15.7.69 Changing flats

15.7.69

Well, well, and hullo. (15th July). Hope you are still recovering properly like a good wee girl. I’ve had Fred’s alter ego in here twice just lately ˗ a cat that is growing up to look like Fred. At least as I remember her. (Do you know in this day and age of photos I don’t possess a single one of you! And I’ve got three of Francisco, whom I’ve never seen.[This was a Korean orphan boy I sponsored for a few years.] Send me one, will you? Even if you have to have it especially taken with all the rest of the Hannagan clan.) This cat is terribly cheeky and walks in whenever I have the back door open and food cooking. I was in the middle of a Sunday meal one weekend, and suddenly felt something rub across my leg ˗ only on this occasion the door wasn’t even open. What a fright. She’d come in an open window! But she’s very like Fred, and I enjoy her company.

Well, several things have happened of interest. To go backwards, today, Hazel and I received a summons to go and see Mr Kentish after one of the rehearsals. Well, remember that TV business that we had going on at the Centre a while back? And how I was shot sitting doing absolutely nothing? Well, they want the people who appeared in that scene to go to Edinburgh in September to shoot a scene up there as a follow-up and they pay! Everything. Great great great.

On Sunday night I went up to town and after going to Church in the evening at six at my little French church off Leicester Square (Mass in French ˗ and sermon!) (it’s a beautiful church actually built with the same sort of material as in Moran Chapel, but about six times as big, right next to a cinema currently showing a hit film on Lesbians.) [Moran Chapel is/was in the centre of Dunedin, in the Octagon: a tiny place that might hold twenty people.] (I’ll have to get a new ribbon.) (Hold on...) [I changed the fading ribbon to an equally faded red one; almost impossible to read.]

As I was saying, I met up with David and Hazel and Dave’s flatmate John, and a friend of Hazel’s called Kathy Bird. And it turned out that Kathy had found a flat which she wanted to move into but found that she wasn’t going to have enough people ˗ again someone had opted out at the last minute. I said that if David agreed (Syrus, that is ˗ the one I was to share a flat with) it might be suitable for us to come in on. It’s a place with room for five people and six if wanted. So anyway last night David and I went out to look at it (after David had said he liked the idea ˗ I’ll still be going down to Hastings though, I think; I don’t see any reason not to see a bit more of the place) and it’s massive ˗ five bedrooms, a large lounge, a kitchen, bathroom, and lots of funny little off rooms, that don’t seem to have any purpose in life, and a private garden which at the moment looks fabulous. It’s on the ground floor of an old three-storeyed house, and the place has so many doors ˗ most of the rooms have two (?) that it looks like the set of a French farce! It’s not actually ours yet, but Kathy and I are going in tomorrow to look at it, so I’ll not finish this until it’s definite and then if it is you can start addressing mail there. [A woman lived upstairs on her own, as I recall, which meant she must have had an enormous amount of space. As for most of the rooms having two doors; I think this is nonsense. Mine did, but not the rest, as I recall. ]

Tomorrow night I go to NZ House near Piccadilly to a reception being held by the High Commissioner for NZ for James Robertson and Kiri [te Kanawa] before they go to NZ for Carmen. [A recording of this production is available on You Tube, though for video there are only still shots.]

Last night before going to see the flat David and I had tea at Alistair’s house (which he’s renting prior to getting married); actually Dave lives there too at the moment; and very nice place it is. An old three-storey place too, semi-detached, which means that you go up and down all the time to get anywhere, and that it’s rather narrow, but it’s also very cosy and comfy. And the sort of place that anyone would be happy in let alone newlyweds.

I’ll leave the rest of this till tomorrow.

Tomorrow is now here and this morning we went up to the agents near Oxford Circus and filled out an application for the flat. Now they’ve got to send away for three references from each of us, which will take about a week. I only hope that if they do accept us they don’t take too long about it, because the date they seem to think we should go in is about three days after I’m supposed to have left here!

