Fiona Shaw takes on Elegy for Young Lovers

The diary is impressed with the energetic Fiona Shaw, who, while spending her nights as the cigar-puffing Lady Gay Spanker in London Assurance at the National theatre, has used the hours of daylight to direct a very fine production of Hans Werner Henze's Elegy for Young Lovers for English National Opera. So impressed, in fact, that we forgive her the fact that she laughed raucously, and sometimes alone, at the opera's jokes on opening night. Still, if she wasn't enjoying it, what hope is there for everyone else?