12. Ballet Climax— Sadler’s Wells And After....

SADLER’S WELLS—a name with which to conjure—had been a part of my balletic consciousness for a long time. I had observed its early beginnings, its growth from the Old Vic to Sadler’s Wells to the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, with the detached interest of a ballet lover from another land. I had read about it, heard about it from many people, but I had not had any first hand experience of it since the Covent Garden Opera Trust had invited the Sadler’s Wells Ballet to move to Covent Garden from their famous ballet center, Sadler’s Wells. This they did, early in 1946, leaving behind yet another company called the Sadler’s Wells Theatre Ballet.

I arrived in London in April, 1946, at a time when I was very definitely under the impression that I would give up any active participation in ballet in any other form than as an interested member of the audience.

The London to which I returned was, in a sense, a strange London—a London just after the war, a city devastated by bombs, a city that had suffered grave wounds both physical and spiritual, a city of austerity.

It was also a London wherein I found, wherever I went, a people whose spirits were, nevertheless, high; human beings whose chins were up. The typical Cockney taxi-driver who brought me from Waterloo to my long-time headquarters, the Savoy, summed it all up on my arrival, when he said: “We’ll come out of this orlrite. We weren’t born in the good old English climate for nothin’. It’s all a bit of a disappointment; but we’re used to disappointments, we are. Why when ah was a kid as we ’ad a nice little picnic all arranged for Saturday afternoon, as sure as fate it rained and the bleedin’ picnic was put orf again.... We’re goin’ to ’ave our picnic one day; this ’ere picnic’s just been put orf, that’s all....”

As the porters were disposing of my luggage, the genial commissionaire at the Savoy, Joe Hanson, added his bit to the general optimism. After greeting me, he asked me if I had heard about the shipwreck in the Thames, opposite the Savoy. I had not, and wondered how I had missed the news of such a catastrophe.

“Well, it was like this, guv’nor,” he said. “Churchill, Eden, Atlee and Ernie Bevin went out on the river in a small boat to look the place over. Just as they were a-passin’ the ’otel ’ere, a sudden squall blew up and the boat was capsized.”

He paused and blew his nose vociferously into a capacious kerchief. “Who do you think was saved?”

“Churchill?” I enquired.

He shook his head in the negative.

“Eden?”

He shook his head.

“Atlee?”

Again he shook his head.

“Bevin?”

Once more the negative.

“No one saved?” I could hardly believe my ears.

“Ah, there’s where you’re wrong, sir.... England was saved!”

The commissionaire’s big frame shook with prideful laughter.

I freshened myself in my room and went down to my favorite haunt, my London H. Q., as I like to call it, the Savoy Grill, that gathering place of the theatrical, musical, literary, and balletic worlds of London. One of the Savoy Grill’s chief fixtures, and for me one of its most potent attractions, was the always intriguing buffet, with my favorite Scottish salmon. This time the buffet, while putting up a brave decorative front, was a little disappointing and, to tell the truth, a shade depressing.

But a glance at the entertainment advertisements in The Times (the “Thunderer,” I noted, was now a four-page sheet) showed me that the entertainment world was in full swing, and there was excitement in the air.

I dined alone in the Grill, then returned to my room and changed to black tie and all, for it was to be a festive evening, and walked the short distance between the Savoy Hotel and the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. I was going to the ballet in a completely non-professional capacity, as a member of the audience, going for the sheer fun of going, with nary a balletic problem on my mind.

I was to be the guest of David Webster, the Administrator of Covent Garden, who met me at the door and, after a brief chat, escorted me to my seat. My eyes traveled around the famous and historic Opera House, only recently saved from the ignominy of becoming a public dance hall. Here it was, shining and dignified in fresh paint, in damask, and in the new warm red plush fauteuils; poor though Britain was, the house had just been remodelled, redecorated, reseated, with a new and most attractive “crush bar” installed.

The depression I had felt earlier in the day vanished completely. Now that evening had come, there was a different aspect, a changed atmosphere. I looked at the audience that made up the sold-out house. From the top to the bottom of the great old Opera House they were a happy, relaxed, anticipatory people, ready to be entertained and stimulated. In the stalls, the audience was well-dressed and some of the evening frocks were, I felt, of marked splendor. But the less expensive portions of the house were filled, too, and I remembered something that great director, Ninette de Valois, who had made all this possible, had said way back in 1937: “The gallery, the pit [American readers should understand that the “pit” in the British theatre is usually that part of the house behind the “stalls” or orchestra seats, and is not, as in the States, the orchestra pit where the musicians are placed] and the amphitheatre are the basis and backbone of the people s theatre.... That they are the most loyal supporters will be maintained with deep appreciation by those who control the future of the ballet.”

There was, as I have said, an anticipatory atmosphere on the part of the audience, as if the temper of the people had become graver, simpler, and more concentrated; as if, during the war, when the opportunities for recreation and amusement were more restricted, transport more limited, the intelligence craved and sought those antidotes to a troubled consciousness of which ballet and its allied arts are the most potent.

While I relaxed and waited for the rising curtain with that same anticipatory glow that I always feel, yet, somehow, intensified tonight, I reflected, too, on the miracle that had been wrought. I remembered David Webster had told me how, only the year before, the company was preparing for a good-will tour to South America, and how the sudden end of the war had made that trip impracticable and unnecessary. It had become more urgent to have the company at home. Negotiations had been initiated between the Sadler’s Wells Ballet, the British Arts Council, and Boosey and Hawkes, who had taken over the Covent Garden lease, for the Sadler’s Wells Ballet to make its headquarters at Covent Garden, where it would be presented by the Covent Carden Opera Trust. Having been turned into a cheap dance hall before the war, Covent Garden’s restoration as a theatre devoted to the finest in opera and ballet required very careful planning.

All of this whetted my appetite. My eyes traveled to the Royal Box, to the Royal Crest on the great curtains, to the be-wigged footmen.... Slowly the lights came down to a dull glow, went out. A sound of applause greeted the entry into the orchestra pit of the conductor, the greatly talented musical director of the Sadler’s Wells organization, Constant Lambert. In a moment, the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, was filled with the magnificent sound of the overture to Tchaikowsky’s The Sleeping Beauty, played as only Lambert could play it.

Then the curtain rose, revealing Oliver Messel’s perfectly wonderful setting for the first act of this magnificent full-length ballet. Over all, about all, was the great music of Tchaikowsky. My eyes, my ears, my heart were being filled to overflowing.

The biggest moment of all came with the entrance of Margot Fonteyn as the Princess. I was overwhelmed by her entire performance; but I think it was her first entrance that made the greatest impact on me, with the fresh youthfulness of the young Princess, the radiant gaiety of all the fairy tale heroines of the world’s literature compressed into one.

I was so enchanted as I followed the stage and the music that I forgot all else but the miraculous unfolding of this Perrault-Tchaikowsky fairy story.

Here, at last, was great ballet. The art of pantomime, so long dormant in ballet in America, had been restored in all its clarity and simplicity of meaning. The high quality of the dancing by the principals, soloists, and corps de ballet, the settings, the costumes, the lighting, all literally transported me to another world. I knew then, in a great revelation, that great ballet was here to stay.

“This is Ballet!” I said, almost half aloud.

After the performance, back at the Savoy Grill once more, at supper I met, once again, Ninette de Valois, whose taste and drive and determination and abilities have made Sadler’s Wells the magnificent institution it is.

“Madame,” I said to her, “I think you’re ready to go to the States.”

“Are we?”

“Yes,” I replied, “you are ready.”

The supper was gay and charming and animated. I was filled with enthusiasm and was a long time falling asleep that night.

After that evening, there was no longer any attitude of “to hell with ballet” on my part. Ballet, I realized, with a fresh conviction solidifying the revelation I had had the night before, was here to stay. “To hell with ballet” had given way to “three cheers for ballet!”

After breakfast, the next morning, I telephoned David Webster to invite him to luncheon so that I might discuss details of the proposed American venture with him. During the course of the luncheon we went into all the major points and problems. Webster, I found, shared my enthusiasm for the idea and agreed in principle.

But, in accordance with the traditionally British manner, the thought and care and consideration that is given to every phase and every department, every suggestion, every idea, such matters do not move as swiftly as they do in the States. Before I started out for my usual London “constitutional” backwards and forwards across Waterloo Bridge, from where one looks up the Thames towards the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben, mother of all our freedoms, I sent flowers to Margot Fonteyn with a note of appreciation for her magnificent performance of the night before and for the great pleasure she had given me.

There followed extended discussions with Ninette de Valois, the Director of whom, perhaps, the outstanding characteristic is that her outlook is such that her greatest ambition is to see the Sadler’s Wells Ballet become such an institution in its own right that, as she puts it, “no one will know the name of the director.” However, before any decisions could be reached, it became necessary for me to get home. So, with the whole business still very much up in the air, I returned to New York.

No sooner was I back in my office than there came an invitation from Mayor William O’Dwyer and Grover Whalen for me to take over the direction of the dance activities for the Festival for the One Hundred Fiftieth Anniversary Celebration of the City of New York. I accepted the honor in the hope that I might be able to organize a completely international and representative Dance Festival, wherein the leading exponents of ballet and other forms of dance would have an opportunity to demonstrate their varied repertoires and techniques. To that end, I sent invitations in the name of the City of New York to all the leading dance organizations in the world, seeking their participation in the Festival. The response was unanimously immediate and enthusiastic; but, unfortunately, many of the organizations, possessing interesting repertoires and styles, were not in a position to undertake the costs of travel from far distant points, together with the heavy expenses for the transportation of scenery, equipment, and costumes. Among these was the newly-organized San Francisco Civic Ballet.

