Bernard Levin.  Growing up in the household that I did, where such gentle televisual pleasures as Face The Music were regular viewing, and where my parents would often refer in warm, vaguely nostalgic terms to the likes of That Was The Week That Was, it was inevitable that I'd be familiar with the man's name, appearance, and reputation as an acidic and unforgiving critic of the arts, and as one of that first wave of blunter, more direct, political interviewers who refused to kowtow to those in authority.  He was not, looking back, somebody I warmed to very much.  He seemed to my youthful self to be somewhat charmless, possessing a face that appeared to show no signs of ever having broken into a smile. 
Beyond the notorious TW3 incident where Desmond Leslie attempted to punch his lights out on live television, I knew little of him. After all, he was a critic - even as a teenager I was aware that critics were not likely to be people I was going to feel much fondness towards.

Well.  Forward a few decades, and my sister gives me, for Christmas, a copy of "Conducted Tour", Mr. Levin's 1982 travelogue of the world's great international opera festivals.  To my shame, that was Christmas 2008, and I've only just now, over a year and a half later, got around to reading it (sorry, Jane, if you're reading this!)

The Bernard Levin who emerges from the pages is a very different sort of chap to the one I'd imagined.  Of course, anybody perhaps ten years my senior, with a knowledge of the arts will probably know this already, but for me it was quite a shock.  Far from the sullen, misanthropic aesthete I'd been expecting, I find I'm reading the joyful experiences of a genuine bon viveur, a lover of fine wines, particularly vintage champagne, of wonderful food; a man capable of raptures of delight at acquiring a new dinner jacket in black velvet.  These are things calculated to please me as a reader.
Time and again, during this ramble through the festival capitals of the world (Edinburgh, Bayreuth, Glyndebourne, Aldeburgh and so on), there are references to performances preceded or followed (or both!) by excellent meals; to intervals (of which long operas, perforce, may have several) spent knocking back copious bubbly; to a life thoroughly enjoyed with many friends.

In short, a book calculated to lift the spirits.  I'm regularly reminded throughout just how much Dad would have enjoyed it, though no opera-buff he.  It would just have been "his sort of a book". 

As a postscript, it occurs to me, thinking about the chapter on Bayreuth (where the festival is entirely centred upon the operas of Richard Wagner), and prompted by Stephen Fry's programme on the subject, repeated last night, wherein he visits Bayreuth, that I should probably acquaint myself better with Wagner.  I can recognise some of the tunes, as can most of us, I guess:  Bits of Lohengrin, the Death of Siegfried, Rde of the Valkyries, etc., but I'd be hard pressed to tell you very much of the plot, and I've certainly never actually watched, or listened to, a whole Wagnerian opera. 

I probably should.