As cultural one-upmanship goes, the battle at the moment chez Jury is a highbrow one. At the weekend, I caught the final part of the Mariinsky’s Ring Cycle at Covent Garden conducted by Valery Gergiev. My beloved, meanwhile, has just returned from Germany where he had been the guest of a friend lucky enough a couple of tickets for Gotterdammerung at Bayreuth and found himself sitting a few rows from Stephen Fry.

The home of Wagner’s Ring, where fans can wait a decade for the chance to attend, has to trump the Russians’ first Cycle in the best part of a century in terms of top tickets. But what has been clear, comparing notes, is neither of us had a top Twilight of the Gods experience.

The design team and director of the Mariinsky Ring were booed in London (though I was glad the Covent Garden shared my approval for Elena Nebera as Gutrune and Mikhail Petrenko as Hagen). Siegfried as well as the designer and director got the verbal kicking in Germany.

My favourite, though, was discovering that even though Bayreuth has a dress code akin to Glyndebourne, it is not delicate picnic hampers that sustain German audiences through Wagner’s epic. It’s bratwurst – sausage – in a bun. Complete with ketchup. Class!