The spread of this awful coronavirus has resulted in the loss of numerous projects planned for 2020, many of them booked over a year in advance. I haven’t been able to see the Labeque sisters play Philip Glass in Bordeaux, Berlioz’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’ in Strasbourg, Benjamin Britten’s opera ‘Peter Grimes’ in Frankfurt, Bruckner and Shostakovich concerts at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, nor to visit exhibitions at the Städel Museum in Frankfurt, the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and the once-in-a-lifetime van Eyck show in Ghent. I have also had to cancel my planned trip to the Aix-en-Provence festival in July to see Alban Berg’s ‘Wozzeck’.

However, the virus has sadly cost many people much more than just the loss of travel opportunities and this is its real tragedy. Hopefully, at some point in the not too distant future, we will see an end to it and a return to a life as near normal as possible.