MY VERSION OF EVENTS....

The eulogy I just about managed to deliver today as we bid farewell to our mother. ---- Before I begin I would like, on behalf of our family, to thank you all for coming today to celebrate Mum's life. I would especially like to thank James and Sarah for organising the music for us today and especially all of my friends and colleagues from Opera Holland Park for giving your time to bring your talent and kindness to honour our mother. We are extremely grateful. ------- I want to speak to you today mum. I haven't really been able to for so long and I want everybody here to listen to what I have to say because there are things that we maybe should have said to you before, but didn't. Lidia Volpe, nee Perillo, you were mother to Lou, Matteo, Sergio and me. You were grandmother to Matthew, Leanora, Marcella, Gianluca, Fiora, Jack and Lily. You were aunty to countless others and a surrogate mother to many, many more. Here with us today are the children of your dear friend ...

A radical plan for opera and the arts What we do is plan just one performance of any opera or play. Perhaps two, just to be safe. We would save a fortune in performance costs. We then film and record it in HD super surround sound and maybe, just maybe, in 3D! We charge people something like a tenner per month to subscribe to a streaming service. They can watch it at home on telly, on their phone, their iPad, their Kindle. Wherever, whenever they like, just as iTunes Match says. Just think of the millions who'll take this up in order to discover opera and theatre; one minute Justin Bieber, the next, Coriolanus or Gawain. They wouldn't have to leave home. They'd love it. Now here's where it gets really clever. We don't make these recordings in a studio but in a theatre! Then we charge people a premium - like, a really big amount of money - to be AT the recording. People will love to tell their friends that "they were there when..." The tickets woul...

You have to admire Jose Mourinho's chutzpah (liberally laced with narcissism). He returns in triumph to Stamford Bridge, spends a season waxing lyrical about his relationship with the fans, gathers a team that is being hailed already as one of the best ever in the Premiership (it isn't, by the way) and then takes an almighty swipe at Chelsea fans in a fashion that is guaranteed to get them hot under the collar. After the hard fought win against QPHa Ha on Saturday, Jose went on the offensive; the floodlights man was targeted and then so were the fans. We were too quiet apparently - I was there and I can't say the noise levels were any different from normal; we got loud when we attacked, sat grumbling when we didn't, started whining when our small neighbours scored and then we went mad when Hazard scored the winner. The only thing with the potential to have changed that would have been Rio Ferdinand's appearance. T'was ever thus, so one has to wonder what Jos...

When we started Opera Holland Park in 1996, one of our primary aims (and in this we were not alone) was to feature the concept of "accessibility" at the heart of the company. In so many respects this concept becomes ever harder to maintain because, well, things don't get cheaper to provide and audiences are ever more demanding. And when a major newspaper reviews a show, the critic doesn't instinctively consider the cost of our tickets. It is further complicated by the great differences in opinion vis a vis what "accessibility" actually means. In our case, we have fallen back on the fact that we provide 1500 free tickets and a few thousand at £15 and nobody in their right mind would argue against the idea that these seats are very appealing. But after that, you pay £50 and more which in comparative terms is reasonable but in real terms is still pricey. Factor in the economic situation and our core audiences (who are not all wealthy) have to start mak...

It took us a while, but we finally announced the 2015 Investec Opera Holland Park season back in September. We were still dismantling the theatre from the last one and it is now a rush, believe it or not, to be ready for the summer. The autumn is filled with drawing up strategies, doing the budgets and yes, getting the money; lots of generous collars get felt. The 2015 line-up is a corker for sure. Il trittico represents the big challenge (I bet you thought it would be Aida huh?) because of the difficulties in sustaining a three hour evening featuring three very different pieces. Having Anne Sophie Duprels in two of them will help and knowing our 2012 Schicchi is a lovely production does too. As much as I love GS, I am thrilled by the prospect of Il tabarro and Suor Angelica, the latter opera's final half being profoundly moving. There is no question that Aida is something of a mountain for any opera company to climb but Verdi did give us some intimacy to work with too and...

A (very slightly) edited version of the talk I gave at the recent - and very interesting - OBERTO conference at Oxford Brookes University. The day was full of far more interesting and scholarly papers than mine; I was just the end-of-the-day entertainment! Reassessing audiences and the "not for us debate" I tend to approach opera from an instinctive point of view. Instinct is really something people like me have almost always  survived on. I read a piece recently in which Kasper Holten, asked whether he was making the right decisions on repertoire, said that in the end, we can really only act on our instinct and our taste. After all, whilst scientific approaches to marketing and running our businesses has a place, if that was the only answer we would all surely be millionaires. So, often, instinct is our greatest tool. And after 25 years of doing this and meeting thousands of opera goers, instinct and experience is something I need to pay attention to. Right now, my instinct ...

Throughout this summer, there have been many debates and flare-ups in the press and on social media surrounding opera. The controversies and resulting soul-searching and argument fluctuated wildly between those who felt a sense of doom and gloom and those eager to be optimistic - sometimes, in my view, with a touch of delusion - about the future and what was good about the developments occurring in the industry. It was interesting, then, to attend the OBERTO conference at Oxford Brookes University yesterday, where an impressive collection of academics and opera professionals delivered papers on a variety of issues and subjects based around the issue of accessibility, access and the age old matter of opera's reputation. You can be sure that the word "elitism" came up quite a bit. Throughout the day, the well constructed programme tried to encapsulate and rationalise the varying pillars of the operatic firmament that occupy all of us ceaselessly. These included crossove...