Good-natured glow

Almost everyone who has written about Vaughan Williams’s opera Sir John in Love has defensively insisted that we put all thoughts of Verdi’s Falstaff out of our minds because Vaughan Williams had something quite different in his mind. He knew all the going operatic versions of the play, including Nicolai’s (which is a minor masterpiece, as was demonstrated in Buxton last year), so he must — so the argument goes — have had something special and personal to contribute.