'Have you got tickets for Bellini's Norma?' a friend asked Annie, my wife, last October. 'Cecilia Bartoli is going to be Norma. It's the must-have ticket for the Festival.' We got ours before Christmas - only just in time.
Last night we were there. The spacious Festival Theatre was full. Foreign visitors mixed with cultured locals; real opera buffs rubbed shoulders with those who thought Bellini was a Russian pancake, Bartoli a sauce for pasta.
The production was eccentric. The story of Druids and Romans, sacred groves and human sacrifice had been relocated to Nazi-occupied Paris. Opera plots are generally silly but the super-titles made what we saw on stage completely ridiculous. It didn't matter. It made us focus on Bartoli's brilliantly powerful, furious Norma. We were privileged to be there. In an odd sort of way it was like watching Tiger Woods play golf in 2000, the best at their best. Unforgettable.
Thank goodness our friend alerted us to the run on tickets.