A cold coming

>For someone with nothing better to do on a wet summer evening there is still harmless amusement to be had from an old-fashioned melodramatic opera. But the curtains part on a pale-faced official announcing that the diva is unwell, the performance must be abandoned. The audience rise to leave, stunned and grumbling. They have missed the show - they don't know by how much. For the soprano's illness is only one scene of drama that has embraced kidnapping, drug running, and death - and the climax is still to be reached, round the corner from the opera house among the vegetable sacks of Covent Garden.