Email: alisongrist@tiscali.co.uk Call: +44 (0)7940 59 00 70

December 2009: Flashbacks pop into my head as I journey on the tube towards Covent Garden. Memories of being fourteen and on a school trip to see Puccini's “Tosca” at the Royal Opera House. I’ve never forgotten that experience. But it wasn’t the production that struck me so much as the fact I was simply blown away by the lavishness of the theatre - the stage, the scenery, the oceans of red velvet, sumptuous staircases, the pure gorgeousness of it all. I fell in love with the actual theatre.

Now, a quarter of a century later (cough cough) and I’m finally back for work and walking towards the building. Where have I been all these years? Now it’s still beautiful but with the addition of a vast extension that has helped turn it into one of the biggest and grandest opera and ballet house in the world.

At the Stage Door I’m given a security pass and led into the bowels of the building. I’m here to film interviews and behind-the-scenes footage for BBC Classical music’s Christmas production of “The Tsarina’s Slippers”. It’s a Tchaikovsky opera with ballet scenes and it’s based on Ukrainian writer Nikolai Gogol’s story, “The Night Before Christmas”. The cast are rehearsing on stage with a full orchestra and the director is working out technicalities with the lighting and special effects teams. It seems a very colourful and cheery production and it’s all sung in Russian. The sur-titles aren’t operating yet, so it’s hard to fully understand what their singing to each other other than by observing their body language.

I interview the director, conductor and lead artists though I don’t know how much I’ll be able to use of the Russian singers as their English is often hard to understand. But they have an infectious joy for this comic-fantasy production, it’s easy to like them especially Maxim Mikhailov who plays The Devil and Larissa Diadkova as Solokha the Witch.

I then film Cossack dancers rehearsing in one of the studios who are young and British, brought in specially for this production. As they block their routine, then dance it through, we film them and their choreographers. When I ask if they can repeat their routine so that I can film it from different camera angles, they agree. However, it becomes very clear soon into the routine that it has taken so much out of them, they’re more jaded on this pass. The choreographer asks to stop.