19.1.69 - London Opera Centre tours to Southampton

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!

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..!]

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!

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

14.9.68: managing to stay alive

14.9.68

[This letter starts off] (Read the other page first will you?  I knew I’d do this someday!) [I'd begun to type on the wrong page.]

Page 2...

Dear Mum, Am writing this as I finish off my breakfast so don’t be surprised if there are a few crumbs and coffee stains on this letter.  Only hope they don’t send it at full rated as a result!  It’s my anniversary – the week since I had my FIRST breakfast here! And I’m still alive. Haven’t killed myself with my own cooking, I mean, nor been knifed in Commercial Road, nor squashed to little bits of matter in the Rush Hour.  I have the radio blaring in one ear and the tap dripping in the other, so things are a little noisy: the radio never does anything but blare – I’ve got it turned right down even now; it’s just that the morning programmes are all pop with screaming disc jockeys, etc. 

Well, what have I done since I last wrote?  I’ve done some more composing – don’t know how you feel about that, but I had to do something to occupy the old mind  - the cooking and ironing and washing, though a strain, wasn’t really using much brain!  I’s a similar thing to that last thing, the one that they did a bit of at the school.  It’s to be five songs this time, and I’m about half way through – quite pleased with the first and third, and so-so about the second.  [Can’t identify what these songs would be, though they probably still exist amongst my old manuscripts.]

I’ve been going into the Centre every day this week too, and doing some practice – still feel rather strange there, and guess I will until I get started.  Remember I said I met Ann Gordon the other day, again, and she apologised for not realising who I was the previous time, well, she also said that she and Kiri T.K [te Kanawa, of course] were to do a concert at the Overseas League or some such, and they wanted a NZ pianist.  Well, since at that stage nothing definite was done because she wasn’t sure whether Kiri hadn’t already got someone, but she said she’d get in touch, and finally, yesterday, I was given a note when I got to the C, from Ann, saying to ring K. that afternoon or Sunday evening.  Well, I tried on and off all afternoon, but couldn’t raise a whisper. So I’ll ring on Sunday.  Nice to be doing something already, wouldn't it?  I’ll let you know how it turns out.

On Thursday I’d decided to go to Dickens House, but by the time I’d got to the Centre and away it was about 3.30 – I was very late that day – and by the time I’d walked along C.Rd, another 20 minutes, and got a train going in the direction I was (I finished up getting on one that was going vaguely that way, but not quite; had to change my train plans entirely) and even then I had to walk from the Monument station to the Bank – you do this underground, and seem to go up and down steps, escalators, along corridors and tubes for ages, and just as you arrive you find the train just going out!  Still it’s fun!  Well, I got to Russell Square Station eventually – you see, the D. House was shutting at 5, and it was then 4.15 – and of course that particular part of London isn’t as well sign-posted as the rest (one thing about L, they expect you to get lost, but they also expect you to have an A to Z and a tube map!), and I spent several minutes figuring out which way to go.  However, by the time I’d reached the house, now just another amongst dozens of houses divided up for doctors, etc., it was 4.35, so I thought I’ll come back tomorrow, and did.   [I assume this is 48 Doughty St, but I don’t remember going there at all!  Certainly Doughty St is near the Russell Square Station. See photo.]  

It was well worth 2/6, but there is an aura of the celestial about everything: this is the knife-stand that he used, this is the feather-duster a maid who stayed for three days touched – it’s not quite that bad, but some of the stuff is a little ridiculous.  Other stuff is a little uncanny – the chairs that he sat in for such and such a portrait, and the portrait is hanging above it – oooh, it’s a little spooky!

But it really was interesting, particularly the letters and manuscripts – his writing was much worse than mine!  - the books and paintings and the very fact of the house itself. But some of the stuff, such as the window that Oliver Twist, for heaven’s sake, is supposed to have crawled through in some part of his story is just a load of old twaddle! But London in general is surrounded by this fascination with the places where things were supposed to have happened – in the books!  Mad, I call it.  He certainly made lots of parts of L. and England famous, for entirely fictional reasons.  It is interesting, however, to come down out of the house and walk into Greys Inn Road – where so many of his stories are set at certain times.  That is weird, because though so much of it has changed, much of it hasn't and if I could recall some of the incidents, I think I’d feel a little funny.  Perhaps this is what has got to the Londoners themselves.

Also went to see Madame Tussauds, but it was something ridiculous like 7/6 to get in, so I didn’t!  And so was Regent’s Park Zoo so I just wandered round the outside. Then promptly went off and went to this show that I couldn’t get into standing and paid 8/6 for a seat, where I had to lean forward so far I may as well have stood!  Still it was worth it: Richard Briers and Ronnie Barker are both in it, and though neither has much to do really it was quite intriguing to see them in the flesh.  And to see Briers in a rather nasty role for a change: they both get shot during the course of the play, but so do a couple of others – so! It’s a quite mad play within a play: they’re a couple of critics watching a play that eventually they become part of; quite mad, but very entertaining. [This will Tom Stoppard’s The Real Inspector Hound, I’d guess.]

There was shorter play before it about a composer and lyricist who with their leading lady act out a new musical in the hopes that a producer who is sitting in the audience with us will  put it on.  But the play wasn’t terribly good though they all acted madly. 

Mr and Mrs Marshall seem to be a very nice couple: they've now given me another hot plate, separate-like, which I nearly wrecked when I turned it on, as something started to burn: turned out to be a piece of cardboard that was sitting on top and which I’d thought was a part of it all!  I’ll burn the house down yet: the oven keeps smoking every time I cook in it, though Mrs M is going to have a look at it next time I cook something as she says it shouldn't!

Lots of luv, Mike XXXXXXX