This evening I went up to NZ House (after spending the entire day mucking around doing nothing at all in London ˗ it has been so hot that it’s impossible to do anything; a real muggy sort of heat, which is killing the English. I sat in St James Park this arvo doing absolutely nothing except watching the people go by for about two hours ˗ even went to the all cartoon show to fill in time for an hour ˗ it was cooler, and anyway they had a Laurel and Hardy, as well as part twelve of one of those old serials) for this reception for Robertson and Kiri, and it was pretty deadly and I didn’t really meet anyone new.

Our production of Il Tabarro promises to be really something. James conducted it while I played for a rehearsal the other day, and didn’t even complain about my playing in any way. A change. But as a show it should be fabulous ˗ and will knock the audience for six.  Ande Anderson, who is producing, is putting rather more into it than perhaps he would normally, because the situation rather parallels a marital situation he’s been involved in (he hasn’t said so, but it’s obvious from the knowledgeable way he speaks about the feelings of the characters involved.) [I suspect someone amongst the students suggested this and it became a reality.] I’ll be playing the celesta in the actual performances, which doesn’t mean much, as neither Schicchi nor Tabarro have much for the instrument. [Handwritten] That’s all for now. See ya, love Mike. 

8.7.69 Rehearsals and payments

8.7.69

Dear Mum, I’ve only just received your letter telling me about when you were sick. Well, this is not good at all ˗ what does Fred [the cat] think she’s up to letting you get ill? I’ll have a word to say to her when I write! And what you are doing eating stones?? [I think my mother had a gallstone problem at this time.] It must be all this gardening you do. Anyway, I hope that by now you are getting better again, and haven’t gone back to work too soon. I’m very glad that all those marvellous brothers and sisters of yours were within calling distance. They really are great to have around in time of crisis. I’ve written a short letter to Monica, [Stokes] (it is 24 Argyll St, isn’t it?) and I’ll get you to thank everybody else, including Mr B, for looking after you for me. [Mr Bevan and his wife lived around the corner from my mother, and were very good friends.]

I’ve got the morning off this morning (we’re in the middle of production rehearsals so that I always have a little more time to myself) so I’m writing straight away, and I hope to be able to go Mass at 10.00 just to make sure you get better. (Believe it or not it’s only 9.40 now ˗ I do get up early sometimes.)

I went to the first rehearsal of this thing that I have to play for on Thursday night last night. And though I practised the stuff I had to play I didn’t feel very happy at all, and I don’t think the conductor did either. But between you and me, I found him a very difficult conductor to follow, and I’m very glad that there is another rehearsal on Wednesday, before the show. I felt so inadequate last night (when I arrived he was playing for them in great style, and bringing them in with his head ˗ though he does have the advantage of having had the music to work on since last Easter) that I began to get annoyed with my apparent uselessness (essessess), but I thought this is no good, Mike; pull your sox up and even if you aren’t as good as he is, do your best and make it worth their while paying you such a ridiculous fee. They’ve giving me seven guineas! [It seems more ridiculous now that anyone was still paying fees in guineas.] Which works out to about a pound an hour for the hours I work for them. Still I think it’s worth it, because of the amount of practice I have to do on the stuff to make them sound even remotely reasonable. I also went to another rehearsal with the two soloists on Saturday morning, and wasn’t very happy to find that the Mezzo didn’t know her work ˗ and they are supposed to be professionals. Anyway, it was quite a good rehearsal in spite of that, and I got two shocks from it: late in the time I was there they suddenly foisted a Britten Canticle for tenor, mezzo and piano on me which I had to sightread! (I knew it by ear a bit, fortunately, from the record.) [Probably: My beloved is mine (Canticle I) for soprano or tenor and piano (words Francis Quarles), 1947] The second shock was that I did sightread it, and quite well ˗ I was beginning to wonder if I’d been suffering under a delusion all these years I could sightread! And they are intending to perform this piece at the concert too ˗ I think almost, that they should pay me another couple of guineas for the shock treatment!

