MY VERSION OF EVENTS....

I had it all planned. Tonight would have been the 31st opening night of my Opera Holland Park career. And my last, too. I retire from the company  on the 30th September  this year and I had intended to use the ten weeks of music-making and the conviviality for which the venue is famed as a backdrop to say an awful lot of farewells. Those after show drinks, served in coup, flute and miniature and usually filled with a concoction of James Clutton's invention will be no more. Anxious looks at the weather forecast are gone too (not a loss) but most of all, I have been shorn of the chance to celebrate with all the team after each – always different – adrenalin filled night of wonderment; committed professionals who, like the singers who come off the stage, are crackling with the release of the night's pressures, having made a contribution to the enrichment of a thousand people. After all, that is the particular elixir we crave and it is why we do it. I'm not dwelling too much on