By the time I show up at Glyndebourne for the start of Season 2019, the remarkable, intricate machinery of the Festival has already been rumbling along for about six weeks, since rehearsals began back in the chilly mornings of March. But it’s only now, in late April, that the costumes are ready to put in an appearance and the dressers have been summoned. Every year, when I step through the stage door on my first day back, it feels as if no time has passed at all, and everything in this backstage world of wonder feels intimately familiar. The cheery smiles from the security staff, the squeak of wheels on a double bass case, laughter echoing in the lift shaft.

‘So Pearl, you’re going to need to be over here to collect the masks.’ I am led across to the back of the set, and stationed with a basket by a towering structure of steps labelled ‘DAM OF FAUST TREAD UNIT A’. Blue fairy-lights are gaffa-taped to the framework, lighting the way.

The schedule for today is listed as ‘Faust, stage and orchestra.’ It’s the first time I will have heard the orchestra - in this case, The London Philharmonic — since the last season, and the sound they make is nothing less than glorious, bringing the music alive with shivering, magical verve. Already the corridor outside the pit doors is cluttered with cello cases, and the sound of their locks clunking open echoes off the walls.

It’s only on my third illicit trip across the elegant courtyard to the Box Office, hot-footing it past the Long Bar and feeling conspicuous in my backstage blacks, that I find an envelope with my name on it has been left for me.

During the morning, we are in the auditorium, watching some of the chorus girls rehearsing the water nymph scene. They are suspended high in the air on wires, and they are swirling thirty-foot long mermaid tails that brush the stage floor far below them. The effect is really quite breathtaking — they absolutely look as though they are under water.

The atmosphere is shimmering with a low level buzz of anticipation. Performers begin to emerge, transformed, from their dressing rooms and everyone is looking as though they have just stepped right out of a fabulous Edwardian children’s book illustration. The costumes are amazing - stunning fantasy has been woven through the historical references with smile-sparking wit and imagination. Tailors and seamstresses are clustered in the corridors, tape measures draped around their necks, frowning with concentration as they scrutinise their handiwork.

‘Oh man,’ says Sahel as the staff bus rumbles out of Lewes, shaking his head with a smile, ‘you know it’s bad when you need a fourth cup of coffee by the afternoon!’

‘Fourth?’ says the older man sitting next to him. ‘More like tenth.’

Sahel’s infectious laughter is bubbling up again, and I think to myself that if someone as rubber-ball bouncy and bright as Sahel has been finding the schedule punishing, then I am fully entitled to my own mind-deadening tiredness.

The stage crew are still setting the stage, and red DO NOT ENTER tapes are pulled across the entry door, meaning we cannot pre-set our quick-changes backstage. Apparently Rinaldo had been rehearsing on stage this morning, and the crew are struggling to switch everything over to the mammoth Magic Flute on time. When they first tried this change-over, it took them seven hours. So far today, they’ve been at it for four, which is a bit ominous.

The lights overhead flicker, pop, and then cut out. Suddenly, everything is plunged into the semi-darkness of emergency lighting. The intercom is dead, and the opera has ground to halt. The monitor screen is black. I hear a thunderous rumbling coming from the stage as the safety iron hurtles down, and then the fire alarms begin to wail. I turn to catch eyes with my colleagues, and no one is smiling. This is not a drill.

I wander back out into the gardens, and take a moment to stand beneath the glittering, gleaming, silver crescent moon.

So there it is. Another summer at Glyndebourne... gone with a glimmer and a wink.