24.3.69 Chance meetings and kerfuffle at the flat

24.3.69 [handwritten]

Dear Mum, what a small world it is! Apart from meeting up with Don Rutherford today ˗ I’ll explain about that in a minute ˗ I was sitting in a little restaurant in Charing Cross Rd, reading thru a score of a rather difficult one act opera we’re doing in the middle of next term. A man came and sat opposite me as there wasn’t much room, and as he was about to leave, he asked me if I was reading it for pleasure or if it was being done somewhere. I said, yes, at the Opera Centre, and he says, in the East End?, and I says, yes, and he says, is it as bad up the right way as upside down, and I said it was and showed him ˗ he turned out to be a rep from Covent Garden, and mentioned he was working on Cellini (Benvenuto Cellini, by Berlioz ˗ it’s his anniversary this year). We had a wee chat about difficulties of playing un-pianistic stuff before he left, and he wished me luck with it and said he was glad he wasn’t doing it! But this cafe isn’t close to Covent Garden, and is only one of hundreds in this area ˗ I’m now in the all-night P.O., about five minutes away. I discovered this restaurant the Sunday I was looking for St Pat’s in Soho, and it was about the only place open that Sunday morning.

Don [Rutherford, a singer from Dunedin with whom I worked on a couple of local amateur shows. He was also instrumental in getting me the job with the NZ Opera Company as pianist on their La Boheme piano tour, which he sang in. He moved to Canada, and then spent most of his operatic career in Germany.) is over here to ‘cover’ (a nicer word than ‘understudy’) the role of Hamlet in the

Humphrey Searle

new opera of the same name by Humphrey Searle. Don had done it in Canada and since the guy who has the role is likely to walk out any minute because he doesn’t think he can do it, Don was brought over for seven and a half weeks (with his wife) just to sit round in case. [It wasn’t because the other singer, Victor Braun, couldn’t do it, but because he was having considerable trouble with his voice. And then Donald himself got encephalitis and never performed.] They were rehearsing at the Centre today (they do a lot of Garden rehearsals there) and I met him in the canteen for a few minutes. He hasn’t changed at all ˗ except that he has slightly wispy sideboards currently in fashion here (and apparently in Canada) and he has a touch of a Canadian accent.

Things at the flat have been undergoing rapid changes of late. John, you see, is a notoriously late getter-upper in the morning and consequently is seldom on time for work. Well, both Noel Gibson at the Centre (who is sort of his boss) and June Megennis, who’s the Director’s secretary) and who practically runs the place, had been asking me where John gets to in the mornings and complaining, as I thought, reasonably enough. Well, I was getting a bit brassed off at them constantly going off at me about it and told John so ˗ which caused a rather heated argument! Anyway, I apologised in the end for going on at him about it and a lot of useful matter came out. According to John, he didn’t have to keep strict hours, and a whole lot of other guff, some of it reasonable enough and some of it slanted with John’s rather curious outlook. Next day, he gave in his notice!! saying he was tired of the place and the corrupt way its run ˗ the previous day his car brakes had failed and now he has neither car nor job !!! (But he does have money in the bank at least.) He seems quite happy and is looking for something else to tide him over until he gets in (he hopes) to the Royal College, in September. So!

Today I spent a fiver on buying old Vocal Scores ˗ I’ve got to have them ˗ but it was payment for a job, so it worked out nicely!

Love, Mike.

20.3.69 Some catch up stuff

20.3.69

Dear Mum, there are so many odd fragments of news I thought I’d better write again to you. I’ve sent off the two foreign newspapers to Dale, but heaven knows when she’ll get them. They’ve both got news of the space men in them. [Not sure who Dale is, though it could be a second cousin.]

(As you can see I’ve finally been given one of these new type air letters: but I see that they don’t have on the outside where to cut them open except on one side; I almost invariably make a mess of one of these and cut them everywhere but where they’re supposed to be cut! Think I’ll put a wee note on the outside.) [These ‘new type air letters’ had only about two-thirds as much room to write on, which must have been frustrating for yours truly.] 

I’m finally getting my tax thing away too, but I’m sending it to you if you don’t mind, because I quite honestly am not sure of completing it from such a distance, and I thought perhaps if you were to give it straight to Des, it might not get lost in the rush of the end of the year. Anyway, it’ll take a while yet. [Presumably my tax return for 1968/9. Des was one of my uncles, who worked in the Inland Revenue in Dunedin; this was in the days when you could go into the office, speak to a human being and get them to help you fill out your tax return. In fact, you could go in and ask for your uncle is you so desired.]

