First Night, Last Night

Last night was the first night of the Opera Holland Park season.

Capacity in the auditorium has been reduced from a thousand to four hundred. Every attic and junk shop south of the Humber has been raided to create a flexible layout. It is charmingly eccentric.

The orchestra (City of London Sinfonia) has been scaled back to seventeen. They are placed centre stage with the opera being performed around them. The whole layout engenders a sense of intimacy, drawing the audience into the opera; an audience obviously delighted to be back watching a live performance after a year of streaming at home.

The opera was The Marriage of Figaro and I don’t think I was the only person whose spirits soared as the familiar overture began. A blissful three hours of much loved arias followed and the plot in the final Act was as incomprehensible as usual. OHP have pulled it off in spades. I’m lucky to have tickets for four more operas and a musical.

Meanwhile it was a first flight for the peregrine falcon chick. Walnut fledged, as us ornithologists call it, at 6.24 am yesterday morning and flew to a long window ledge on the fifteenth floor of the hospital where she has remained. Her parents have brought her food and she is showing no sign of budging.