SECOND OPINION The Minotaur Covent Garden
By: RICHARD GODWIN

HOW startling the reading matter of strangers on the Tube can be. While most commuters content themselves with free papers, selfhelp books and bibles, you can usually find one buried in something improbable: a Neruda reader; a Mahler score; a Semiotics journal, perhaps.

I have often wanted, but never quite managed, to strike up conversation with someone buried in such an esoteric tome — so I was happy to oblige when a sweet old couple did just that to me and my fiancée as we journeyed home from the Opera House last Tuesday night, both scanning the programme of The Minotaur. Not because we wanted to look smart, I should add, rather because we were trying to fathom the horrors we had just seen.

"Was it any good? My husband and I were thinking of going," smiled the lady.

I didn't know quite what to say.

Opera is only a recent pleasure of mine, and only because my fiancée sometimes comes by free tickets. Sir Harrison Birtwistle's take on the minotaur myth is by far the least remitting and most demanding thing I've seen at Covent Garden. It's the operatic equivalent of Joy Division or Scott Walker at their bleakest: all dense rumbling brass and woodwind, hardly any air, still less tunes — and blood. Lots of blood, screeching crows, craws of gore and human tripe.

Its impact is undeniable — the libretto is delicious, John Tomlinson is remarkable, Antonio Pappano's baton makes sense of the hardest bits, the critics mostly loved it and I have not quite been able to get it out of my head since.

But was it enjoyable? Who, exactly, is this sort of entertainment for? A rich, masochistic, gothic aesthete with a classics degree? There is something perversely amusing that the pinnacle of high art should be quite such torture.

I quite like the thought of some flash banker stumbling into the stalls by mistake. But did I advise a kindly old opera-loving couple to queue up at the box office for cheap returns for it? No. They looked way too nice.

In rep until 3 May (020 7304 4000, www.roh.org.uk).

The bald gentleman sitting behind us had had enough.

"I would rather be castrated with a cheese grater than listen to any more of this rubbish", he said, and with that he breathed one last waft of halitosis in our direction, picked up his fancy lady and made for the exit, leaving three quarters of a bottle of Moet undrunk on his table. We all breathed a sigh of relief.

  The scene was legendary jazz club Ronnie Scott's, last week, where two young jazz groups - the delightful Curios and the bracingly avant-garde Polar Bear - were making their debuts. The departure of said gentleman, who spent Polar Bear's set emitting burps and such comments as "cheer up you miserable bastards", felt like a victory for the forces of jazz-good against the forces of jazz-bad - and Lord knows there have been few of these in recent years.

It is generally agreed that Ronnie Scott's has lost its mojo ever since Sally Green took it over in 2005 and gave it an expensive refurbishment (£2.38 million to place a pillar in front of every table).

The Standard's jazz critic, Jack Massarik, was briefly banned after he wrote a piece compaining about its high prices, loss of atmosphere and disastrous bookings policy. Under Greene's owneship, and the artistic directorship of Leo Green, who departed at the end of last year, Ronnie's has pitched itself at people like our bald friend, who spend lots of money on champagne and talk over the jazz as they try to seduce their secretaries. The fact that the well-known jazz legend Craig David played there says a lot.

But the booking of two young English bands for three nights last week seemed a welcome step back in the right direction, even if playing a cymbal with a violin bow (as Polar Bear did) wasn't to everyone's tastes.

However, the front of house staff were off-message, scarcely disguising their disgust at the younger, less flash clientele the bands brought in; on point of principle, Polar Bear only agreed to play if Ronnie's reduced their standard ticket price of £35.

In the old days - when I actually didn't have much cash but enjoyed £10 student tickets, now discontinued - I remember being thoroughly charmed by the maitre d', who would reward everyone simply for having the good taste to drop by.

By contrast, last week, the front-of-house staff tutted us in the direction of the worst table in the place, nearly exploded when we moved without asking permission, then again when we failed to order anything very expensive.

Making them listen to a cymbal being played with a violin bow for three consecutive evenings seems a good way to begin their punishment.

You may have read that some blinged up gangsta wonk has been given a prestigious headline slot at Glastonbury, the glamorous Somerset music festival - and now, due to this booking and this booking alone, they're having trouble shifting tickets.