I’m sure I’ve got dozens of other things to say, now what are they all? I know: on Tuesday, I’d been informed that I’d got to go to a rehearsal at 5.30 in the evening, and so said to myself that I’d fill the day in on my own. When I finally arrived at the Opera Centre, the rehearsal had been shifted forward into the early afternoon, and I’d missed it entirely and the two pianists from the other show had had to do it. They’d tried to ring me here at the flat, by phoning upstairs, but of course D was out all the time. We can’t be expected to know they’re going to change their minds like this at the last minute all the time. It’s very poor organisation and quite a number of the singers have been complaining about it too.

Anyway, on the same morning I’d rung up George Bamford to see if he had any more stuff for me to check, and he said he still wouldn’t be ready until that night, and so I said all right then I’d call around in the late afternoon. He also said, of course you don’t do copying do you, he said, I could do with help on that more than anything else. Well, like the twit that I am, I said, No, I don’t, because he’s never sounded keen on my doing it before. Anyway, after I’d rung off, I thought to myself, well, perhaps I could force his hand a little, since he was in such an awkward position as far as time went, and go in and say would it be any use if I did do some copying for him. Well, I did go in, and he, without too much apparent second thoughting, said all right, he’d let me have a go. (He offered one other time to give me some pointers on the business, but never did.) So I sat down eventually, and got started, and apart from his scrubbing the very first thing I did ˗ actually it was a bit of a mess, the pen I’d started to use had scratched on the paper and ink dots had gone everywhere! Also I seemed to be picking up dirty marks from the pen all the time. So finally I went off and washed my hands, and started again, with a not too efficient blotter ˗ it was doing most of the mucking-up of things, I discovered ˗ and using the exiled piece of paper to cover up the page until I actually used it [wrote on it] each time, I got on all right. Didn’t do very much in the end ˗ he said he’d prefer that I went a little slower than not (I thought I was going slow!) and even though the place is away from the mainstream of things, there are a lot of people coming and going, and George and his wife talk a lot, always apparently starting a conversation up without informing the other who or what they’re talking about! And Mrs B made me a couple of ham sandwiches and an enormous cup of coffee, and this delayed things a little too.

Anyway that was that and I then went to the OC. Well, I felt a bit put out at not having anything to do, so in the end David Gorringe, and Hazel and I went to the pictures (a local cinema where it’s cheaper, but where the audience seems always to consist of morons ˗ they don’t laugh or do anything.)  We went to Finian’s Rainbow ˗ a Monica-taking picture, if it hasn’t already been to Dunedin. [Presumably meaning my mother should take my aunt Monica to see it. She was the wife of my uncle Des mentioned above.] It is full of marvellous lines, with a lot of very clever jokes on racial problems in the South of America. But it all went over the heads of the people here ˗ they really are thick, you know. [Oh, dear, what a bumptious know-all this guy is!] (The same day I went down to our post office in Blackheath to get our mail delivered to our doorstep instead of the flats upstairs, and the first bit of mail arrived this morning ˗ Upstairs!). Heaven knows what’ll happen when they get decimal coinage. I think most of them will just give up!

Yesterday, I got up early and went in to get seats for the Dance of Death with Olivier. Got three quite decent seats, without having to queue with a very big crowd ˗ a dozen perhaps, and then since I had 3 hours to fill in before going down to East Croydon where the rehearsal are being held just now (the local art school is doing the designing of the show) I went to the cinema in Waterloo Station where they were showing On the Waterfront with Brando. Fabulous. A very moving story, with a priest who was a priest in it, instead of the usual wishy washy characters you get, and Brando is superb.

Last night Mike and a friend of his he found in a pub recently called John from Ohio (he’s here for an indefinite time, and very pleasant) and I went to D of D. It’s a rather rubbishy play though the first act is at least several times better than the second, but it was great to see Olivier in the flesh, and Geraldine McEwan, his co-star, is outstanding.

Lots of love Mike. 

18.3.69 - Finally feeling better

18.3.69

Dear Mum, I’m going to answer your first question on the letter I received this morning by saying ‘I feel on top of the world!’ ˗ in fact I feel so much like my old self that I’m leaping around. I’d forgotten just how energetic and cheery I normally am. Either that or I’m going Mad! ˗ I’m bouncing around like a two-year-old so much and chatting away to myself about the world in general (I’ve done that for years) that suddenly it doesn’t matter that it’s never anything but winter in England. Actually the weather has been improving ˗ it’s been that much milder lately, so I’m finding it quite pleasant. No one else seems to think it’s getting any better, but they’re a pack of moaners, the English, I think, and they’ve got so much to grumble about they naturally put something very important like the weather first! I’m now three times as busy as I’ve been ˗ must stop exaggerating! I’ve still got a touch of the cough that I had, but it seems to be vanishing slowly, and no longer bothers me.

