They’ve weathered quite well too with ?-stud bassist John Taylor eliciting screams as he kneels

They’ve weathered quite well too, with ?-stud bassist John Taylor eliciting screams as he kneels centre stage, while singer Simon Le Bon’s every jaunt clearly reminds the audience of teen crushes.Exposure though, soon puts them into frame: at two hours, the concert provides a little too much perspective. Yet for their 25th anniversary the reformed, “classic” 1980-1985 line-up has sold out a huge arena tour.
Much must be down to a renewal of interest in all things 1980s. For the past decade, they’ve been widely derided as all that was wrong with the aspirational 1980s: while they aimed to make funk-fuelled futurist pop with art school slap on, but were stymied by blokish arrangements, vocals and videos featuring Boy’s Own adventures or women with not much on. It just needs someone brave enough to take on the challenge.”.

The Duran Duran camp must be laughing right now. But he is worried that, once again, fine words may not be translated into action. “There’s a golden opportunity here,” he says, “for an opera company to stage a new work which will appeal to a new audience, and which will have them leaving the theatre with smiles on their faces Contemporary opera does not need to feel like a cold shower. And Peter Ash’s terrific new score gives us a wonderful chance to do just that.”So will the story have a happy ending? As with most of Dahl’s stories, it’s hard to tell. But a key figure in the outcome might just be Donald Gordon, the 73-year-old chairman of the third-largest property developer in the country, Liberty International, who last year donated £20m to be shared equally between the Royal Opera House and the Wales Millennium Centre.At Covent Garden, the chief executive Tony Hall greeted the donation with delight. “Not only does this provide us with vital funds to put towards staging new productions,” he declared, “but it also forges exciting links with the new Wales Millennium Centre.” As Hall has been one of the few people in the British opera establishment to enthuse about the project, Sturrock is quietly optimistic.

“We’re also talking to Youth Music (the lottery-funded facilitator) about The Golden Ticket,” Morris says, “because we see this as an opportunity to show children that opera is not something to be scared of. We would have to take it already made.” But who would take on the responsibility of making it? Who would agree to lead this consortium?Earlier last year, Judith Isherwood, the new chief executive of the Wales Millennium Centre – Dahl was Welsh-born – showed interest in being that major partner, but her interest waned as the financial pressures of ensuring that the new theatre opens on time increased.Fiona Morris, however – an executive music producer at BBC Wales – had other ideas. A long-time fan of the project, she is now deep in negotiations both within the BBC and with Sturrock and Ash about a film version of the opera. Its production would involve a summer-long television search for the young cast, before being broadcast in the winter.This year, the BBC is already planning a television opera version of Antoine de Saint-Exup?’s American-French children’s classic The Little Prince, with music by the Oscar-winning British composer Rachel Portman If that works, The Golden Ticket could follow in 2005.