And it's worth pausing a moment just to savour that line-up. It really is very neat: essentially a chamber orchestra, but with significant tweaks. Only single double-reeds, as opposed to double Fls and Cls, heavy on the percussion (but not 'heavy' percussion) and harps (2!), harpsichord (nice touch in the context), celesta. And most distinctive, equal numbers of strings, except for a couple of extra first violins. All in all, a meticulous choice by someone who knows exactly the sound world he wants to create.

The first performance was in the Jubilee Hall, which wouldn't have allowed anything like a full-sized orchestra (think of the previous Britten chamber operas with even smaller forces). On the first night the forces were actually one instrument fewer than the score demands: the second harpist had to withdraw at short notice, and Osian Ellis spent the whole night rearranging the two harp parts into a single virtuoso one. The forces were expanded upwards for the ROH production, and unless I'm much mistaken, it's the second version which appears on the Decca recording, which uses the LSO rather than the ECO.

As always, Britten's scoring is meticulously organised to leave space for the voices, but many counter-tenors just don't make a very large sound (as was evident last week in the Judith Weir piece I saw last week at His Majesty's, Aberdeen - a cosy, mid-sized house with good acoustics), an added problem being that Deller's voice had an unusual range for a counter-tenor, and it's just not comfortable for some of them, particularly at the lower, less carrying end of the voice, which the role exploits particularly.

The first time I'm aware of mics being used at the ROH was for Humphrey Searle's Hamlet (early 1970s), where The Ghost had one of the new-fangled radio mics (so no visible wires, which was magic, then) and was amplified with added reverberation. The two singers playing Astron in Tippett's The Ice Break (one them a counter-tenor) a few years later, were similarly boosted.

Ah, but the question remains, which one? I wasn't the one who ran on and sang (or shouted) "And I", and I didn't once scratch the donkey's head. I was one of the three who crept on and stood on the bower at the back, sang the "hail mortal"s and made fun of Bottom's ears. This is all because three of the four soloists were deemed 'too tall for the roles'. All a bit disappointing, we'd gone through the audition process for the solo positions, and then Hall just chooses small people on a whim! But still, we got the credit.


Indeed it would. I wonder where he is now.

I don't suppose anybody of this forum is planning to attend the Saturday matinee performance in Woking?  If so, I hope to see you there.

I hadn't noticed the existence of this thread until I was looking for somewhere to post a brief review of Romeo et Juliette, which I saw last night.  Rather than hijack the existing thread I'm off to start a new one