18 May 1961

My dear Mr. von Thal:

It was exceedingly good of you to write me and call my attention to the article on 'Emilia di Liverpool.' I have ordered photostats of it from The Library of Congress. I appreciate your kindness very much and hope you will let me hear from you again if your hear of something you feel I should know of.

I fell into a bit of luck Monday last. I had gone over to Bloomington, Indiana where the Metropolitan was putting on two performances as part of its annual spring tour. After Monday's Nabucco I went back and talked to Thomas Schippers (who conducted very well indeed) to inquire about the version he made of Donizetti's Duca d'Alba. He bowled me over by offering to send me his photostats of the score. I am particularly interested in this as I managed to get hold of a tape of the Matteo Salvi version of Duca d'Alba, and thus I will have an excellent chance to compare the two versions in detail. I've also recently copied a tape of Anna Bolena and have promptly fallen in love with the work. I am in the midst of the gratifying experience of finding that familiarity breeds greater respect for Donizetti.

The Metropolitan performances were interesting, but scarcely blue-ribbon. I was delighted at long last to hear Nabucco face to face, but the singing, especially that of Rysanek who was in poor voice, was not the best. The sets were hideous and Rennert's direction ineffective. Thanks to Schippers' conducting and the chorus, the evening had some thrills. The other work was Martha, and, believe it or not, it was the first time I've heard the opera in the house. De los Angeles was charming (in the Bori, Mafalda Favero sense) and Tucker sang stoutly. The production, a new one, was marred, though, by the Germanic humors of Ebert's direction which were in conflict with de los Angeles' authentic Latin flavor and Tucker's idiomatic approximation of it. I enjoyed myself thoroughly at both performances.

My Donizetti work, at the present, is focused on working up an article on Donizetti's collapse and illness to appear in Opera News to accompany the broadcast of Lucia with Sutherland next December. The article will be a preliminary version of one of my chapters. Along with this, I'm working on a translation of Massanet's Werther for the Indiana University School of Music which I hope they will use next year. Then, too, it's end of the term and I find myself surrounded by Himalayas of papers to grade and return. The end of June and early July I'm off to the East Coast for a month of rooting about in several large libraries.

I've had the disappointment of not getting the Guggenheim Fellowship I applied for, which I hoped would get me to Italy during the summer of 1962, but I've taken some heart from the fact that none of my friends who applied for Guggenheims got them either and that I have yet to hear of someone getting one on his first try. I am now sounding out some other possibilities to see if I can find some foundation or fellowship who will underwrite my trip.

I want to thank you again for your great kindness in telling me of the article on Emilia.

Yours sincerely,

6 Sept. 1961

5:40 AM (too damnably hot to sleep)

My dear van Thal:

(in time!)

I returned from a short trip to Florida and Charleston, South Carolina, to find your very welcome letter waiting for me. I was quite frankly a bit relieved to get it, because while I knew you were busy and were quite possibly out of town in August, nevertheless I had a nagging thought that perhaps my last to you had been too much in the line of unsollicited autobiography. Staying a few days with old friends in Florida was thoroughly pleasant, but the place itself, which I had never seen before, was garish-ghastly, except for an occasional glimpse of "un-developed" country, stretches of sea oats, palmetto scrub and sand, which gave some sense of what the place was like before the white man, let alone the tourist, appropriated it. Charleston, however, I thoroughly enjoyed because it lives connected with its past and positively resists the newcomer, refusing to acknowledge any terms but its own. To someone like me, who can take Donizetti seriously, Charleston made sense.

