Post by Simon Fairclough

A few days ago I was at the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence for Die Frau Ohne Schatten with a genuine dream team including Nina Stemme, Michael Spyres, Vida Miknevičiūtė, director Barrie Kosky, conductor Klaus Mäkelä, the Orchestre de Paris, and Cambridge’s very own Richard Wilberforce as chorus master. The production has attracted glowing reviews in the world’s press - totally justified. And tonight the London Symphony Orchestra closed its 2025-26 concert season with a superb performance of Tristan & Isolde at the Barbican Centre. Both performances were packed to the gunnels, and in London a strikingly large number of audience members were in their teens, twenties and thirties - indeed there was even a ten-year-old kid in the row behind us. I couldn’t be more supportive of Arts Council England’s desire to support a broad range of art and to ensure that publicly-funded culture can be enjoyed by people from across the country and from all parts of society. But when it comes to opera, perhaps excellence and relevance were never actually in competition…