Friday 20th March 2015

A small party was got up for The Magic Flute last Wednesday at the Royal Opera House, Covent. Prince Dmitri, Robert Nevil and Bruce MacBain. We had the Rich Ladies’ Small Table in the Paul Hamlyn Bar in the interval but unfortunately only one example of a Rich Lady was on view: gold whooshed up hair, a plum bouclé suitlette and massive multi-strand necklace. I couldn’t graph her as she was too near. Already I was weakened by my viral cold with sub-normal temperature and inclined to burst into tears at the slightest thing. All day long I had been repeating the old Dimbleby TV commentary which without fail sets me off: ‘Air Force One, arcing through the air from the Andrews Airforce Base, Washington DC, begins its descent to Heathrow Airport, London bearing the first black President of the United States of America and Mrs Obama on their first visit to this country as President and First Lady.’

So all through The Magic Flute I was in floods. What an astonishing work it is! Everything is in it: the mad shrieking evil of the Night’s Queen, the heart-breaking pathos of Pamina when Tamino won’t speak to her, the grave solemnity and awe of Sarastro. But the sillier it gets and the more simple the music on the glock or the flute, the more infinitely touching and magical and fragile. At the Garden, the singers gave everything and were divine. I looked round at the audience a few times. That is magic too, how every face was enraptured.

All this was a prelude, of course, to Aunt Smidge passing the following the morning.