17.2.69 - nosebleeds, snow and master classes

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

5.2.69 - a bit of unnecessary gloom and doom

5.2.69

Dear Mum, I’m writing this in a time of some depression, so I’m afraid it may be all a bit miserable as far as reading goes. Perhaps you should throw it away now. The so-called results of the auditions have out ˗ with a letter to each of the three reps from the Centre who went in for it running thus: (after thanking us for playing) The Panel was interested to hear your performance, but felt that more time is needed to decide on the question of a pianist. Probably we shall ask you to re-audition within a month. [I think I'd always fallen comfortably into jobs in New Zealand, and assumed it would be the same in the UK.]

I ask you, what sort of a letter is that? John, whom I’m flatting with now, and who is in the know as to what goes on in the Centre ˗ he’s ‘assistant House Manager,’ whatever that is ˗ had already told me that this was what they were going to say to us, but I sort of wasn’t concerned. Tonight however when he bought the letter home with him, I ceased to be annoyed about the whole thing, and just became depressed. John let it drop that they seem to think that the standard at the C. isn’t as high as last year, and I feel that once again I’m not sure if I’m good enough. I keep telling myself that I am, and this keeps me going for a while, but then I know deep down that there is just so much I don’t know, and just so much that I don’t seem to be able to do with the ease that I should, that I wonder if I’m really cut out for it. But if I’m not cut out for this what am I to do? So once again, I lay the story in your lap, and know that you’ll write back and say, that of course I’m capable of doing it, but in this I’m afraid that your word isn’t sufficient! I’m glad to hear you say so, of course, but this doesn’t seem to help to make me the better musician that I should already be, and don’t seem to be getting. Oh, I know I’ve improved in some ways since I’ve been here, but the others have probably done the same, and are still just as far ahead.

You know, the Good Lord makes it a bit tough just landing us in this earth with scarcely any guide rules about how we are to cope with practical living: I mean like knowing that we have a certain talent but not knowing whether it’s sufficient to carry us through. Or to put it another way, to feel that the work we enjoy isn’t necessarily going to be the work we can do for a living. I know that He’s got his eye on us, and has obviously kept His eye on me since I’ve been here. In some ways I’ve never been so well looked after; but to have a talent that is halfway between being good or bad is very difficult. It’s the problem of coping with a mind that isn’t prepared to do ordinary office-work, or some such, because I just don’t have ambition in that respect, and yet this self-same mind has to cope with knowing that it’s possibly not good enough to do what it really wishes to do. I’ll keep on praying, and hope that He sees fit to let me know what he has in store and wants me to do. [This argument about the level of talent has continued long past my time in the UK ˗ what I didn’t realise at that time was that I wasn’t putting enough work into practice, into improving in the areas that I wasn’t so good at, and into learning how to do the things I couldn’t do. That would all have helped in some measure at least. And while I don’t believe the saying that the Good Lord helps those who help themselves, he still does expect us to put the work in to make our talent usable!]

Let’s get off the dreary subject of tomorrow, and have a look at something I know a bit about! I got me first letter at me new address today, forwarded from Plaistow, (tho’ left upstairs, at 23) so I feel as tho’ I’m beginning to belong here now. John and I get on very well ˗ whereas Kingsley barely said a word most of the time he was at no 13, John talks nonstop! It’s a refreshing change, and he is generally interesting. Julie is a nice wee soul, short and with long blonde hair, and fairly quiet ˗ as much as any girl ever is, I suppose! [Oh, so unbelievably patronising!]

Glad to see you enjoyed your little holiday, and are being looked after. This place is still a bit shambolic ˗ tho’ we had plates, saucers and cups, and basic cutlery, with a couple of pots, and a pan thrown in, we keep finding things that we need that we haven’t got. [Think this sentence must be an example of my Irish heritage.] And that were supplied at Plaistow. Never mind, we’re surviving, and I daresay we will continue to do so. (Just as an afterthought to my above unpleasant topic, wouldn’t it be nice if we could say to the Good Lord when we felt like it, Look, Lord, I think I’ve been down here long enough, how about finishing off this only occasionally pleasant life down here?  It’s probably just as well we can’t. [I bet my mother thought so too; such a jaundiced view of life from an inexperienced 23-year-old.]

