Opera-house pecking order: Luisi goes for Met gold

So it's official: the Metropolitan Opera is more "important" than Covent Garden - at least to the rather image-conscious Fabio Luisi, currently rated as one of the possible successors to New York's now-ailing supremo of the last 40 years, James Levine. He's ditching two performances of a musically resplendent Aida at the Royal Opera for Wagner at the Met.

A notice on the Royal Opera website advises us that: “Fabio Luisi will no longer conduct the performances on 30 March and 2 April, 2011. This is to enable him to stand in for James Levine at the Metropolitan Opera conducting Das Rheingold. Therefore, the performances on 30 March and 2 April, 2011, will now be conducted by Daniele Rustioni."

So the punters who've paid over £100 for their seats to a show where the conducting is one of the greater glories - at least within the pit, even if Luisi doesn't co-ordinate so well with the singers - have to put up with a putative second-best (no thoughts here, to be honest, on Rustioni, who's young - 28 - and photogenic). It's not even as if the Rheingold is new, though the second instalment of Robert Lepage's Ring cycle (which Levine still wants to conduct) is. We're fairly used to opera-house performers going sick when it turns out they have a better offer elsewhere, but it's rarely so nakedly stated as here.

Well, we'll get over it, but I'd be surprised if the Royal Opera bothered to ask him back beyond any engagements for which he's officially booked - and I don't suppose you'd find Antonio Pappano, the house's fiercely loyal music director, doing anything of the sort.