Giles Terera’s Othello is physically imposing (there is much emphasis on his toned torso) but emotionally underpowered, and there is little chemistry between him and Rosy McEwen’s suburban termagant of a Desdemona. Paul Hilton’s Iago is so overtly villainous that one would expect to see him twirling his moustache if he had been allotted one. As is so often the case now, every effort seemed to be made to disguise the fact that Shakespeare wrote the play in verse. There was much barking, and the lines were raced through as though the audience might lose attention if the actors didn’t hurry on to the next scene. Only Tanya Frank’s battered but resilient Emilia handled the verse with aplomb. As a consequence, she was the only character who truly came alive.

Across the river, Aaron Sorkin and Bartlett Sher’s slickly effective staging of To Kill a Mockingbird (Gielgud Theatre) has had a change of cast. Matthew Modine has taken over as Atticus Finch from the much-praised Rafe Spall. Although considerably older than Spall, Modine, in this vigorous performance, avoids the trap that he might seem more grandfatherly than paternal, and he has the measure of the role. Bringing the piece up to date, Sorkin and Sher emphasise the resentment that both the white and Black underclass have for the condescension and contempt that they feel the white liberal élite have for them. A climactic scene along these lines between Modine and the superb Cecilia Noble as Calpurnia is a highlight of the performance.

Perhaps the most chilling evening spent in the theatre was C.P. Taylor’s 1981 play Good (Harold Pinter Theatre). Seen in the week in which Donald Trump dined with two notorious anti-Semites, this depiction of a German literary scholar who is sucked into the Nazi party and ends up becoming an adviser to the concentration camp commanders had a disturbing relevance. The magnificent David Tennant, ably supported by Elliot Levy and Sharon Small, relentlessly led us through his character’s moral disintegration. After the play’s harrowing conclusion, an unusually silent audience filed out into the evening.

Musically, results were also varied. Usually, one can expect that whatever one may turn up to hear at Wigmore Hall will be of interest, but on this occasion expectations were sadly disappointed. The baroque ensemble Arcangelo played Scarlatti, Corelli, and Handel, among others, in a style I would describe as ‘early music prissy’ – accurate but bloodless. The soloist, soprano Katharina Konradi, obviously an audience favourite, was also technically proficient, but seemed completely emotionally uninvolved with what she was singing. A bland all-purpose smile will not compensate for no sense of jubilation when performing Handel’s Gloria.

Things were certainly looking up later in the week when Allan Clayton and Kate Golla took to the Barbican stage to repeat the devastating Winterreise they performed around Australia in 2022. The London audience responded as ecstatically as had the Australian ones.

The final performance I attended – a semi-staged performance of Benjamin Britten’s Gloriana given by the English National Opera in their home theatre, the Coliseum – was an extraordinary one on several levels. For a start, the opera itself has never quite recovered from its notoriously frosty first reception in 1953. Written to celebrate the young queen’s ascension to the throne, a work depicting the last declining years of the previous Queen Elizabeth set to what would then have been considered ‘modern’ music by its mainly aristocratic, philistine audience was hardly likely to receive an overwhelmingly positive response. On top of that, the libretto acquired a reputation for being unwieldy and undramatic. Over the years, its reputation has improved, and even in a semi-staged performance it came across as an eminently stageable and powerful work. It was helped by a tremendously committed performance commandingly conducted by Martyn Brabbins, with a talented cast dominated by a majestic performance from Christine Rice as Elizabeth.

Although obviously planned before the queen’s death, it now came across as a sort of last hurrah. A farewell of the first Elizabethan era mirroring the end of the second and whatever vestiges of imperial splendour that entailed. Farewell, a long farewell to all its greatness. But that was not the only feeling of a last hurrah. In an appalling move, the Arts Council have completely cut the funding for the English National Opera and are attempting to force the company to go to Manchester, an unnecessary and suicidal move. Unless there is a sudden change of heart, the company that nurtured so many English and Australian singers will no longer exist. In the audience there was a palpable sense of sadness and fury and when, just before the start of the second act, an audience member suddenly shouted out ‘Three cheers for the ENO’, the roof of the building from which they will soon be evicted practically blew off.

Perhaps it is drawing a long bow, but it is possible to see in the slightly absurd but extraordinarily impressive queen’s funeral and the valiant staging of an opera about her predecessor a final flourish before things change forever.