Taut as a drumskin: Dialogues des Carmélites, at Glyndebourne, reviewed

The three Just Stop Oil protestors were sitting in the stalls, somewhere near the middle of the front row. Someone had shelled out a cool £600 for those tickets – navigating the Glyndebourne website without, somehow, clocking the company’s loudly proclaimed commitment to sustainability (they even produce their own dyes for costumes these days, using plants from the estate) and then arriving at the venue without noticing the hilltop wind turbine, visible for miles around, which makes Glyndebourne probably the only opera house on Earth to be powered entirely by renewable energy. That kind of commitment to protest, coupled to that level of dim-bulb unawareness, commands a certain respect.

Their methods, not so much. There was a flash and a bang as they detonated their confetti cannon directly behind the oblivious head of the conductor Robin Ticciati. There’s a reason why shouting ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theatre is a standard metaphor for the acceptable limits of free speech.