Aida

I didn't notice till it was half over that Sky Arts Channel was showing Verdi's opera Aida (one of my favourites) from last year's production at La Scala Milan. So I watched acts 3 and 4, the curtain calls and the credits.

The director was Franco Zeffirelli, the conductor Riccardo Chailly, both towering characters in their fields.

Franco Zeffirelli

The audience went mad during the curtain calls. But you would have been forgiven for thinking that the audience was acclaiming the performance of one individual alone, because the cameraman remained almost constantly focused on - the male dancer.

All he was wearing was a headdress of feathers, lots of body makeup, and a posing pouch. He was muscular, not ugly - but really, until Zeffirelli came out, you would have thought he was the star of the show. The singers were all but ignored by the camera (it's true that the curtain calls were obviously under-rehearsed and the dancer managed to get himself in prime position time after time) and this man absolutely hogged the limelight, aided and abetted by the cameraman.

They have The Claque in Italian opera houses, people paid to applaud certain artistes. Gee, you don't suppose this dancer had paid the cameraman, do you?

The male dancer centre stage, wearing rather more than he did in the curtain calls.