THE LETTERS OF RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS

The White Gates,
Dorking,
SURREY.

16th April, 1952.

Dear Mrs Thomson
It was so good of you to tell me about the performance on Friday.¹  I was very much interested in the ‘Birmingham Post’ criticism.  I do not think myself that the production was so bad as they make out, unless of course owing to a smaller stage they had to modify it a great deal.
It was so nice of Elizabeth to write to me.
What I should really like to see in the way of production is more or less like an Elizabethan stage without scenery, but galleries &c.
Ys sincerely
R. Vaughan Williams

Mrs. Thomson,
84, Oakfield Road,
Selly Park,
Birmingham.

1. Katharine Thomson had been to see the Covent Garden Opera Company’s production of Pilgrim’s Progress in Birmingham on April 11th, when the Theatre Royal was the only theatre in town allowed to open on Good Friday, because of the nature of the production. The Birmingham Post article (published on the 12^th) was by John Fitzwalter Waterhouse, generally one of VW’s more consistent and generous critics; he loved the opera but was critical of the production.