In what I suspect is a Covent Garden first, the Royal Opera House will interrupt Saturday night's performance of La bohème so that the BBC can film the finale to their Maestro at the Opera competition.
Once Act 2 of the real show is done, Maestro Bychkov will make way for the BBC's contest winner, who will 'conduct' another Act 2, this time purely for the BBC's cameras. After this, the real show will resume with Act 3.
This arrangement avoids the need to build the complex Act 2 set twice in one night. But it may not go down well with certain customers, or to be totally accurate, their husbands. They had expected the filming to begin after Act 4, leaving them free to escape it altogether and go home at a more reasonable hour.
Luckily there are usually some highly-recommended divorce lawyers in the audience.
Thanks to reader hippoes for pursuing this with the ROH:
