The ample bosom of soprano Anna Netrebko played a starring role in Saturday’s performance of Verdi’s Macbeth from New York’s Metropolitan Opera, especially for those of us watching it in the live relay to cinemas (in my case at Oxford’s Phoenix Picturehouse).

“I think the cameraman is rather keen on her,” said my companion as the lens plunged once more towards the Russian diva’s cleavage. I had to agree.

Ms Netrebko proves to be the sexiest Lady Macbeth we’ve seen since the RSC’s revival of Shakespeare’s play featuring Helen Mirren as the evil queen. I was astonished to discover this was fully 40 years ago. Later Stratford productions included two (in 1986 and 1993) from Adrian Noble, who directs the Met’s opera.

Though cinema audiences have been delighting in these relays now for nine years, Saturday’s was my first Met production witnessed in this way. It followed, incidentally, an afternoon at Stratford for the matinee of the new Love’s Labour’s Lost, as merry a feast of wit as one could hope for.

The close-up attentions of the camera in Macbeth meant that, besides Ms Netrebko’s assets, one could observe that Željko Lucic as Macbeth had a dirty shirt collar and that the ‘baby’ clutched by one of the weird sisters was clearly a plastic doll.

It also permitted us to see that the cast were delivering acting performances every bit as impressive as their singing. Tenor Joseph Calleja excelled as the grief-stricken Macduff — his aria following the moving chorus of the Scottish exiles was jaw-dropping in its beauty. Rene Papé was a marvellous Banquo.

The Met season continues on Saturday with Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro.