Live reviews

We're off to Covent Garden tonight to see Tippett's opera A Midsummer Marriage. I missed the production when it was new so look forward to seeing it with interest. My only previous stage experience of the work was David Pountney's luminous and overheated production at the Coliseum. I hope that the Royal Opera's efforts are an improvement; I'll keep you posted.

We've put together a draft programme for the Chelsea Festival concert in June 2006 and assembled a team of singers and a conductor (Paul Ayres). So it looks as though we may have a concert. I want to write a new piece for the choir (and organ) and have been looking at texts. I've completely failed to find something which appeals and fits in to the concert's theme of the Virgin Mary. So it looks as if I'll be going for something completely different. I turned to a couple of tried and trusted sources, the poems of Helen Waddell and of Rabindranath Tagore. The Waddell poems that appealed were all a little too gloomy so I've opted for Tagore, a pair of poems from Crossing on the theme of the Traveller. I find them beautifully evocative, but I worry that people will find them gloomy. We'll see!