The essential car wash.

[Tony Griffiths]

The photographer makes a small improvement.

[Steve kay]

"Snapper" Griffiths has such an amazing theatrical archive. Maybe in due course he can share his memories of Bayreuth, and that savage personregie production of Walkure in 1968 which he obviously attended. Wotan wearing an apron, the Walkyries polishing their chariot before carrying off the bodies of dead heroes to Valhalla piled on the back seat. And the magnificent Brechtian relationship with the audience, as Siegrune and Waltraute empty buckets water over the audience in the stalls. Careful examination reveals the runes carved onto the shaft of the spear, here represened by a mop. Oops is that the time? Better get out with the dogs.

[Tony Griffiths]

Not a problem. Here is what it looked like the last time I attended the show:

[Steve kay]

A magnificent appearance by Neptune, but you fail to tell us in which opera. Mozart’s Idomeneo, perhaps? Or perhaps Rameau’s tale of lust and divine vengeance, in which Neptune, pursuing the nymph Nais, ends up destroying his rivals for her hand with tsunami waves? Though perhaps a Paris performance would feature a Bebe Peugeot or a Bedelia. Unless it was a splendid tableau mounted in Rothesay Pavilion, to accompany a performance of Hamish McCunn’s “Land of the Mountains and the Flood” Does our distinguished Scottish Arts Correspondent have anything to say?