The Sadler’s Wells organization accepted the invitation in principle, as did the Paris Opera Ballet, through its director, Monsieur Georges Hirsch. Ram Gopal, brilliant exponent of the dance of India, accepted through his manager Julian Braunsweg; and, in this case, I was able to assist him in his financial problems, by bringing him at my own expense. Representing our native American dance were Doris Humphrey and Charles Weidman, together with their company. I happen to feel this group is one of the most representative of all our native practitioners of the “free” dance, in works that often come to grips with the problems and conflicts of life, and which eschew, at least for the time, pure abstraction. Most notable of these works, works in this form, is their trilogy: New Dance—Theatre Piece—With My Red Fires American dance groups were invited but for one reason or another were not able to accept.

As preparations for the Festival moved ahead, David Webster arrived from London to investigate the physical possibilities for the participation of the Sadler’s Wells Ballet as the national ballet of Great Britain.

The logical place for a Dance Festival of such proportions and such significance, and one of such avowedly international and civic nature, would have been the Metropolitan Opera House. Unfortunately, the Metropolitan had commitments with another ballet company. My friend and colleague, Edward Johnson, the then General Manager of the Metropolitan Opera Company, regretted the situation and did everything in his power to remedy the position and free our first lyric theatre for such an important civic event. However, the other dance organization insisted on its contractual rights and refused to give way, or to divide the time in any way.

The only other place left, therefore, was the New York City Center, in West Fifty-fifth Street. Webster made a thorough inspection of this former Masonic Temple from front to back, but found the place entirely inadequate, with a stage and an orchestra pit infinitely too small, and the theatre itself quite unsatisfactory for a company the size of the Covent Garden organization and productions. As a matter of fact, it would be hard to find a less satisfactory theatre for ballet production.

As Webster and I went over the premises together, I sensed his feeling about the building, which I shared. Nevertheless, I tried to hide my disappointment when, at last, he turned to me and said: “It’s no go. We can’t play here. Let us postpone the visit till we can come to be seen on your only appropriate stage, the Metropolitan.”

We had had preliminary meetings with the British Consul General and his staff; plans and promotion were rapidly crystallizing, and my disappointment was none the less keen simply because I knew the reasons for the postponement were sound, and that it could not be otherwise.

The Dance Festival itself, without Sadler’s Wells, had its successes and left a mark on the local dance scene. The City Center was no more satisfactory, I am afraid, for the Ballet of the Opera of Paris, presented by the French National Lyric Theatre, under the auspices of the Cultural Relations Department of the French Foreign Ministry, than it would have been for the Covent Garden company. It was necessary to trim the scenery, omit much of it, and use only part of the personnel of the company at a time. But, on the other hand, it was a genuine pleasure to welcome them on their first visit to the United States and Canada. In addition to the Dance Festival Season in New York, we played highly successful engagements in Montreal, Toronto, and Chicago.

The company was headed by a distinguished French ballerina in the true French style, Yvette Chauviré. Other principal members of the company, all from the higher echelons of the Paris Opera, included Roger Ritz, Christiane Vaussard, Michel Renault, Alexandre Kalioujny, Micheline Bardin, and Max Bozzini, with Robert Blot and Richard Blareau as conductors. The repertoire included Ports of Call, Serge Lifar’s ballet to Jacques Ibert’s Escales; Salad, a Lifar work to a Darius Milhaud creation; Lifar’s setting of Ravel’s Pavane; The Wise Animals, based on the Jean de la Fontaine fables, by Lifar, to music by Francis Poulenc; Suite in White, from Eduardo Lalo’s Naouma; Punch and the Policeman, staged by Lifar to a score by Jolivet; Divertissement, cuttings from Tchaikowsky’s The Sleeping Beauty; The Peri, Lifar’s staging of the well-known ballet score by Paul Dukas; The Crystal Palace, Balanchine’s ballet to Bizet’s symphony, known here as Symphony in C; Vincent d’Indy’s Istar, in the Lifar choreography; Gala Evening, taken from Delibes’ La Source, by Leo Staats; Albert Aveline’s Elvira, to Scarlatti melodies orchestrated by Roland Manuel; André Messager’s The Two Pigeons, choreographed by Albert Aveline; the Rameau Castor and Pollux, staged by Nicola Guerra; The Knight and the Maiden, a two-act romantic ballet, staged by Lifar to a score by Philippe Gaubert; and Les Mirages, a classical work by Lifar, to music by Henri Sauguet.

Serge Lifar returned to America, not to dance, but as the choreographer of the company of which he is the head.

I happen to know certain facts about Lifar’s behavior during the Occupation of France, facts I did not know at the time of the publication of my earlier book, Impresario. Certain statements I made in that book concerning Serge Lifar were made on the basis of such information as I had at the time, which I believed was reliable. I have subsequently learned that it was not correct, and I have also subsequently had additional, quite different, and reliably documented information which makes me wish to acknowledge that an error of judgment was expressed on the basis of inconclusive evidence. Lifar may not have been a hero; very possibly, and quite probably, he may have been indiscreet; but it is now obvious to any fair-minded person that there has been a good deal of malicious gossip spread about him.

Lifar was restored to his post at the head of the Paris Opera Ballet by M. Georges Hirsch, Administrator, Director of the French National Lyric Theatres, himself a war-hero with a distinguished record. The dancers of the Paris Opera Ballet threatened to strike unless Lifar was so restored; the stage-hands, with definite indications of Communist inspiration, to strike if he was. Hirsch had the courage of his convictions. I have found that Lifar did not take the Paris Opera Ballet to Berlin during the Occupation, as has been alleged in this country, although the Germans wanted it badly; and I happen to know numerous other French companies did go. I also have learned that it was Serge Lifar who prevented the Paris Opera Ballet from going. I happen to know that Lifar did fly in a German plane to Kieff, his birthplace; as I happen to know that he did not show Hitler through the Paris Opera itself, as one widely-spread rumor has had it. As a matter of fact, stories to the effect that he did both these things have been widely circulated. I happen to have learned that Lifar made a tremendous effort to save that splendid gentleman, René Blum, but was unable to prevail against Blum’s patriotic but unfortunately stupid determination to remain in Paris. I also happen to know that Lifar was personally active in saving many Jews and also other liberals from deportation. Moreover, I know that, as has always been characteristic of Lifar, because he was one who had, he helped from his own pocket those who had not.

The performances of the Ballet of the Paris Opera at the City Center were not the slightest proof of the quality of its productions or its performance. The shocking limitations of the playhouse made necessary a vast reduction of its personnel, its scenery, its essential quality. The Paris Opera Ballet is, of course, a State Ballet in the fullest sense of the term. It is an aristocratic organization, conscious of the great tradition that hangs over it. The air is thick with it. Its dancers are civil servants of the Republic of France and their promotion in rank follows upon a strict examination pattern. It would be interesting one day to see the company at the Metropolitan Opera House, where its original setting could be approximated, although I fear the Metropolitan has nothing comparable with the foyer de la dance of the Paris Opera.

Here is ballet on a big scale and in the grand manner, with all the scenic and costume panoply of the art at its most grandiose. It is the sort of fine ballet that succeeds in giving the art an immense popularity with the masses.

As a matter of fact, I am negotiating with the very able Maurice Lehmann, the successor to Georges Hirsch as Director-General of the Opera, and I can think of no happier result than to be able to bring this rich example of the balletic art of France to America under the proper circumstances and conditions, if for no other reason than to compensate the organization for their previous visit.

* * *

The International Dance Festival over, my chief desire was to bring Sadler’s Wells to this continent.

Perhaps it would be as well, for the sake of the reader who may be unfamiliar with its background and thus disposed to regard this as merely another ballet company, to shed a bit of light on the Sadler’s Wells organization.

Following the death of Diaghileff, in 1929, we knew that ballet in Britain was in a sad state of decline, from which it might well never have emerged had it not been for two groups, the Ballet Club of Marie Rambert and the Camargo Society. Each was to be of vital importance to the ballet picture in Britain and, indirectly, in the world. The offspring of the Ballet Club was the Rambert Ballet; that of the Camargo Society, the Sadler’s Wells Ballet. As a matter of fact, the Camargo Society, a Sunday night producing club, utilized the Ballet Club dancers and another studio group headed by the lady now known as Dame Ninette de Valois, D.B.E., D. Litt.

Back in 1931, at the time of the formation of the Camargo Society, the little acorn from which grew a mighty British oak, Dame Ninette, “Madame” as she is known to all who know her, was plain Ninette de Valois, who was born Edris Stannus, in Ireland, in 1898. She had joined the Diaghileff Ballet as a dancer in 1923, had risen to the rank of soloist (a rare accomplishment for a non-Russian), and left the great man, daring to differ with him on the direction he was taking, something amounting to lese majesté. She had produced plays, in the meantime, at Dublin’s famous Abbey Theatre and at Cambridge University’s Festival Theatre; and had also formed a choreographic group of her own which she brought along to the Camargo Society to cooperate. When she did so, she was far from famous. As a matter of fact, she was, to all intents and purposes, unknown.

One Sunday night in 1931, two things happened to Ninette de Valois: she became famous overnight, which, knowing her as I do, was of much less importance to her than the fact that, quite unwittingly, she laid the foundation for a British National Ballet under her own direction.

The work she produced for the Camargo Society on this Sunday night in 1931 did it. It was not a ballet in the strictest or accepted sense of the word. Its composer called it A Masque for Dancing. The work was Job, a danced and mimed interpretation of the Biblical story, in the spirit of the painter and poet Blake, to one of Ralph Vaughan Williams’s noblest scores.

From Biblical inspiration she turned to the primitive, in a production of Darius Milhaud’s Creation du Monde, a noble subject dealing with the primitive gods of Easter Island, set to the 1923 jazz of the French composer.

