Many thanks La Cieca – and get well soon, New York City; hope the cough clears up soon… (or did someone bring a dog into the stalls?)

I dragged myself up off my own Act 3-style sickbed (traditional Xmas flu) to the Kampe-Smith-Jurowski Act 2. I know what Sir Morosus means – a bit cold, is another way of describing Jurowski. But he’s always interesting, and sometimes I thought I was getting onto his “zen” level (as he’s called it, I gather) and it got really good. The orchestra (LPO) seems to be getting better and better and at times was amazingly eloquent. He doesn’t seem so interested in building things gradually. His technique of marking sforzandi a beat or two before they happen can be very distracting! He’s still ludicrously young, remember…

Kampe’s voice seems bigger and warmer than before, if not quite as abandoned as I’d like it in the loud, high bits. I know she’s capable of wild ecstasy from Fidelio (Namen-, namenlose freude etc.), so let’s see. She looks great, of course – the new Meier? RDS – pretty good but also holding back a tiny bit I thought. Good old Laszlo Polgar for a touching Marke when he was obviously not well

Wagner-lite (though I hate the phrase). No sense of the great arching span but beautifully phrased and transparent, although that is an aspect of the LPO being on the platform in the analytical RFH accoustics. At least the soloists were at the front rather than in the choir stalls as in the disastrously balanced Korngold Helene.

Sarah Connolly was a sumptuous Brangäne.