17.2.69 This letter was written on both sides of two sheets of paper, and runs to some 2,500 words - good grief.
Dear Mum, I was all set to write a letter to you and
discovered that I didn’t have an aerogram, so I thought I’d start anyway, and
if I don’t finish this I’ll copy it onto an airletter tomorrow. Julie has been
prancing round the house all happy tonight, because she got a Valentine Day
card ˗ actually it came on Friday last, but she was away for the weekend, and
didn’t come in again till tonight. She and I have just been having a long chat
on things in general, and she’s been showing me snapshots of her family and her
trips abroad, etc, and it’s generally been very interesting. We get on very
well, all things considered ˗ we scarcely see each other except for the odd
occasion like this ˗ and she’s rather nice kid really; kid ˗ she’ll be 21 in
June. (John, whom I thought was about 26 is only getting on for 22 in March!)
Julie’s mother looks only about thirty-something herself, and is still very
attractive, I think. Heaven knows why these people want to leave home ˗ Julie
only lives at Orpington, which comparatively speaking is just down the road,
and John lives even less far away in Eltham (is it?). Seems to me they’d
certainly be more comfortably off at home. I can see it up to a certain point,
certainly if they don’t get on too well with their families it’s fair enough,
(for both the parents and them) but otherwise it seems a bit strange. Julies
seems to get on all right with hers, although there is some business about a
stepfather somewhere, which may be the trouble. But with John, I don’t know
what the reason is. I don’t mind flatting, but being either a typical male or
just lazy, I’d much sooner have someone looking after me!! [It doesn’t seem to occur to me that the
other two want their own space and don’t want to be beholden to their parents.]
By the way, please don’t growl at me in your next letter at
what I’m about to tell you. ((((I’ve had another cold....I’m sorry...!)))) And
I’ve just spent the weekend in bed, mainly, and also taken today off, because
although I had recovered quite a lot, I didn’t really think it was worth while
risking it to go back straight away. The big trouble was that when I got the
cold ˗ very suddenly on Thursday ˗ right in the middle of a very hectic week, I
couldn’t take Friday off because it was the final night of our master-classes.
What a time for it to come. I spent all day Friday feeling absolutely rotten
and fortunately it calmed down when it came time to play. But I think if I’d
been able to stay home on Friday , I wouldn’t feel quite as under-par as I
still do. Anyhow, I’m determined to knock it on the head, because I bought some
Vitamin Tablets today, and started a three-week course of them, and hope that
this will bring me back up to scratch. The trouble is I suppose that I can’t
really eat too well ˗ just can’t afford to, and there’s nothing to be done
about that side of it ˗ I haven’t had a steak since I’ve been here for
instance, and though we can get meat at the Centre, it isn’t wonderful, and
certainly isn’t very generously given out. I’ve been eating salads for the last
week or more, because it seamed to me they were more healthy than the meals that
we were getting otherwise but of course the only meat in them is ham. However,
as much as I object to having to take pills like this I think it’s the only
solution in the meantime, and of course I haven’t been up to the Crowls for
nearly a month ˗ thru circumstances ˗ and this may have been a partial cause
too. Anyway, though I sometimes think I am, I’m not starving, and probably eat
more than my actual share of things. Never mind, I’m not dead yet, as I keep
thinking I’m saying.
(John has just arrived home, and I doubt if the rest of this
will be very comprehensible.) The flat is getting to be more comfortable as we
fit up more of the place with odds and ends, and as it begins to look less
bare. But the big problem of the place is that it’s very hard to get enough hot
water for a wash in the bathroom let alone a bath! The water heater is very
temperamental somehow ˗ it’s one of these gas things where whenever you turn on
the tap the whole thing lights up off a pilot light; the other night it blew up
in my face, and gave me quite a shock, but didn’t do me any damage. It blew the
front off the thing in such a way that it now hangs on by only three corners,
but seems to be working all right since then. But the water still doesn’t stay
hot for very long - I don’t know what’s wrong with it ˗ I think we’ll have to
get the Land Agent people on to it.