Since I last wrote I’ve also met the other boy that was originally to come in here with the present other two. He’s a talker too, and funnily enough seemed to want to put me, particularly, off Julie. (Apparently his mother has been ill, mentally, of late which was the reason for his not coming in, but John also keeps talking about his having gone off to Paris ˗ he must have been there a very short time, that’s all I can say.) It’s all very confusing, and I only hope it’s not going to get awkward. Anyway, this other boy, also a John, came in the other night, and the way he carried on when Julie was here was just annoying to say the least. John Gray, seemed quite annoyed too and I think has second thoughts about any changes that might have been planned. I don’t know how it was all to work, but it seems this other John was to move in when Julie moved out, but just how Julie was to go I don’t know! Anyway, it seems to both John and me, that things are satisfactory enough as they are, and we present three are getting on quite well. Anyway strictly speaking this other John could do nothing about it, as John G. and I are the people who’ve signed the agreement for the place (for six months) and he hasn’t so...?

I think I’ll cope financially, in fact, I’m sure I will, and John has already given me some lifts back and forth from the Opera C. And funnily enough, it’s actually quicker to go from Charing Cross to Blackheath by British Railways, than it used to be to go from C. Cross to Plaistow by tube! And it costs the same. So though it seems as though I’m further out of London, I don’t know that I actually am. Greenwich Observatory is just near ˗ in walking distance, and so is the Thames, and the Cutty Sark and some other important boats are moored in dry dock on the way we go to work. Quite an old.

interesting area really. Blackheath Village is in a little valley ˗ we’re on one side of the hill; and the Catholic Church is 5 minutes away ˗ and

So ˗ that’s the present situation. Anyway, LOTS of LOVE Mike

P.S. Our Master Classes don’t end till Friday week ˗ very short rehearsal time. 

28.1.69 A new flat out of nowhere

It's been a very long time since I added any of these letters from the UK onto this blog; the last one was back in 2013, and consisted of the letter written the previous day to this one, when I was troubled about having to find a new flat. 

28.1.69

Yippee!!!!!  What did I say just yesterday about fortunes changing within the space of a few hours? I was just thinking, too, yesterday night about the old Bible line: about not a sparrow falling without the good Lord knowing about it and lo and behold, he surely has got his eye on this sparrow!

Today’s happenings: I rang the flat service to tell them that I hadn’t liked the other place either, and Mr Atkins said he thought he had another place at New Cross ˗ it was a £5er a week, though, but sounds quite good. New Cross is fairly well served by the tube to the Opera C, and so I said well, could he make an appointment with the owner. He couldn’t get hold of the fellow till six-thirty tonight, so said for me to ring back. Now David Syrus overheard a conversation between John Gray, our receptionist at the Centre, and someone else, about how John had been let down at the last minute by a friend when they had arranged to share with another person a flat in Blackheath, which is also down South of the Thames, like New Cross. This flat was fully self-contained, with new furniture, and all conveniences. David apparently mentioned that I was looking for somewhere, and John got onto me, took me down with him in his car to the flat and my new address is 23A Montpelier Row, London SE 3. [Looking at this site on Google now, I don't recognise it at all!]

I think I’ll shift in this weekend. The Marshalls are quite easy, so here goes. There are so many advantages at this early that it all seems a bit much. The rent if £4-13-4 a week, which while it is more by a bit, quite a bit, than at present, it means that I have a whole flat and complete privacy within it. I can catch either a bus reasonably directly to the Centre or get a train, not tube, to Tower Bridge, and get a bus along Commercial Rd. In fact looking at the map it rather seems that trains go direct from Blackheath ˗ 20 yds down the road from the flat to Stepney East ˗ 20 yds from the Opera Centre! But I’m not sure about this. Anyway, John has a car, works at the same place as me...need I say more. That’s his idea, not mine! And we both go to the same sort of concerts quite often, too, soooo...! [Looking back, £4-13-4 seems the oddest amount to be paying for anything per week. Still it was a darn site cheaper than the £242 being asked for a similar location a couple of years ago.]

The flat is the basement of a huge house ˗ four storeys ˗ an old Georgian Mansion, in fact, looking out over Blackheath Common, which is also huge, and the village, which has an olde worlde charm that I wouldn’t have thought existed so close to the rest of the Thames area, which is scungy. The place above us has been turned into bedsits, though it was formerly a YWCA, but ours is an ex-storeroom area, and covers most of the area in the basement. We have our own patio at the back, and there is an immense garden. [Which I don’t remember ever using. Nor did the other two.] The furniture is all new, and the place is newly decorated ˗ in white throughout! ˗ but with carpets in the main rooms, an enormous kitchen, dining room, a great lounge, two bedrooms (have I already said all this?). 

