Why did Raymond Gubbay’s new Savoy Opera fail to make it? “The product was simply not good enough. For opera regulars the performing standards were very ordinary; coach parties would have found the stagings skimpy and unambitious, while general theatregoers, used to the zip and glitz of musicals with production budgets many times larger than the Savoy’s, would have regarded the shows as village hall efforts. There was no razzmatazz, nothing striking enough to make an instant convert out of an opera sceptic, nothing you cannot see regularly at a decent music college production. Musically and dramatically, standards have simply not been high enough.”