Coincidental with the Camargo Society activities, Ninette de Valois was making arrangements with another great Englishwoman, Lilian Baylis, who had brought opera and drama to the masses at two theatres in the less fashionable parts of London, the Old Vic, in the Waterloo Road, and Sadler’s Wells, in Islington’s Rosebery Avenue. Lilian Baylis wanted a ballet company. Armed with only her own determination and high-mindedness, she had established a real theatre for the masses.

Ninette de Valois, for a penny, started in with her group to do the opera ballets at the Old Vic: those interludes in Carmen and Faust and Samson and Delilah that exist primarily to keep the dull businessman in his seat with his wife instead of at the bar. However, Lilian Baylis gave Ninette de Valois a ballet school, and it was in the theatre, where a ballet school belonged, a part of and an adjunct to the theatre. The Vic-Wells Ballet, soon to become the Sadler’s Wells Ballet, was the result.

It was not nearly as easy and as simple as it sounds as I write it. It is beyond me fully to convey to the reader those qualities of tenacity of purpose, of driving energy, of fearless courage that this remarkable woman was forced to draw upon in the early years. There was no money; and before a single penny could be separated from her, it had to be melted from the glue with which she stuck every penny to the inside of her purse.

Alicia Markova joined the company. Anton Dolin was a frequent guest artist. It was, in a sense, a Markova company, with the three most popular works: Swan Lake, The Nutcracker, and Giselle.

But, most importantly, Ninette de Valois had that vital requisite without which, no matter how solvent the financial backing, no ballet company is worth the price of its toe-shoes, viz., a policy. Ninette de Valois’ policy for repertoire is codified into a simple formula:

1) Traditional-classical and romantic works.

2) Modern works of future classic importance.

3) Current work of more topical interest.

4) Works encouraging a strictly national tendency in their creation generally.

The first constitutes the foundation-stone, technical standard, and historical knowledge that is demanded as a “means test” by which the abilities of the young dancers are both developed and inspired.

The second, those works which both musically and otherwise have a future that may be regarded as the major works of this generation.

The third, the topical and sometimes experimental, of merely ephemeral interest and value, yet important as a means of balancing an otherwise ambitious programme.

The fourth is important to the national significance of the ballet. Such works constitute the nation’s own contribution to the theatre, and are in need perhaps of the most careful guidance of the groups.

It was the classics which had, from the beginning, the place of priority: Swan Lake (Act II), Les Sylphides, Carnaval, Coppélia, The Nutcracker, Giselle, and the full-length Swan Lake.

In 1935, Markova left Sadler’s Wells to form her own company with Dolin. With Markova’s departure, the whole character of the Sadler’s Wells company changed. The Company became the Star. The company got along without a ballerina and concentrated on its own personality, on developing dancers from its school, and on its direction. Creation and development continued.

However, during this time, there was emerging not precisely a “star,” but a great ballerina. Ballerina is a term greatly misused in the United States, where any little dancer is much too often referred to both in the press and in general conversation in this way. Ballerina is a title, not a term. The title is one earned only through long, hard experience. It is attained only in the highly skilled interpretation of the great standard classical parts. Russia, France, Italy, Denmark, countries where there are state ballets, know these things. We in the United States, I fear, do not understand. A “star” is not one merely by virtue of billing. A ballerina is, of course, a “star,” even in a company that has no “stars” in its billing and advertising. A true ballerina is a rare bird indeed. In an entire generation, it should be remembered, the Russian Imperial Ballet produced only enough for the fingers of two hands.

The great ballerina I have mentioned as having come up through the Sadler’s Wells Company, as the product of that company, is more than a ballerina. She is a prima ballerina assoluta, a product of Sadler’s Wells training, of the Sadler’s Wells system, a member of that all-round team that is Sadler’s Wells. Her name is Margot Fonteyn. I shall have something to say about her later on.

I have pointed out that the backbone of the Sadler’s Wells repertoire is the classics. Therein, in my opinion, lies one of the chief reasons for its great success. There is a second reason, I believe. That is that, along with Ninette de Valois’ sound production policy, keeping step with it, sometimes leading it, is an equally sound musical policy. Sitting in with de Valois and Frederick Ashton, as the third of the directorial triumvirate, was the brilliant musician, critic, and wit, Constant Lambert, who exerted a powerful influence in the building of the repertoire, and who, with the sympathetic cooperation of his two colleagues, made the musical standards of Sadler’s Wells the highest of any ballet company in my knowledge and experience.

The company grew and prospered. The war merely served to intensify its efforts—and its accomplishments. Its war record is a brilliant, albeit a difficult one; a record of unremitting hard work and dogged perseverance against terrible odds. The company performed unceasingly throughout the course of the war, with bombs falling. Once the dancing was stopped, while the dancers fought a fire ignited by an incendiary bomb and thus saved the theatre. The company was on a good-will tour of Holland, under the auspices of the British Council, in the spring of 1940. They were at Arnheim when Hitler invaded. Packed into buses, they raced ahead of the Panzers, reached the last boat to leave, left minus everything, but everything: productions, scenery, costumes, properties, musical material, and every scrap of personal clothing.

Once back in Britain, there was no cessation. The lost productions and costumes were replaced; the musical material renewed, some of it, since it was manuscript, by reorchestrating it from gramophone recordings. As the Battle of Britain was being fought, the company toured the entire country, with two pianos in lieu of orchestra, with Constant Lambert playing the first piano. They played in halls, in theatres, in camps, in factories; brought ballet to soldiers and sailors, to airmen, and to factory workers, often by candlelight. They managed to create new works. Back to London, to a West End theatre, with orchestra, and then, because of the crowds, to a larger West End playhouse.

It was at the end of the war, as I have mentioned earlier, that the music publishing house of Boosey and Hawkes, with a splendid generosity, saved the historic Royal Opera House, at Covent Garden, from being turned into a popular dance hall. A common error on the part of Americans is to believe that because it was called the Royal Opera House, it was a State-supported theatre, as, for example, are the Royal Opera House of Denmark, at Copenhagen, and the Paris Opéra. Among those Maecenases who had made opera possible in the old days in London was Sir Thomas Beecham, who made great personal sacrifices to keep it open.

When Boosey and Hawkes took over Covent Garden, it was on a term lease. On taking possession they immediately turned over the historic edifice to a committee known as the Covent Garden Opera Trust, of which the chairman was Lord Keynes, the distinguished economist and art patron who, as plain Mr. John Maynard Keynes, had been instrumental in the formation of the Camargo Society, and who had married the one-time Diaghileff ballerina, Lydia Lopokova; this committee had acted as god-parents to the Sadler’s Wells company in its infancy. The Arts Council supported the venture, and David Webster was appointed Administrator.

* * *

A word or two about the Arts Council and its support of the arts in Britain is necessary for two reasons: one, because it is germane to the story of Sadler’s Wells, and, two, germane to some things I wish to point out in connection with subsidy of the arts in these troubled times, since I believe a parallel can be drawn with our own hit-and-miss financing.

Under the British system, there is no attempt to interfere with aesthetics. The late Sir Stafford Cripps pointed out that the Government should interfere as little as possible in the free development of art. The British Government’s attitude has, perhaps, been best stated by Clement Atlee, as Prime Minister, when he said: “I think that we are all of one mind in desiring that art should be free.” He added that he thought the essential purpose of an organized society was to set free the creative energies of the individual, while safeguarding the well-being of all. The Government, he continued, must try to provide conditions in which art might flourish.

There is no “Ministry of Fine Arts” as in most continental and South American countries. The Government’s interest in making art better known and more within the reach of all is expressed through three bodies: the Arts Council, the British Film Institute, and the British Council.

The Arts Council was originally known by the rather unwieldy handle of C. E. M. A. (The Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts), originally founded by a gift from an American and Lord De La Warr, then President of the Board of Education. In 1945, the Government decided to continue the work, changed the name from C. E. M. A. to the Arts Council of Great Britain, gave it Parliamentary financial support, and granted it, on 9 August, 1946, a Royal Charter to develop “a greater knowledge, understanding and practice of fine arts exclusively, and in particular to increase the availability of the fine arts to the public ... to improve the standard of the execution of the fine arts and to advise and cooperate with ... Government departments, local authorities and other bodies on matters concerned directly or indirectly with those objects.”

Now, the Arts Council, while sponsored by the Government, is not a Government department. Its chairman and governors (called members of the Council) are appointed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer after consultation with the Minister of Education and the Secretary of State for Scotland. The Chancellor answers for the Council in the House of Commons. While the Council is supported by a Government grant, its employees are in no sense civil servants, and the Council enjoys an independence that would not be possible were it a Government department.

The first chairman of the Arts Council, and also a former chairman of C. E. M. A., was Lord Keynes. His influence on the policy and direction of the organization was invaluable. There are advisory boards, known as panels, appointed for three years, experts chosen by the Council because of their standing in and knowledge of their fields. Among many others, the following well-known artists have served, without payment: Sir Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud, Noel Coward, Peggy Ashcroft, J. B. Priestley, Dame Myra Hess, Benjamin Britten, Tyrone Guthrie, Dame Ninette de Valois, and Henry Moore.

While statistics can be dull, a couple are necessary to the picture to show how the Arts Council operates. For example, the Arts Council’s annual grant from the British Treasury has risen each year: in 1945-1946, the sum was £235,000 ($658,000); in 1950-1951, £675,000 ($1,890,000).

Treasury control is maintained through a Treasury Assessor to the Arts Council; on his advice, the Chancellor of the Exchequer recommends to Parliament a sum to be granted. The Assessor is in a position to judge whether the money is being properly distributed, but he does not interfere with the complete autonomy of the Council.

