Item 34 - Letter from Donald Tovey to R. C. Trevelyan

Is hoping to come in September and finish the score of Ariadne ["The Bride of Dionysus"] now it is 'perfectly safe'. Fears it will have disappointed Trevelyan that he did not get the opera finished 'straight off', but he had to take advantage of the support given to his music by 'those angelic creatures Adolf & Fritz Busch' to get his 'smaller and more portable works launched'. Fritz Busch, after commissioning Tovey's symphony, offered him a choice between it and the opera for the winter; Tovey thought that the symphony would get a 'first-rate performance' but the Aachen opera singers he had heard would not do the same for the opera, so it would be best to take that to Vienna in January to see what [Franz] Schalk can do with it, until the British public can 'follow a sustained musical idea again'. Hopes to finish the score in Trevelyan's presence, instead of when he was 'at the other end of nowhere'. Will call at the Shiffolds on Monday the 8th and hopes to hear some new poetry.