Slowly the world of the arts starts to take a timid step forward in plague-torn Australia.

Just as alarming new cases of Covid hit South Australia the state opera company there together with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra put on Richard Mills’ Summer of the Seventeenth Doll which is good to see even if you’re inclined to think, like the Germans, that the most viable form of contemporary opera is the musical from Porgy and Bess to West Side Story.