25.6.69 - The year begins to wind up

25.6.69

Dear Mum, I’ve just been down to the shop to see if I could get a card for Daphne and Jack, but they had nothing that was either sufficiently funny or pleasant, so I’ll have to get you to pass on my congratulations. I don’t think I remember their address anyway. (Why did they call him Peter? We’ve surely got enough confusion in this family already. [Jack was my mother’s youngest brother, and Peter he and Daphne’s fifth child, their first boy. I already had another cousin called Peter.] They’re certainly determined not to let the Elgin Road Hannagans beat them are they? [Terry was older than Jack and he and his wife Monica had their fifth ˗ and last ˗ child in 1968.]

And what about this snow? You poor old things. Our weather is staying fairly warm, although it has been raining for the last couple of days. I think it’s clearing now. This week is our last with formal lessons, and we’re saying goodbye to the various teachers; next week we start rehearsals most of the time. The German teacher said she would take me on as a private pupil if I wished, though I don't know if I could afford it. But if I can, she’s certainly worth keeping on with.

We’re rehearsing two operas (The Consul is also going on but I’m not working on it) and they are Gianni Schicchi, which the Centre did last term but which I didn’t work on, and Il Tabarro, which is another one in the trio of operas that go under the heading of Il Trittico, and is, of course, by Puccini. We had our first production rehearsal today with Ande Anderson, and things seemed to be going fairly smoothly.

I don’t know if I told you that, a while back, when I was sitting in the train one night waiting for it to leave Charing Cross, I was marking some music ˗ actually I was putting some new words into a vocal score ˗ when a young negro fellow came along and looked over my shoulder through the window. I didn’t notice him at first, and got a bit of a shock! Anyway, he jumps in the carriage and sits down next to me and starts telling me about his interest in playing the classical guitar, and so we talked on and off until Blackheath. Well, on Monday, I was sitting in a carriage again, doing a crossword, when a figure went flying past, and then came back, and it was the same guy again. And he popped into the train, and again started talking. This is quite unusual here, which is what makes it worth telling ˗ it’s so rare than anyone will talk to you in a train ˗ in fact people wouldn’t say anything if you stood on their foot; I don’t think they’d expect you to apologise! This is how far they’ve taken this sort of don’t speak to your neighbour bit. This time he was saying how he had to learn a whole two-page spiel for the next day to use in his job as a door-to-door salesman for an encyclopedia firm! He’s an engineering student I think normally, and this is a sort of holiday job.

At present at the Centre ˗ well yesterday, anyway ˗ they were holding auditions for singers and reps, and I went in to listen for a moment and suddenly realised that the pianist auditioning was Bill Southgate ˗ do you remember him? And he was apparently very nervous (though I didn’t hear him do the stuff he’d prepared) because when it came to doing sight-reading he made some fearful blues! (Am I glad I didn’t have to audition there!) [I auditioned by tape from NZ, I think.]  I went and had a cuppa with him afterwards and I think he was in a bit of a state, because he was rambling a bit! Anyway I got his address from him, and I must go and see him. [Bill Southgate - or William Southgate as he is more usually known these days - was from Dunedin, and eventually would become one of New Zealand’s better-known conductors. Strangely, when my wife and I came back from the UK in 1974, we met the Southgates at Auckland airport; they’d just returned as well.]

I think we’re talking about different things as regards the mysterious palette knife (!) ˗ I think I know what a spatula is, but wasn’t there a long (about 8 ˗ 10 inches, plus handle) implement, about an inch wide, and with a rounded end?? It’s driving me mad ˗ surely that isn’t a spatula?

Again, don’t worry about Postal Notes; I’m surviving quite well, thank you, and though they are nice when they do come, they aren’t part of my contract or anything! I’ve sent a letter to Monica H[annagan, wife of Terry] and Co, but I haven’t to the Stokes ˗ suppose I should, shouldn’t I? I’ll try and do it. Aerogrammes are actually cheaper than postcards ˗ you know? ˗ but harder, even for me, to fill up! [I have no idea why I was supposed to be writing, unless it was just a matter of keeping in touch with Dunedin relatives I’d had a great deal to do with over the years.]