We’re in the middle of our last week, practically, of rehearsals for our end of term double bill. I’ve actually got the day off, until 5.30, when we have a rehearsal, but George Bamford (who kept me busy all day Saturday with parts for a terrible Irish recording that is being made soon) has some more film music up his sleeve, and with a bit of luck, I’ll be able to go in later this morning and get it, and do it before and after the rehearsal.

I spent Sunday transposing two songs down for one of the students (who may pay me!) and then went off to see a film at our local cinema, on the other side of the Heath. It was ‘If...’ which I’d been trying to see in the West End for ages, but which had always been sold out at the price I was willing to pay. As it turned out it was a very disturbing film, but I don’t feel for the reasons the director intended. It’s all about a public school, and especially three of the sixth formers, who finally gun down the parents and teachers on Parents’ Day, with old 2nd World War machine guns and grenades that have been in store under the school! But this wasn’t what was disturbing; quite honestly I found the end rather silly, but it was the way all sorts of perversions and deviations from the norm were casually accepted within the film that annoyed me. Morals had vanished out the window, somewhere, and much of the film was taking up with telling you, in a roundabout way, that they had.

The previous night, I’d had to take the parts back to Bamford (he must owe me about £13 or £14 now), and this meant a trip all the way up to Kings Cross, and rather a waste of time, unless I was going to stay in the town. So I walked along to David Gorringe’s flat in Portland Place, which is only several stone’s throws away (!), on the hope that he might be interested in going out, or even just sitting round talking. I was almost put off by the fact that the front door of the flats was locked, but I could see a light on in the penthouse, and didn’t think his flatmate was back yet from an Opera for All Tour, so I chance it and rang the bell, and was answered by a voice thru the speaker at the door. It’s a most odd feeling talking to a disembodied voice in the street!

Anyway Dave was home and feeling all miserable because he didn’t know what to do with himself, and so after a bite to eat (I felt a bit awful about that, I always seem to be having snacks up there ˗ I’ll buy him lunch one of these days at the Centre) we went to the pictures ˗ even though it was getting very late, we got into a later showing of the most recent Ingmar Bergman film, called Shame, and about apathy ˗ I think! It concerned, mainly, two married people (to each other for once!) who during a war in the late 1970s, had taken up a farm to fill in the time when they couldn’t be musicians, and how in spite of the fact that the most terrible things were going on around them, they concerned themselves with their own troubles purely, and were of course shocked when the war suddenly took them over. The man, till nearly the end, when he was forced by a guerilla mob to shoot a high official of the other side, and did it because he was ashamed of his previous cowardice, and that it had turned him against his wife, or vice versa, was a very weak individual who would cry when things got too much for him, and after the shooting, he suddenly changed completely, and his wife who had been dominant up till then, became the weaker and was forced to see her husband turn into a brute. This makes it sound rather curious, but it was a fascinating film. And yet I was trouble rather less by it than by If... And it should have been the other way round.

Last Friday, John Kentish asked me if I could go down to Eltham (two train stops below Blackheath) and play for a rehearsal that night, and on the Monday. Well, I couldn’t do the Friday, but I did do last night, and it turned out they wanted a conductor, not a pianist! (And they pay over £4 for it!) So with some misgiving, I took them thru parts of Traviata, which fortunately I know reasonably well, and really enjoyed it. It was quite like being back with the old Carmen chorus at home, and just the same as far as the atmosphere went. [I presume I mean that I’d been chorus master for a local production of Carmen in Dunedin, but I don’t remember doing this at all.] Only this time I had principals as well: an Aussie leading lady, and an NZ bass (the place is running with them ˗ Sadlers Wells has little else!)  There were even the same types of people there: the woman who didn’t want to do what everyone else was doing, and the men shy of singing, but very hard working. I came home on a cloud! And once I got started they even took my cheek the same as the Dunedin crowd, and took it well, for English [people]! (Sorry to harp on these people, but Londoners can be lacking in a sense of humour ˗ you’re never quite sure if you’re on safe ground!)