The address of the Saturday Review is 25 W. 45th Street, New York 36, New York. I would write directly to Irving Kolodin, who is an Associate Editor, their Jeremiah of the musical scene, and who, I know, has great respect for Newman. Have you ever run across any of E.N.'s criticism he wrote for the New York Post during the season of 1924-25? At the risk of quoting something you might already be familiar with, let me send you this -- I think it a classic of its kind. It's a reply, published in the Post on 20 Dec. 1924, to a letter from the press agent of the Metropolitan, W. J. Guard, who had written Newman, urging him to take into account the problems of putting on a 24-week repertory season that averaged eight performances a week. Newman wrote: "My argument was that with its human material and its financial resources the Metropolitan could easily be very much better than it is. You ask me to take into account your internal difficulties and troubles. With all possible sympathy, we cannot. Neither the press nor the public has anything to do with the private difficulties of an artist or an artistic institution. The press and public are concerned solely with results.... If you were asked to buy a pair of shoes the soles of which were badly fitted to the uppers, you would reject them even though you were assured that the trouble came from the shoemaker's having injured his hands at baseball. If you were viewing an exhibition of pictures, you would not regard it as any excuse for a piece of bad coloring that the artist's wife had left him. If at a recital a pianist pedalled badly, you would not, on being told that he suffered from am ingrowing toenails, declare that his pedalling was ideal. So do not blame the community if it tells you, in all politeness, that it has no concern whatsoever with your internal difficulties. It is your business to face the difficulties and overcome them. If you will not face them, or having faced them, failed to overcome them, and the artistic results are bad, you must not blame the critics and the public for noticing they are bad. It is not a matter of ill-will on their part; it is merely a matter of good eyesight. There was once a Scotch parson who said in a sermon: 'And now, my brethren, we have come to a very deeficult passage; and having looked it bowldly in the face, we will pass on.' His talents were wasted in the church. He should have gone in for operatic management."

I took some Donizetti material with me on my junket South. I ran across some publications of the Accademia Chigiana in Siena, where there are some Donizetti ltrs. in the archives. The character of his nephew, Andrea, is puzzling. It was he who was the official family representative during D.'s collapse in Paris. Yet, with all the urgency and all the embarrassing gossip, he dawdled for three months getting from Constantinople (where his father, D.'s brother Giuseppe, was the Sultan's bandmaster) to Paris. His main interest seemed to be with D.'s property rather than his person. After D. died, his two brothers were his heirs. The other brother, Francesco, a thorough-going incompetent, died only eight months after Gaetano, and left all his property to his servant. Andrea's fury at this puts him in something less than a becoming light, even more his obstructionism when D.'s brother-in-law tried to reclaim, perfectly legally, his sister's dowry. Part of this, of course, is raw greed, but I can't help feeling that his unresponsiveness to D.'s pitiable condition was due, at least in part, to resentment of his uncle's success. At one time, Andrea had studied music and failed to make a go of it, and took up jurisprudence as second-best.

I want to thank you for your kindness in sending Streatfield and Florence, my wife, that unabashed covetress of shoes, is looking forward to seeing Vanity Fair. You were good to tell me how to get in touch with Bonynge. I look forward, as always, to hearing from you, and if there is ever anything I can do for you, over here, or send you, don't hesitate to let me know.

As ever,

21 August 1964

Dear Bertie:

Your welcome letter came this morning. I was glad to get your news, but sorry to hear of the hiccoughs. I have a sure-fire, though repulsive-sounding, remedy for them which a doctor (a pathologist!) told me about. As soon as they begin I eat a tablespoon of peanutbutter (nothing else) direct from the spoon. It works for me, but I don't know how it would be if they've been going on for some time. There's something about trying to unstick the peanutbutter from the roof of one's mouth, maybe, or else it rests heavily directly upon the diaphragm; in any event, I can vouch for it.

Now to try to answer your letter and deal with the various items in it. First of all, thanks for ringing up Shirley, and as evidence of your efficacy the first batch of proofs arrived safe and sound. I was thrilled to see them, believe me. By the way, I presume the second copy is for me to keep and mull over before the page proof comes. Right?

Now, as to Bellini. I am pleased you want a letter. In fact, I have enclosed translations of two, because they form (I think) a fascinating contrast and some insight into the Bellini myth and gentle art of puffery. Before I explain, let me tell you the letters are translated from Vincenzo Bellini: *Epistolario*, (a cura di Luisa Cambi), published by Mondadori, 1943. (I imagine their copyright is still in force, so maybe you would have to get their OK to use these?)

