ABSTRACT
During a performance at Covent Garden of Rheingold, the first opera in Wagner’s Ring Cycle, I was called out of the Box where I was sitting with my guests, by a member of the Opera House staff. He told me my son wanted to speak to me on the telephone. “It’s a girl,” Ben told me. “She has got red hair and she’s really beautiful.” I can think of no telephone call in my life that made me so happy. I returned to my seat feeling intense joy and unable to resist whispering to my friends, “I’ve just heard I have a grand-daughter.” I will never be able to listen to Rheingold again without re-living that moment of extraordinary happiness.
