with him and his family on a number of occasions. He emailed this week to say he was in a play at the Drayton Arms Theatre and would I like to go. Well, interest piqued, what else could I do?

It’s a venue I’ve not been to before – a small 50-seater above a lovely pub. The play was called Modern Romance and was a series of twelve scenes – six pre-filmed and projected, six acted live – about the various whacky ways people get together these days. Scatalogical, filled with innuendo – how do you make paper clips and staples sexy ?- it was funny and revealing. My friend Manzur did a two-man scene with Jay Ramji as a gay Under 21 football couple one Arsenal (guess!) one Fulham who among other escapades embrace at a goal being scored while playing against each other to the consternation of coaches. It was written by Giles Fernando and directed by Penny Gkritzapi who I had a pleasant chat to in the bar afterwards and spent time with Manzur and other cast members. Manzur had done some acting back in Bangladesh before we worked together and had started acting classes again here only recently. It transpired that this was his UK stage debut, and very well he did, having joined the cast at very short notice. A totally unexpected fun evening added to my calendar by a chance email.

The live action cast with Manzur and Jay third and fourth from left.

Last outing for this post is to see Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov at the Royal Opera House. Another soggy trip into town and no drinks beforehand as it’s a bladder-challenging two hours and twenty minutes with no interval. Susie Stranders’ insight talk last month was very helpful in making both the story and the musical motifs clear so I could look out for particular moments in the piece. The choral singing was incredibly powerful and included a children’s chorus which Susie had prepared – great job! I took my seat being slightly panicked about being a long way from the aisle should nature call. Then it was suddenly time for the final black out and curtain calls. How on earth to two and a half hours pass so quickly? Answer: engrossing story from Pushkin, marvellously varied score with simple tunes and powerful orchestration, brilliantly sung, accompanied by an orchestra on top form and a superb overall production directed by Richard Jones. A brilliant night at the opera.