Founded in 1994 and vastly praised for its recordings on the ECM

Founded in 1994 and vastly praised for its recordings on the ECM label, the Zehetmair Quartet remains, against all the received wisdom, a part-time outfit: rehearsing and touring just one new programme a year. The double-act has always been Roger Daltrey as Townshend’s alter-ego, with the guitarist’s visceral attack churning up monsters from the id. During “Anyway Anyhow Anywhere”, Townshend strikes a Messianic pose and lets off aural grenades, explosive runs along the fret that speak of both frustration and determination.Daltrey admitted that: “It doesn’t matter how much you hurt, when you get on stage it all goes out the window.” But it is the two’s ability to pull each other out of difficulties that still gives them meaning and purpose A moment in “Love Reign o’er Me” illustrates just how. In the middle of a commanding performance, Daltrey forgets his lines, but where in the past Townshend might have been minded to throttle him, tonight he pulls off a majestic ringing sequence that restates the song’s theme of deliverance.Although this week’s series of gigs are pitched as a warm-up for the Teenage Cancer Trust benefit performance of Tommy at the Royal Albert Hall, two new songs were premiered. In the light of recent events, that plan now takes on a new sense of moment, and the on-stage chemistry between the pair – who have spenttheir professional lives at war with one another – suggested they were up for the task. The Who’s first British date since the death of bassist John Entwhistle and Pete Townshend’s arrest on child pornography charges (he was later cautioned and was put on the child protection register) was a chance for the group’s leader to find succour and support in the communal audience he has tended for so long On the night the crowd were not found wanting. Accompanied by senior doctors and managers to lend his claims credibility, he has trumpeted the growth in NHS staff and the success of the service in coping with winter pressures, and he is expected to announce in a couple of weeks that the Government has achieved its target of having no one waiting for hospital treatment longer than nine months by the end of March 2004.Yesterday’s figures on heart disease showed the number of patients waiting more than six months for surgery had come down to 390 at the end of February from 2,700 two years ago.

Looking slim, fit and ready for action, the guitarist fired into the psych-rock chords of “Who Are You”. Although the solo was partly fluffed, the song inspired by a drunken Seventies crisis of conscience rang with new contemporary meaning.On “I Can’t Explain”, Daltrey swung his mike, Townshend exhibited his windmilling power chords, but both here and in the following “Substitute” – all but drowned out by the barracking choir – a certain nostalgic listlessness was detectable. But as the evening progressed, Daltrey and Townshend’s determination to keep the band they have fronted for four decades relevant won through.Before their recent difficulties, the group were planning to release their first album of original material in more than 20 years. For the first 20 minutes of the show, even the decibel-challenging output of Townshend, Daltrey and co was challenged by the vociferous crowd.
With long-time side man Rabbit Bundrick on piano, Pino Paladino taking Entwhistle’s role on bass, and the redoubtable Zak, son of Ringo Starr, Starkey on drums, The Who 2004 are a ferociously well-drilled outfit.For his part, Townshend remained mute about his recent difficulties, but, as expected, the music spoke volumes.

And she’s biding her time, developing her stamina, before scaling the operatic heights. ‘The Mikado’, The Coliseum, London WC1 (020-7632 8300), in repertory, 3 April-6 May. In her spare time, she gives recitals – often charity ones for her father’s church – but she also dreams, and not only of singing Carmen: “My burning ambition is to sing Maria in West Side Story, and I’d love to do My Fair Lady.”Could she manage the different styles? “If I’m in the car and I’ve got the Sugababes on, I don’t sing along in an operatic way. There’s nothing I hate more than a musical recorded by opera singers in an operatic style. If you’re going to be a crossover artist, you’ve got to really cross over.”Simmonds is currently being pestered to make a jazz record, “but I’m only going to do it if I can do it properly”. Her Staffordshire origins are still audible in her voice, and it’s no surprise that her first ambition was to be an actress.

As a vicar’s daughter, it was natural for her to sing in church, where even at 11 she had an alto timbre. She took lessons and starred in local shows: “I began to have ambitions, but had no idea how I was going to realise them.”The answer was a four-year course at the London College of Music, followed by three years knocking about on the fringes of musical theatre with a group she led. She also sang in a Christmas show for a Norfolk steam-engine museum – and the doves with whom she now shares the stage as Second Lady in the ENO Magic Flute are the very same ones she shared the stage with there.She studied for two more years at the Guildhall, where she picked up two big prizes, and then, through a series of happy accidents, she made her progress via Glyndebourne (“getting shagged in a lift in Flight”) to ENO. She is a bewitching Dorabella in Cosi, and an entrancing Rosina in Barber of Seville. She makes a convincingly gauche Cherubino, and as Ascanius in The Trojans transforms herself into something creepily butch.When I ask her how she does it, she tells me she finds such instinctive matters hard to articulate, so I settle instead for an account of background.