'Spread the truth from pole to pole'

‘Beastes of all manner kinde’, from Bonn and Oxford, waiting to come on to perform in Benjamin Britten’s Noye’s Fludde, to music played by the Leiden youth orchestra and with dancers from Perm. It’s been a while since quite so many of Oxford’s twin towns have got together to perform music rehearsed separately but I love it every time. Music transcends our differences. At our post-performance party this evening our guests from Bonn sang us a song about meeting again. We listened, we picked it up, we sang it with them. And I introduced my lovely host from when I sang in Bonn earlier this year to my lovely host from when I sang in Leiden two years ago.
 
As tensions rise in the world outside, our dove in this performance (who presented Noye, after the storm, with 'a branch of olyve from some place. It is a signe of peace') was Russian. And as the rainbow, sewn from Pride flags, spanned the stage, I wondered what Britten would have made of the meaning it has taken on since he died.
 
Of course it will take much more than this to make us all realise that the world is a better place when we work together than when we fear each other, but it’s heart-warming to feel how things can be.