The biggest bother with this sort of thing is that everything is done in a hurry ˗ and you don’t have time to absorb the music into your system before it has to be performed ˗ music really needs a good working out, and then a rest and then a rejuvenation treatment, and by that time it’s become part of you, and seems to lie under your fingers all that much easier, and to come from you the way it should instead of being forced. (I’m just off to Mass, I’ll finish this later.)

Back Again. To continue. I was under the impression that Chelmsford, the place where the concert and rehearsals are taking place, was somewhere in the North East of London, but I discovered last night that it was about 20 miles or more from Liverpool St, which in itself is about three quarters of an hour from Blackheath. I wondered why they offered to pay my expenses as well as the fee. Thank goodness I didn’t refuse.

They now tell me at the Centre too that I may have to go to Bristol at the end of the week to play the celeste in the orchestral rehearsals for Schicchi and Tabarro which are being held there. The reason for this is that the orchestra we are using this time is the Bristol BBC training orchestra. But I doubt if I’ll actually get there as there is nothing important for me to do on the celeste and to me it seems hardly worth the expense of getting me down there. But that sort of thing ˗ expense, I mean ˗ is what the Centre is rather absurd about. They spend money on all sorts of crazy things (like hiring an orchestra from a town over a 100 miles away when there are just as good here, and having to pay for their travel etc).

You know my large, large grey case? Well, it’ll shortly be on its way back to NZ. Kevin and I are swapping cases ˗ he needs a big one for stuff he is sending by sea, and I find that that case is too large to carry stuff around in, in London, so he’s giving me a smaller one. Because his only day off in the week is Thursday and because I can’t meet him this Thursday, I’m taking it up to Waterloo’s left luggage, and leaving it, and then sending the ticket down to him by post! Sounds like a couple of old-fashioned spies on the job, doesn’t it? Hope you don’t object to my giving presents away like that! I’m sure you won’t. Well, I’m nearly at the end of this aerogramme and I want nothing but GOOD reports from now on.

Lots and lots of love, Mike

25.6.69 - Aussie composer & Alwin Nikolais

27.6.69

Dear Mum, (started the same day as the previous letter) I started this off for some reason because I’d left something out and John arrived with 2 friends and I’ve forgotten what it was. (Quarter of an hour later) I’m now doing some more copying of James Robertson’s (incidentally he got the C.B.E!!!) edition of the parts of Schicchi ˗ in other words his idea of those things that are better, or different to Puccini’s! What I’d forgotten: recently, two of the students at the Centre here got me to play through some songs that they’re performing at Australia House. They’ve been composed by an Australian woman, and while, it seems to me, the actual vocal parts are quite pleasant and would make good pop songs (in fact I think she’d make a lot of money that way!) the accompaniments are absurd! Her idea to make them modern ˗ and her idea of modernity is to put quite wrong notes and harmonies all over the place which instead of making them exciting as she no doubt intends only make them difficult for the singer and make it appear that the accompanist is playing wrong chords! And yet these are to be performed. It makes me scared of ever putting anything before the public. Though I think at least that I have slightly more idea of what I want to do, and aim for that. [After all this pontificating, I fail to mention who the composer was. Disappointing!]

Know thyself is never more applicable than in the creative or entertainment business ˗ do what you can do and don’t try and be your next-door-neighbour! Jeff said this once too ˗ that everyone is given a certain talent and should know what that is and use it to its fullest extent. His father, he said, told him that no one is better than anyone else ˗ and it has certainly given Jeff plenty of confidence! Jeff is definitely the most down-to-earth tenor I’ve known, even though the fact that he is a tenor weighs a little against him (I’m very rude, I’m afraid), but he has his feet fairly firmly on the ground, and says not so much what he thinks, but what he knows ˗ Hmm, what a curious ramble this is!