 

Tomorrow I’ve got to get up rather earlier than I have the last few days, and go and get tickets for Dance of Death ˗ with Olivier!! Fabulous. [I presume this was the stage production, but since that began in 1967, I may have been talking about the film version from 1969.] I stayed the night at Dave’s on Sat, and then spent some time getting lost in Soho looking for the Catholic Church in there that Abigail and I had gone to on Ash Wed. Soho is easy to go straight thru, but difficult to track anything down in. I found it though and won’t lose it again! I was coming from the opposite direction this time, which was why it was so difficult. Actually I had been trying to find another street when I ran across it! Lots of love, Mike. 

13/3/69 - Hamlet and Hertford

13/3/69 [Completely handwritten letter on an aerogramme]

Dear Mum, I’m writing a few words now before I forget again. THANK YOU for the sweets & biscuits which arrived nicely in time for LENT. However, I didn’t think it would really be wise to leave them another six weeks so I gave myself a special dispensation and have started on them. The biscuits, I’m afraid, got very knocked about; I think the packing had come loose and they were crushed but eatable. Please don’t make a habit of this. 3 Post Orders a week ˗ I don’t want a bankrupt mother on my hands!!

Thanks too, for all your concern and prayers about me ˗ I am feeling a lot better, though I still have this choky cough, but at least I’m beginning to feel a little like my old energetic and cheery self again. You know that I used to boast that I could never feel blue for long? ˗ well, this was the longest time I’ve ever felt and I was beginning to wonder really what was wrong with me ˗ no life, listless, etc. But others in the place (the Centre) have had the same trouble. Must be a bug or someut..

We’ve (Mike, Kate and friends) just been to a production of Hamlet at the Round House ˗ an old railway turntable building converted into a theatre. The audience sits, almost, on three sides of the stage, and consequently everyone is very close, and feels right in it. Nicol Williamson was Hamlet ˗ and fabulous, as he always is. The rest of the cast was equally superb. Man alive, it really is a fantastic play, and the mere fact of knowing it so well (this is the 4th or 5th version I’ve seen) made it all the more effective. In two scenes I felt like crying out loud ˗ where Hamlet and his mother have the long argument, and when Laertes tries not to cry on hearing that Ophelia, his sister, has just drowned, but can’t restrain his tears. The fight scene at the end was horrifying, it was so well done and so close. And actors would come right thru the audience ˗ you really were in the thick of things. I’d like to go again!!

NEXT DAY ˗ Spent a boring morning at the Lortzing ‘Opera Rehearsal’ rehearsal. [I presume this must have been a production put on at the Opera Centre, though I don’t remember anything about it.] What a load of old rubbish this is ˗ some of the music is “pretty,” but the dialogue is the sort of stuff I gave up writing years ago!! [Remembering at this time that I was an ancient man of 24] I feel it’s just a waste of time.

Later this afternoon Delia Wallis and I set off for Hertford (pronounced HARFORD) where I was to accompany her (unpaid except for expenses) at an Old Folks party. At Kings Cross [Station] we met up with her boyfriend Robert, who seems a pleasant gentle soul. (But he’s a singer!! Just been touring with the Welsh Opera For All.) We travelled rather slowly up to Hertford and walked in heavy rain to her (family ) home, which is a large (3-storeyed) place of the type I thought had all been converted into flats. Hertford seems rather pleasant ˗ some of it old, some very mod. We had some tea there, and eventually her brother-in-law, Clive (married to Coral), drove us to the Corn Exchange where hundreds of old people were  being treated to a party-cum-concert. We were on after a party of schoolgirls who sang a seemingly endless medley of songs, and vaguely danced. On arriving at the piano and playing I soon discovered it had no sustaining pedal which was a considerable handicap!!  However the songs (4 oldies) were all very very popular and after this I was driven back to the station.

When I got to Kings Cross again I remembered George Bamford [the music copyist] had said he had some more stuff for me. The lift in their flats isn’t working and after climbing 5 flights I found he wasn’t ready to give me the stuff ˗ I’d originally said I’d go tomorrow! Anyway he invited me in to watch an old pro on TV (colour ˗ which isn’t very attractive; it’s too inconsistent) who was playing jazz on a vibraphone ˗ with four sticks. Which is almost like trying to hit the right keys on a piano with sticks. He was fabulous and made the climb worthwhile.

Lots of love, Mike

*[Delia Wallis sang with Convent Garden, and later must have moved to the USA to work. She was on the staff of Fredonia State University of New York prior to her death in 2009.]

