[…] I caught my breath at some of the gilded names on the prize-boards.  Among them was ‘Giovanni Barbirolli’: during my first year I had slipped into the Duke’s Hall to hear a rehearsal of Verdi’s Falstaff, and watched a dynamic little man whip up the students in a hair-raising crescendo at the start of the third act.  ‘Sir John, Sir John!’ Alice was to sing later, with her eyes on the conductor rather than on the Fat Knight – how prophetic this seems now!