MY VERSION OF EVENTS....

I am currently in Italy, high in the Picentino, lapping up the sunshine and whatever sauce is left on my plate (yesterday's lunchtime Pasta Amatriciana would have been swabbed up with whole loaves of bread had there been enough of it) but I still find myself drawn to Twitter and the world outside. And it isn't only to post pictures to make you all jealous either; I read an excellent piece by John Allison this morning ( http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opera/what-to-see/warning-this-opera-may-cause-offence/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter ) in which he spoke about the recent trend for warning patrons about the content of productions. I have to say, we have only ever done this when we have had concerns about participants in our free tickets for young people - as much for the sensibilities of their parents as for the children. Despite John's argument, when a character has his throat cut and there is arterial spurt splattering the walls, an 8 year old could easily find...

Football parlance is never far from the surface at OHP. "It is the hope that kills you" is one cliche that comes easily to most football fans; it means that it is often better to have no hopes or dreams for your team so that they can't ultimately be dashed. As we went into October of 2015 as an independent company, I suppose that expression came to mind more often than any other. We have hopes and aspirations for the company - not, it is true, based entirely on speculation, since we have been at it for a while - but there always exists the question, even for manifest optimists like us, that what you predict will happen may not come to pass. I think it was the author Terry Pratchett who said that opera was just hundreds of things NOT going wrong, and he was pretty much on the money. The most profoundly appealing aspect of opera is that it is indeed a human product and humans are properly dodgy beings, but this is also what makes it so terrifying. And this applies t...

It has been an interesting couple of days on twitter; I have had two prolonged discussions with people who are evidently committed opera goers, but who both appeared to harbour quite virulent belief in the idea that opera is elitist. Both conversations revealed that whilst the general population is polarised on the matter of 'high' arts, those already converted appear to be divided within it. The first conversation centred around our free ticket schemes. A critic had mentioned meeting two boys at a performance of Fledermaus who were on the scheme. Both, she said, appeared fully engaged and had told her they would definitely be coming back. A twitterer doubted that such schemes were useful (although we did end up discussing subsidy and who was paying for such free tickets). When we set the scheme up many years ago, the idea was simple; the best way to encourage life-long interest in opera is to give young people (from the age of 7 in our case) the chance to experience it, a...

So I didn't imagine it: our Queen of Spades was as good as it felt like it was going to be. The cast were fabulous and everybody appears to agree with the spider comparisons for Rosalind Plowright's remarkable physical incarnation of the Countess. There is always pressure on a first night, that's obvious. But the pressure doesn't apply in one place, or in equal force, like a blanket across us all, it manifests itself in several places. For the singers - some of them still young and subject to eager attention - they take on these mighty, signature roles with trepidatious ballsiness. The director, the conductor, the designer; they too feel the weight of expectation to create a coherent piece of musical theatre that satisfies the myriad personal expectations of the audience. It takes enormous courage from performers to step out into the glare of critical attention in such revered roles. For those in the earlier stages of a career, it is nights like last night that wi...