March 1969 - Colds in the head and chest, and an exciting win

10.3.69

Dear Mum, I’ve been meaning to get going on this letter all week, since I received your one about the Linguaphone records, but it has been one hell of a week and I just haven’t got round to it. Anyway, about the records: yes, I did bring them with me, and funnily enough, the day I received your letter I was taking them to Lindsay Campbell, who’d been asking me for them for about a month! Does that put you in a very awkward position? Certainly, as soon as Lindsay is finished with the, I’ll post them out if you’d like. [No idea why my mother wanted these records, which I must have brought over with me from NZ.]

About the Italian and German newspapers, I’m waiting for an opportunity to be in the West End at the time of day when the shops are open. I dare say there are other places, but Piccadilly is the only one I’ve been able to recall seeing foreign papers in. Actually I was there on Friday evening...and forgot!

Well, to bring you up to date on recent events. When I last wrote it was at the end of a day in bed, and I was just thinking that I was getting over that sore throat I had, when blow me down, I suddenly found I was the possessor of another cold! You wouldn’t believe it would you? Colds at home always used to start in the head and go down to my chest. But here they do what they please, and I’ve had them going up and down with great abandon. Anyway I had to go in on Friday (though they sent me home early in the end ˗ not for my sake, but for the singers!) and I thought that perhaps I could get something to knock the cold back, so I went and got some Coldrex tablets (which I wouldn’t normally touch, as they leave me feeling all drugged) and they did the trick eventually, by sort of holding the thing up in my head somewhere, and not letting it run all over the shop. I felt revolting, because I kept feeling as though I was in a permanent dream state, but they seemed to calm the effects of the cold down enough to enable me to go into this last week with some degree of calm. 

However, it left me with a most horrible chest cough ˗ one where the phlegm was so far down in my chest that I couldn’t cough it up. And though I took some cough medicine that someone at the Centre suggested it didn’t help. The same person suggested that I might be getting bronchitis, which gave me scare, as you’d expect, so when I got up to the Crowls on Friday night I said that I thought I’d better see a doctor soon, as the whole thing was worrying me terribly. Reg suggested we get hold of a doctor up here in Palmers Green, and tell him that I was just visiting up there and see if they would do something for me ˗ rather than wait until I could find out where the doctor hangs out in Blackheath. So yesterday morning, he rang up someone and they made an appointment for ten to ten, and I went round and a Lady doctor (it’s always embarrassing that ˗ now I know how it feels for a woman to have a male doctor examining her) listened to my chest and said I didn’t have bronchitis, and gave me some sickly sweet, but bitter, medicine which does seem to be doing some good. At least when I cough now, something dislodges, rather than staying there!

Back to last week ˗ and again, just to keep things in chronological order! On Sat morning, I hired a studio at the Blackheath Conservatoire ˗ like everything else, about two minutes walk ˗ and went in intending to do three hours work on the stuff for the re-audition of the Opera for All that was on the following Monday. However, about three-quarters of the way through my time, I was rung up by John Kentish (our Director of Studies, whatever that means, at the Centre, and a man who doesn’t even recognise me when I meet him round the place!) He wanted to know if I would come up in the afternoon and play Traviata for the people from the Opera Federation which was meeting at the Centre over the weekend. They must sing through the opera while James Robertson takes them thru it and gives them an idea of how it should go. Well, I wasn’t very keen, quite honestly, as I had all the weekend shopping to do, and also still felt rotten with my cold, but when he said the magic words: we’ll pay you, I accepted! (They paid me three guineas in the hand for two hours work ˗ and I didn’t play a good deal of the time! No wonder they don’t make any money. I felt a bit silly throughout, as my eyes were watering, and I couldn’t even concentrate on what I was doing completely.) Anyway, the people from the Opera Fed. Who are out and out amateurs, wouldn’t have worried because they barely seemed to know what they were doing, let alone anyone else.

Went to bed reasonably early on both Sat and Sunday nights, and on Monday morn went to the first Fidelio with the 83-year-old [Otto] Klemperer conducting. Or so they say: to my eyes he appeared to be asleep most of the time. It seems a bit curious to me. I mean, when a man is so old that he can no longer do an even reasonably good job of work, I don’t see the point of his doing it ˗ however great he may have been. Klemperer has been a fine conductor, and perhaps some of the finer details of this production were due to him, but really it seemed more to me that the orchestra was looking after itself, and that the singers were doing likewise. Considering they couldn’t even see his beat, it was so tiny, I don’t see how they could have been following him! I’m told the prompter in the prompt box was really who was keeping the singers together! And it was so slow. [This slowness is confirmed by someone else online.] This is also due to his age, and while some small details, that might normally be overlooked, came to light, the thing fell apart dramatically. I didn’t stay for the second act (though I would have liked to ˗ because in spite of all I’ve said above, there was a curious fascination about it all. The soprano, some of whose singing was like mine ˗ horrifying ˗ had a lot of personality. Again she shouldn’t really be doing the part ˗ she can’t in actual fact sing a lot of it properly ˗ but she does make you watch her) but went back to the Opera Centre to do a bit more work on my audition music. (I don’t know what’s wrong with this typewriter but it’s constantly wrecking the side of this page and tearing it to pieces!)

