The Narcissistic Fish is a brand new opera specifically created to be filmed.

It’s begun: very limited access to live music, the chance to sit before one or two players in the same room – as we were doing only three and a half months ago, in some cases thousands of us before an orchestra of up to a hundred musicians.

The Opera Story is an enterprising set-up based in London and founded with a mission to commission and stage new operas by early career composers. They have so far produced three full-scale pieces, the earliest from 2017, performed in a reclaimed warehouse space in Peckham.

As the Wigmore Hall goes dark again for the summer after a stupendous series of June weekday recitals - you can still catch them all on film at the Wigmore's website, or on BBC Radio 3, and Boyd Tonkin's review of two concerts will appear here on Sunday - the shadows grow on what our goverment's going to do about the arts.

"Touch her and you die," sings Masetto in telling Don Giovanni to keep away from his Zerlina. There's certainly trouble, though not instant death, when fingers briefly meet. Mozart's dark comedy has much in Da Ponte's text about hands-on business but only a few points where it's actually seen; love and sex don't really happen, though there are two skirmishes, one fatal.

Vintage champagne was served up last night, and whether you found the glass half-full or half-empty would depend on your perspective.

It's taken time, but at last we have two major musical figures speaking up for cultural institutions in dire straits. Following a crucial, detailed article by Charlotte Higgins in The Guardian, Simon Rattle and Mark Elder have finally taken up the cudgels as their colleagues in the theatre world have been doing for weeks.

As more musicians emerge from lockdown to conduct, play and sing in audience-less venues - ongoing kudos to the Wigmore Hall for its weekday lunchtime concerts, a fixure for so many viewers and listeners - here are some more off-piste treasures, a past glory from the Royal Opera, a chance to vote for l

Rustles of renewal are stirring in the Surrey woods where Grange Park Opera has built the splendid theatre that remains, for this summer, sadly out of bounds. Faced with the cancellation of its 2020 programme, Wasfi Kani’s company has not simply relied, like many others, on a back catalogue of archive videos to keep its audiences onside.

What would have been the festival season starts around now. Some organisations are offering mementos of past glories; others, especially in countries where the lockdown has been relaxed to a greater extent than is possible in the UK, are managing to assemble some of their artists in audience-free auditoriums, playng and singing to you online. All are under varying degrees of financial stress and many may not relaunch; help where you can with donations every now and then.

Bergen International Festival