Takes time (and a free ticket from a friend) but I've finally made it to a performance at Holland Park opera. Not a Tosca or Madame Butterfly style event; this was a rehearsal, and a robust, strong one of Oklahoma, put on by an equally robust, strong choral society made up of past and present of Allen and Overy, a powerhouse in the legal world. Gorgeous, rousing work, with enough echoes to have me warbling some of the show tunes on my way home.

The venue is a little work of wonder; they've made the most of a wartime ruin and fastened an enormous marquee around it, where the shadows of swooping parakeets zip over, the odd eerie cry of the park's resident peacocks wander in, and the music and tunes thump on.

At one point, very briefly, as if a door had popped open, I saw back into the past and thought of all the previous versions of Oklahoma that London has hosted. Somewhere trapped in a West End theatre is the happy ghost of a Rodgers and Hammerstein tune riffing through.