Item 6 - Letter from Donald Tovey to R. C. Trevelyan

1 item: letter with envelope.

Northfields, Englefield Green, Surrey. - Has just received both of Trevelyan's letters, and 'agree[s] on all points'; where Trevelyan's suggestions [for the "Bride of Dionysus" libretto] differ from his own he prefers Trevelyan's, and doesn't mind the extra length before the 'foam-wanderer's chorus' since the terseness he needs does not mean Trevelyan should 'sacrifice natural contrast & logical transition to arithmetic'. Is impressed by what Trevelyan has done with the 'lumber-room-full of possible material' for Dionysus' second speech which he sent him. Emphasises that this is Trevelyan's play, and 'won't be [his] opera until [he has] set it'; and that his ideas are 'worth nothing' until Trevelyan treats them, at which point, if they become as good as his own they are his own. Praises the new speeches. Now his business is to attend to the music: asks Trevelyan to send him any variants as they occur so that he can enter them into his copy.

Is still not sure whether the music will move fast enough to get through the text in a reasonable time: classical opera, with its repetitions, cannot be compared, and nor can Wagner's short lines; Wagner's music also cannot be compared with Tovey's, as he is feeling his way to 'what looks like a much more formal dramatic style than his, - more symphonic & less constantly declamatory & anti-lyrical.' But this does not matter: if what results when the material is 'in musical shape' is seven or eight hours long, then the play must be arranged as a opera, and Tovey must beg Trevelyan to make him 'a present of its skeleton, or to reduce it to newspaper headlines' for him; Trevelyan must then publish it as a play and get independent performing rights, while Tovey sets all the choruses, includes those omitted from the opera, and supplies him with practical incidental music. But he hopes this will not be necessary. The difficulty about incidental music is that there is so much that 'absolutely must be sung... that it's operatic at once' and would suggest 'either desiccated opera or musical comedy'.