I suppose as usual it is too late to suggest another film for you to go and see, but one called The Heart is a Lonely Hunter is superb, and except perhaps for one small sequence (which I think in this case is probably necessary) I think you would find it wonderful. It’s a deaf-mute trying to live amongst normal people, and the fact that no one else realises he is as lonely as the ones he helps. The acting is unbelievable. 

We went to a rehearsal of Macbeth, the opera, at the Garden yesterday ˗ what an appalling production ˗ it never fails to amaze me just how bad some of their productions are ˗ they live so far in the past that you’d think they’d never heard of the word imagination. [Elena Souliotis made her debut at Covent Garden as Lady Macbeth in this production, as well as singing the role for the first time.]

Last Friday our normal lecture at the Centre was replaced by a talk with films at the Generating Board Theatre in Newgate St. The films were made by the man who talked ˗ he’s an ex-executive film man, and is experimenting, now that he has the time, with film and music. The two examples he showed us were very interesting (his name is James Archibald and you’ll see it occasionally on some of the 50s films ˗ English ˗ on TV) but the one he likes more of the two seemed to me less good. We went back to the Centre with him (Jeff took he and J Robertson) (and me) and he said it was because I’d only seen half of his favourite: and that was about half an hour! Love, Mike. [I don’t remember this at all, and I’m not sure quite why people from the Centre went to it.]

7.5.69 Busy week

7.5.69 [This aerogramme was handwritten, and has a number of words missing presumably due to the hastiness of the writing]

Dear Mum, I thought I’d better start this off while I have a minute, because I don’t seem to have much free time coming up this week. I’ve been very very busy for Bamford, for one thing, and I also had to do some work for another of the Reps at the Centre which took all Monday night up.

To recap a little: the previous Sunday night , David Gorringe and I went to the Palladium (!) because he had free tickets, and saw the filming of a Variety Show there for TV. (We were one [I think I meant ‘two’] of about 2000 in the audience!) It was rather interesting really because, though it wasn’t like being in a TV studio, a lot of the details were the same. (Have I told you, incidentally, that John and I went out and bought a table, for £2, a drawleaf one, and four Edwardian chairs for £4?? This was rather more than I wanted to pay for so little, but the chairs at least may be quite valuable, and are certainly solid!) [My eternally misplaced optimism about getting a real bargain at a secondhand shop.] (We also have a piano which we got for nothing, except the expense of getting it to the flat. It’s not in the best of conditions but when I get a moment I’ll have a look at it.) ( We also have a fourth occupant of the flat; I think I’ve already mentioned he was coming. He’s Jeff, anyway).

Last Tuesday, Mike and I went to the Wells’ production of The Magic Flute*. Golly, this is a fabulous opera. I really enjoy it each time. Some of the singing wasn’t as good as the [Covent] Garden [production], and some was better and some was awful. And though the production wasn’t quite as magical in spots as the Garden, we still had the Queen of the Night appearing out of nothingness (simple, but always effective ˗ she arrived on a forklift truck apparently!) and a much better ordeal by fire and water. At the Garden they mostly went thru a lot of lit streamers that were either coloured red (for the fire) or green (for the water), but in this production they went in a cylinder-shaped thing which was broken in two semi-circular pieces; when they went into it closed right around them, was lit up inside, and then for the fire went red in flame-like lighting ˗ the two silhouettes still seen inside. For the water, instead of flames the cylinder appeared to fill with green water, and when it covered the two characters, Tamino, who all [the time] was playing his flute, caused bubbles to arise from his breath under water. This was one of many delightful touches. Apart from the obvious Masonic symbols etc, the opera contains one of the most superb love stories in all operas. Tamino and Pamina, who fall in love before they’ve even seen each other, are wonderful examples of the power of love over everything (including Masonry!). There’s one scene for example where Pamina tries to get Tamino to tell her he loves her, but because he’s been told not to speak to anyone, he cannot say anything, and she finishes her speech with the heart-breaking ‘I wish I could die’ ˗ and then pours out her anguish in one of the [most] beautiful arias ever written. In spite of all sorts of distractions she remains faithful to Tamino and they go through fire and water together in the end, tho’ that doesn’t seem to have been in the original plan!