act of a rehearsal of

The audition was later in the afternoon, and I was first. This time they really listened to us, by contrast with the previous occasion when they had raced through the reps. But in the end it made not much difference, as I didn’t get a job. Robertson called each of the reps into his office the next day, and had a long chat with them. Alistair [Dawes] got the English Opera For All tour, but the other job which was going hasn’t been filled at all for some reason. If Alistair hadn’t got it, I would have been a bit annoyed because he is the one who really deserves it, but I also feel that I could have done it. Anyway, Robertson and I had this talk, and it at least cleared a few things up. From what he says it is worthwhile my continuing in this profession, but he seems to feel that I have some catching up to do ˗ which is what I’d felt all along, because the others have all been doing full time music for so long.

continued on a second aerogram.

The problem is of course, how to do this catching up. He reckons I work very hard ˗ in fact he said he sometimes wonders if I don’t work too hard ˗ good grief! ˗ but as far as I can see, I’ve got to work hard to stay with the others. Isn’t it a problem? I just don’t know where to start to help myself. I’d thought perhaps of going to some small opera house in Germany or somewhere (there is a lot of work there) but it’s a matter of getting there. He suggested I might try teaching for a while but while I don’t fancy it it may do some good, even if it was only part time. I’d thought of some part time work ˗ preferably musical (for example with George Bamford if he’d take me on ˗ he obviously needs an assistant) and filling in the rest of the time with coaching. But here too I’m at a disadvantage, as I only know a limited number of people. I’d thought of going back to Aussie, where at least the standards aren’t quite so high [!], and where perhaps I could get the sort of experience I need to help me cope over here. But as Michael says it’s a long way away from the mainstream of things and it wouldn’t be worthwhile going back there unless I definitely had some work. And unless they’d take me on my Opera Centre background, I’d probably have to go all the way out there to audition or something. AAAAAAgh! (excuse me!) Whatever happens I’ll have to start getting onto people soon, and get something underway before the next term is too far advanced. So there we are.

On Wednesday, the Tauber competition was to take place in Wigmore Hall, and so Abigail [Ryan] and I went along, and found that we were something like eleventh on the list, out of twelve. What a long wait. From where we were it sounded as though Abigail didn’t stand a chance, the voices seemed to be so good, and when we did go on, I don’t really think she sang all that well. Anyway, after everyone was finished we went down into the hall, and waited with a whole pile of Abigail’s relations who had made an occasion of it and come down from Manchester. There was her mother, a lovely plump homely woman with the sweetest eyes I’ve ever seen, and her aunt (whom I later found out was likely to burst into an old Music Hall song on the slightest pretext) and her two sisters, Mary (who was mad as a snake and three months pregnant)  and Vera, a rather more straight-laced girl, but still very friendly. And there was also Tommy her brother, a tall, balding very gentle man.

Eventually the judges came out and of course the hall was electric. They then announced after considerable spiel, that though there had been many lovely voices there this afternoon, the aim of the prize (a year in Vienna studying at the Academy with all expenses paid) was to help someone with potential to develop, and the prize therefore went to Abigail Ryan. Well, you’ve never seen anything like it. Abigail was by this time sitting with her sisters and aunt, while I was with her mother and her flatmate, a middle-aged spinster of American origin, and her young friend, an Anglican girl doctor (who practises in Wood Green ˗ I thought she might have turned out to be the lady doctor I was to have yesterday) who has recently come out of a convent where she spent 18 months before deciding it wasn’t for her.

Abigail’s mother gave me a kiss and a hug (which nearly made me vanish from sight) then rushed over and hugged the American woman (Miriam is her name) and meanwhile Abigail had stood up, sat down again, been clapped, stood up again, tried to get out of the row she was in, walked briskly up the aisle to fin there was no way to get up on stage (!) walked round through the connecting doors and arrived on stage looking considerably confused, and there she was presented with a large bouquet of flowers, and congratulated by the judges and photographed by a funny little man who suddenly appeared from nowhere. I think we were all as excited as she was.