The Council, in its turn, supports the arts of the country by giving financial assistance or guarantees to organizations, companies, and societies; by directly providing concerts and exhibitions; or by directly managing and operating a company or theatre. The recipient organizations, for their part, must be non-profit or charitable trusts capable of helping carry out the Council’s purpose of bringing to the British people entertainment of a high standard. Such organizations must have been accepted as non-profit companies by H. M. Commissioners of Customs and Excise, and exempted by them from liability to pay Entertainments Duty.

An example of the help tendered may be gathered from the fact that in 1950, eight festivals, ten symphony orchestras, five theatres, twenty-five theatre companies, seven opera and ballet companies, one society for poetry and music, two art societies, four arts centers, and sixty-three clubs were being helped. In addition, two theatres, three theatre companies, and one arts center were entirely and exclusively managed by the Arts Council. Some of the best-known British orchestras, theatres, and companies devoted to opera, ballet, and the drama are linked to the Arts Council: The Hallé Orchestra, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, Covent Garden Opera Trust, Covent Garden Opera Company, and the Sadler’s Wells Companies are among them. Also the Old Vic, Tennent Productions, Ltd., and the Young Vic Theatre companies.

Government assistance to opera in twentieth century Britain did not begin with the Arts Council. In the early ’thirties Parliament granted a small subsidy to the Covent Garden Opera Syndicate for some two years to help present grand opera in Covent Garden and the provinces at popular prices. A total of £40,000 ($112,000) had been paid when the grant was withdrawn after the financial crisis of 1931, and it was more than ten years before national opera became a reality.

In the meantime, some ballet companies and an opera company began to receive C. E. M. A. support. The Sadler’s Wells Opera Company and Sadler’s Wells Ballet Company, for instance, began their association with C. E. M. A. in 1943. C. E. M. A. was also interested in plans stirring in 1944 and 1945 to reclaim the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, as a national center for ballet and opera. I have pointed out how this great theatre in London, with a history dating back to the eighteenth century, was leased in 1944 by the international music firm of Boosey and Hawkes, who, in turn, rented it to the newly formed Covent Garden Opera Trust. The Trust, an autonomous body whose original chairman was Lord Keynes, is a non-profit body which devotes any profits it may make to Trust projects. Late in 1949, H. M. Ministry of Works succeeded Boosey and Hawkes as lessees, with a forty-two-year lease.

The Arts Council, in taking over from C. E. M. A., inherited C. E. M. A.’s interest in using Covent Garden for national ballet and opera. The Council granted Covent Garden £25,000 ($70,000) for the year ended 31 March, 1946, and £55,000 ($154,000) for the following year. At the same time, it was granting Sadler’s Wells Foundation £10,000 ($28,000) and £15,000 ($42,000) in those years.

The Covent Garden Opera Trust, in the meantime, had invited the Sadler’s Wells Ballet to move to Covent Garden from their famous ballet center, Sadler’s Wells. This it did, early in 1946, leaving behind another company called the Sadler’s Wells Theatre Ballet. Ninette de Valois continued to direct both groups.

It was a year later the Covent Garden Opera Company gave its first presentation under the Covent Garden Opera Trust, and the two chief Covent Carden companies, opera and ballet, were solidly settled in their new home.

The Trust continues to receive a grant from the Arts Council (£145,000 [$406,000] in 1949-1950), and it pays the rent for the Opera House and the salaries and expenses of the companies. So far as the ballet company is concerned, the Sadler’s Wells Ballet pretty well pays its own way, except for that all-besetting expense in ballet, the cost of new productions. The opera company requires relatively more support from the Trust grant, as it has re-staged and produced every opera afresh, not using any old productions. Moreover, the attendance for ballet is greater than that for opera.

The aim of Covent Garden and its Administrator, David Webster, is to create a steady audience, and to appeal to groups that have not hitherto attended ballet and opera, or have attended only when the most brilliant stars were appearing. Seats sell for as little as 2s 6d (35¢), rising to 26s 3d ($3.67) and the ballet-and-opera-going habit has grown noticeably in recent years. It is interesting to note the audience for opera averaged eighty-three per cent capacity, and for the ballet ninety-two per cent.

The two British companies alternately presenting ballet and opera provide most of the entertainment at Covent Garden, but foreign companies such as the Vienna State Opera with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, La Scala Opera, the Paris Opéra Comique, the Ballet Theatre from New York, the New York City Ballet Company, the Grand Ballet of the Marquis de Cuevas, and Colonel de Basil’s Original Ballets Russes have had short seasons there.

The Arts Council is in association with the two permanent companies coincidentally operating at Sadler’s Wells—the Sadler’s Wells Theatre Ballet and the Sadler’s Wells Opera Company. Other opera and ballet companies associated with the Arts Council are the English Opera Group, Ltd., and the Ballet Rambert, while the Arts Council manages the St. James Ballet Company.

All these companies tour in Britain, and some of them make extended tours abroad. The Ballet Rambert, for instance, has made a tour of Australia and New Zealand, which lasted a year and a half, a record for that area.

The Sadler’s Wells Ballet has made long and highly successful tours of the European continent. Its first visit to America occurred in the autumn of 1949, when the Covent Garden Opera Trust, in association with the Arts Council and the British Council, presented the group at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City, and in various other centres in the United States and Canada, under my management. A second and much longer visit took place in 1950-1951, with which visits this chapter is primarily concerned.

Sadler’s Wells has a ballet school of something more than two hundred students, including the general education of boys and girls from ten to sixteen. Scholarships are increasing in number; some of these are offered by various County Councils and other local authorities, and a number by the Royal Academy of Dancing.

In addition to the Arts Council, I have mentioned the British Council, and no account of Britain’s cultural activities could make any pretensions to being intelligible without something more than a mention of it. It should be pointed out that the major part of the British Council’s work is done abroad.

Established in 1934, the British Council is Britain’s chief agent for strengthening cultural relations with the rest of the British Commonwealth, Europe, the Middle East, the Far East, the United States, and Latin America. It is responsible for helping to make British cultural achievements known and understood abroad, and for bringing to the British, in turn, a closer knowledge of foreign countries.

Like many other British cultural bodies, the British Council derives its main financial support from the Government (through grants from the Foreign Office, plus certain sums on the Colonial and Commonwealth votes), and is a body corporate, not a Government organization. Its staff are not civil servants and its work is entirely divorced from politics, though the Council has a certain amount of State control because nine of the Executive Committee (fifteen to thirty in number) are nominated by Government departments.

The British Council’s chief activities concern educational exchanges with foreign countries of students, teachers, and technicians, including arranging facilities for these visitors in Britain; they include supporting libraries and information services abroad where British books and other reading materials are readily available, and further include the financing of tours of British lecturers and exhibitions, and of theatrical, musical, and ballet troupes abroad. Sadler’s Wells Ballet has toured to Brussels, Prague, Warsaw, Poznau, Malmö, Oslo, Lisbon, Berlin, and the United States and Canada under British Council auspices with great success. The Sadler’s Wells Theatre Ballet has toured the United States and Canada, under my management, with equal success, and is soon to visit Africa, including Kenya Colony. The Old Vic Company, the Boyd Neel String Orchestra, and the Ballet Rambert toured Australia and New Zealand, and the Old Vic has toured Canada. John Gielgud’s theatre company has visited Canada. In addition, the British Council has sponsored visits abroad of such distinguished musicians as Sir Adrian Boult, Sir John Barbirolli, Sir Malcolm Sargent, and Maggie Teyte.

One of the British Council’s important trusts is the responsibility for the special gramophone recordings of distinguished musical works and of the spoken word. This promotion is adding notably to record libraries, and is helping to make the best music available to listeners all over the world. It is also the Government’s principal agent for carrying out the cultural conventions agreed upon with other members of the United Nations. These provide, in general, for encouraging mutual knowledge and appreciation of each other’s culture through interchanging teachers, offering student scholarships, and exchanging books, films, lectures, concerts, plays, exhibitions, and musical scores.

The relationship between the British Council and the Arts Council is necessarily one of careful collaboration. In the time of C. E. M. A. many tasks were accomplished in common, such as looking after foreign residents in Great Britain. Now the division of labor of the two Councils is well defined, with clear-cut agreement on their respective responsibilities for the various entertainment groups that come to or go from Britain. The British Council helps British artists and works of art to go ahead; the Arts Council assists artistic activities in Britain, including any that may come from abroad. Both bodies have a number of committee members in common, and the feeling between the groups is close and friendly.

It is, I feel, characteristic of the British that, without a definite, planned, long-term programme for expanding its patronage of the arts, the British Government has nevertheless come to give financial aid to almost every branch of the art world. This has developed over a period of years, with accumulated speed in the last twelve because of the war, because the days of wide patronage from large private incomes are disappearing if not altogether disappeared, and also perhaps because of an increasing general realization of the people’s greater need for leisure-time occupation.

In all of this I must point out quite emphatically that it is the British Government’s policy to encourage and support existing and valuable institutions. Thus the great symphony orchestras, Sadler’s Wells Ballet, Covent Garden Opera, and various theatre companies are not run by the Government, but given grants by the Arts Council, a corporation supported by Government money.

What is more, there is no one central body in Britain in charge of the fine arts, but a number of organizations, with the Arts Council covering the widest territory. Government patronage of the arts in Britain, as has frequently been true of other British institutions, has grown with the needs of the times, and the organization of the operating bodies has been flexible and adaptable.

The bodies that receive Government money, such as the Arts Council, the British Broadcasting Corporation, and the British Council are relatively independent of the Government, their employees not being civil servants and their day-to-day business being conducted autonomously.

There is no attempt on the part of the Government to interfere with the presentations of the companies receiving State aid, though often the Government encourages experimentation. A very happy combination of arts sponsorship is now permissible under a comparatively recent Act of Parliament that allows local government authorities to assist theatrical and musical groups fully. Now, for instance, an orchestra based anywhere in Britain may have the financial backing of the town authorities, as well as of the Arts Council and private patrons.

