LIKE I say, I get around. Sometimes, though, I even surprise myself.
ENO's production of La Boheme is a triumph,
Having seen Parisian singer Camille in the golden oven of the Hackney Empire last year I was prepared for this to be an intimate and classy show.
Most likely it would be a two-set encompassing a run-through of her latest album Ilo Veyou followed by her greatest hits - her "plus grand succes" to date.
But I wasn't prepared for the absolutely stunningly inventive, world-class minimalism of the staging and music. Nor could I have been adequately briefed on the flawless charm of Camille herself.
Self-effacing, pitch perfect and frankly beautiful, she commands the sparse set for nearly two hours while a single incandescent light bulb suspended from the roof acts as a delicate and powerful foil to the music, effortlessly embodying an embryo, a child, a lover, a star or a universe.
Using this most simple of theatrical devices, she has the audience in the palm of her hand, their stunned attention saluting her originality and the auditorium swelling with the silent, spectral clatter of mouths falling open en masse.
Camille's typically wry songwriting and demeanour was exercised to its full in everything from her patter, audience manipulation and good-humoured piss-taking of the French stereotype, subtly underscored by a tasteful backlit tricolore and a comic vignette from a melodramatic, Anglophobic dance-instructing character.
This occasionally touring show is not a pop concert but an overwhelming piece of art.
Absolutely no doubt, Camille is a rare and vital creative force, unmissable when next she visits.
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