Although we imagine our politicians are the most arrogant and egomaniacal of Australians (that's why we boo our prime ministers in the Rod Laver Arena) there's another kind of Australian who frequently egomaniacally outperforms our politicians.

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I speak, through clenched and grinding teeth, of Australian theatrical directors.

My teeth are a little clenched because I have just been to Opera Australia's production in the Sydney Opera House of Christoph Willibald Gluck's much-loved, much-staged opera Orpheus and Eurydice.

As is so often the way with tickets-on-themselves theatrical directors this production's director Yaron Lifschitz chose to vastly "improve" (my inverted commas) upon composer Gluck's silly old ideas (so 18th century) about what his, Christoph Willibald's, own opera is about.

This kind of "I'm a genius, I know best!" thinking on the parts of theatre directors is a close cousin of the kind of thinking that must have gone through prime minister Scott Morrison's ego-inflamed mind when he appointed himself to five ministerial positions.

But that's not one of my best analogies. Perhaps a better one here is the way in which Winston Churchill, an amateur painter, took it upon himself to alter-improve paintings of the old masters (even of Rubens!) hanging on the walls of Chequers his prime ministerial country mansion.

But I digress.........

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