How far do you truly believe? Perhaps it’s a waste of time even to ask the question

Readers familiar with Idomeneo might have shared my pleasure (and bemusement) at a performance of Mozart’s early opera at the Coliseum in London last week. The English National Opera production, which staged most of the action in what appeared to be a top-quality modern hotel, was ludicrous (I found the waiters distracting, but then I often do), but no more ludicrous than any other imaginable 21st-century staging of an 18th-century account of an ancient Greek tale.