Verdi without the trappings

Scene: the Royal Opera House, last Friday, 10.35 p.m. In the last act of Aida, Amneris, in the formidable person of Olga Borodina, has just concluded her magnificent denunciation of priests: ‘Cruel monsters! You will always be thirsty for blood!’ and the final ten minutes remain, the exquisite scene in which the hero and heroine suffocate while singing their farewell to life.

Scene: the Royal Opera House, last Friday, 10.35 p.m. In the last act of Aida, Amneris, in the formidable person of Olga Borodina, has just concluded her magnificent denunciation of priests: ‘Cruel monsters! You will always be thirsty for blood!’ and the final ten minutes remain, the exquisite scene in which the hero and heroine suffocate while singing their farewell to life.

Sitting in the stalls, I know just how Amneris feels, and my silent imprecations are directed to the Powers That Be who decree that operas should end close to 11 p.m. I realise this isn’t the first time I have complained about this, but since all other reviewers apparently live in London I feel the need to voice the anxiety of those of us who have to get to a train station and catch a last or late (and so slow) train.

So I had to sneak out and miss that wonderful scene, and a good job I did: thanks to almost every road in the vicinity of Covent Garden being closed, my taxi — no point on a Friday night even trying to get into one of the jammed Tube stations — had to take an incredibly circuitous route to get to King’s Cross. And even if I had risked staying to the end, I’d have been in such an acutely tense state that I wouldn’t have got anything out of it.