Phi has not in my opinion shone quite so brightly this week as he usually does. It seems to me that several of the definitions, both of the answers and within the wordplay, are rather tenuous, although no doubt people will explain how I am missing things.
I took a long time to finish the NW corner; Rienzi was slow to appear, even though Phi gave us plenty of help by defining it as a German opera, which immediately cut out more than half of them. 12ac was apparently unsound, but more likely never properly understood, and the double definition at 8dn was also a problem. When I gave up and went to aids my Chambers Crossword Dictionary didn’t help: Bradford may have been better.