The headmaster Stephen Yeo has left ‘to pursue other opportunities,’ according to an internal message. He will remain head nominally until the end of the term next month, but will not set foot again in the school.

An interim head, Bernard Trafford, formerly of Royal Newcastle Grammar, will fill in after the New Year.

Once again, Purcell has shed a head without any account to parents or students of the reasons for his departure.

Due process seems to mean nothing at this troubled school.

The former Post Hotel in Toblach (Dobbiaco), where Gustav Mahler used to take coffee every day after collecting his mail, is under threat of imminent demolition.

You can help stop the march of the philistines by signing this petition.

The churn continues at a once-prestigious UK music school where nothing seems to have settled since a controversial head departed in the dead of night six years ago.

The latest incumbent, Stephen Yeo, appointed in May 2015, departed at 3pm on Friday, we hear.

The school has issued no statement and we’re unable to obtain a comment at the weekend but our spurces are specific about the time of departure.

UPDATE: It’s confirmed.

The headmaster’s welcome on the website is now signed off by an ‘acting head’, although Yeo’s name has not yet been taken down from other sections.

Purcell has been through more heads in the present decade than most of us have bought new overcoats. It all stems from a failure of governance and transparency at the time of the first defector’s midnight flit.

The school’s president is Sir Simon Rattle. Patrons include Vladimir Ashkenazy and Kiri te Kanawa.

The international soprano Carol Neblett died on Thanksgiving Day.

After her City Opera debut at 23 as Musetta in La Bohème, she was a company stalwart for ten years before the Met came knocking. Carol went on to sing at all major houses, forming a notable partnership on stage and on record with Placido Domingo.

Claudio Abbado chose her for his recording of Mahler’s second symphony. Her signature role was Minnie in Puccini’s Fanciulla del West.

Born in Modesto, California, and graduating from UCLA, she returned later in life to the golden west to be artist in residence and voice teacher at California’s Chapman University.

She was married first to the cellist Douglas Davis, then to Kenneth Schermerhorn, music director of the Milwaukee Symphony, and thirdly to a cardiologist, Phillip Akre. She had three children.

Early on, she shocked America by playing Thais in the buff, accusing agile photographers of snapping pubic hair that she kept hidden from the audience. The New York Times splashed its feature with the headline ‘What do you Say to a Naked Prima Donna?’. It’s a finely calibrated piece of writing by Steve Rubin, who was never lost for questions, and a good insight into the rise of an all-American artist. And the headline was not unwarranted: she did a topless shoot in the bath for Paul Slade and would flourish pictures of her tempestuous Thais.

Those were the 70s, a more innocent era.