This Queen of Babylon, the incomparable Joan Sutherland, does such justice to the role and sings this great aria from Rossini’s Semiramide so superbly that one just knows, has to know, that she, and this, are indeed a ‘Bright ray of hope’ – bel raggio lusinghier. Let’s face it, we need all the bright rays of hope which we can get these days! I first heard this great Diva at the Fenice, I think, singing Gilda when my father took me there as a very young child more years ago than I care to remember – and many years before the last fire! This is but a pale shadow of that first childhood experience.

Afterwards, my father, wise old man that he was, is, took me out to eat at a cafe in the Calle Larga de l'Ascension, in San Marco – sorry, I can’t, after all these years, remember the name of the cafe we dined in (but I could walk you there tomorrow), but I know, I remember, that wonderful sense of being two grown up men together – father and son – out on the town, even though I was just a child my memory invests that night with a great significance. I’m sure that you know how important I felt that I was – I’d just been invited into the grown-up world by the most important male adult in my life – my wonderful father.

He had, still has, a superb understanding of everything that we are. My father was, is still, a believer in freedom, in art, in culture, in science, in us; in short, he is a polymath – a modern polymath, for he is a practical man – a chartered engineer – but, and most importantly, a cultured and tolerant man who introduced me, as a child, to the great arts – and to great music.

So, my beloved father, this is for you. Oh, and thanks for the Grosser Tiergarten and for believing in me so much that you made me face No. 4, Tiergartenstrasse, that stupid bus station – how banal, what on earth was I afraid of – last year, and thank-you for holding my hand and weeping with me – it haunts me still, as you meant it to, and, as I limp through life now, now at last, I see what you wanted me to see.

And thank-you, my dear, dear father, for teaching me how not to hate but to love and to love , despite that stupid autobus station in Berlin.

And thank-you for teaching me to recognise intolerance and hatred – even in myself – that was a hard lesson to learn.

So now I want to say just one simple thing:

“Thank-you, Dad.”