One thing which I feel perhaps you may not feel too happy about is the fact that the third person is a girl. (Cries of horror from 12,000 miles). The point is that she is an old friend of John’s, and since he is doing this with his mother’s eagle-eye on him, and I think the girl has been living in the house with his family, anyway, I think it should be all right. As it is I doubt that we’ll see each other very much anyway, and since the place is so big I can’t see us getting in each other’s hair. And John assures me that she isn’t the sort of person around whom untoward things occur, so if you do object, do so now, or forever hold your peace as they say! I think you can trust me, don’t you? [Good grief: even for 1969 this all seems a bit olde worlde; perhaps Blackheath Village had some effect on my brain at the time of writing. As it was I barely ever saw this girl; if she wasn’t staying in her room, she was out, and then eventually she just up and left.]

I feel terribly excited about it all, as though I was going to my first real home, here. One where you’re not constantly running into your landlord ˗ not that they’ve been any trouble ˗ and they have been wonderful to me really. I must get them a small something before I go.

My second bit of news is that the four storey place KateTither and her friend lived in was burnt out the other night ˗ not completely but enough to be a nuisance, and so at present they’re in a bed-sit with another friend. I rather hoped that the Marshalls might feel like doing a room swap and taking them on, but they don’t seem too keen, really, because Kate’s friend has a boy of four, and partly because they don’t think the girls would be too happy about trailing outside to the toilet. (We have two! in the new place!) However things may still work out for them.

I now have to contact Kingsley who has left me no address ˗ only a phone number ˗ and also that great thundering trunk and his heater. What a complicated life it is but it isn’t getting me down. And I’ve got back some of my nerve as regards playing goes. That rep who came to us and said something about it, put me on the right track, even if he hadn’t intended to, and I just refuse to be upset about the reps’ classes anymore. And have started to enjoy them more than I have for some time. In fact I’m beginning to feel the way I did when I first arrived, which was rather more confident than I have been for some months.

Re the flat again ˗ the new one ˗ it seems somehow more permanent than this place has been. I think I’ve always known I’d have to leave here sometime, but this new one seems like going home again. Wonder why? Must go ˗ I still have to ring his lordship, and do German homework, and I haven’t really had any tea yet. What a life!

Tons of love, Mike (you’ve been praying, haven’t you?)  Love. 

More on wartime experiences

Since we're having a bit of a focus on wartime experiences at the moment, here are some comments from John Stokes on his father Des's time during World War II...

Dad was a fighter pilot trained in NZ and Canada and sent to the Solomon Islands where he completed two and a half tours before the surrender. Because the Nips [Japanese]

had very little airpower left by the time he got there, the Corsairs he flew were ground attack and so spent their time bottling up the Japanese troops in Rabaul and other garrisons throughout the Solomons chain. 

The NZ squadrons spent a lot of time supporting the Australian Army in Bougainville; I've spoken to Aussie and NZ vets and while they do concentrate on the funny things that happen, the reality is that it was a really savage set of actions - no quarter given or taken - with no real purpose other than to show the Americans that "Hey, look; we're still fighting, too!!"
The casualty lists published in the Australian papers were more than a little sobering, especially after VE Day when half the world went euphoric; men were still fighting and dying in squalid conditions very close to home....

Des at Wanaka, with an example of one of the planes he flew. 

Des is on the wing of the plane, second from left of those seated. 

ANZACs

Yes, it's a very long time since anything was posted on here, but as a result of my daughter Abby finding a website called Shadow Battalion, we discovered that according to their records not only was Frank Hannagan (my great-uncle) present during the First World War - he died in 1917 at Passchendaele - but two other relatives appear to have served there at some point: Albert Alexander Hannagan, and John Blaney Francis Hannagan.

Albert was my great grandfather's nephew - the son of Charles Hannagan Senior (I've listed him as 'senior' because my own grandfather was also Charles). John Hannagan was Albert's brother.

27.1.69 Flat-hunting, Verdi, and Schoenberg

27.1.69

Dear Mum, how our fortunes change within the space of hours almost! It seems an age since I last wrote though I know it’s not, and equally, the last week seems to have been one of the longest (and funnily enough also the shortest) I’ve ever known. Sorry about this curious start: explains: When I last wrote it was a happily confidant little lad who thought that the subject of the flat was all settled. However David Syrus decided that he was really better off where he was and so left me with a whole flat to myself. I tried Kurt Gänzl, because I knew he wasn’t too well off, flat-wise, but he had other complications and that wrecked that idea. I asked another guy too, but he has complications too. 

