Seeds are always best planted deep, and opera’s magic started to grow quietly in me as a child. My father took me to see Die Zauberflöte when I was still quite small, too young to be awed by the idea of opera or to have absorbed any ideas about it being difficult or elitist or intimidating. I simply fell madly in love with the bird man and the bears and the Queen of the Night and the enchanting, eccentric Mozart madness of The Magic Flute. I still can’t hear Papageno’s magic bells without a soaring feeling of joy, the grandness of wearing a party dress and being allowed up late, of the sense-memory of my small, hot hand in my father’s large, cool one as we sat in the darkness, listening.
When I graduated and moved to London, I’d book a seat in the upper slips at the Royal Opera House for about a tenner. For that money I’d try to see something once a month (glass of tap water in the interval, night bus home) and take a risk on things I didn’t know or had never heard of – a good way to hone your palate. Thirty years later one can still get a ticket for ten or fifteen pounds and it is one of the many reasons why I think Alex Beard is a god.
