“Reports of director Franco Zeffirelli’s decline – physical, artistic and mental – have been exaggerated. He may be 80, and suffering balance problems – the result of an inner-ear ailment, contracted after a botched hip operation – but in the past six months alone, he has completed a film about Maria Callas, staged opera productions in Italy and the US, and had a huge success with Luigi Pirandello’s Absolutely! (perhaps) in London. He is now back at Covent Garden, for the first time in nearly 40 years, to direct Pagliacci.”