I was terribly pleased, especially as when I had been sitting down at first and Abigail had gone off to talk to someone (this was before the announcement) some idiot German woman behind me had been spouting off in a know-all fashion about this Abigail saying she shouldn’t be singing dramatic soprano, as though she was a specimen of some sort, and she had got a bit of a shock when she recognised the accompanist was sitting right in front of her ˗ I hope she got even more of a shock when the winner was announced. These people who have all the knowledge of the world tucked away in their brains annoy me not a little. [Possibly the pot calling the kettle black, I suspect.]

Naturally this all called for a celebration. I was the first to arrive backstage ˗ and Abigail gives me a big kiss ˗ in front of all the dignitaries and officials and judges. They didn’t seem to mind, and I can’t say I did either. Anyway, we all (family and friends) went off to the pub down the road, and stayed there for about an hour ˗ filling the air with laughter at a whole lot of in-Catholic jokes: the whole family is Catholic of course. And they’re terribly friendly people, and terribly funny. We all went off after this (we’d picked up another one of the students by this time, David Harrison, who’d just come into a whole lot of money and insisted on paying for things left right and centre ˗ the evening cost me practically nothing ˗ though I did try to pay ˗ and with him in tow, nine of us (Miriam had left by then) went to a restaurant called the La Laguna, near the Coliseum [Theatre], and took over the basement section. We must have been a bit noisy, as there were some other people there originally!) Then they went to another pub, and just sat, and then we all went to Miriam and Abigail’s flat in St John’s Wood (by tube) and stayed there for a while, watching a foggy TV picture (it starred the man all the women had seen in a musical in the West End the previous night and they’d all fallen in love with him) and playing some songs on the piano.

I left quite early as I still had a hectic couple of days to follow. I had to play for 5 of the singers auditioning at the Wells on Friday, and we were told on Thursday that instead of only having to sing one song each they should have two prepared, so this meant a whole lot of last minute work. I can’t say I felt particularly happy about any of the playing I did, and anyway, we all think that the whole business was merely a courtesy thing because the Wells always used to audition the singers that were leaving the Centre and had stopped doing this last year.

Yesterday, Reg and I went down to Southend, because in the last few days the sun has come back to us (we’ve hardly seen it all winter ˗ it’s horrible). We spent about four hours wandering around ˗ it’s a resort, of sorts, because it’s actually on the Thames estuary ˗ tho this is very wide. (They call it Southend-on-Mud!) It has the longest pier ˗ a mile ˗ and at the end of it are restaurants, cafes, theatres, etc. It’s quite a thing ˗ with even an electric railway running its length.

With a bit of luck the fresh air may have done some good ˗ lots of love, Mike.

Late Feb, 1969: hectic schedule...

28.2.69

Dear Mum, how are things with you? I’m at home once more ˗ in the middle of the week when I should be at work ˗ I just don’t know what is wrong with me of late. In spite of taking some vitamin pills since I had my last cold, I woke up yesterday with a screamingly sore chest, and wobbly legs, and a sore head. Anyway I went to school, and though I had intended coming home in the afternoon ˗ I had nothing set out to do ˗ I stayed on and did some of the work for the very busy week I’ve got next week: the re-audition for Opera for All on Monday, playing for Abigail Ryan at the Wigmore Hall for the Tauber contest on Wednesday, and playing for three of the singers doing an audition for the Wells on Friday. I intended going in today, and even got up and was dressed, but once again I felt all shakey, and finally went back to bed. I was supposed to go and have dinner with Mike [Tither] tonight too. I’m not feeling bad just at this moment but equally I don't feel a hundred per cent. I’m really fed up with being below par, and wish I knew what to do about it.

Sorry there have been such long gaps between letters, but I was terribly busy last week. Went with Abigail to a play called the Delicate Balance, done by the [Royal] Shakespeare Co. The acting of this company ˗ it’s a repertory one ˗ is always superb, and even if the play isn’t much good, the cast is well worth seeing. Actually it was a fairly interesting play, though I can’t say I saw the point of it all. Peggy Ashcroft was in it, and also Michael Hordern and Sheila Hancock ˗ who used to be in a crazy TV thing called The Rag Trade. Abigail and I decided at the last minute to go ˗ we were on a [number] 15 bus, which meant we could go all the way into town, and both had originally intended to go straight home. But I had to collect some stuff from George Bamford, the copyist, and so we 