The story of these two letters is this. The first, addressed to Florimo (Bellini's schoolmate and biographer, later the librarian of the Conservatorio at Naples) was printed by Florimo in 1882, with this note. "I gave the autograph of this letter to Cavaliere Temple, the brother of Lord Palmerston, when he was Ambassador of Her Brittanic Majesty in Naples, contenting myself in order to make a *beau geste* to this exalted personage with keeping just a copy of it." It is clear that Florimo, as was his custom, rewrote the letter in what seemed to him appropriate terms. (It would be interesting to try to trace the autograph copy, which might well be in the hands of the heirs of Sir William Temple.) The second letter is to Bellini's uncle, one Vincenzo Ferlite of Catania, and is authentic. The autograph of this letter belonged (at least in 1943) to Euplio (lovely name!) Reina of Catania. The contrast in tone between the two letters I find fascinating. In the first there is no hint of the cock-crowing over his rivals, so characteristic of Bellini, but it contains little touches in which Florimo urges acceptance of his role as best-friend and closest-confidante of Bellini. In the second, the reference to the very rich woman is to the Countess Giulia Samayloff, who was successively the *amante* of the composer Giovanni Pacini (taking him over from Napoleon's sister Pauline) and later of the tenors Giovanni David and Antonio Poggi and Godness knows who else besides. Who the very powerful woman he mentions is I am not positive, but I would not be surprised if it was a member of the Visconti circle. I hope you find these letters interesting and I would be delighted if they might prove useful to you.

The inconsistencies between these letters are striking. In the forged one, he is supposed to boast of his strength, but in the authentic one (dated 2 days later!) he says he is very weak. From the second letter it is clear that Norma wasn't really a tremendous fiasco (certainly not in the sense that the prima of Butterfly was) because Bellini got 4 calls at the end. There was some opposition in the house, but the silence after the first act was surely due to Pasta, Grisi and Donzelli quitting on the trio. What do you think?

Now about the Rossini. I would be glad to think seriously about putting together a collection of Rossini letters in English translation and with an introduction and notes. I see, however, some problems that would have to be resolved before I could undertake such a project. Chief problem is that I don't have any letters at hand. I would need photographic copies of letters, books with letters imxxx published, and this would involve some expense. If somehow I can get the materials in hand, I could go ahead in great shape. I would imagine that there ought to be quite a few autograph Rossini letters in libraries and private collections in England. Have you any helpful suggestions about how I might get hold of this.

How I wish there was some possible way to get to London for a bit. I love the place, and nothing would please me more than some good pow-wows face to face with you. Believe me, I hope the proofs of DONIZETTI will stir an American publisher into some constructive action.

You mention the criticism of your collection of letters having no theme, and you ask me how I would tack such a project. Frankly, I am suspicious of exo-skeletal themes: Bawdy composers between the sheets or Little genuises and how they grew and such rot. It seems to me much more plausible and sensible to allow thematic ideas to emerge from the letters as you get a number of them together. I would think certain groupings would naturally tend to emerge (reactions to criticism, activities while engaged in composition, friendship, rivalries, and so on). Wouldn't the real value of such a collection be to show the heterogeneity of the species composer, since you obviously can't limit yourselves to large chunks of a few men's correspondence. And besides most creative people, even the grubbiest, provided they are deeply stirred by something, have an eloquent letter in them. This talk of theme sounds like an editorial department's gimmick; personally I am more interested in people and how they felt, even if their feelings are not particularly admirable. Any composer's life and his words are in one very real sense irrelevant to their music anyway (for instance, if there's any sense of grandeur in Norma, there is no concomitant sense of it in any of Bellini's letters I've seen), and so I think you should feel perfectly free to show these composers as men embroiled in their human predicaments. I have no stomach for the cult of the genius anyway. This isn't too clear, probably, and it probably isn't any help, but here are some reactions fresh off the top of my pointed head.

Dear Bertie, I hope the hicoughs are vanished permanently. May everything go swimmingly for us both. Our best love to you and Phyllis. I look forward to hearing from you again.