(Next day.) I’ve just stood thru a performance given by the Alwin Nikolais Dance Group, at the old Sadlers Wells theatre. The music, or perhaps it should be, the sound, consisted of electronic noises, some giving quite a definitive rhythm, some seeming to do nothing but ramble. The opening piece was done by five dancers (whether the dancers were men or women throughout made no difference, except in one of the longer pieces) each holding two suction-like devices with which they performed. During the whole evening no one specifically ‘danced,’ but intertwined. The next piece had three dancers inside sack-like affairs, with no apparent opening, but made of such a material that they went slack or expanded as the person moved about inside. Then there was a solo, and then the entire group of ten tripped across the stage holding two streamers each which were attached to the side they entered from, and then performed in and around and on and under these streamers, which were again sufficiently pliable to be sat on at one stage.

[Part II]

These first four items seemed purely of an entertaining variety, but the second section of the programme consisted of a long piece entitled, Tent and which consisted of the group coming on with another of these pliable materials, this time a large circular affair which had a hole in its centre big enough for all the dancers to stand in at once. After some preliminaries, several balls with some sort of attachments about a yard below them descended and somehow picked up certain spots of the ‘tent’ so that it could be raised from the outside or the central circle. And this was done without any apparent assistance from those on stage ˗ but the attachments were strong enough to allow the dancers to play and pull at both the balls and the tent at different times. From then on the group seemed to represent humanity and the tent some sort of constantly intervening oppression which would overtake them and force them down and cause them to change or start again.

(Next day ˗ the last lot was written in the train, so that’s the reason for then handwriting being even more illegible than ever!) During the course of the dance an eternal triangle, with a man and two women, kept forming itself, but just as part of the detail of what else went on. I think it would probably need a second viewing to really get a lot more from it. The last ballet was a piece taken from an act of an apparently full-length ballet called Vaudeville and had the entire group, again, this time dressed in red and purple costumes and each with metal props consisting of a two-legged affair joined in two places, or perhaps it was three ˗ once across the top and yes, I think, twice further down, like this. [Drawing of something with two uprights and three cross pieces included.] These they used as gates, fences, doors, beds, you name it! Finally they built a house with it, which in the course of a ‘storm’ (?) blew up! All through this piece they’d suddenly stop when the music stopped, all prance (as only dancers can) to the front of the stage, and all talk at once to the audience. The whole thing was quite hysterical!

There was one girl who was ‘different’ from everyone else ˗ she took bigger skips (?) and this upset all the others quite a lot. It was a very funny and yet also a very disturbing piece, though perhaps not as much as the middle ballet had been.

I’m just now reading a book on Verdi, by a man called Frank Walker, and he has set out to clear up all the spurious facts surrounding Verdi’s life by the use of lots and lots of letters. There’s very little about his music ˗ it concentrates on the people involved. All the other biographies I’ve read have been semi-fictional and bad. This one keeps on referring to them and saying, ‘Tut, tut, tut’, ‘so and so’ always gets the facts wrong!! [This book was The Man Verdi, published 1963,by a man who’d spent his career as a talent agent. It's no longer in print, but can be downloaded here in various formats.]

Love Mike.

31.3.69 - Double bill and exhaustion

31.3.69

Dear Mum, how the year is flying ˗ look at the date already! Well, we’ve had a very busy week ˗ a rather killing one in fact. We’ve been up at the Wells most of the week doing our Double Bill and though I haven’t really had that much to do it always seems when we’re on a show that life is three times as hectic as at any other time. And I’ve had to do during the show is to work as a dresser ˗ and then only for at the most six people (sometimes someone else with equally as little work would get in first and take over one or two) ˗ and to help David Gorringe, who was stage managing The Opera Rehearsal to get his curtain up and down at the right moment. (Very proud of that we were ˗ never had a bad curtain the whole time!) [The Opera Rehearsal was conducted by Anthony Negus, one of the repetiteurs.] I also made coffee for one of the singers, and got the occasional bottle of something for others. Now according to rights this shouldn’t have made me tired, but it seemed to.

