Opera: Passion, Power and Politics (runs until February 2018)

Opera: Passion, Power and Politics is the first exhibition to be mounted in the V&A's new Sainsbury Gallery. Like the Pink Floyd exhibition (which was extended to run until 15 October (although I think all tickets have probably now been sold)), it uses a multimedia format with location-based audio playing out into a set of slightly too tight headphones (they're fine for the first hour or so, but after that I was finding my ears a bit squashed).

Unsurprisingly you get to hear a lot of opera. Fortunately for the casual listener to classical music, it's largely the better stuff stuff like The Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves or The Marriage of Figaro.

The exhibition starts with the early history of opera in Italy, quickly moving on from its origins as an entertainment for the nobility to its early form of public entertainment in Venice, and its spread throughout Europe.

As well as displaying the artifacts relating to the operas, including various spin-offs, such as the miniature paintings of castrati (who were apparently the boy bands of the day), the exhibition also provides socioeconomic context, providing a glimpse into the societies that influenced opera, as well as the effect that opera had on society (including the Soviets banning Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, apparently because Stalin didn't enjoy it).

The final piece of the exhibition is a run-through of a number of operas running through most of the twentieth century up to the present day - some of which were great (Summertime from Porgy and Bess for the Gershwin lovers), and some of which were awful (which I've convenient blotted from memory).

Probably a good two hours is needed to properly go around the exhibition (potentially more if you go on a busy day, as I went on a Monday).

A Life in Waves (2017)

I like it when I buy something and I'm told it comes with a free salad, or money off my next purchase (providing I was going to make a next purchase - a voucher for money off cosmetics when I buy my lunch at Boots doesn't really do anyone any favours - not me, not Boots the Chemist, which is paying for the money and ink, and not the poor tree whose life was given in order that I can have a useless coupon).

So, when I turned up a few minutes early to see A Life in Waves, a film that I'd chosen to see on the strength of the trailer alone, I was pleasantly surprised to hear a couple of people making arrangements for a Q&A session after what I presumed to be my film.

For those who've never heard of it, A Life in Waves is a documentary about the work of Susanne Ciani.

For those who've never heard of her, Susane Ciani is a musician and composer. who was a pioneer in the field of electronic music in the 1970s, and who was responsible for the sounds of a number of commercials from the end of that decade - including the Coca Cola pop-and-pour sound effect.

Anyway, back to the film. I'm sitting in a packed screen - apparently everyone else got the memo that I missed - and the woman who is going to be the facilitator for the Q&A gives us the brief rundown before the start of the film. I was expecting someone like the boom operator, or if we were lucky, the director to be the subject of the Q&A.

I wasn't lucky.

So the film itself is the story of a fascinating personality. Susanne Ciani comes across one of those people with whom you think you could spend hours chatting. I won't go into much in the way of detail - I knew nothing about this woman's life or career before I went in, so I had the pleasure of experiencing her story as an unfolding surprise. I wouldn't want to deny anyone else that pleasure.

The film itself is nicely told. It's interesting, moving, thought-provoking, and it's completely reliant on its subject, who fortunately is worth making a film about.

As for the subject of the Q&A, it turned out to be Susana Ciani herself, speaking over Skype - so in addition to the film, that was an extra half an hour spent in the company of a very interesting woman.

Better than lucky.

Pink Floyd: Their Mortal Remains Exhibition (runs until October 2017)

I have to confess that I was only peripherally aware of Pink Floyd. I knew they were the creators of Dark Side of the Moon, although I had never listened to it. The only one of their songs I could named was The Wall (or the Teacher, Leave Those Kids Alone song as I knew it when growing up).

The notion of an exhibition dedicated to them didn't exactly fill me with much excitement. Some album art and maybe a bit of pop memorabilia for a band in which I had no personal interest. However, I'd recently bought membership at the V&A (Victoria and Albert Museum to the culturally unaware), so I didn't have anything to lose, except an hour out of my day.

The first clue to the nature of the exhibition was the headset and attached metal box-with-LEDs-thing provided at the entrance to the exhibition. My immediate thought that this was some plan to turn us all into Cybermen - but I was assured that this was a location-based audio guide. Sennheiser headphones, so presumably they were serious about the quality of the sound.

The first indication that the exhibition was more than a few album covers was provided immediately inside the entrance to the exhibition as a giant black cab led through into the first room where we were treated to a multimedia experience of music, interview videos and a psychedelic, moving ceiling.

The layout in the first couple of rooms doesn't work particularly well with the crowds that a weekend visit attracts. Video interviews attract circles of people, which makes it difficult to get close enough to the exhibits. For those who can manage to squeeze past the crowds, the amount there is to see and read also slows the movement of traffic. With less people, there would be content to spend hours going over - as it was, I found myself skipping some parts, promising that I would come back another time.

Further into the exhibition, the crowds thinned out - possibly because they were all bottle-necked in the first two rooms. The layout further on make better use of the space - necessitated in part by the need for enough space to show off some of the Pink Floyd inflatables that were used in their stage shows.

Traffic management issues aside - and really the only way of preventing them would have been to have created a less compelling exhibition - Their Mortal Remains is a fascinating exhibition. Aside from presenting the album covers (and there is an entire room dedicated to the photography for the cover of Wish You Were Here), it provides a multi-media tour of Pink Floyd's history that gave me an understanding of the sheer scale of the influence that the band had and continues to have. It's also turned me from someone who didn't really care about Pink Floyd to someone who downloaded Dark Side of the Moon immediately after leaving the exhibition.

And despite only giving parts of the exhibition a cursory look, I still managed to spend two hours wandering through.