I really have, I think, been doing too much flying during the last few days. In the middle of November I came to London to work with the Covent Garden company during their rehearsals for the première of Katerina Izmailova. We had just got into the swing of things when it was time to leave for Riga. The première in Riga was on 23 November. This was my first experience of working together with the talented, indeed quite magnificent, company of the Latvian Opera House: it must be one of the best opera companies in the country. I would not like to start analysing the performance (the composer is probably the last person who should do that), but it seemed to me that the Riga première came off well.