Culture

Opera is a good word. It means work. And if you want to experience a work that is the absolute and utter works, a shattering combination of music and drama and visual imagination, get yourself along to the London Coliseum right now and book seats for Lucia di Lammermoor. It's a triumphant return to form for English National Opera, with a cast of singing actors performing to the absolute hilt of their pretty spectacular abilities. And that includes Clive Bayley, who was so unwell that he couldn't carry on singing beyond the first scene, but continued to give an impassioned performance on stage while Paul Whelan sang for him from the wings. The atmosphere is one of stifled Victorian repression resulting in obsession, infantilism and insanity.

As this is the last week of my thirties, I feel entitled to indulge in a spot of pop culture nostalgia (or more than usual, at any rate). In tomorrow’s Spectator, I review Paul Morley’s masterly book on Joy Division, which I recommend to anyone who is interested in the music, ideas and social currents of the late Seventies and early Eighties. Looking back on three decades of writing about the Manchester band, Morley explains why the group, and the Factory records label pioneered by the late Tony Wilson, were so important in the history of rock and the redevelopment of the North. Absolutely terrific. And while I am at it, the DVD of last year’s Control is out soon and is similarly indispensable (even if you don’t care much for post-punk music).

Twenty seven years after it was grounded by sudden death, the Zeppelin flies once more – and none of us can quite believe it. The three surviving members of the ultimate rock group – Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, and John Paul Jones – take to the stage at London’s O2 Centre, joined by Jason Bonham, son of their late drummer John Bonham, and burst without ceremony into “Good Times, Bad Times”.  It is an extraordinary occasion in every way, the most eagerly awaited reunion in the history of rock’n’roll. Each member of the audience, gathered from 50 countries, is conscious that more than a million (some say 20 million) people applied online to be here tonight: we are the Charlie Buckets of rock, winners of the golden tickets.

Anyone tempted to think that opera might be a dying art only had to be at the Grand Theatre in Leeds on Tuesday night or the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden last night to discover that it is triumphantly and thrillingly alive.  On Tuesday, for a performance of Madam Butterfly, I sat surrounded by a group of fabulously dressed-up 16-year olds, mostly female and every one of them chattering or texting busily until the moment the lights dimmed and the music started. From that moment they were all on the edge of their seats and silent except for the occasional sharp intake of breath or sigh of pleasure.

There's more to folk these days than dodgy beards and cable-knit sweaters and it’s clear why Bellowhead, instigators of an outbreak of frenzied folkish foot-stomping at Shepherd’s Bush Empire on Wednesday, picked up Best Live Act in this year’s BBC Radio Two Folk Awards. Fronted by the charismatic Jon Boden, and underpinned by a riotous brass section, the 11-piece big band’s quirky, contemporary take on ballads, sea shanties, and traditional dance tunes had an ecstatic cross-generational audience singing along and jigging wildly, inhibitions cast asunder.

There is something more than usually grotesque about the slow-motion downfall of Amy Winehouse being played out daily in the media. As the singer and her appalling husband holiday in St Lucia, their respective parents are fighting a shameful proxy battle at home, with her father-in-law, Giles, calling on Amy’s fans to boycott her records until she cleans up. She looks pitifully skeletal in the latest pictures, hollow-eyed and miserable. The worst of it is – beyond the horror of watching a human life collapse like a frame-by-frame car crash – is that she is, quite simply, one of the best soul singers of all time, possessed of a voice that bewitches, infiltrates the heart and defies emotional gravity. This is not just another Britney or Li-Lo celebrity rehab story.

I do not know whether, as was so often claimed, Tony Wilson, who has died aged 57, was a genius. But, as music mogul, club entrepreneur, loudmouth and zealous Mancunian, he was certainly one of the most important and remorseless figures in British popular culture of the past 30 years. Immortalised by Steve Coogan's performance in the film 24 Hour Party People, Wilson was a jobbing Granada TV presenter who also had a passion for pop. As a musical Svengali, he is rivalled only by Epstein and McLaren, and he was more prolific than both.

"Can you believe it?" Every time Barbra Streisand remembered how long it was since she had first sung a song, visited a town, tried a local delicacy - "1961!" - 23,000 adoring fans agreed that, no, it was quite unbelievable. Most of the audience at the 02 arena last night could not quite believe they were actually, at last, genuinely hearing their heroine, playing in London for the first time in 13 years. And the sense of event was as palpable as the crushed velvet of the legend's gown: veering effortlessly from the ditzy to the diva, she held a thousand dreams in the palm of her hand, and yet was not too grand to take questions from the crowd, too. Like Gordon, she was listening and learning, although it must be said that, in her case, the questions were not very tough.

There are few sights in Western civilisation to compare with Spinal Tap performing 'Stonehenge' and it is at least arguable that the risk of impending apocalypse caused by climate change was worth it to get Nigel, the boys and the dancing dwarves back on stage. Two billion people watching around the world are surely happier for having seen this awe-inspiring sight. Surely the end of modern society and the melting of the polar ice-cap is a small price to pay? We must all suffer for art, you know. (The  Beastie Boys were pretty splendid, too.

  So farewell, George Melly. There isn't much fun left in jazz any more; it takes itself so seriously. George didn't — always having fun, listening to his favourite Bessie Smith records. He was one of the last generation of jazz musicians to enjoy his work and to convey that feeling to his audience; he was also of all things a collector of Surrealism. I hope he leaves me one of his suits. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, if the women don't get you, the liquor must.

Where better to spend the last night of the Blair era than in the company of ageing rockers? These days, The Who smash their tambourines rather than their guitars. But, other than that, they are still as sharp as the sharpest Carnaby Street winkle pickers and as taut as the tires on a brand new Vespa. At the Wembley Arena last night the band that hoped that they would die before they got old showed that you're only as old as the venue you fill. My Generation? Yes, and their children, and, in some cases, God help us, grandchildren. Pop long ago broke its promise to define generation gaps and became something completely different: part of our island folklore, our national glue.

If you think Glastonbury is silly, click on the BBC News website and watch the clip of 2,000 heavy metal fans playing Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water” in Stuttgart. This, as any fule kno, is one of the most over-rated songs in the history of pop music, plodding and portentous, opening with a mindless riff that has inspired generation after generation of Wayne’s World clones to pick up a guitar when it would have been much better if they had been forced into national service. Sour of me to say so, but sometimes the truth is ugly.