I'll be at the ENO on Thursday, Upper Circle, specs, iron grey hair and moustache and probably colourful tie.

I got there last night. Terrific evening. I don't think I have ever seen a more visually beautiful opera production - I was particularly struck by the scene on the boat to Venice, and the end - but all of it, really. As everyone has said, the lighting director was the biggest star. I'm always a bit worried about what will be done to favourite operas of mine, but I thought this was an excellent production  throughout. That said, I didn't think Bostridge was quite right as Aschenbach. He sang it most beautifully, as I knew he would, but in the end he just is a good ten years too young. The scene in the barber's chair where he resorts to cosmetics to make himself look young lost a whole dimension - he didn't look much different, though his Elderly Fop impersonation made the point, I suppose. In fact I thought the whole opera lost a dimension because of this. I felt he overacted a bit, too, though this may have been what was intended. I was much more convinced by Philip Langridge when I heard him do it last year, and that was only a concert performance.

Peter Coleman-Wright was good in many ways, but I didn't think his diction was quite good enough - and I know the words pretty well. I liked Tadzio, and the choreography was genuinely boyish. All the small parts went well. And the orchestra (another big star in this) played Britten's opalescent score beautifully. I arrived early enough to hear vibraphone practice, which was a treat.

Although I felt I was listening in a reasonably detached way, when I came out of the theatre afterwards I felt as if I was still in the opera. The international crowds outside the Coliseum were the crowds in Venice, the corridors of my hotel were the Venice alleyways, and my hotel room, which just happened to have long white curtains, was the Hotel des Bains.

(A couple of unworthy thoughts: were the beautifully dressed Edwardian visitors to Venice just a little reminiscent of Cecil Beaton's Ascot scene in My Fair Lady? And was that very little girl - how old was she, for goodness' sake? - very like Gretl, the youngest child in the film of The Sound of Music? This only occurred to me at the curtain call when the little children lined up. I rather expected a performance of "So long, farewell".)

Thanks Mary and everyone for comments & thoughts. Roll on next Weds!!

I am not going, i always thought it a bit iffy and with so many good stuff coming up i decided to pocket the cash for another day.

Mary, please bear with my moderately irreverent D in V story.

In the year of the premiere, I persuaded my parents to have a long weekend in East Anglia so I could visit all those wonderful medieval churches I had never seen.  On the inevitable wet afternoon my family found itself in a tea shoppe in Aldeborough, with an endearingly small poster for "Death in Venice".  (The poster could have been for the Choral Society doing Zadok the Priest, rather than the last masterpiece of one of the century's greatest operatic composers, but that was rather sweet.)

My dear, late father noticed the poster.  He loved Gilbert and Sullivan and records of romantic symphonies and piano concerti, but he could not read or play music.  He knew Britten's reputation, although apart from my school's performance of Rejoice in the Lamb, I don't suppose he had ever experienced his music.

"O" says Dad with a twinkle in his eye, seeing the poster for Death in Venice," what's that all about, then?  Do they find her body strangled with a silk stocking in the bottom of a gondola?"

As far as I could see too, Don B. There certainly wasn't a clear beckon, if one at all, and I took this as a deliberate decision by the director to overrule the stage direction. I suppose there is a bit of a dilemma when staging something which in the Mann reads "It seemed to him the pale and lovely Summoner out there smiled at him, and beckoned..." (my underlining). If it was indeed only in Aschenbach's mind, do you show the beckon and make it literal (in which case you lose the suggestion that it might be illusory) or do you not show it (and thereby make it well nigh impossible for the audience, unless familiar with the libretto, to pick up what Aschenbach 'thinks' he is seeing).

I can't say it worried me at the time because it was so beautiful and intense, and the music and the stage picture more or less made me feel my blood was being drained away at that point anyway, but I agree it was a significant decision on the part of the director. If I am remembering rightly she also rather underplayed the extent to which Tadzio might be leading Aschenbach on when he follows the family. This Tadzio was clearly aware of Aschenbach's interest in him (Aschenbach's "So, my little beauty, you notice when you're noticed") but seemed to have little intention of playing up to it.

I didn't actually buy the programme (sorry, ENO). If anyone else did, Deborah Warner doesn't say anything there about this by any chance, does she?

It's only a matter of time before a director comes up with this interpretation . Thank heavens for Deborah Warner.