Blank canvas | 7 February 2013

I approach any production of Mozart’s last opera, La clemenza di Tito, in a state of acute trepidation: it’s not pleasant sitting bored through nearly three hours of one of your favourite two or three composers, one whom you regard as perhaps the most astonishing artist who ever lived. But that is how La clemenza di Tito has nearly always affected me — first, before it was revived in theatres, on a dodgy old Nixa recording, then, fairly often since, in various opera houses, its having now become a repertoire piece, something which was inconceivable only 40 years ago.