On Wednesday, I did some work for Bamford and was told of something that he wanted to know if I’d like to do at the weekend. This was to go to a composer’s home in Hampstead (Wilfred Josephs ˗ I think he did the music for the Great War TV series) and with an electric eraser, to rub out stave lines (they’re printed on the back of the music) for some modern work. They said (the composer and his wife) it would take a couple of hours to do the fifteen pages ˗ well it took  four hours to do five!! What a job ˗ I’m off to do some more tonight and will probably have to do it again tomorrow night. I charged them 10/- an hour, which they paid, but I felt it might have [been] too much, until the Bamfords said, it was the least I should have charged! [I’m not sure what I mean about the staves being printed on the back of the music; the whole job ˗ I can only remember being at the house ˗ sounds a bit odd, and would have been a doddle in the computer age.]

And I went to the Crowls again ˗ with a COLD (but I’ve been taking vitamin tablets and it seems to have gone), and [had] a pile of checking as well as this four hours work. What a weekend!! I’m not going to get finished here I can see ˗ I’ll write another one soon, love Mike.

*I note that one of the cast members of the Wells production of The Magic Flute was Donna-Faye Carr, who was at the London Opera Centre during at least part of my year there. 

13/3/69 - Hamlet and Hertford

13/3/69 [Completely handwritten letter on an aerogramme]

Dear Mum, I’m writing a few words now before I forget again. THANK YOU for the sweets & biscuits which arrived nicely in time for LENT. However, I didn’t think it would really be wise to leave them another six weeks so I gave myself a special dispensation and have started on them. The biscuits, I’m afraid, got very knocked about; I think the packing had come loose and they were crushed but eatable. Please don’t make a habit of this. 3 Post Orders a week ˗ I don’t want a bankrupt mother on my hands!!

Thanks too, for all your concern and prayers about me ˗ I am feeling a lot better, though I still have this choky cough, but at least I’m beginning to feel a little like my old energetic and cheery self again. You know that I used to boast that I could never feel blue for long? ˗ well, this was the longest time I’ve ever felt and I was beginning to wonder really what was wrong with me ˗ no life, listless, etc. But others in the place (the Centre) have had the same trouble. Must be a bug or someut..

We’ve (Mike, Kate and friends) just been to a production of Hamlet at the Round House ˗ an old railway turntable building converted into a theatre. The audience sits, almost, on three sides of the stage, and consequently everyone is very close, and feels right in it. Nicol Williamson was Hamlet ˗ and fabulous, as he always is. The rest of the cast was equally superb. Man alive, it really is a fantastic play, and the mere fact of knowing it so well (this is the 4th or 5th version I’ve seen) made it all the more effective. In two scenes I felt like crying out loud ˗ where Hamlet and his mother have the long argument, and when Laertes tries not to cry on hearing that Ophelia, his sister, has just drowned, but can’t restrain his tears. The fight scene at the end was horrifying, it was so well done and so close. And actors would come right thru the audience ˗ you really were in the thick of things. I’d like to go again!!

NEXT DAY ˗ Spent a boring morning at the Lortzing ‘Opera Rehearsal’ rehearsal. [I presume this must have been a production put on at the Opera Centre, though I don’t remember anything about it.] What a load of old rubbish this is ˗ some of the music is “pretty,” but the dialogue is the sort of stuff I gave up writing years ago!! [Remembering at this time that I was an ancient man of 24] I feel it’s just a waste of time.

Later this afternoon Delia Wallis and I set off for Hertford (pronounced HARFORD) where I was to accompany her (unpaid except for expenses) at an Old Folks party. At Kings Cross [Station] we met up with her boyfriend Robert, who seems a pleasant gentle soul. (But he’s a singer!! Just been touring with the Welsh Opera For All.) We travelled rather slowly up to Hertford and walked in heavy rain to her (family ) home, which is a large (3-storeyed) place of the type I thought had all been converted into flats. Hertford seems rather pleasant ˗ some of it old, some very mod. We had some tea there, and eventually her brother-in-law, Clive (married to Coral), drove us to the Corn Exchange where hundreds of old people were  being treated to a party-cum-concert. We were on after a party of schoolgirls who sang a seemingly endless medley of songs, and vaguely danced. On arriving at the piano and playing I soon discovered it had no sustaining pedal which was a considerable handicap!!  However the songs (4 oldies) were all very very popular and after this I was driven back to the station.

