Rupert Christiansen has narrated this article for you to listen to.
It’s four years since I gave up opera criticism. The pandemic had struck, I had hit a significant birthday, and notched up three decades at the coal face – a quarter of a century at the Telegraph, and an earlier stint at this address. There were other things I wanted to do and after reviewing something like 2,500 performances, I had said everything I wanted to say, several times over, and knew that it was time for other voices to be heard.
Truth be told, I was becoming a little jaded. My blind spots – opera seria, the final eight mediocrities of Richard Strauss, Rossini’s irritating comedies – were turning cancerous, and I was even tiring of masterpieces like Tosca and Die Zauberflöte: no reflection on them, simply the effect of over-familiarity. ‘Don’t you miss it?’ friends still ask.
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