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 (?) Café 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 1^st 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 2^nd 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.

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