Late Feb, 1969: hectic schedule...

28.2.69

Dear Mum, how are things with you? I’m at home once more ˗ in the middle of the week when I should be at work ˗ I just don’t know what is wrong with me of late. In spite of taking some vitamin pills since I had my last cold, I woke up yesterday with a screamingly sore chest, and wobbly legs, and a sore head. Anyway I went to school, and though I had intended coming home in the afternoon ˗ I had nothing set out to do ˗ I stayed on and did some of the work for the very busy week I’ve got next week: the re-audition for Opera for All on Monday, playing for Abigail Ryan at the Wigmore Hall for the Tauber contest on Wednesday, and playing for three of the singers doing an audition for the Wells on Friday. I intended going in today, and even got up and was dressed, but once again I felt all shakey, and finally went back to bed. I was supposed to go and have dinner with Mike [Tither] tonight too. I’m not feeling bad just at this moment but equally I don't feel a hundred per cent. I’m really fed up with being below par, and wish I knew what to do about it.

Sorry there have been such long gaps between letters, but I was terribly busy last week. Went with Abigail to a play called the Delicate Balance, done by the [Royal] Shakespeare Co. The acting of this company ˗ it’s a repertory one ˗ is always superb, and even if the play isn’t much good, the cast is well worth seeing. Actually it was a fairly interesting play, though I can’t say I saw the point of it all. Peggy Ashcroft was in it, and also Michael Hordern and Sheila Hancock ˗ who used to be in a crazy TV thing called The Rag Trade. Abigail and I decided at the last minute to go ˗ we were on a [number] 15 bus, which meant we could go all the way into town, and both had originally intended to go straight home. But I had to collect some stuff from George Bamford, the copyist, and so we 

St Patrick's Catholic Church, Soho Square

decided to see if we could get seats. [It sounds like this was a patch in which I thought Abigail and I might become an item. It wasn’t to be, though for a very good reason.]We did, and then I went tearing up to Kings Cross while Gail went and got some seats at Convent Garden, and when I got back we went to Ash Wednesday mass at St Pats in Soho. They had a choir singing old 14th century music, and the sound seemed to float all around the ceiling. Gorgeous, and there was a little old drunk in the back of the church who spent the last quarter of an hour using all the four-letter words in his vocab to mutter his way through the mass. And no one did anything to stop him; I don’t suppose there was much that could be done anyway! [

When we came out of church it was snowing hard, as it had been on and off all day, and we got covered in the stuff going to the theatre. This was one of the worst falls I’ve seen, adn there was complete chaos all over. I was lucky that the trains had started running again by the time I got out of the play but other people had been waiting for about two hours!

The next night Kevin and I went to see The Cocktail Party, by T S Eliot, with Alec Guinness in the lead. If anything this was even more obscure than the previous night! But it was very well done generally, with the exception of one of the actors, who recited his verse with the accents all wrong (the play is in blank verse) and made it sound all unnatural.

The next night I had my first experience of a laundrette, and found it quite interesting. I also realised just how clean washing things in a machine like that is to washing them by hand. [!] my shirts have always seemed to be clean, but this was the first time my underclothes and hankies were really whitened again! I went up to Crowls that night too. Next morning I had to go back down to Kings Cross to collect a huge pile of music to be checked; it subsequently took me all weekend, ! ˗ and then meet one of last year’s rep students who is now at the Wells whom [Uncle] Reg had met up with at his church, and whom he had invited around so that I mgiht have a chat with him. We spent about an hour and a half talking, and it was very interesting. I’m afraid the Crowls must have thought I was being a bit rude, doing nothing but work all weekend, but the thing was that I had to take it back to Bamford on Sunday evening. (And then I got some more on Monday ˗ which completely filled in another evening. It was music for a film score, for Alfred the Great, and had to be ready for recording on Wednesday ˗ that is, yesterday. [The film score was written by Raymond Leppard, who, as Wikipedia puts it without the pun intended, ‘played an instrumental role in the rebirth of interest in baroque music.’ ]

On Sunday night Kevin [Flaherty] and I and some others from the Centre went to a concert at the Festival Hall conducted by Andre Previn, with John Ogdon playing Rachmaniov’s Third [Piano] Concerto. I didn’t like this latter much, but they also played a Haydn Symphony very well, and a Symphony by William Schuman, a modern American composers, which was very exciting. [Sunday 23 February 1969 André Previn Symphony No. 85, ‘La Reine’ HAYDN Symphony No. 3 WILLIAM SCHUMAN Piano Concerto No. 3 RACHMANINOV John Ogdon piano.]