When I got to Kings Cross again I remembered George Bamford [the music copyist] had said he had some more stuff for me. The lift in their flats isn’t working and after climbing 5 flights I found he wasn’t ready to give me the stuff ˗ I’d originally said I’d go tomorrow! Anyway he invited me in to watch an old pro on TV (colour ˗ which isn’t very attractive; it’s too inconsistent) who was playing jazz on a vibraphone ˗ with four sticks. Which is almost like trying to hit the right keys on a piano with sticks. He was fabulous and made the climb worthwhile.

Lots of love, Mike

*[Delia Wallis sang with Convent Garden, and later must have moved to the USA to work. She was on the staff of Fredonia State University of New York prior to her death in 2009.]

3.10.68 - Students and subsidies

Letter not dated but postmarked 3^rd Oct, 1968

Dear mother, you silly old thing, just because your little poem upset me a little once doesn’t mean to say that you should give up what is obviously a new career opening before you!  The first time I read it, it had an amusing effect – I just read it again, on the wrong day.  But while we’re on the subject, so to speak, of upsetting things, I’d better say that for this Course to be worthwhile in the long run, I’ll have to stay in the UK after it’s over.  Not that I wouldn't come home tomorrow, if I could bring London with me!  But, presuming that I come out of it all with the degree of success expected, I can see obviously that it would be a waste to go straight home again – not that they wouldn't like me anymore, or find something to do with me, but there’s that much more room for expansion, here, and since I seem to be cut out for something in this line, it’s no use constantly chopping and changing for the rest of my life.  I know you will understand, and I know too that the amount you miss me, is equal at least to the amount I miss you and everybody else at home.  But it seems the Good Lord intended things to go this way – you never know he might change the whole look of things tomorrow, and I may find that things are different entirely. Anyway, that’s the position as it stands.  To think that I might never see Dunedin again doesn’t bear thinking about, as you realise, I know, but when I hear, just for example, that to put a student through at the LOC costs somebody £1500! it’s only fair I should do my best to come out at the other end at least with the look of what I went in there for!  And even if there wasn’t a mysterious somebody paying that amount there are two unmysterious bods – you and me – paying considerably more, by contrast, towards my future, and I don’t think I should let us down.  It’s all very serious isn’t it, and I started out on this letter in a happy frame of mind, so as long as we can content ourselves with being as close as mum and son can across a few thousand miles, I dare say we’ll pull through.  I hope that hasn't upset you; don’t wish to make you miserable when I send you a letter.  [Until I re-read this letter I'd forgotten that someone must have subsidised me to go to the LOC. I don’t think I ever knew who it was: perhaps it was Prof Peter Platt, from the Music Department at the University of Otago who had spoken on my behalf to the LOC and who encouraged me to go; perhaps it was Bertha Rawlinson, the Dunedin singer.  Perhaps it was a group of people associated with the Dunedin Opera Company. I don't think I've ever known.]

Let’s change the subject. I sent a card to Marg. But it won’t arrive until after the date. It’s just a postcard – they’re 10d to post but at least it shows we’re thinking of her; after all I used to get on very well with her, didn’t I?  [Regrettably, I'm not sure who this ‘Marg’ was – I suspect she was more my mother's friend than mine.]

Finally wrote to Kevin R[owlands] since that seemed safer than trying to contact him at the theatre, and asked him if he’d let me know what was the best way of getting in touch with him.  [I was obviously feeling obliged to contact this man because our neighbours had been keen that I should do so, and you can read that in the lines.]

I still don’t feel that I am in London – I’ve just never got that feeling I expected of being in such a place.  I think for one thing it’s because the places seen in photos so often are quite different in reality.  Trafalgar Square looks impressive in a verydifferent way here to the way the photos make it look and so does Piccadilly Circus. Silly, isn’t it? Big Ben gets me though – it is remarkably beautiful – there’s something quite golden about the look of it, which is something that I’d never seen in photos.  And crossing over the Thames anywhere is something that I find enchanting. London skies always seem to be a sort of lovely grey, and the buildings go so well with this, and the river, that that’s my favourite part of the city, I think. 

