Today is the first stage-orchestra rehearsal of Figaro, conducted by 'student' Tcherepnin. I went to the rehearsal and sat dutifully through it for almost five hours so as to familiarize myself as much as possible both with the opera and the mise-en-scène. I know all the arias and the ensembles, but what I don't know yet is how they fit together. Overall it is a very lively and attractive work, although it suffers from many infelicities, and from the dramatic point of view Mozart could surely have made it twenty times more interesting than he has done. When I come to write an opera I shall not choose an intensely dramatic subject but something light and buoyant, a French comedy with an intricate plot, but it will certainly be an opera with a lot of life about it.