ON THE RADAR AR

That wonderful Italian soprano Mirella Freni died last week at 84. She was most celebrated for portraying sweetly simpering innocents such as Mimi in La Bohème, but when I met her at a dinner party about 10 years ago, I encountered a hard-nosed tough-cookie prima donna for whom the description “down to earth” would have been too polite. Frankly, she was terrifying. After dinner and a few drinks, she started on anecdotes of her favourite subject – Luciano Pavarotti. They were both born in Modena in the mid-Thirties and sang together frequently, but they were not friends, and she clearly took a dim view of him. Scurrilous stories of his behaviour on and offstage culminated in her description of how he had once lost his swimming trunks when he jumped into her swimming pool, revealing, to her amusement – well, this is a family newspaper, so I will leave the rest to your imagination. Before entering any place of theatrical entertainment, I need to shore myself up for what can be a gruelling experience with a fortifying glass of wine. But I was appalled the other evening at the Harold Pinter Theatre (currently showing an excellent Uncle Vanya) to be charged an extortionate £9.40 for a standard measure of the house plonk, despite the £6 per standard measure advertised on the theatre’s website. Shame on ATG, which manages the place! In the wake of this outrage, I did a spot comparative survey, and it shows that subsidised institutions are charging more reasonably: National Theatre, £5; Barbican, £5.50; South Bank Centre, £6; Royal Opera House £6.20; London Coliseum £6.50. Another ATG venue, the Duke of York’s, is charging £8, so what exactly is the policy here? There aren’t many more major Lottery-funded projects for the arts on the stocks now, but a new £16million redevelopment of the National Railway Museum in York is a potential stunner – proposing the building of a magnificent central atrium (with a unifying function rather like that of Norman Foster’s Great Court at the British Museum) linking the two main exhibition halls that show treasures such as Stephenson’s Rocket. Architectural runners and riders shortlisted for the project include much-lauded French and Irish firms. But insiders tell me that the money is on either Carmody Groarke (also tipped for this year’s Stirling Prize for their boat museum on Windermere) or the scheme jointly dreamed up by Studio 6a (South London Gallery, MK Gallery in Milton Keynes) and the game-changing Belgian firm Office Kersten Geers David Van Severen (nothing significant in the UK, but all over the Low Countries like a rash).