And as you already know we’ve had snow, snow and snow, and
snow. Until it makes you sick. One night last week when we were rehearsing late
it came down while we weren’t looking, and when we went out hit us all in the
face. The way I get to the Opera Centre now when I don’t get a lift is to go
via the Shadwell Tube Station, about seven minutes walk, via Commercial Road,
and Watney Street (where the coldest open-air market in London is), and on this
particular night I though that in spite of the snow, I’d save meself 5d and
walk instead of getting a bus. Well, I arrived at the Tube Station, unable to
see through my glasses, frozen right through, and looking like an abominable
snowman. And of course all the trains were late. I was carrying more than
usual, and I was thoroughly fed up.
One thing here, when it does snow is that they get on the
job pretty quickly, and clear up the roads, and even the pavements in some
places. This is very necessary, because it seems invariably to freeze up
straight away. Either that or it turns to the most revolting slush, and makes
it like walking on water. Anyway, so that is the snow for you. It’s still
attractive to look at but by golly it’s cold, and very unpleasant to be out in.
It sort of gets right inside your head, and these last few days I can feel the
cold air right inside my sinuses. Even when I was in bed on Sat it was driving
me mad, in spite of Aspros and everything, because I couldn’t get any relief
when I breathed. It just ached, and finally my sinuses and my eyes and my gums all
felt as though someone was driving nails through them. Nasty, that!
And yesterday, Sun, when I did get up for quite a long time,
my nose suddenly poured blood in the good old way that hasn’t happened for a
long time ˗ when I sneezed. But at least it seems to have relieved a few things
.
May as well go on a bit [this
was by now the third page of a typewritten letter] and include some things
about the master classes. Incidentally, thanks once again for the postal notes,
and the cuttings. I don’t keep many of the latter ˗ they make interestingly
reading, but of course there is little point in keeping them all as you no
doubt realise. It’s now the next day, by the way, and if I finish this it’ll be
lucky. I’ve had another nose-bleed ˗ it came on in the middle of the Italian
class, and I had to go out [because]
it poured so much. But then, as I had to go into the West End to see if I could
get myself an Italian-English Dictionary and a German-English Dictionary ˗ both
very useful of course, but they both cost money of course. Honestly it gets my
goat, and no doubt other students’ goats, too, when visiting lecturers and our
own tutors rant on about how we should have a copy of such and such, and so and
so ˗ and to my eyes at least if we have barely enough money to feed ourselves
up to the point where we don’g flag from a semi-malnutrition how on earth are
we supposed to buy all these books etc? (This is not a hint, just a general
moan for poor old students ˗ even those on grants are limited in scope.) [I don’t mention that I obviously spent a
good deal on going to the theatre and the movies here; though certainly I did
feed myself fairly sparsely at times.]
It’s the same with the work we’re supposed to ˗ especially
the reps: we’re at everyone’s beck and call, we’re supposed to be able to learn
up new music constantly and really know it, and we’re also supposed to read up
on every subject to do with the theatre and music under the sun. No human being
can do it in the space of the ordinary average English day!
Anyway, I’ve strayed completely from what I started on. I
got the German dictionary by the way, but not the other. Anyway as I was
walking through St James park to get to the Victoria library to return a book,
my nose started to bleed again, and has barely stopped since!! I’m now at home,
and in desperation froze the whole area around my nose with a cold flannel ˗
this stopped it for long enough to go out and have a precarious meal (I’d
originally intended having one in town) with odd drips coming my way, but then
the thing is still running even now, and nothing on earth seems to be able to
stop it. It’s calm at the moment but feels as though it’s just about to strike
again. [The story of my life: nosebleeds
were commonplace in spite of cauterization; and my mother used to get them
regularly too.]