On Tuesday, I went to see Gloriana ˗ by Britten. It’s an opera that was written for the present Queen’s coronation, and wasn’t much of a hit at the time: certainly by comparison with his others. It does have a rather weak first act, and the last act is only good up to a certain point ˗ it’s basically the libretto that is the fault ˗ because the music is fabulous. One scene especially makes the opera worthwhile. This is the quartet scene in the second act. It’s only about seven minutes long, but it is so exciting the way it builds up from the single character on stage to a marvellous quartet bit with 3 of the characters singing a sort of vengeance piece while the fourth character, a woman, does great sweeps around the stage in great anxiety. It’s full of very neat touches too. At the end of the first act, a prayer scene, the curtain falls on complete silence ˗ no one dared clap until it was down. There is a masque in the beginning of the 2nd act, which is entirely accompanied by unaccompanied chorus singing. (?) And the ball scene in the end of the second act, where the queen, in making a fool of someone also actually makes a fool of herself, is partially accompanied by an onstage band, which every now and then is taken over by a rowdy and horribly orchestrated (with sliding trombone sounds and lots of percussion) version of the band music.

[handwritten] I’m glad to hear Mary [?] is coming up to see you ˗ that’ll be very good for you I should think. A pity isn’t it that you can’t cook meals for Fred [the cat].

Reg didn’t blink when I told him there was a girl staying in the flat. Thought I’d better tell him. [Goodness knows why!]

I’ve also got some checking to do for the Centre’s Gianni Schicchi parts. More cash I hope! Mike. [The Opera Centre included Gianni Schicchi in one of its student productions.]

3.11.68: Operas, Concerts, and du Pre

3.11.68

Dear Mum, I had intended to write on Friday, but what with one thing and another, especially the very busy week we’ve had, I just didn’t get round to it.  I had originally planned a not very busy week after the exhausting Ella Gerber period, but found in the end that I was out nearly every night.  On Tuesday, I had planned to go to The Italian Girl in Algiers at the [Sadlers] Wells with Michael – Kingsley had already been on the previous Saturday – but as things turned out I went with David Gorringe (think I’ve mentioned him before, if not, he’s small, 25, from Canterbury, an ex-furnishing business man, who’s very interested in the theatre) and Kevin, who had come back from the South Coast to get a job. Apparently the work over the winter period down there is considerably lessened and the hotel he’d been at couldn’t keep him on.  So anyway, he’s now going to be working in London, near Hampton Court (as far West as we are East) from tomorrow.  When he’s going to see his fiancée, I don’t know, because he only has Thursday – all day – and Sunday afternoon off!  He’s still working as a barman, incidentally.  [I don’t know who this ‘fiancée’ was – I don’t think I ever met her, or at least not more than once, and the engagement got broken off in due course.]

So we four went to the Italian Girl, and though it had some marvellously funny bits, I think I enjoyed the Opera for All production that much more.  Besides, where we were sitting in the Coliseum (the new Sadler’s Wells) in the Dress Circle we found that much of what was being sung on stage in the bigger ensembles was completely lost.  And they left out the funniest thing in the whole show, by not repeating the never-ending septet at the end of the first act, which I think I mentioned previously.  But it was very beautiful to look at, full of lovely luscious greens and blues, and with a marvellous set consisting of three variously-shaped platforms that fitted together sometimes, but other times would sort of float apart to form different levels.  It was produced by Wendy Toye who has also made several films. 

Prior to this I had gone up to David’s place to have a snack tea – he lives near Great Portland St, which is near Regent’s Park, Baker St, and Madame Tussaud’s, in a very nice, centrally-heated penthouse which he shares with a bloke who’s working on the Opera for All at the moment, but he only pays a quarter of the full rent because the flat is actually also leased by another bloke who uses it as a base for the business he partners with the other bloke (the OFA man – get it?).

