You want to see Yuri Bashmet, arguably the greatest living viola player, but you can't because you've chosen to go to a recital by Yevgeny Kissin, one of the world's top pianists, on the same evening in another hall. Even the option of dashing from one half to another is complicated by timing and distance. No, this isn't Berlin, London or Vienna. It's just a typical dilemma in the 17-day life of the Verbier Festival, high in the major Alps of Switzerland's Valais region.
Somehow I hadn't expected the death three days ago of the great British tenor, though unquestionably a world-class artist, to be commemorated among the international set of the Verbier Festival. Yet last night, before he raised his baton to conduct the Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra, conductor Marc Minkowski had a few words to say about Anthony Rolfe Johnson. His mezzo-soprano, the glorious Anne Sofie von Otter, especially wanted to dedicate her performance to a dearly loved friend and colleague.
It becomes increasingly hard for a music festival to stick out from the crowd these days. But high culture, high summer and high altitude create a rousing major chord each July in Verbier, which can genuinely claim to be the only festival you reach by cable car. When you get up there you are greeted by an alpine symphony of glaciers slithering off peaks and pastures clanging with cowbells. Streams descant and trill along gutters between chalets. No wonder stellar musicians drop their fee to return, both to play and listen. Egos are left at the bottom of the mountain.
Sir Charles Mackerras has died at the age of 84. In tribute to one of the most highly respected and best-loved of conductors, theartsdesk republishes here an interview he gave on the eve of conducting Benjamin Britten's The Turn of the Screw for the English National Opera last October. Despite bouts of ill health, he found time to talk about his friendship - and falling out - with Britten, his time conducting the opera under Britten's watchful eye, his experiences in Prague in 1948 as a witness to the Communist takeover of Czechoslovakia, his pioneering performances of Mozart from the 1960s and his run-ins with Richard Jones and Christopher Alden over their "monstrous" modern productions.
With several replicas of Mozart's libertine stalking the country this summer, there had to be a good reason for seeking him out in the cinema. I had two. One was a curiosity to see how the TV channel Arte and the French Institute in South Kensington would handle a medium so successfully exploited around the world by New York's Metropolitan Opera.
It seems somehow wrong to come away from a Don Giovanni feeling a bit noncommittal about the whole thing. It’s the sort of opera that should raise you from your seat – that should fire and inspire – but this performance, directed by Jonathan Kent, never truly got off the ground. The set – a sort of Rubik's Cube of a building designed by Paul Brown that opened in ever more ingenious ways, and morphed from chapel to party house to graveyard – was clever and satisfying and mirrored the steady disintegration of the characters as we progressed.
The question remains why Mozart never finished Zaide. One immediate reason is he got a well-paid commission for Idomeneo, and Zaide was written on spec. Another reason, at least on last night’s evidence, was that it seems as likely he didn’t finish it because he realised he had a turkey on his hands. On a beautiful summer's evening when, if you wanted drama or entertainment you could be (to take a few examples) watching the World Cup or Wimbledon or the fabulously operatic Muse at Glastonbury, you would in any case have to have a pretty compelling night in the theatre to compete. This turgid gallimaufry wasn’t it.
The question remains why Mozart never finished Zaide. One immediate reason is he got a well-paid commission for Idomeneo, and Zaide was written on spec. Another reason, at least on last night’s evidence, was that it seems as likely he didn’t finish it because he realised he had a turkey on his hands. On a beautiful summer's evening when, if you wanted drama or entertainment you could be (to take a few examples) watching the World Cup or Wimbledon or the fabulously operatic Muse at Glastonbury, you would in any case have to have a pretty compelling night in the theatre to compete. This turgid gallimaufry wasn’t it.