19.1.69
Dear Mum, just another few words, as I now have returned
from Southampton, and may as well tell you about it while I have a minute
free. (Incidentally, I seem to have got
over bug of earlier in the week without any more troubles, which is good.) Well, on Friday morning, after I last wrote, I
had to get up at the revolting hour of 7.00!, in order to have plenty of time
to get to the Waterloo Station to catch a train at 9.47. As it was I was much
too early by about ¾ of an hour, but it didn’t matte,r even though Waterloo is
a very draughty station. There were only seven of us going down by train, Kiri
[te Kanawa], Jane Plant (another
married soprano, a bit dithery), David Smith, the Canadian tenor – and a
curiously mixed up boy – 21 – sometimes very nice, sometimes downright
over-rude; Keith
Stoppard, and Bob
Lloyd, also both married (!), Henry Ward, one of the reps, and me. Bob and
Henry and I talked all the way down, and found out a bit more about each other,
tho Henry is inclined to be a bit reticent, and the comparatively short time –
about an hour and a half – passed quickly.
Southampton seems a nice place, though I didn’t really see
much of it at all, except when travelling from A to B, but it looks a bit
quieter than London. And it’s quite near the New Forest – some of which wanders
into the town. The theatre we were playing at was the Nuffield Theatre, in the
University and like much of the University, very new, and except for the
outside nicely designed.
Everyone was to be billeted with local professors and
lecturers and students, and they were all supposed to meet us before the
rehearsal in the afternoon, but very few did. However it didn’t matter, and
after we had collected our meal tickets, we went and had lunch in the University
Union. Here for the first time I struck some of the cast playing this game
(which they had apparently played all the way down in one of the cars, and it
spread amongst the whole Opera Centre part of the company) which entails
someone having a name beginning with, say, C, and the others have to ask him if
he is, eg, an American composer (Copland) and if the person with the name doesn’t
know an American composer the rest get a ‘free’ question which means they can
get some more definite clue about the person. It takes an awful lot of
concentration, and since it was played at practically every meal with generally
anything up to ten people, and also all the way round a little trip of
Southampton we took last night and also all the way back in the car this
morning I feel fagged out! Came home and just slumped down on me bed for an
hour.
Anyway, our rehearsal went off not badly, (with me conducing
the off-stage chorus in Dido – and string
quartet – tho they really could probably have done without me!) and after this I
caught up with my billet. To jump ahead a bit, they turned out to be a
late-twenties couple – he is an ex-second fiddle with the Allegri
Quartet, which has quite a good reputation over here, and has toured a lot
of the world, including NZ (tho this particular member didn’t, just Canada, and
the States), and his wife is a very good cellist called Sharon
McKinley – he is Peter Thomas. And
they were so informal and so nice – she was a delight in fact – that I felt
very relaxed and happy with them. They only lived two minutes from the theatre
so I was enabled to go and come as I pleased – they gave me the back door key!
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| Queen Elizabeth I |
On Friday night the show went very well, I think, and even
better last night. Better I think than it ever did at the Wells. The orchestra
decided to have a little fun too, and at the end when the curtain calls were
running thru, as Theresa Cahill comes out as Angelique, she brings the sign
with her: Wife for Sale, and the
orchestra all threw money up at her! During
[between?] yesterday’s shows, half a
dozen of us went to see if we could see the Queen Elizabeth but couldn’t get
passes, so we went across on the Hythe Ferry instead, which at least took us out
over the harbour area, quite close to it. The others all reckoned she wasn’t as
big as the old pair of Queens, but I wouldn’t know. She looked a fair size to
me, and rather neat and lovely. However one of the wardrobe girls was also
telling me that she had a closer look at it and it looks badly put together. In
fact, it seems to me to be generally a rather bad piece of workmanship
altogether. [This observation apparently
based on what the wardrobe girl said..!]
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| Alan Opie - a more recent photo |
After last night’s show, Alan Opie and his girlfriend Kath
Smales, (also a student) and Tony Baldwin (who Some of the humour was rather crude, and
there were a few rather unbelievable lines to some of the songs, but it was a
very pleasant atmosphere in spite of this.
brought me back today) and I
went to a pub up the road from the theatre and walked into a sing-song that was
going on, and sat down and joined in and really enjoyed ourselves.
This morning, on the way back – David Smith was with us too –
we stopped off at a nicely built – in an old-fashioned style (tho a reasonably
new place) – pub, and had a sort of second-breakfast: and the atmosphere was
straight out of Dickens: the host seemed to be expecting us just to walk in at
that particular moment – he had sausages sitting there ready and waiting, and
coffee and rolls appeared out of thin air, and there was a nice roaring fire. Lovely.
And not very expensive either. He told us to come back again, and made it quite
obvious that he would be just as ready next time. There was a lovely little fast-flowing stream
running past the place, and a little short-haired terrier mooning about the
lounge.
So that’s me Southampton jaunt – much pleasanter than I expected
it to be – and with a welcome back anytime from the Thomases.
Better go and do some washing – see yah!
[handwritten] Love Mike.
PS I’ve got to play both
the difficult pieces in the Master Class AND conduct the third! Good Grief!
