Not in the Royal Albert Hall, of course. Except in intervals.

But if I’m watching a concert on telly at home and it has failed to grip my ear or has thrown up an incident of general interest, why should I or anyone else wait for the time delay of a newspaper review to describe what happened? If it worked in the Royal Wedding, why not the Proms?

It is surely high time for the concert world to adjust to social media?

In the June issue of The Strad I raise the question of musicians tweeting during a performance:

String players are likely to have their fingers occupied most of the time, but the piccolo has long periods of staring at ceiling and the percussion can go half an hour without a bash. Would we mind it awfully if they tweeted the world that maestro X was playing a blinder, or that he was lagging as usual two pages behind the band? Music, we keep getting told, must adjust to the modern age. That includes social media and instant communication. So – yes or no – should we tweet in concerts?

What do you think?

Ahead of Nico Muhly’s new opera, Two Boys, the composer appeared on a panel with the polemicist Claire Fox and the writers Will Self and myself, with Christopher Cook in the chair, to discuss whether the internet was making monsters of us all.

The opera, whose subject matter we were asked to avoid, deals with a child murder that may have been informed or provoked by web exposure. Will took the view, expressed in a video here, that the internet monsterizes. The rest of us, to a degree, demurred.

So far, so predictable. But what took us all by surprise was the degree to which a generalised and theoretical discussion turned quickly intimate and confessional. This was due, in part, to Nico’s lucid affirmation of his adolescent self-discovery online and, in part, through an unplanned unbuttoning by the rest of us of personal encounters with addiction, child pornography, criminal impersonation and insane abuse.

photo: Samantha West

The audience led us into multi-user dungeons, second life and something called Grinder that can wreck your dating life.

Nobody in the room escaped unenlightened or unprovoked. An intruding mouse – live, not mechanical – failed to break the atmosphere.

It was an intense evening and a remarkable example of how contemporary opera can reach far beyond the remits of a 19th century art form. It happened at Covent Garden with Anna Nicole. Now it’s ENO’s turn. Where else is this happening?

The debate will shortly go online at the ENO site.

I had trouble picking the day’s first disc. Bob Dylan is 70 and I really don’t want to be thrust back into all the mythology and false naivety.

Far better to sample Barb Jungr’s sophisticated re-interpretations of Dylan classics, with supple vocal and sensitive instrumentation.

Yeah, that does the trick.

It is reported on Hebrew websites (and here), and confirmed by mutual acquaintances, that the violinist Matan Givol took his own life shortly before he was due to play in a concert with the Tel Aviv Soloists.

(Tel Aviv Trio: L to R Matan Givol, pianist Jonathan Aner and Matan’s brother, cellist Ira Givol)

Matan had played in all rehearsals for Saturday’s concert in Haifa with the German countertenor Andreas Scholl and his harpsichordist wife, Tamar Halperin. But on Sunday he failed to show up for the next concert in Tel Aviv.

The conductor Tal Barak announced that there had been a tragic event and the intended programme was cancelled. Instead, Halperin accompanied Scholl in a vocal recital.