Pièce 195 - Letter from Donald Tovey to R. C. Trevelyan and Elizabeth Trevelyan

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Dr Veiel's Klinik, Cannstatt, Stuttgart. - Will be a 'great triumph' if Miss Busch succeeds [in revising her German translation of "The Bride of Dionysus"]; wants the Trevelyans to 'keep her spirits up' as he does not think she realises what a task it will be. She has asked him to make the lines that need altering, whereas it would be much quicker to mark the ones which do not; his time in education must have made him 'habitually judge by improvement than by actual attainment', as he wonders how he could have thought this version 'could be tinkered'. He knows that 'stock Italian operas are sung to very bad German translations', but not to 'unsingable ones'. Has great confidence in Miss Busch's 'thoroughness' and ability to 'deal with the problem once she has grasped its nature', which she had not when she wrote her first version. Now she has heard the opera sung, so may have it in her head, and she will have Tovey's 'explicit advice on almost every bar'. Hopes only that she will not be discouraged. It may be an advantage that 'the chief weakness in the Edinburgh performance was the enunciation' since the public could make out the story without hearing the words, though the first Nereid chorus needs revising. Miss Busch will soon get used to what Tovey thinks is unsingable or otherwise: 'Wagner's worst crackjaw (from which [he] can quote ad infinitum) is well within [his] powers of declamation at the proper tempo'.