While accurate predictions about the future course of relations between Government and the arts in Britain are not, of course, possible, it seems likely, however, that all of mankind will be found with more, rather than less, leisure in the years to come. In the days of the industrial revolution in Britain a hundred-odd years ago, the people, by which I mean the working classes, had little opportunity for cultivating a taste for the arts.

Now, with the average number of hours worked by British men, thanks to trade unionism and a more genuinely progressive and humanitarian point of view, standing at something under forty-seven weekly, there is obviously less time devoted to earning a living, leaving more for learning the art of living. It may well be that the next hundred years will see even more intensive efforts made to help people to use their leisure hours pleasantly and profitably. As long ago as the early 1930’s, at a time when he was so instrumental in encouraging ballet through the founding of the Camargo Society, Lord (then J. Maynard) Keynes wrote that he hoped and believed the day would come when the problem of earning one’s daily bread might not be the most important one of our lives, and that “the arena of the heart and head will be occupied, or reoccupied, by our real problems—the problems of life and of human relations, of creation and behavior and religion.” Then, “for the first time since his creation,” Lord Keynes continued, “man will be faced with his real, his permanent problem—how to use his freedom from pressing economic cares, how to occupy the leisure science and compound interest will have won for him to live wisely and agreeably and well.”

* * *

Stripped to the simplest explanation possible, Sadler’s Wells leased its company to Covent Garden for a period of years. The move must have entailed a prodigious amount of work for all concerned and for Ninette de Valois in particular. Quite apart from all the physical detail involved: new scenery, new musical material, new costumes, more dancers, there was, most importantly, a change of point of view, even of direction. With a large theatre and orchestra, and large responsibilities, experimental works for the moment had to be postponed. New thinking had to be employed, because the company’s direction was now in the terms of the Maryinsky Theatre, the Bolshoi, the Paris Opéra.

The keystone of the arch that is Sadler’s Wells’s policy is the full-length productions of classical ballets. The prime example is The Sleeping Beauty, my own reactions to which, when I first saw it, I have already recounted. In the production of this work, the company was preeminent, with Margot Fonteyn as a bright, particular star; but the “star” system, if one cares to call it that, was utilized to the full, since each night there was a change of cast; and it must be remembered that in London it is possible to present a full-length work every night for a month or more without changing the bill, whereas in this country, almost daily changes are required. This, it should be pointed out, required a good deal of audience training.

The magnificent production of The Sleeping Beauty cost more than £10,000, at British costs. What the costs for such a production as that would have been on this side of the Atlantic I dislike to contemplate. The point is that it was a complete financial success. Another point I should like to make is that while The Sleeping Beauty was presented nightly, week after week, there was no slighting of the other classical works such as the full-length Swan Lake, Coppélia, Les Sylphides, and Giselle; nor was there any diminution of new works or revivals of works from their own repertoire.

It was in 1948 I returned to London further to pursue the matter of their invasion of America. It was my very dear friend, the late Ralph Hawkes of the music publishing firm of Boosey and Hawkes, the leaseholders of Covent Garden, who helped materially in arranging matters and in persuading the Sadler’s Wells direction and the British Arts Council that they were ready for America and that, since Hawkes was closely identified with America’s musical life, that this country was ready for them.

Meanwhile, Ninette de Valois grew increasingly dubious about full-length, full-evening ballets, such as The Sleeping Beauty and Swan Lake, in the States, and was convinced in her own mind that the United States and Canadian audiences not only would not accept them, much less sit still before a single work lasting three and one-half hours. Much, of course, was at stake for all concerned and it was, indeed, a serious problem about which to make a final, inevitable decision.

The conferences were long and many. Conferences are a natural concomitant of ballet. But there was a vast difference between these conferences and the hundreds I had had with the Russians, the Caucasians, the Bulgarians, and the Axminsters. Here were neither intrigues nor whims, neither suspicion nor stupidity. On the contrary, here was reasonableness, logic, frankness, fundamental British honesty. George Borodin, a Russian-born Englishman and a great ballet-lover, once pointed out that ballet is a medium that transcends words, adding “the tongue is a virtuoso that can make an almost inexhaustible series of noises of all kinds.” In my countless earlier conferences with other ballet directorates, really few of those noises, alas, really meant anything.

At last, the affirmative decision was made and we arrived at an agreement on the repertoire for the American season, to include the full-length works, along with a representative cross-section, historically speaking, of the Sadler’s Wells repertoire of their shorter works. The matter settled, I left for home.

On my return to New York, still other problems awaited me. The Metropolitan Opera House, the only possible New York stage on which Sadler’s Wells could appear, was faced with difficulties and perplexities, with other commitments for the period when the British visitors would be here.

However, thanks to the invaluable cooperation and assistance of Edward Johnson, Alfred P. Sloan, and Mrs. August Belmont, it was decided that a part of the season should be given to Sadler’s Wells. Had it not been for their friendly, intelligent, and influential offices, New York might not have had the pleasure and privilege of the Sadler’s Wells visit.

The road at last having been cleared, our promotional campaign was started and was limited to four weeks. The response is a matter of theatrical history.

Here, for the first time in the United States, was a company carrying on the great tradition in classical ballet, with timely and contemporary additions. Here was a company with a broad repertoire based on and imbedded in the full-length classics, but also bolstered with modern works that strike deep into human experience. Here were choreographers who strove to broaden the scope of their art and to bring into their works some of the richness of modern psychology and drama, always balletic in idiom, with freedom of style, who permitted their dramatic imaginations to guide them in creating movement and in the use of music.

By boat came the splendid productions, the costumes, the properties, loads and loads of them. By special chartered planes came the company, and the technical staff, the entire contingent headed by the famous directorial trio, Ninette de Valois, Frederick Ashton, and Constant Lambert, with the executive side in the capable hands of David Webster, General Administrator. The technical department was magnificently presided over by Herbert Hughes, General Manager of the Sadler’s Wells Ballet, and the late Louis Yudkin, General Stage Director.

It was an American ballerina, Nora Kaye, who hustled Margot Fonteyn from the airport to let her have her first peek at the Metropolitan Opera House. The curtain was up when they arrived, revealing the old gold and red auditorium. Margot’s perceptive eyes took it all in at a glance. She took a deep breath, clasped her hands in front of her. “Thank goodness,” she said, “it’s old and comfortable and warm and rich, as an opera house should be.” She paused for a reflective moment and added, “I was so afraid it would be slick and modern like everything else here, all steel and chromium, and spit and polish. I’m glad it’s old!”.

On an afternoon before the opening, my very good friend, Hans Juda, publisher of Britain’s international textile journal, Ambassador, together with his charming wife, gave a large and delightful cocktail party at Sherry’s in the Metropolitan Opera House for a large list of invited guests from the worlds of art, business, and diplomacy. Hans Juda is a very helpful and influential figure in the world of British textiles and wearing apparel. It was he, together with the amiable James Cleveland Belle of the famous Bond Street house of Horrocks, who arranged with British designers, dressmakers, textile manufacturers, and tailors to see that each member of the Sadler’s Wells company was outfitted with complete wardrobes for both day and evening wear; the distaff side with hats, suits, frocks, shoes, and accessories; the male side with lounge suits, dinner jackets, shoes, gloves, etc. The men were also furnished with, shall I say, necessaries for the well-dressed man, which were soon packed away, viz., bowler hats (“derbies” to the American native) and “brollies” (umbrellas to Broadway).

The next night was, in more senses than one, the BIG night: a completely fabulous première. The Metropolitan was sold out weeks in advance, with standees up to, and who knows, perhaps beyond, the normal capacity. Hundreds of ballet lovers had stood in queue for hours to obtain a place in the coveted sardine space, reaching in double line completely round the square block the historic old house occupies on Broadway, Seventh Avenue, Thirty-ninth and Fortieth Streets. The orchestra stalls and boxes were filled with the great in all walks of life. The central boxes of the “Golden Horseshoe,” draped in the Stars and Stripes and the Union Jack, housed the leading figures of the diplomatic and municipal worlds.

Although the date was 9 October, it was the hottest night of the summer, as luck would have it. The Metropolitan Opera House is denied the benefit of modern air-conditioning; the temperature within its hallowed walls, thanks to the mass of humanity and the lights, was many degrees above that of the humid blanket outside.

Despite all this, so long as I shall live, I shall never forget the stirring round of applause that greeted that distinguished figure, Constant Lambert, as he entered the orchestra pit to lead the orchestra in the two anthems, the Star Spangled Banner and God Save the King. The audience resumed their seats; there was a bated pause, and then from the pit came the first notes of the overture to The Sleeping Beauty, under the sympathetic baton of that finest of ballet conductors. So long as I shall live I shall never forget the deafening applause as the curtains opened on the first of Oliver Messel’s sets and costumes. That applause, which was repeated and repeated—for Fonteyn’s entrance, increasing in its roar until, at the end, Dame Ninette had to make a little speech, against her will—still rings in my ears.

I have had the privilege of handling the world’s greatest artists and most distinguished attractions; my career has been punctuated with stirring opening performances of my own, and I have been at others quite as memorable. However, so far as the quality of the demonstrations and the manifestations of enthusiasm are concerned, the première of the Sadler’s Wells Ballet at the Metropolitan Opera House, on 9 October, 1949, was the most outstanding of my entire experience.

Dame Ninette de Valois, outwardly as calm as ever, but, I suspect, inwardly a mass of conflicting emotions, was seated in the box with Mayor O’Dwyer. As the curtains closed on the first act of The Sleeping Beauty, and the tremendous roar of cheers and applause rose from the packed house, the Mayor laid his hand on “Madame’s” arm and said, “Lady, you’re in!”

