small rooms and opera

Jenufa (English Touring Opera) at Cambridge was tremendous last night - tight-sprung and intense as ever, glorious singing and playing. And how fine to experience it in the relative intimacy of the Arts Theatre (how they fund it I don't know - more than sixty it seems, in the singers and players and crew, and the auditorium half full).
I love opera in small venues - a perk of last night was decamping to the Keynes Box for a touch of extra privacy, since it was empty (Keynes started the theatre). I once spent a year touring with Scottish Opera for Youth, and some of the most thrilling opera-going experiences of my life have been those of Scottish Opera Go Round, several singers and a piano in the village halls of Scotland.
The greatest small grand opera performance I've known was an operatc singing postman in his mailroom on board a train traveling through Italy - singing to the girl I was with rather than me, his voice resounding off the metal walls as he plied her with full-throated Verdi and Puccini.