Next night Michael and Lindsay Campbell (from Dunedin, an actor in his 50s whom Mike shares a flat with – near Oxford Circus – I think I told you).  Anyway I was invited up to their place for tea before I went because I was getting them in free (as I had the previous night – great isn’t it?) and we had a very nice meal cooked by Lindsay, who then also shouted us a cab to the theatre, and brought us a drink in the interval!  He was very appreciative.  According to Mike, though he (LC) has lots of friends he doesn’t really have many close ones and so it seems that he’s very happy to be taken somewhere so to speak.  [Lindsay Campbell had been one of Dunedin’s top amateur actors before heading for London; he appeared in a number of roles on TV from 1964 onwards and had a tiny part in A Clockwork Orange a few years after this letter was written.  He also claimed that he’d suggested the theme music for The Onedin Line.]

Anyway we went to La Belle Helene, by Offenbach and after I’d changed seats after the first act – I was sitting behind Hazel, from the Centre, and she had a lot of hair on! – I enjoyed it a lot.  Denis Dowling [a singer originally from Ranfurly, in Otago] was in it, by the way, and the whole thing was a hilarious spoof on Classical Mythology.  It was rather like a Gilbert and Sullivan on a slightly different scale.  It was produced, originally (this particular performance is a kind of re-production) by Basil Coleman who spoke at one of our lectures one day.

Oh, on the Tuesday night I forgot to say, Kevin came out and stayed with us, and slept on our divan which apparently he found quite comfortable. The only trouble was that we sat up and talked after we’d got home till about one.  Also forgot to say that on Monday morning we’d been to see Madame Butterfly at the Garden, and though the production, especially the lighting wasn’t always the best, it’s always worth watching Puccini.  And the singing was generally very fine. 

On Thursday night, Mike and Kingsley and I went to the Festival Hall, only because it was free, (I’d intended to stay home as I felt very tired) to see a gala concert – seats at anything up to 20 guineas! – and quite honestly it was the most disappointing concert I’ve attended.  Andre Previn was conducting, and Jacqueline du Pre was the cellist in two concertos.  They started off with a Weber Overture, which was interesting, and then Mrs Daniel Barenboim (he’s a pianist and she’s du Pre in private life) [did I mean she was du Pre in public life?] came out and played the Bloch: Schelomo (whatever that is) for Cello and Orchestra.  Bloch was a Jewish composer and this comes through quite strongly. Unfortunately he’d never had to contend with Miss DP, which we had to.  She plays the cello as though she wishes to tear its strings to pieces (authorities tell me one of her strings was off pitch anyway) and constantly produces a grating sound as she hacks at it, and then when she’s finished a section she turns and looks either at the conductor or the first violinist in a way that suggests they’d better not criticise or she’ll get up and belt them.  She’s all elbows too, and has a fierce look on her face throughout.  Her finest achievement of the whole evening was when she played down to the lowest notes on her cello, and instead of letting it vibrate with her left hand, she let that go, and continued bowing her right – I’m sure Mr Bloch never intended that ugly sound.  This overall effect was so off-putting that when she played her next, the Saint Saens, I looked anywhere but at her, and the effect was much more pleasant, although the SS is nothing to write home about.  The orchestra finished up with the Rachmaninov 3^rd Symphony – which dragged on until nearly the entire audience was asleep.  Perhaps this was Mr Previn’s fault, because people who said they knew the 3^rd, said later perhaps they didn’t!  What really got me was that the papers gave the whole mess a good write-up!!  And I though the London papers were supposed to be amongst the most fiercely critical in the world!  [It doesn’t occur to me that I may have been wrong about this concert; plainly something upset me in terms of the playing or the music. For an opposite viewpoint on it, check out Hywel David’s article, which says that the playing made him feel as though he was in ‘seventh heaven.’]

On Friday I went to Mass in the evening, All Saints Day, and then went again yesterday morning.  I couldn’t remember if one or both or neither were Holy Days of Obligation so I went both times to make sure!  They didn’t announce them as being anything special last Sunday, but however. [handwritten] Have to stop apparently. LOTS of love, Mike.

[Handwritten on the return address page] Kingsley sez thanks very much for the money for the trunk – he didn’t have time to say it before he left.