At the last minute, I gave a spare opera ticket to a friend who had little chance to understand what she was about to see.
During the interval, she said that she'd spent the whole of the first act trying to make sense of 'an operatic riot of lesbian passion'.
There is, of course, no lesbianism in Mozart's La Clemenza di Tito, but there are two central travesti roles, Sesto and Annio - a travesti role being a male role sung by a woman, sometimes referred to as a 'pants' or 'trouser' role.
The Sapphic impression was highlighted by the main female role, Vitellia, being played by a crop-haired Emma Bell in a billowing black dress. Her pragmatic seduction of Sarah Connolly's Sesto, as a way of encouraging him to assassinate the faithless emperor, crackled with the static of lust and revenge.
David McVicar's production for the English National Opera (ENO) at London's Coliseum highlights the personal and the erotic, and draws from Bell and Connolly performances of a lifetime.
If confirmation were ever needed that operatic artifice is an effective conveyor of high emotion, then Bell and Connolly provide it in their high-octane arias and duets.
