THE LETTERS OF RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS

The White Gates,
Dorking, Surrey.

17th Septr. 1952

Dear Cedric

Thank you so much for your invitation, but I don’t think I can face “Electra”.¹ I remember being taken to it years ago by Beavis Ellis² and I thought the opening bars were from the wrong Opera and must be by Macfarren, and it sounded to me like that all the way through.
Yrs
RVW

(R. Vaughan Williams).

Cedric Glover, Esq.,
The Aldermoor,
Holmbury St Mary, Dorking.

1. Richard Strauss’s opera ‘Elektra’, first performed at Covent Garden in February 1910, so VW would have heard it around that time.
2. F.B. Ellis, at one of whose concerts of modern orchestral music the London Symphony received its first performance in 1914. He was killed in the first world war.