Crisply and a shade perplexed, “Madame” replied:

“In?... Really?”

Genuinely puzzled now, she tried unsuccessfully to translate to herself what this could mean. “Strange language,” she thought, “I’m in?... In what?... What on earth does that mean?”

We met in the interval. I grasped her hand in sincere congratulation. She patted me absently as she smiled. Then she turned and spoke.

“Look here,” she said, “could you translate for me, please, something His Lordship just said to me as the curtain fell? Put it into English, I mean?”

It was my turn to be puzzled. “Madame” was, I thought, seated with Mayor O’Dwyer. Had she wandered about, moved to another box?

“His Lordship?”

“Yes, yes, of course. Your Lord Mayor, with whom I am sitting.”

I hadn’t thought of O’Dwyer in terms of a peer.

“Yes, yes,” she continued, “as the applause, that very surprising applause rang out at the end, the Lord Mayor turned to me and said, ‘Lady, you’re in!’ Just like that. Now will you please translate for me what it is? Tell me, is that good or bad?”

Laughingly I replied, “What do you think?”

“I really don’t know” was her serious and sincere response.

The simple fact was that Dame Ninette de Valois, D.B.E., D. Litt., to whose untiring efforts Sadler’s Wells owes its success, its existence, its very being, honestly thought the company was failing in New York.

This most gala of gala nights was crowned by a large and extremely gay supper party given by Mayor O’Dwyer, at Gracie Mansion, the official residence of the Mayor of the City of New York. It was a warm and balmy night, with an Indian Summer moon—one of those halcyon nights all too rare. Because of this, it was possible to stage the supper in that most idyllic of settings, on the spacious lawn overlooking the moon-drenched East River, with the silhouettes of the great bridges etched in silver lights against the glow from the hundreds of colored lights strung over the lawn. Beneath all this gleamed the white linen of the many tables, the sparkle of crystal, the gloss of the silver.

Two orchestras provided continuous dance music, the food and the champagne were ineffable. It was a party given by the Mayor: to honor the Sadler’s Wells Ballet and to cement those cultural ties between the two great world centers, London and New York. What better means are there for mutual understanding and admiration?

There was, however, a delay on the part of the company in leaving the Metropolitan Opera House, a quite extended delay. Three large buses waited at the stage door, manned by Police Department Inspectors in dress uniforms, with gold badges. But this was the first time the company had worn the new evening creations I have mentioned. It took longer to array themselves in these than it did for them to prepare for the performance. As a matter of fact, Margot Fonteyn and Moira Shearer were the last to be ready, each of them ravishing and stunning, the dark, flashing brunette beauty of Fonteyn in striking contrast to the soft, pinkish loveliness of Shearer.

Then it was necessary for our staff and the police to form a flying wedge to clear a path from the stage door to the waiting buses through the tightly-packed crowd that waited in Fortieth Street for a glimpse of the triumphant stars.

Safe aboard at last, off the cavalcade started, headed by a Police Department squad car, with siren tied down, red lights flashing, together with two motorcycle police officers fifteen feet in advance and the same complement, squad car and outriders, bringing up the rear of the procession, through the red traffic lights, thus providing the company with yet another American thrill.

There was a tense instant as the procession left the Metropolitan and the police sirens commenced their wail. The last time the company had heard a siren was in the days of the blitz in London, when, no matter how inured one became, the siren’s first tintinnabulation brought on that sudden shock that no familiarity can entirely eradicate. It was Constant Lambert’s dry wit that eased the situation. “It’s all right, girls,” he called out, “that’s the ‘all clear.’”.

Heading the receiving line at Gracie Mansion, as the company descended the wide stairs into the festive garden, were the Mayor and Grover Whalen, Sir Oliver and Lady Franks, Sir Alexander Cadogan, the Honorable Trygve Lie, President Romulo. There was a twinkle in Mayor O’Dwyer’s eye, as some of the corps de ballet girls curtsied with a “Good-evening, your Lordship.”

Toasts were drunk to the President of the United States, the King of England, Dame Ninette de Valois, to the Mayor, to Margot Fonteyn, Moira Shearer, and the other principals. The party waxed even gayer. Dancers seem never to tire of dancing. It was three in the morning when the Mayor made a short speech to say “good-night,” explaining that he was under doctor’s orders to go to bed, but that the party was to continue unabated, and all were to enjoy themselves.

It was past four o’clock when it finally broke up, and the buses, with their police escorts, started the journey back through a sleeping Manhattan to deposit the company at their various hotels. Constant Lambert, the lone wolf, lived apart from the rest at an East Side hotel. All the rest of the company had been dropped, when three buses, six inspectors, two squad cars, four motorcycle officers, halted before the sedate hostelry after five in the morning, and Constant Lambert, the sole passenger in the imposing cavalcade, slowly and with a grave, seventeenth-century dignity, solemnly shook hands with drivers, motor police, and all the inspectors, thanked them for the extremely interesting, and, as he put it, “highly informative” journey, saluted them with his sturdy blackthorn stick, and disappeared within the chaste portals of the hotel, while the police stood at salute, and two bewildered milk-men looked on in wonder.

The New York season was limited only by the availability of the Metropolitan Opera House. We could have played for months. Also, the company was due back at Covent Garden to fulfil its obligations to the British taxpayer. Following the Metropolitan engagement, there was a brief tour, involving a special train of six baggage cars, diner, and seven Pullmans, visiting, with equal success and greeted by capacity and turn-away houses, Washington, Richmond, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Chicago, and Michigan State College at East Lansing; thence across the border into Canada, for engagements at Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal, to honor the Commonwealth.

Before David Webster returned to London, we discussed the matter of an early return for a longer stay. I pointed out that, with such an evident success, Sadler’s Wells could not afford to delay its return for still further and greater triumphs. Now, I emphasized, was the time to take advantage of the momentum of success; now, if ever, was the time, since the promotion, the publicity, the press notices, all were cumulative in effect.

Webster, I knew, was impressed. I waited for his answer. But he shook his head slowly.

“Sol,” he said, “it’s doubtful. Frankly, I do not think it is possible.”

Meanwhile, I discussed the entire matter of the return with leading members of the company. All were of a single opinion, all of one mind. They were anxious and eager to return.

Such are the workings of the Sadler’s Wells organization, however, that it was necessary to delay a decision as to a return visit until at least the 3rd or 4th of January, 1950, in order that the matter could be properly put before the British Arts Council and the British Council for their final approval.

It should not be difficult for the reader to understand the anxiety and eagerness with which I anticipated that date.

* * *

It seems to me that during this period of suspense it might be well for me to sum up my impression of the repertoire that made up the initial season.

The Sadler’s Wells Ballet repertoire for the first American season consisted of the following works: The Sleeping Beauty; Le Lac des Cygnes (Swan Lake) in full; Cinderella, in three acts; Job; Façade; Apparitions; The Rake’s Progress; Miracle in the Gorbals; Hamlet; Symphonic Variations; A Wedding Bouquet; and Checkmate. The order is neither alphabetical nor necessarily in the order of importance. Actually, irrespective of varying degrees of success on this side of the Atlantic, they are all important, for they represent, in a sense, a cross-section of the repertoire history of the company.

The Sleeping Beauty, in its Sadler’s Wells form, is a ballet in a Prologue and three acts. The story is a collaboration by Marius Petipa and I. A. Vsevolojsky, (the Director of the Russian Imperial Theatres at the time of its creation), after the Charles Perrault fairy tale. The music, of course, is Tchaikowsky’s immortal score. The scenery and costumes are by Oliver Messel. The original Petipa choreography was reproduced by Nicholas Serguëeff.

It was the work which so brilliantly inaugurated the company’s occupation of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, on 20th February, 1946. Sadler’s Wells had previously revived the work in 1939, on a smaller scale, under the title The Sleeping Princess.

My unforgettable memories of the present production are topped by the inspired interpretation of the title role by Margot Fonteyn, who alternated moods of subtlety and childlike simplicity with brilliant fireworks, always within the ballet’s frame. There is the shining memory of Beryl Grey’s magnificent Lilac Fairy, the memory of the alternating casts, one headed by Moira Shearer, entirely different in its way. There is, as a matter of fact, little difference between the casts. Always there were such ensemble performances as the States had never before seen. Over all shone the magnificence of Oliver Messel’s scenery and costumes.

The full-length Swan Lake (Le Lac des Cygnes), actually in four acts, was a revelation to audiences for years accustomed to the truncated second act version. Its libretto, or book, is a Russian compilation by Begitschev and Geltser. It was first presented by Sadler’s Wells in the present settings and costumes by Leslie Hurry, with the original choreography by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov, reproduced by Nicholas Serguëeff, on 7th September, 1943.

This production replaced an earlier one, first done at the Sadler’s Wells Theatre, on 20th November, 1934, with Alicia Markova as the Swan Queen, and the scenery and costumes by Hugh Stevenson.

On the 13th April, 1947, it came to Covent Garden, with an increased corps de ballet, utilizing the entire Covent Garden stage, as it does at the Metropolitan Opera House.

As always, Margot Fonteyn is brilliant in the dual role of Odette-Odile. In all my wide experience of Swan Queens, Fonteyn today is unequaled. With the Sadler’s Wells company, there is no dearth of first-rate Swan Queens: Margot Fonteyn, Moira Shearer, Beryl Grey, Violetta Elvin. Altogether, in case the reader has not already suspected it, Swan Lake is, I think, my favorite ballet. It is not only a classical ballet; it is a classic. The haunting Tchaikowsky score, its sheer romanticism, its dramatic impact, all these things individually and together, give it its pride of place with the public of America as well as with myself. Here my vote is with the majority.

