Summer Opera Chaos

In this episode, we catch up on a chaotic few weeks of music, travel and opera: Glyndebourne black tie etiquette, Waitrose picky bits, Zürich Opera House, Wagner’s Swiss exile, German churches with questionable air conditioning, Hong Kong and Shanghai choral adventures, and the strange ritual of the 90-minute countryside opera interval.We also talk about what makes summer opera festivals so seductive, so expensive, and occasionally so absurd — from Glyndebourne and Longborough to Opera Holland Park and Garsington. Plus: Gerald Barry’s gloriously deranged The Importance of Being Earnest, Jorge Bolet playing Liszt, and why everybody should commission an opera immediately.