Tuesday, April 24, 2018

Undated - Free seat at the opera


It's a bit hard to tell where this letter fits in. Possibly I wrote two on one day, since the next one in the list is actually dated the 10th Sept. However, the information in this letter seems to indicate that it was certainly around the 10th or 11th.

Undated, but postmarked 11 Sept 67 

Dear Mother, How are You? I am fine! Long hot day here in Sydney, so having nothing really to do , I went to the T. P. Zoo. [Presume this is the Taronga Zoo – was it called the Taronga Park Zoo at one point?] And got so lost that I kept finding bits I hadn’t even realized existed. It’s a marvellous place, isn’t it? Snakes – UGH! Giraffes – oooh! (One baby there, but he just sat.) Some peculiar little animal that stopped and talked to me (everyone reckoned he was an opossum, but he was in with the wallabies). A cockatoo that nearly burst my ear drums with his ‘hullo,’ and two others that fell quite in love with me and wouldn’t leave. Very friendly crowd of animals there – there – they nearly all  had time to stop and chat! And a very good aquarium with some of the oddest and most beautiful fish I’ve seen. Who said op-art was a new thing? God gave it to fishes centuries ago!

It’s a ferry-trip, of course – or didn’t you know – I never know where you’ve been in S. and where you haven’t; and the ferry goes round the Opera House, still being completed, but surprisingly beautiful., and looked on as an attraction by even the most mundane of Sydneyites.

AMP Building
Went up to the top of the AMP building to top off the afternoon. It’s 25 storeys high (no 13 isn’t used except as an air-conditioning plant!) and the lift gets there in about 5 secs flat. I had to make 2 trips to pick up some of the things I’d left behind (stomach, heart, etc). And the view naturally is stupendous!
Surprisingly enough that just about filled in the day, and I’m off to tea in a minute. I’ll try a restaurant in Kings Cross tonite; went to the Continental (?) CafĂ© in one of the thousand arcades late nite – very nice too. So, see ya.

Jack’s mail arrived – somewhere along the line it’s been dipped in something pink! and every letter including Grahame’s reference has got blodged in some part. Looks like I’ll just have to wait and see whether it’s necessary to use that or not. [I’m unclear as to who this Jack is – Grahame may have been Grahame Clifford with whom I’d worked both as an accompanist in Dunedin when he was teaching there, and again in Wellington when he and I went on the Die Fledermaus tour together, and became even closer friends. He’d been one of the top baritone singers at Covent Garden in his day, and had originally come to Dunedin with a D’Oyly Carte tour, playing the comic patter roles. When he ‘retired’ he thought Dunedin would be a good place to live. Unfortunately he was never truly appreciated there.]

Had tea in a place I won’t go to again. Wouldn’t even give me a serviette! Couldn’t quite tell what the excuse was but the girl said, ‘We don’t…serviettes’?? So I was none the wiser nor cleaner by the time I’d finished the meal.

I’d rung Anne Newbury this morning and she suggested that since there were NO seats available for any part of the opera season – it’s been sold out for months!! – why not come along and see if I could get in behind the percussion players in one of the side boxes to see it – ‘it’ being Turandot. Well, I met her (and also quite a few others from Fledermaus) [the others being some of the orchestra members from Fledermaus; the NZ Opera Co had used Sydney orchestral players for some reason] and we found that there was simply NO room behind the percussion players, because they had every conceivable instrument in there already. So they suggested I go upstairs and stand at the back. Well, I tried that, but was told at least 3 times by a fussy usher that the fireman would growl, so I headed off at the end of the 1st Act, and discovered quite by chance (or good management on the part of the guardian angel) that there was room in the side box in the gods. And after the first act two people moved out so I was free to take either seat. And what a sound it was. The view wasn’t much – everyone looked like a dwarf (!) – but I was between the stage and the orchestra practically and got the best of both! Marvellous. 

Grahame Clifford, presumably as the
Modern Major-General.
The production wasn’t anything remarkable, but the singing except for one or two spots was wonderful – and the chorus was terrifically full-blooded. The woman who played Turandot (who doesn’t come on till the 2nd Act) arrived with a cloak that must have been 24ft long (!) made up (the cloak!) to be a peacock (of sorts) and it was spread all the way down a flight of stairs by her handmaids. And her costumes were terrific! Thousands of beads and glittering things. Heaven knows how she stood up in it all. [The stairway, one of those typical ‘inspirations’ by the designer, took up most of the stage, and while it was great for such effects as already described, it left little room round the sides for the large chorus, and the principals. Consequently, a lot had to be done on the stairway.]

Went round to see Feist afterwards for a brief visit, and he sez he’ll probably be there on Monday (!!) Oh well. [Bob Feist, the conductor of Die Fledermaus, who was by then working for this season in Sydney. An American conductor, with some eccentricities. He and I had our moments, in rehearsals, mostly because I wasn’t as familiar with Fledermaus as he expected I should somehow be. I also played the glockenspiel in the performances, a fairly thankless task since the part is not large – but they had to do something justify taking me around New Zealand. A good deal of some performances was spent reading The Hobbit by the light of the orchestral lamp. I seem to remember that I also played the triangle in the overture, and I certainly played the glockenspiel as the ‘sound’ of Grahame Clifford playing on the bars of the prison cell.]
So, must go to bed. See ya, love Mike.