Do send the Tablets, if it’s not too expensive – I haven’t had any yet, so they’re a treat in store.  [Again, I think this was note that I felt obliged to put in; I can’t remember ever feeling that strongly about the magazine.]

The school goes on as busily as last week, and when I’ve done a day there, I really feel as though I’ve been working. It’s the sheer concentration, I think. And my bottom is getting calluses on it from sitting on hard chairs so much!! 

We saw the dress rehearsal of An Italian Girl in Algiers last night, done by the LOC Opera for All Group.  (There are Welsh and Scots ones too.)  And it was a delight, after a slightly shaky start.  Rossini really was a comic master.  There is one ensemble – the story is too incredible for words of course – where seven mixed characters sing – everyone something different, on top of a simple um chah accompaniment.  And it’s so so funny – just because each time you think it’s going to go off in another direction it starts all over again.  The ensemble singing of the cast was excellent. 

While I have a bit of space let me tell you about some of the students, so that you’ll have something to refer to if necessary. John Opie! [he was actually Alan Opie, as I wrote in an earlier letter – the exclamation mark is because I’d worked with a Ramon Opie in the NZ Opera Quartet] from Cornwall, who is a baritone, and takes off my NZ accent – when I’m not taking off an East End one – there’s such a variety of accents at the school that we spend half the time taking each other off, and when it comes to a language class!  John has a good sense of humour – lacking in some of the more London type singers (and others).  David Cyrus [actually Syrus, who became my best friend out of the student intake of that year], a rep, a sort of ungainly boy, and awkward to look at, and who makes me feel as though there is perhaps someone else around whom I’m on a par with.  [David was, and still is, somewhat awkward in mannerisms – it’s part of his charm.  He was forever apologising, so much so that when I berated him for it in a letter from NZ once, after I’d been back here for some years, he sent by return mail an aerogram with a single, tiny word stuck in the middle on the page – ‘Sorry’. David would go on to be Head of Music at Covent Garden, where he began work in 1971 and still remains.]

Alistair Dawes, a rep, and friend from youth of the above.  Smokes a pipe, has a shock of hair (or perhaps the hair itself has had the shock!), and, like four of the reps, has permanent specs, and is able to be amused. (So is D.C)  Anthony Negus, the most pro of the reps – he freelanced in coaching last year [I conveniently forget at this point that I’d already worked for at least two years as a professional repetiteur and accompanist], is mad on Wagner, on opera in general, and looks hurt if you criticise anything [related to opera, that is]. Very confident, and generally with good reason.  Henry Ward, seemingly the odd-rep-out, no glasses, full of fire, apparently, but with an extremely lackadaisical attitude to work, and an intense dislike of stuff that doesn’t please him.  A very friendly smile but rather unapproachable (he’ll probably go somewhere). [I can’t find anything on the Net about Henry; he left LOC in the first half of the year, I think, because he didn’t feel it was teaching him anything, and possibly went onto a conducting job with one of the Northern Opera Companies.]  A.N. also pipes – his is worse smelling, (though still not unpleasant) than A.D’s.  Keith Stoppard, baritone, married to the daughter of a top Engineer (at present head of the Plessey Co in Aussie), an ex-engineer himself, and, unfortunately no relation to Tom Stoppard who is at present one of London’s top dramatists.  [I seem to remember Keith had difficulties as a married student juggling everything in his life; he was possibly the only married student apart from Kiri. I can’t find anything on the Net to say what became of him. He was one of the friendlier – and more mature – singing students.] David Patmore, one of the S.Ms [stage management students], slight stutter (which makes his German tricky!) very friendly with the reps, and a very nice guy.  [He also became a good friend during this time.]  He and the other 4 reps are all ex-OXFORD!  What distinguished company.  [handwritten] Oxford can’t be so highbrow after all!  There are no girls here [in this list of names, rather than not at the Centre at all] because I can’t remember who they are from day to day – they change their hair styles.  [Yup, a pretty weak excuse – of course there were girls, and of course I already knew some of them.]  Love, Mike