Evgeny Titov has landed at the Royal Opera, and he has good news for Britain’s beleaguered opera scene. ‘It’s the best place to work,’ he declares, leaning forward with enthusiasm; and already he’s thrown the interview off course. Usually with overseas artists there are courtesies, and then a tactful acknowledgment that British companies work under unavoidable pressures of time and money. But this actor-turned-opera director, whose career has taken him from St Petersburg to the Salzburg Festival, has seen a few things, and he means what he says. He likes it here.

‘Everybody told me before I came, “You will love it,”’ he says. ‘“Oh, is that so?”, I thought: I visited a few times for preparation and I was, like, “Yeah, it’s good, but I don’t see the difference.” But when you start rehearsing, it’s amazing. Amazing! Because of the people, because of the working conditions, because of how they take care of you, and how quickly they react. Everything’s prepared, everything’s thought through. Honestly, I’m not the kind of person who goes to Zurich, and then Vienna, and tells them all that they’re best. No, the Royal Ballet and Opera is definitely the best organised place I’ve ever been, and the most supportive. Really! It’s impressive.’

‘I’m very crazy, absolutely free, six years old!’

‘I’m very crazy, absolutely free, six years old!’

He sits back, beaming. Titov has just completed a full day’s rehearsal on the Royal Opera’s new production of Parsifal, but you wouldn’t guess it. Wagner’s final opera is a work apart, as vast and as beautiful as Tristan und Isolde or Götterdämmerung, but freighted with a philosophical complexity that can daunt even the most devoted Wagnerite. Wagner didn’t even call Parsifal an opera; to him it was a ‘Bühnenweihfestspiel’ – a ‘consecrational stage festival’ – and the Nazis, troubled by its Christian symbolism, discouraged performances. There’s enough here to put any director through the........

© The Spectator