Anthony Holden Sunday February 29, 2004 The Observer

The last opera I went to was before 1990 - Phillip Glass' Akhnaten at the ENO.

This was something else.

Its timing couldn't be better - Sasha is at college and has three sessions on the trot from 2.15 to 5.00, when I usually get on with disentangling Plone. La Bohème, staged just across the road in the Royal Albert Hall, was on from 2.30 to 5.00. I met Graham just outside and we went in to find grandstand seats in the stalls. It was spine-tingling, spectacular and seemed all too short - real quality time.