Grave and glittering

While it’s clear, from the ending-times of most of their performances, that neither of London’s major opera houses feels it is worth considering seriously their patrons who don’t live in the capital and have to use public transport, it often seems even clearer that most Londoners wouldn’t dream of going further afield for an opera than Bow Street or St Martin’s Lane. At least I can’t see any other explanation of why each visit I have paid to Sadler’s Wells this year has been to a theatre half-full, if that. And several of those visits have been far more enjoyable than almost anything to be found in the West End in recent months. The Polish King Roger, Opera North’s largely magnificent ‘Little Greats’, and now the Hungarian National Opera & Ballet’s Duke Bluebeard’s Castle and The Miraculous Mandarin have played, at the performances I attended, to houses which would cause panic attacks at Covent Garden or the ENO.