Much was made in London reviews of the loud prompt received by Placido Domingo during a recent opening night of Nabucco at Covent Garden.

Today’s Telegraph obituary of Alberto Remedios reveals that the great English heldentenor was unashamed of acknowledging a little help with lapsed memory.

Despite his thrilling voice, Remedios struggled with memorising his lines. Once during Siegfried the front-row audience at ENO could hear frequent whispers from the prompt box. As the applause thundered at the end he picked up one of the flowers that had been thrown on stage and strode over to the box to present it to the unseen prompter. The audience cheered even louder until Remedios helped the prompter on to the stage to take a well-earned bow.

He often worked with Rita Hunter, with whom he was close, and much fun was had by their respective families when they appeared together and she sang the line: “Oh Siegfried, don’t you know how much I love you?” On another occasion, when he was singing Erik in The Flying Dutchman at Covent Garden, Hunter’s character Senta had to leap from a cliff to her death. He forgot that they were on stage and called after her: “Are yer al’ right, Scouse?”

For a personal appreciation of Alberto, see here.

When Riccardo Chailly cancelled this week’s Leipzig farewell performances of Mahler’s third symphony at very short notice, the official reason was health.

Behind the scenes, though, there are other rumbles.

It appears that Chailly, who is music director at La Scala Milan and at the Lucerne Festival, has been restocking the Lucerne orchestra with musicians from Milan – at the expense of his former Leipzig colleagues.

There is particular disquiet at the absence of the Gewandhaus concertmaster Sebastian Breuninger from the Lucerne summer lineup. These concerns are now bursting out on social media. Neither side is officially saying much.

It seems a sad way to end 11 glorious years as kapellmeister in the home of Johann Sebastian Bach.

That’s no golden calf.

It’s Romeo Castellucci’s new production of the Schoenberg opera in Madrid.

Is that Aron hiding behind the beef?

photo (c) Javier de Real

Sydney Sings, a July festival organised by Leo Schofield and promising big names, has been called off at less than a month’s notice.

The official reasons is the ‘sudden illness of the event’s executive director Jarrod Carland‘.

We wish him better.

Behind cupped hands, there are suggestions the Government failed to deliver on a past minister’s promises.

The highlights were supposed to be Jessye Norman giving a masterclass and a 600-voice choir in Carmina Burana.