“The real irony about the 75-year-old Maazel’s return to the Covent Garden pit, as conductor of his own work, is that he hasn’t been there since 1978, six years before the title of the piece that has cost a million quid for six performances. Even as a conductor, he is ‘past his sell-by date’, to quote myself here six months ago, after hearing him re-open La Fenice in Venice with the most vulgar of Traviatas.”