We saw mezzo-soprano Alice Coote, accompanied on piano by Bradley Moore, perform a recital of English poems set to music by English and American composers (Elgar featured prominently among the composers and the Romantics among the poets). We sat in the front row, which is awesome at a Grateful Dead show, but can feel a little awkward at a classical music event – but it was the first time to see a singer perform up close. The experience was a reminder of how little I really know and understand about music, watching the contortions of her face and body as she sang.

Unfortunately, Ms. Coote was suffering from a cold and was a little off, but it was still gorgeous. Not entirely my cup ‘o tea, though – the music, from twentieth century composers, sometimes seemed too close to the popular songbook and I have never been a big fan of musicals (except for, for some reason, The Fantasticks).

When she sang a series of “poems” – actually diary excerpts – by Virginia Woolf, I saw a bit of what we had been missing earlier. In many of the other poems, even such emotive pieces like Byron’s So We’ll Go No More A-Roving, she seemed content to simply perform the recital. But when she arrived at the Woolf pieces, her performance changed. She seemed to be personally and deeply moved by the sentiments. A reminder of how much, for me, a good operatic performance is as much a product of the acting as the singing.