Meanwhile, however, I have come to love opera, which, after all, is a form of musical theatre too. Perhaps the differences are not so very great. Perhaps, unless one hates all popular music, it is merely snobbish to assume that musicals are not worth going to. In any case, I though it was time to confront my prejudices. I went first to Chicago, the very long-running Broadway musical, which has won countless awards and was choreographed by the legendary American Bob Fosse. Then I went to see Les Miserables, the world's -longest-running musical, now in its 23rd year, which is based on Victor Hugo's novel of that name. Les Mis is not American: its composer and original lyricist are largely French, the English lyricist is South African, with help from the English poet James Fenton, and it was directed by the legendary Englishman Trevor Nunn. Most people would agree that these are forms of musical theatre at its best.

Oh dear. Both productions had outstanding merits, within their idiom. But the idiom is all wrong. To generalise from the particulars listed above, musicals are very much too loud. At times I longed for earplugs. The -music is unmemorable, manipulative and repetitive, and sometimes very derivative; the beat is oppressively heavy and unsubtle, and there's a superfluity of vulgar oompah. Many performers seemed to me to be singing slightly flat, as lots of crooners do; it's clearly deliberate, but it doesn't appeal to me, and I really don't know why it's considered a good idea. The singers are miked-up, possibly because their voices are often weak: surprisingly few of the stars had really exceptional voices, and some of the women had voices that were painful to hear.