So! what to do? I really didn’t and still don’t feel like moving, despite the disadvantages of this place, and I feel in a bit of a mess. Today I thought that well, it could turn out for the best and so I went off to the place that I’d gone to before, to see what they could turn up for me. I’d also discussed the problem with Reg over the weekend and he’d said he’d get onto his contacts and see what might turn up. I tried two places tonight; the same young man who served me before was my aid again, and even gave me a lift up to Stamford Hill, where the first place was. He’s a very pleasant bloke: his landlady is a New Zealander (!); and he lives up that way anyway. The first place (I’m looking for a bedsit) was a very small room with only a gas ring to cook on, and utensils consisting of three different knives, up on the second floor of a house, and while it may have been quite cosy, it didn’t seem to be me. The bloke, his name is Atkins (his first name begins with A too, but the only thing that comes to mind is Arty, and that doesn’t seem right) then gave me a lift down to Seven Sisters Road, where I then walked up to the next place. This was a basement room in another large house, but there were no utensils there and the electricity included was only the lighting. It also looked cold, but the room was larger, and the woman who was fairly deaf, seemed anti-everything. So neither of those seemed much good. I was able however to get a bus right to the door of this place from there which was some consolation, but my hints to Mr and Mrs Marshall that I’d like to stay but couldn’t afford the rent came to nothing  – though they were very sympathetic and seemed to think they’d be as sorry to lose me as I would be to go!

Went out to ring Reg, who incidentally had a cyst taken off his eyelid today, about the same time as I was doing my audition for Opera for All, which seemed to go reasonably well – I was happy anyway, tho I don’t really know what they thought. He hadn’t been able to do anything from his end because his phone had gone on the blink! However he’s not giving up.

When I came back from ringing him, Mr M came up the stairs and said would I like to stay on £4 a week until I could find someone to share the place! I said that that was very nice, thank you, but I wasn’t sure that I’d be able to manage to stay on, as I didn’t see much hope of getting anyone to share the place. (I wonder if I should advertise? for someone, I mean?) Mr M said well, they didn’t expect me to be tied down to staying on, and he seemed to not mind if I went off after having only paid him that much for a time so that is something anyway. But I don’t know if it puts me in an awkward spot or not! But it’s nice to know I’m a reasonable sort of tenant anyway! That’s a review of the situation up to date.

On the weekend I went up to the Crowls and they had been given tickets to an amateur performance of an opera by Verdi, which is never done: Luisa Miller. Maurice Coombs supplied the tickets – we went to his place on Boxing Day – and it turned out his wife Phyllis was in the chorus – she’s Mavis and Nina’s little sister (about 45!). The production and acting and even a lot of the musical performance was very amateur – these people should see some of our local stuff [ie, productions in Dunedin] – they’d never believe it – but Verdi shone through everything in sight. He can’t be put down, that man. Even when the singers seem incapable of doing the thing properly or with the proper amount of passion, the fact that they had to sing it at all made them do it at least half-way decently. His music is fabulous, and it was a treat to hear something really unknown to me.

We’ve had fabulous weather here the last few days: it’s actually been in the fifties! [I assume this is a Fahrenheit temperature, since this was mid-winter, though even 50 degrees Fahrenheit hardly seems anything to crow about.] And very mild. People are going around without coats even. Overcoats, I mean. (Although I saw one fellow in shirt-sleeves and one idiot in his singlet!)

Jane Manning

During the last week I went to a performance of modern works: arrangements by Berg and Webern (the former’s life story I’ve just finished) and a performance of Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire, first without reciter, so that we could just hear the music, and then with reciter – Jane Manning, who was also in The Growing Castle a while back. This person doesn’t sing, but speaks on the notes written down; the effect can be fantastic, and can also be less impressive than either speech or singing. She was super-excellent, anyway, ploughing her way thru some horribly difficult things with ease. And so did the chamber ensemble. I had a score of the Lunaire, so knew just how difficult some of it was. Most of it, in fact.

For the record, at my audition, I played a chunk of Boheme, tho not all I intended, and a duet (between Anna and Ottavio) [from Don Giovanni] but they didn’t let me finish that either. and because they were pressed for time, I didn’t play the piano piece I’d prepared. The sightreading was from Verdi’s Falstaff, and seemed to me to be easy, but perhaps I was mistaken!

Last Wednesday we went to a general rehearsal of the last act of the Meistersingers, but it seemed only partially good. the Sadlers Wells version had seemed just as good, in fact. On Thursday Mike got us into a premiere of Buona Sera Mrs Campbell, a very funny and rather moving comedy, with Gina Lollobrigida, and several other very good actors.

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!