St Patrick's Catholic Church, Soho Square

decided to see if we could get seats. [It sounds like this was a patch in which I thought Abigail and I might become an item. It wasn’t to be, though for a very good reason.]We did, and then I went tearing up to Kings Cross while Gail went and got some seats at Convent Garden, and when I got back we went to Ash Wednesday mass at St Pats in Soho. They had a choir singing old 14th century music, and the sound seemed to float all around the ceiling. Gorgeous, and there was a little old drunk in the back of the church who spent the last quarter of an hour using all the four-letter words in his vocab to mutter his way through the mass. And no one did anything to stop him; I don’t suppose there was much that could be done anyway! [

When we came out of church it was snowing hard, as it had been on and off all day, and we got covered in the stuff going to the theatre. This was one of the worst falls I’ve seen, adn there was complete chaos all over. I was lucky that the trains had started running again by the time I got out of the play but other people had been waiting for about two hours!

The next night Kevin and I went to see The Cocktail Party, by T S Eliot, with Alec Guinness in the lead. If anything this was even more obscure than the previous night! But it was very well done generally, with the exception of one of the actors, who recited his verse with the accents all wrong (the play is in blank verse) and made it sound all unnatural.

The next night I had my first experience of a laundrette, and found it quite interesting. I also realised just how clean washing things in a machine like that is to washing them by hand. [!] my shirts have always seemed to be clean, but this was the first time my underclothes and hankies were really whitened again! I went up to Crowls that night too. Next morning I had to go back down to Kings Cross to collect a huge pile of music to be checked; it subsequently took me all weekend, ! ˗ and then meet one of last year’s rep students who is now at the Wells whom [Uncle] Reg had met up with at his church, and whom he had invited around so that I mgiht have a chat with him. We spent about an hour and a half talking, and it was very interesting. I’m afraid the Crowls must have thought I was being a bit rude, doing nothing but work all weekend, but the thing was that I had to take it back to Bamford on Sunday evening. (And then I got some more on Monday ˗ which completely filled in another evening. It was music for a film score, for Alfred the Great, and had to be ready for recording on Wednesday ˗ that is, yesterday. [The film score was written by Raymond Leppard, who, as Wikipedia puts it without the pun intended, ‘played an instrumental role in the rebirth of interest in baroque music.’ ]

On Sunday night Kevin [Flaherty] and I and some others from the Centre went to a concert at the Festival Hall conducted by Andre Previn, with John Ogdon playing Rachmaniov’s Third [Piano] Concerto. I didn’t like this latter much, but they also played a Haydn Symphony very well, and a Symphony by William Schuman, a modern American composers, which was very exciting. [Sunday 23 February 1969 André Previn Symphony No. 85, ‘La Reine’ HAYDN Symphony No. 3 WILLIAM SCHUMAN Piano Concerto No. 3 RACHMANINOV John Ogdon piano.]

On Tuesday, I went to see Gloriana ˗ by Britten. It’s an opera that was written for the present Queen’s coronation, and wasn’t much of a hit at the time: certainly by comparison with his others. It does have a rather weak first act, and the last act is only good up to a certain point ˗ it’s basically the libretto that is the fault ˗ because the music is fabulous. One scene especially makes the opera worthwhile. This is the quartet scene in the second act. It’s only about seven minutes long, but it is so exciting the way it builds up from the single character on stage to a marvellous quartet bit with 3 of the characters singing a sort of vengeance piece while the fourth character, a woman, does great sweeps around the stage in great anxiety. It’s full of very neat touches too. At the end of the first act, a prayer scene, the curtain falls on complete silence ˗ no one dared clap until it was down. There is a masque in the beginning of the 2nd act, which is entirely accompanied by unaccompanied chorus singing. (?) And the ball scene in the end of the second act, where the queen, in making a fool of someone also actually makes a fool of herself, is partially accompanied by an onstage band, which every now and then is taken over by a rowdy and horribly orchestrated (with sliding trombone sounds and lots of percussion) version of the band music.

[handwritten] I’m glad to hear Mary [?] is coming up to see you ˗ that’ll be very good for you I should think. A pity isn’t it that you can’t cook meals for Fred [the cat].

Reg didn’t blink when I told him there was a girl staying in the flat. Thought I’d better tell him. [Goodness knows why!]

I’ve also got some checking to do for the Centre’s Gianni Schicchi parts. More cash I hope! Mike. [The Opera Centre included Gianni Schicchi in one of its student productions.]

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