★★★★☆ Royal Opera House’s pitch-perfect Mozart is worth a trip out in the rain.

Odeon Swiss Cottage, London
October 5, 2015

It’s a cold rainy night. I’ve had to leave the car half a mile mile away (should have taken the bus…) and as I arrive dripping at the cinema, the queue for tickets snakes right round the foyer. When we finally get to our seats, mine is covered in muck (I didn’t dare ask) so we had to be seated elsewhere with considerable kerfuffle amongst the assorted octogenarians who were our fellow audience members for the evening – an inauspicious start and I did wonder what on earth had persuaded me to venture out this evening. But then on screen, up pops Simon Callow and treats us to 15 minutes of the background to the opera, its writer and composer and the plot in a very, well, Simon Callow sort of a way… and I start to relax.

Make no mistake, this has to be one of the best productions of this opera that has been made.  Of course I haven’t seen them all, but it is hard to see how things...