Saturday 12th February 2022

Messages kept coming from the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, begging me to go to Theodora by Handel. I thought: it will be utter, ghastly drear, like that other one with the prep school boys on bicycles where there’s only one good number (Lascia ch’io pianga). Only worse, because it’s a tale of Christian martyrs. Theodora isn’t even the Empress Theodora. But you’ve got to go to something. Who’d have thought an opera visit would be so dangerous – which is how it should be, perhaps. So I booked and booked Robert Nevil to accompany. Then Royston King comes in  – also with Theodora – and I can’t resist, just to be in the House and with Royston King, of course. So now my February is Theodora twice over. It lasts for 4 hours. 6.30 start. Maybe even 6.

To top all the Theodora suffering, Robert Nevil’s getting flaky about Theodora – his attendance at it, I mean.

Maybe it would have been better never to have started on this Theodora journey. What will become of me?