Of course, as well, since we had all day free, we were more inclined to spend it out somewhere, and this is very tiring, particularly if you’re walking a lot. It’s amazing how much exercise you get in this place, just trying to get somewhere. [Something we found even more tiring when Celia and I went back in 2007 and found ourselves walking continually in spite of buses and the Tube.] You might imagine at first that to go everywhere by tube or train is very easy on the feet, but in actual fact, the miles one must walk through the underground corridors I wouldn’t like to count, and because the escalators go at a rather slow speed, most people walk up and down them ˗ which can be very tiring ˗ the steps are much higher than in normal stairs. Plus the fact that though the trains run up till one or two [in the morning], the tubes and buses stop about 12, and to catch a late train, you have to walk through the city, which may mean a half an hour’s walk. And a quick one too, if you don’t know how long it’s going to take you.

We didn’t get very good write-ups for the show ˗ tho’ The Opera Rehearsal came off under the critics much better than anyone expected, and funnily enough people said they enjoyed it. Of course they only had to sit through it once. None of the crits I read said much about Gianni Schicchi; in the hands of this cast it couldn’t fail to be at least a reasonable success, but in actual fact I think it came off extremely well. [I seem to recall Alan Opie was Gianni Schicchi.]

It’s a fabulous piece, full of glorious music very well orchestrated, and is a marvellous piece of theatre as well. It’s about a group of relatives who are mourning the death of Buoso Donati, at the opening; they mourn him even more when they find out he’s left all his wealth to the local monastery. The youngest of them calls in Gianni Schicchi (because he’s in love with Schicchi’s daughter, and because he knows that Schicchi has a cunning mind and may be able to alter the will). Though the relatives at first object, he does come and alters the will by impersonating the dead man in front of the lawyer, but then leaves all the best stuff to himself! And kicks all the relatives out of the house ˗ except the young one, who gets the best of both worlds by marrying Schicchi’s daughter and inheriting the wealth that Schicchi now has! ‘Oh my beloved father’ is the big hit tune, but it has lots of marvellously characteristic stuff for the relatives. There’s a great moment late in the piece, when the relations find that they still have nothing, and storm out of the house pillaging what they can as revenge ˗ the orchestra rises up and drowns the screaming and yelling on stage, and the brass take over and drown everything in great blasts of gallumping type music as they all leave, and leave the place in a mess! Then the peace comes again as the young lovers come back on stage and sing the rest of their duet with fabulous pre-Hollywood lushness.

On Friday night after the show, Mike, David Gorringe, Dorothy Iredale (nice wee soul, but rather mixed up, perhaps ˗ she has a great career ahead, though, I think [the usual Crowl elder statesman view of other people ˗ Dorothy gets a few mentions in the next years after this in Opera magazine, but there’s nothing else about her on Google] and a couple of others went back to Hazel’s, and eventually, Dave, Dorothy and I stayed the night ˗ sleeping on a variety of things in the flat ˗ I got a camp stretcher which was only comfortable because I was so tired ˗ Dave slept on cushions on the floor, and Dorothy slept in Hazel’s room on an extra bed.

We’d gone somewhere most nights after the show, and I hadn’t gotten home until about 1.30 each night. On the last night when there were two parties to go to, I finished up going home to bed about eleven. I was dying on my feet, and anyway had to do some copying of parts for Bamford, the next day. I spent all day Sunday doing this actually ˗ and really enjoyed it. It’s the first time I’ve had copying to do without Bamford being around around, and found I was getting on very well really. It’s a song for a show called Anne of Green Gables that goes on here shortly, and the score was written in the same key for every instrument which meant that in several cases I not only had to copy from the score but transpose the notes so that the instruments could play the right sounds. [This show opened on the 16th April and ran for 319 performances.] You see (I’ve possibly told you before) some instruments are known as transposing instruments, and in order to get them to play in the same key as non-transposing instruments you have to write in a different key! But it was a lot of fun actually, and generally speaking Bamford seemed reasonably impressed. He’s never enthusiastic, but always finds something a little wrong, just to keep you in your place, I suppose!

The dressing, during the show, made a change too; some of the costumes are unbelievably heavy, and the poor kids were like walking ovens. They fasten everything up with hooks and eyes etc ˗ no buttons.

Love Mike.