LEAGUE OF OPERA

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 101, 1 May 1930, Page 5

LEAGUE OF OPERA

THE BEECHAM SCHEME

FIVE YEARS' PROGRAMME

Sir Thomas Beocham informed a representative of "The Times" recently that the Imperial League of Opera, which he has organised, will begin its five years' programme of opera in September, somewhere outside London. There will be a preliminary season during the summer, but this is not to count as part of the five years' plan, but rather as a measure to complete the membership of the league and so to assure, the whole plan. Meanwhile, he said, steps .are to be taken in London and in those cities which have not yielded their full quota of members to obtain further support. Sir Thomas Beecham stated that in seven out of the eleven cities outside London the allotted membership had been reached. Local committees were working in the others. In London several thousand subscribers were still required, and propaganda during' February and March was to tako the form of a series of concerts in the larger suburbs, at which he would conduct and would also address the audiences. The reason was that' three-quarters of the London subscribers ■, were drawn from Westminster and Mayfair. Up to the present .the outer/areas had not. been very responsive. '' '• . ■ Details of the work which is to begin in September cannot be given for a few weeks, he added, pointing out that these cannot be definitely settled until it is seen precisely how the. subscribers are distributed. "Birmingham, for example," he said, "is finding more than its quota, and is therefore .'entitled to mo o opera thaii was originally contemplated. Other cities declare their intention of doubling their quota, and they 1 may be in a position to' demand more.- So my .plans at the moment are as elastic as they will have to be rigid when the league has its full membership and work begins." He insisted, however, that his main purpose was to have opera running practically the whole year and for this reason, in the interests of the full five years' scheme, and in order that arrangements might be made years ahead, it was that the total of subscribers should be complete before the start. "The public," he said, "do not realise that an opera must be planned long ahead and built like a house. I begin with 100 operas drawn from the schools of the seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. I shall give seventy or eighty of these, a large number of" them unfamiliar to the public of this country, over a period of. five years. I do not begin the contrary fashion of engaging singers and then fitting them into operas. I want to give operas, not necessarily to find employment for singers. -Having made the repertoire, I then go out to get the singers I* need. . Again I must make the arrangements far ahead. There are some I cannot get for two years. They are engaged under contract-in America and elsewhere." The league, he,declared, must know exactly where it'was in respect of its business arrangements and commitments for the full five years. The league was not going to begin and then, after two or three years, make another appeal to the public; that was too arduous an undertaking. It was generally recognised now- that the scheme of the league was the'only, likely one for creating a great opera in England. It was sufficiently advanced now and was. advancing every-.week;, so that he was taking a legitimate risk in making his plans for the whole five years, and de^ finite plans might be announced in a short time, when the distribution of the 'subscribers was settled.