There are ways now to take things even further. Shortly before the great Rigoletto event, the newspapers were full of rumblings about the use of the Auto-Tune machine on TV talent shows. This handy device has been around for well over a decade and has apparently been used in a variety of pop recordings. It can bend a note from a dodgy pitch to an accurate one. After a furore sprang up around an admission that The X-Factor used this to doctor early rounds of the show, reports said that Simon Cowell had banned it from future editions.

Where classical music is concerned, the problem could be one for the Trade Descriptions Act. Why should it ever be acceptable to pass off as live a recording that has been extensively doctored? When does live stop meaning live and start meaning — well, semi-dead? Perhaps when the high-profile chamber music ensemble performing at President Obama's inauguration turned out to be merely miming to a recording they made earlier?

Maybe it's time to get over the mystique of live recordings. It's cheaper, remember, to record a concert than to book a studio, ship in your performers, pay them and fill up the tea urns. If there's widely thought to be something magical about "live recording", it is to everyone's financial advantage, the price for the excitement of the "live" being a healthy and human smattering of wrong notes. By all means issue a concert recording and allow some editing — that is nothing to be ashamed of. Just don't try to pass it off as something it is not. 

Recordings could be around for a long time. Will the music industry continue to dupe its customers? Nobody wants to bear ill-will towards music, but if an atmosphere is created in which we sense that an industry is treating its customers with contempt, regarding them as ignorant dolts, then ill-will there will be. The bottom lines should be obvious: talent isn't talent if it can't sing; a recording isn't live if it has been extensively edited; and studio recording can legitimately be regarded as an art in its own right. 

It's all about money. And maybe that's why those who are interested in the art of music, rather than the commerce, are increasingly going to concerts rather than buying recordings. If the mendacity of the record industry has sent listeners scurrying back to genuine live music, maybe that's no bad thing. Live should mean live.