"I'm not having hip hop at Glastonbury. It's wrong... Glastonbury has a tradition of guitar music", said Noel Gallagher, whose brilliant band Oasis I remember lighting up the Pyramid Stage in 2004. "Glastonbury is contaminated", wisely put in Alexchil on the NME website. "They needed some huge band to headline, not some hip-hop wank", opined MAD_FER_IT. ("Keep Glastonbury White" said mosley666, though this post has since been deleted).

As for Glasto's "summer season" credentials, they have taken a serious hammering. "Harumph!" declared posh_totty: "I never believed those proles who claimed Glasto was good for a jolly. That fact that they're letting nig-nogs onto the main stage rather proves my point - let's leave it to the middle orders this year, what? Who's up for Henley?" (This post has also been mysteriously deleted).

So what was Emily Eavis, who has taken over most of the running of from her father Michael, thinking? Compare Jay-Z (rhymes with 'lazy') with the other Pyramid Stage headliners, The Verve and Kings of Leon. The Verve are a groundbreaking band whose continued relevance is proved by their appearance at every single other festival in the world this summer. That Glastonbury chose to give them the prestigious headline slot where other festivals have only seen fit to stick them on the second stage is just proof of the groundbreaking spirit that makes Glastonbury the world's most groundbreaking music festival. Likewise the Kings of Leon; the piddling Werchter festival in Belgium only puts them fourth down the bill - but perhaps those Europeans do not realise the true majesty of the fact that not only do they have one guitar in their line up - they've got two. Three if you count the bass. Jay-Z probably doesn't even know what a guitar is.

Even I can't keep up the narky sarcasm for much longer, though really, in the face of the idiocy being spouted about Jay-Z's headline slot at Glastonbury, it is hard to remain composed. But let's get this straight: the fact that Glastonbury has not yet sold out this year has very little to do with Jay-Z. Though I'm no special fan, it's pretty clear to anyone with half an ear that his acheivements make The Verve and Kings of Leon's careers look like the sideshows that they are. His booking is by no means out of keeping with Glastonbury's history ("We've booked Cyprus Hill [sic] before" chirped Emily in yesterday's Independent) and indeed, before this idiotic brouhaha, Jay-Z may have attracted as many first time ticket buyers - now likely to be put off by the prospect of lynch mobs.

In reality, the poor sales are perhaps something to do with the fact that Glastonbury last year was a horrible, overcrowded, poorly organised misery-fest, an environment so bleak that for the first and only time in my life I found the music of the Editors striking a chord. Every single one of my friends who went vowed it would be their last. I gave it four stars only through a combination of residual nostalgia and relief (don't tell anyone, but I snuck away on Sunday morning and watched the rest on telly).

What the Jay-Z storm does emphatically prove is that the mainstream rock audience, as epitomised by Noel Gallagher, has never been quite so cloth-eared, narrow-minded and parochial as it is now. And to link the two points together, this is why Glastonbury has gone way downhill in the relatively short period since I first went in 2003 - and the reason why people don't want to go back. I've no doubt those who were regular attendees before then would argue that the rot set in before 2003, but still, five years ago a visit to Glastonbury genuinely felt like a step outside society; the acts themselves didn't matter nearly as much as the spirit of the thing, the heady mix of philosophies and characters. I barely looked at the line-up (though I do remember a pretty enjoyable set form De La Soul), barely took any drugs and did the whole thing on £5.37 - and it was still one of the best weeks of my life.

Now the "alternative" music that seemed to Glastonbury's ostensible point from the outside, but never was from the inside, has been co-opted into the mainstream, the average festival-goer is far more likely to be the kind of bonehead with fast broadband who only thinks music is real if it has a guitar behind it. And once they've turned up to Glastonbury, hoping for some kind of polite rock'n'roll adventure, they find everyone is a bit like them, it's raining, overcrowded and there's no real escape beyond, say, listening to the Editors.

Which leaves us in a paradoxical position: if this kind of festival-goer is genuinely not going to go to Glastonbury because of Jay-Z - and the thousands who have bought their tickets already are the sort of game old stager who'd make it to the festival whatever the line-up - then 2008 could be a vintage year. Less crowds, sunny skies (surely after three rainy festivals a scorcher is due?) - and a gloriously entertaining Pyramid Stage set from a genuine musical pioneer to crown it. And I'm not talking about the Verve or Kings of Leon.