It really is a showcase for talent

It really is a showcase for talent.” And does it work? “Definitely. “Sure, go and have a great time, but the purpose is for people to get a sense of opera for the first time, or perhaps to start to understand the art of DJing. “The tasters let audiences see what’s on in the region without investing too much energy,” says Kaynes. This “taster” format means that one moment you could be listening to a gypsy-influenced Flamenco guitar band, and the next participating in a salsa workshop – without leaving your seat. It is very much conceived to encourage new audiences for the arts.”Much of the festival is divided into 30-minute performance slots, with each artist appear- ing several times across the weekend in different parts of town. “It’s free of course, but ArtsFest is not just an end in itself. “I’ve been part of it since it kicked off,” says Paul Kaynes – the co-director and one of the festival’s founders – “but it has really expanded this year.”
Kaynes is in no doubt as to what sets this event apart from the many festivals vying for attention over the summer.

Boasting an attendance to match that of Glastonbury, ArtsFest was originally designed as Britain’s answer to Amsterdam’s Uitmarkt festival and an opportunity to show off the West Midlands’ finest talent. As the festival season draws to a close, September sees ArtsFest – the UK’s largest free arts festival – light up the streets of Birmingham for the sixth year. It’s moved a long way from the Nineties when, Padmore says with a smile: “Me, a grammar-school girl, redbrick university – I wouldn’t have felt comfortable here.”The Royal Opera’s autumn season starts on 12 September (020-7304 4000; ). She agrees, however, that the key to accessibility remains prices. They are still managing – just – to cling on to the rule that half the seats at every performance should cost £50 or less, and proud of the fact that nearly 40 per cent of last year’s opera audiences were first-timers, 22 per cent were under 35, and 58 per cent had incomes of less than £30,000 a year. Moreover, the House’s avowed aim of greater openness and accessibility is, she feels, being achieved – something that’s vividly symbolised for her by the internal escalator that brings amphitheatre audiences inside the building and away from the segregated staircases of old. Add the new production of Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk and the revival of Tarkovsky’s famous staging of Musorgsky’s Boris Godunov, and you would be mean-minded indeed not to concede that this season has a wonderfully strong line-up.Padmore is happy: it’s the kind of season that fulfils all her criteria.

There’s also a Peter Grimes (sung by Canadian Ben Heppner), designed by John Macfarlane, who created an incandescent Duke Bluebeard’s Castle last year. Strauss is well represented by Der Rosenkavalier (with the wonderful Felicity Lott as the Marschallin), Arabella (with Karita Mattila, who made such a memorable Jenufa) and Ariadne auf Naxos.Meanwhile, in the collector’s corner for casting comes a new, all-star production of Gounod’s Faust, with Roberto Alagna, Angela Gheorghiu (whose joint La Traviata cleared the broadcasting schedules to make way for them), Bryn Terfel and Simon Keenlyside. This is definitely Pappano’s baby, who has loved it since his days as a r?titeur. Caliban is to be sung by Ian Bostridge, which is a mindboggling thought to begin with; he also sings Don Ottavio in Don Giovanni.In the left-field category is another new production, Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd, with Thomas Allen in the title role. Padmore has clearly been an active midwife here, too, helping Ad?through early blocks with material, and finding him a new librettist, Meredith Oakes. This is the third incarnation of Ad?s opera, which was not originally based on Shakespeare at all. The new weighs in with a Thomas Ad?world premiere, The Tempest, directed by Tom Cairns in his Royal Opera House debut.