The third full-length work, so splendid in its settings and so bulky that its performances had to be limited by its physical proportions only to the largest stages, was Cinderella, which took up every inch on the great stage of the Metropolitan Opera House. Cinderella was the first full evening ballet in the modern repertoire of Sadler’s Wells. A three-act work, with choreography by Frederick Ashton, to the score by Serge Prokofieff, its scenery and costumes are by the French painter, Jean-Denis Malclès.

Here was an instance where the chief choreographer of Sadler’s Wells, Frederick Ashton, had the courage to tackle a full-length fairy story, the veritable stuff from which true ballets are made in the grand tradition of classical ballet: a formidable task. The measure of his success is that he managed to do it by telling a beautiful and thrice-familiar fairy tale in a direct and straightforward manner, never dragging in spectacle for the sake of spectacle. Moreover, he was eminently successful in avoiding, on the one hand, those sterilities of classicism that lead only to boredom, and the grotesqueries of modernism, on the other.

For music, Ashton took the score Prokofieff composed for the Soviet ballet of the same name, but created an entirely new work to the music. The settings and costumes by Malclès could not have been more right, filled as they are with the glamor of the fairy tale spirit and utterly free from any trace of vulgarity.

I shall always remember the Ugly Sisters of Ashton and Robert Helpmann, in the best tradition of English pantomime. Moreover, the production was blessed with three alternating Cinderellas, each individual in approach and interpretation: Fonteyn, Shearer, and Elvin.

Job, the reader will remember, is not called a ballet but “A Masque for Dancing.” The adaptation of the Biblical legend in the spirit of the William Blake drawings is the work of a distinguished British surgeon and Blake authority, Geoffrey Keynes. It was the first important choreographic work of Ninette de Valois. Its scenery and costumes were the product of John Piper; its music is one of the really great scores of that dean of living British composers, Ralph Vaughan Williams.

In the music, completely modern in idiom, Vaughan Williams has followed the overall pattern of the sixteenth and seventeenth century “Masques,” using period rhythms (but not melodies) such as the Pavane, the Minuet, the Saraband, and the Gaillard.

The production itself is on two levels, in which all the earthly, material characters remain on the stage level, while the spiritual characters are on a higher level, the two levels being joined by a large flight of steps.

One character stands out in domination of the work. That is Satan, created by Anton Dolin, and danced here by Robert Helpmann. The climax of Job occurs when Satan is hurled down from heaven. The whole thing is a work of deep and moving beauty—a serious, thoughtful work that ranks as one of Ninette de Valois’ masterpieces.

Façade represented the opposite extreme in the Sadler’s Wells repertoire. There was considerable doubt on the part of the company’s directorate that it would be acceptable on this side of the Atlantic, because of its essential British humor; it was also feared that it might be dated. As matters turned out, it was one of the most substantial successes among the shorter works.

Façade was originally staged by Ashton for the Camargo Society in 1931, came to the Sadler’s Wells Ballet in 1935, was lost in the German invasion of Holland, and was restored in the present settings and costumes of John Armstrong in 1940. It is, of course, freely adapted from the Edith Sitwell poems, with the popular score by Sir William Walton.

Fresh, witty, and humorous throughout, there is no suggestion of either provincialism or of being dated. Its highlights for me were the Tango, superbly danced by Frederick Ashton and Moira Shearer, who alternated with Pamela May, and the Yodelling Song with its bucolic milkmaid.

Apparitions perhaps bore too close a resemblance in plot to Massine’s treatment of the Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique, although the former is a much earlier work, having been staged by Ashton in 1933. Its story is by Constant Lambert; its music, a Lambert selection of the later music of Franz Liszt, re-orchestrated by Gordon Jacob. Cecil Beaton designed the extremely effective scenery and costumes. It was taken into the Sadler’s Wells repertoire in 1936.

It provided immensely effective roles for Margot Fonteyn and Robert Helpmann.

Strikingly successful was Ninette de Valois’ The Rake’s Progress. This is a six-scene work, based on William Hogarth’s famous series of paintings of the same name. Its story, like its music, is by Gavin Gordon. Its setting, a permanent closed box, subject to minor changes during the action, scene to scene, with an act-drop of a London street, is by the late Rex Whistler, as are the costumes, Hogarthian in style.

It is a highly dramatic work, in reality a sort of morality play, perhaps, more than it is a ballet in the accepted sense of the term, but a tremendously important work in the evolution of the repertoire that is so peculiarly Sadler’s Wells.

Miracle in the Gorbals is another of the theatre pieces in the repertoire. The choreographic work of Robert Helpmann, it is based on a story by Michael Benthall, to a specially commissioned score by Sir Arthur Bliss. Its setting and costumes are by the British artist, Edward Burra. It was a wartime addition to the repertoire in the fall of 1944.

Like The Rake’s Progress, Miracle in the Gorbals is also a sort of morality play, with strong overtones of a sociological tract. Bearing plot and theme resemblances to Jerome K. Jerome’s The Passing of the Third Floor Back, it puts the question: “What sort of treatment would God receive if he returned to earth and visited the slums of a twentieth century city?”

A realistic work, it deals with low-life in a strictly down-to-earth manner. As a spectacle of crowded tenement life, it mingles such theatrical elements as the raising of the dead, murder, suicide, prostitution. The Bliss music splendidly underlines the action.

With all of its drama and melodrama, it was not, nevertheless, one of my favorite works.

The other Helpmann creation was Hamlet, staged by him two years before Miracle in the Gorbals, in 1942. Utilizing the Tchaikowsky fantasy-overture, its tremendously effective scenery and costumes are by Leslie Hurry.

Hamlet was not an attempt to tell the Shakespeare story in ballet form. Rather is it a work that attempts to portray the dying thoughts of Hamlet as his life passes before him in review. Drama rather than dance, it is a spectacle, linked from picture to picture by dances, a work in which mime plays an important part.

Symphonic Variations, set to César Franck’s work for piano and orchestra of the same title, was Ashton’s first purely dance work in abstract form.

A work without plot, it employed only six dancers, three couples, on an immense stage in an immensely effective setting of great simplicity by Sophie Fedorovich. The six dancers were: Margot Fonteyn, Moira Shearer, and Pamela May; Michael Somes, Henry Danton, and Brian Shaw. There is no virtuoso role. It is a lyric work, calm, ordered, in which the classical spirit is exalted in a mood of all for one, one for all.

A Wedding Bouquet is certainly the most genuinely witty work in all modern ballet repertoire. The work of that genuine wit and gentleman of impeccable taste in music, literature, and painting, the late Lord Berners, it was staged by Ashton in 1937. Utilizing a text by Gertrude Stein, spoken by a narrator seated at a table at the side of the stage, its music, its scenery, its costumes, all are by Lord Berners. At the Metropolitan Opera House, the narrator was the inimitable Constant Lambert. In later performances, the role was taken over by Robert Irving, the chief conductor.

The work, a collaboration between Ashton, Berners, and Gertrude Stein, is the most completely sophisticated ballet I know. The amazing thing about it to me is that with its utterly integrated Stein text, it goes as well in large theatres as it does in the smaller ones. The text is as important as the dancing or the music.

For me, aside from the hilarity of the work itself, was the pleasure I derived from the performance of Moira Shearer as the thwarted spinster who loved her dog, and June Brae, who danced the role of Josephine, who was certainly not fitted to go to a wedding, as Gertrude Stein averred. As the Bridegroom, Robert Helpmann provided a comic masterpiece.

Checkmate was the first British ballet to have its première outside the country, having been first presented as a part of the Dance Festival at the International Exposition in Paris, in the summer of 1937. Both music and book are by Sir Arthur Bliss, with scenery and costumes by the Anglo-American artist, E. McKnight Kauffer.

The concerns of the ballet are with a game of chess, with the dancers pawns in the game. It appeals to me strongly, and I feel it is one of Ninette de Valois’ finest choreographic achievements. It is highly dramatic, leading to a grim tragedy. Its music is tremendously fine and McKnight Kauffer’s settings and costumes are striking, effective, and revolutionary. This is a work of first importance in all ballet repertoire.

I embarked upon a continuing bombardment of Ninette de Valois and David Webster by cables and long-distance telephone calls. I never for a instant let the matter out of my mind.

As I counted off the days until a decision was due, the old year ran out. It was on New Year’s Eve, while working in my office, that I was taken ill. I had not been feeling entirely myself for several days, but illness is something so foreign to me that I laughed it off as something presumably due to some irregularity of living.

Suddenly, late in the afternoon of New Year’s Eve, I found myself doubled up with pain. I was rushed to hospital. A hasty blood-count revealed the necessity for an immediate appendectomy. Before the old year was greeted by the new, I had submitted to surgery. The doctors said it was just in time—a case of “touch and go.” A good many things in my life have been that.

A minimum of a week’s hospitalization was imperative, the doctors said, and after that another fortnight of quiet recuperation. I remained in hospital the required week.

Very soon after, against the united wishes of Mrs. Hurok and my office, I was on a plane bound for London.

At the London airport I was met by David Webster, who took me as quickly and as smoothly as possible to my old stamping-ground, the Savoy Hotel, where, on Webster’s firm insistence, I spent the next twelve hours in bed. There followed extended consultations with Ninette de Valois and Webster; but neither was able to give a definite answer on the all-important matter of the second American tour.

I pointed out to them that, in order to protect all concerned, bookings were already being made across the United States and Canada: bookings involving in many instances, definite guarantees. As I waited for a decision, my office was daily badgering me. I was at a loss what to reply to them. There were daily inconclusive trans-Atlantic telephone conversations with my office and daily inconclusive conversations with the Sadler’s Wells directorate.

