The Last Night of the Proms came and went, and it was pretty much as anyone might have predicted, if they’d given it a moment’s thought. A sprinkling of popular classics, a pair of unthreatening premières, the familiar landmarks tastefully and affectionately done, and some show tunes and arias, sung by the soprano Golda Schultz with a generosity and warmth that couldn’t have been more potent if she really had been singing to a packed and cheering Royal Albert Hall, rather than TV cameras and emptiness. It was recognisably a Last Night of the Proms: celebratory in that slipper-wearing BBC way, without ignoring the unavoidable truth that you can’t have audience participation without an audience.
And after all that fuss, too. Social media gives all arguments a sharper, meaner edge, but the annual stramash over the Last Night is a fixture dating back at least a quarter of a century to 1995, when John Drummond decided to wind up the normies by commissioning Harrison Birtwistle’s Panic.
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