Two out of three

Glyndebourne on Tour has discovered outreach and access, etc. In an attempt, which I desperately hope will be vain, to ingratiate themselves with young audiences, they have conceded, in their mendacious publicity, that ‘traditional’ opera is a matter of fat ladies singing, drawn-out death sequences and the rest of the anti-elitist claptrap, and state that ‘dispelling the myth of these stereotypes has long been a priority for Glyndebourne’. So how do you dispel the myth? Commission an opera which deals with contemporary life, involving back-packers, terrorists, drug-dealing and people-trafficking, and set it to music which could easily be mistaken (by elitists) as an unwelcome resurgence of minimalism, advertise it with sexy posters and hope for the best. What I saw in Norwich was, if not the worst, as close to it as I care to venture. And the audience consisted mainly, and as always, of elderly couples. I noticed a small school party, sitting just in front, whose members seemed to be enjoying themselves far less than a similar group had the previous evening at Figaro, about which I raved last week.