Item 103-104 - Postcards from Donald Tovey to R. C. Trevelyan

Postmarked Mainz. - Asks Trevelyan to expand the hint about Naxos in 'Act III (new style' [of "The Bride of Dionysus"]. Increasingly grateful to Trevelyan 'for having managed without narrative': in spite of Wagner 'living on narrative', Tovey feels that 'it combines all the musical uselessness of dramatic plot-machinery with the dramatic uselessness of lyric music". Thoughts on the music for A[riadne]'s despair. Has heard many operas in Germany: in the 'provincial towns' of Darmstadt, Mainz, Wiesbaden and Frankfurt there is 'a much-better-than-Beecham opera every day' and only pay five marks for the best seats. The singers are variable, but the orchestra, 'conducted by nobody in particular, is most respectable'. This does not make a profit, but is 'considered as much a necessity as the electric light, the churches & the tramcars'. Imagines Salisbury and Winchester having such institutions. Still struggling with the Theseus and Phaedra duet, but has fixed the shape.