At last there came a glimmer. Webster announced that he believed a final decision could be reached at or about 16th February. He required, he said, that much further time in order to be able to figure out the precise costs of the venture and to determine what, if anything, might be left after the payment of all the terrific costs. In other words, he had to determine and calculate the precise nature of the risk.... Figures, figures, and still more figures.... Cables backwards and forwards across the Atlantic, with my New York office checking and rechecking on the capacities of the auditoriums, theatres, opera houses, and halls in which the bookings had been made.

The 16th February passed and still no decision was forthcoming. On 19th February, all that could be elicited from Webster was: “I simply can’t say at this juncture.” He added that he appreciated my position and regretted the daily disappointments to which I was being subjected.

There came the 22nd of February, in the United States the anniversary of the birth of George Washington. This year in London, the 22nd of February was the eve of the General Election. Most of the afternoon I spent with Webster at his flat, going over papers. We dined together and, as we parted, Webster’s only remark was: “See you at the performance.”

Meanwhile the pressure on me from New York increased.

“What is going to happen?” became the reiterated burden of the daily messages from my office.

Other matters in New York were requiring my attention, and it had become necessary to inform Webster that it would be impossible for me to remain any longer in London and that I was sailing in the Queen Mary on Friday.

Election Eve I went to the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, to watch another Sadler’s Wells performance. In the main foyer I ran into Webster.

“Can you guarantee us our expenses and a profit?” he asked.

“I can.”

“It’s a deal.”

It was eight-thirty in the evening of the 22nd February that the verbal deal was made. Five hours difference in time made it three-thirty in the afternoon in New York. I hurried back to the Savoy and called Mae Frohman.

“What’s going to happen?”

“It’s all set,” I replied.

Back to Covent Garden I went. In the Crush Bar, Webster and I toasted our deal with a bottle of champagne.

During Election Day, Webster, “Madame,” and I worked on repertoire and final details; but, for the most part, we gave our attention to the early returns from the General Election. After the performance that night at the Garden, David Webster and his friend James Cleveland Belle, joined me at the Savoy and remained until four in the morning, with one eye and one ear on the returns.

The next day I sailed in the good Queen Mary and had a lovely crossing, with my good friend, Greer Garson, on board to make the trip even more pleasant.

Mrs. Hurok, my daughter Ruth, Mae Frohman, and my office staff met me at the Cunard pier; and I told the whole story, in all its intricate detail, to them.

But there were still loose ends to be caught up, and April found me again back in London. The night following my arrival, I gave a big party at the Savoy, with Ninette de Valois, Margot Fonteyn, Moira Shearer and David Webster as the guests of honor. We toasted the success of the first American season; drank another to the success of the forthcoming and much more extended tour.

While in London, we clarified and agreed upon many details, including the final repertoire for the second American venture—which was to reach, not only from coast to coast, but to dip into the far south as well as far to the north.

Back in New York for a brief stay and then, in June, Mrs. Hurok and I left for our annual sojourn in Europe. This time we went direct to London, where we revelled in the performances at Covent Garden.

I have always loved London and always have been a great admirer of London, the place, and of those things for which it stands as a symbol. I love suddenly coming upon the fascinating little squares, with their stately old houses, as often as not adorned with a fifteenth-century church. Although modernism sometimes almost encroaches, they still retain an old-fashioned dreaminess.

About all is the atmosphere of history, tradition, and the aura of a genuinely free people. The Royal Opera House itself has a particular fascination for me. So far as I am concerned, there is not the slightest incongruity in the fact that its façade looks out on a police station and police court and that it is almost otherwise surrounded by a garden market. A patina of associations seems to cover the fabric, both inside and out—whether it is the bare boards and iron rails of the high old-fashioned gallery, or the gilt and red plush and cream-painted woodwork, the thin pillars of the boxes, the rather awkward staircases, the “Crush” bar and the other bars, the red curtain bearing the coat of arms of the reigning Monarch. Then, lights down, the great curtain sweeps up, and once again, for the hundredth time, the tense magic holds everyone in thrall.

I love the true ballet lovers who are not to be found in the boxes alone or in the stalls exclusively. Many of them sit in the lower-priced seats in the upper circle, the amphitheatre, and in the gallery. The night before an opening or an important revival or cast change, a long queue, equipped with camp-chairs and sandwiches, waits patiently to be admitted to the gallery seats the following evening.

There is one figure I miss now at Covent Carden, one that seemed to me to be a part of its very fabric. For years, going back stage to see Anna Pavlova, Chaliapine, others of my artists, and in the days of the de Basil Ballet, it was he who always had a cheery greeting. In 1948, Tom Jackson closed his eyes in the sleep everlasting, to open them, one hopes, at some Great Stage Door. He was the legendary stage door-keeper, was Tom Jackson, and certainly one of the most important persons in Covent Garden. He was a gentleman in the best sense of the word. Many were the celebrated artists he saw come and go during his long regime. Everybody spoke to him in their own tongue, although Jackson invariably replied in English. He was, I remember, in charge of the artists’ mail, and knew everyone, and remembered every name and every face. Jackson was not only interested in his stage door, but took deep interest in the artistic aspect of Covent Garden. Immediately after a performance of either ballet or opera, he made up his mind whether it had been good or bad.

Sometimes it fell to Jackson’s lot to regulate matters outside the Garden. The gallery queues, as is the London custom, attract all sorts of itinerant musicians and entertainers to the Floral Street side where they display and reveal their art to the patiently waiting galleryites. If the hurdy-gurdies and public acclamations grew so loud that they might disturb any in the offices above, Jackson, with infallible tact, stopped the disturbance without offending the queuers or the entertainers by his interference.

Jackson guarded the Garden inexorably and was relentless on questions of admission. With unerring instinct, he distinguished between friend and foe, and was renowned for his treatment of the yellow press and its columnists, with its nose for gossip and scandal. He is said once to have unceremoniously deposited an over-enthusiastic columnist in the street, after having refused a considerable sum of money for permission to photograph a fainting ballerina. He was once seen chasing a large woman who was brandishing a heavy umbrella around the outside of the building. The large woman, in turn, was chasing Leonide Massine running at full tilt. The woman, obviously a crackpot, had accused Massine of stealing her idea for a ballet. Jackson caught the woman and disarmed her.

The London stage doorkeeper is really a breed unto himself.

I love opening nights at Covent Garden, when it becomes, quite apart from the stage, a unique social function in the display of dresses and jewels, despite the austerity. It is always a curious mixture of private elegance and public excitement. The excitement extends to all streets of the district, right down to the Strand, making a strange contrast with the cabbage stalls, stray potatoes, and the odor of vegetables lingering on from the early market. The impeccable and always polite London police are in control of all approaches, directing the endless stream of cars without delay as they draw up in the famous covered way under the portico. Ceremoniously they take care of all arriving pedestrians, and surprisingly hold up even the most pretentious and important traffic to let the pedestrian seat-holder through. The richly uniformed porters keep chattering socialites from impeding traffic with a stern ritual all their own, and announcing waiting cars in stentorian tones.... Ever in my mind Covent Garden is associated with that sacred hour back stage before a ballet performance, the company in training-kits, practising relentlessly. Only those who know this hour can form any idea of the overwhelming cost of the dancers’ brief glamorous hour before the public.

Particularizing from the general, from the very beginning, in all contacts with the British and with Sadler’s Wells, the relations between all concerned have been like those prevailing in a kind and understanding family, and they remain so today.

And now at the Savoy is the best smoked salmon in the world—Scottish salmon. When I am there, a special large tray of it is always ready for me. It is a passion I share with Ninette de Valois, who insists it is her favorite dish. The question I am about to ask is purely rhetorical: Is there anything finer than smoked Scottish salmon, with either a cold, dry champagne or Scotch whiskey?

The repertoire for the second American-Canadian tour of the Sadler’s Wells Ballet included, in addition to The Sleeping Beauty, the four-act Le Lac des Cygnes (Swan Lake), Façade, A Wedding Bouquet, The Rake’s Progress and Checkmate, the following works new to America: their own production of Giselle, Les Patineurs, Don Quixote, and Dante Sonata.

Giselle, in the Sadler’s Wells version, with its Adam score, has scenery and costumes by James Bailey, and was produced by Nicholas Serguëeff, after the choreography of Coralli and Perrot.

The original Wells production was at the Old Vic, in 1934, with Alicia Markova in the title role. The production for Covent Garden dates from 1946, with Margot Fonteyn as Giselle.

It requires no comment from me save to point out that Fonteyn is one of the most interesting and effective interpreters of the role in my experience, and I have seen a considerable number of Giselles.

Les Patineurs had been seen in America in a version danced by Ballet Theatre. The Sadler’s Wells version is so much better that there is no real basis for comparison. This version, by Frederick Ashton, dates back to 1937. It has an interesting history. It is my understanding that the original idea was that Ninette de Valois would stage it. The story has it that, one night at the Sadler’s Wells Theatre, Ashton, whose dressing-room adjoined that of Constant Lambert, heard the latter working out dance rhythms from two Meyerbeer operas, Star of the North and The Prophet. The story goes on that Ashton was moved by the melodies and that because “Madame” was so occupied with executive and administrative duties, the choreographic job was given to him. Ashton states that he composed this ballet, which is exclusively concerned with skating, without ever having seen an ice-rink.

I find it one of the most charming ballets in the repertoire, with something in it for everyone. In these days of so-called “ice-ballets,” which have little or no relation to ballet, however much they may have to do with ice, I find here an academic ballet, which is very close to skating.

Don Quixote was seen in but a few cities. It was the most recent work, at that time, to be shown. Choreographed by Ninette de Valois, it was a ballet in five scenes with both its scenario and its music by Robert Gerhard, with scenery and costumes by Edward Burra.