Got your letter this morning about your telling me in reply
to grumbly to letter to buck up, cause you were keeping an eye on me in your
prayers. Actually I’ve been feeling quite cheerful ˗ even during periods of the
cold and the great bleed, but I also notice that I bit all my nails down to the
bone yesterday, and that my lips are sore from being chewed. At least I’ve got
not SPOTS!! AAAAAgh! I’m falling apart I think, but as long as I get to the end
of this year, and can start earning, perhaps, a little dough, I’ll be right.
Who’d be a student.
I love the mental side of the life, but honestly ˗
practically speaking it’s for the birds! Thanks for being so un-upset about the
flatting situation ˗ re Julie, I mean ˗ I knew you would understand, being of that sort of person, but I haven’t told
Reg and Co that she’s here ˗ she’s John to them at the mo’! I don’t know how
broadminded he is about something like this. I leave it as being another boy at
the moment I think ˗ I think I shock them enough, unintentionally, at the best
of times!
About seeing someone to tell me what they really think about
me ˗ this seems an impossibility at the Centre ˗ certainly amongst the teaching
staff. They’re all too mixed up in their own little politics to really be
properly concerned about all their students ˗ certain obvious excellent ones,
yes ˗ but those they aren’t too sure of ˗ they just leave them alone!
I was talking this over with one of the girls last week ˗
Abigail Ryan (a dooley [Catholic],
not surprisingly ˗ there are getting to be more every day), and we seemed to
conclude between us that you’ve just got to go ahead an push yourself onwards,
because no one else, over here at least, is really interested in helping you.
I’ll still surviving in spite of setbacks, and can only think that I’m as good
as I know I am and hope that’s good enough for others. As a coach, I seem to
have certain qualities: I spend most of my time being Father Confessor to my
‘pupils’, and as a rep, I seem to have the knack of making it all exciting time
and time again without much flagging, and I even survived my session as a
conductor in the Master Classes without much bother. I enjoyed it actually though
I still have no pretensions that I am a conductor. I know how I like a thing to
go and am fairly definite about getting it that way, but I think there is still
something lacking on that side, and anyway, I see no reason to do something
like that when I don’t greatly care for it. On that side the highest I would
really like to go [would] be a chorus
master, but that would be a long way away, yet, with my present capabilities.
James Robertson thought some of the speeds in the Cosi chunk I did were a little slow, and
unexciting, but at that stage I was happier concentrating on getting things
rather more accurate than exciting. (This was the last rehearsal ˗ at the
performance I let go a bit more, but apparently it was still a little slow.)
The piano playing, while not madly accurate, in whole
sections of Jenufa (which is
tremendously exciting music, by the way ˗ all Czech) though I got the basic
chords right which is the essential thing, and think it was rather exciting,
and certainly the audience tension was very obviously there. Funny how you can
feel it ˗ an audience can feel it itself too, if it comes to that. In the
Tchaikovsky, The Queen of Spades,
again very exciting stuff, the cause and the results were much the same. Michael
Hadjimishev, from the Sofia State Opera, was a fantastic man to work with. He had
the characters so thoroughly understood by the time we were finished (at least
the reps, and some of the singers
understood, some of the others can’t be told anything) that we could [see] exactly why everything was so in
the score. On interpretations he is fabulous. Not an innovator, I shouldn’t
think, but well worth meeting to really understand what characterization is all
about. (The man doing our present reps class, Mauritz Sillem, has
done nothing but recitatives in our present session on The Marriage of Figaro ˗ both as spoken dialogue and ordinary
recit, and we’ve also read the original play on which it is based. It has been
fascinating ˗ singers don’t think enough about the dramatic side of things. The
other Master Class, on TV Opera, was also fascinating. They did it on the night
with dummy cameras and you could actually visualize the whole thing. They used
the whole auditorium floor and with these great spaces and hints of scenery you
could really get the feel of it. Love, Mike
