Pills, Pains

A traditional side show of London's Season--the weeks of social harvest between the opening of the Royal Academy in May and the first week of August--is opera at elderly, fuddy-duddy Covent Garden. Last winter, Londoners talked of letting Covent Garden sit out this Season. Some reasons: some backers objected to German and Italian singers, Wagnerian operas; others were alarmed about wars and rumors of wars. To the rescue of Covent Garden leaped gruff, goateed Sir Thomas Beecham, who has spent uncounted sums from his pill income ("Worth a Guinea a Box") to give England good music, like it or not.

At that time Sir Thomas fumed: "It is seriously proposed that because we are suffering from a temporary access of jitters and jumps that would bring discredit upon a community of elderly nuns we should discontinue an event that is as regular a feature of our yearly calendar as the Royal Academy, the Military Tattoo, or the Eton and Harrow cricket match."

Also, Sir Thomas reportedly took a hand in Covent Garden's financing. A new backer for the opera appeared: the London Philharmonic Concert Society (among the directors: Sir Thomas). The Philharmonic Orchestra (conductor: Sir Thomas) took to the air, on Radio Luxembourg, the continental commercial station* to which Britons listen on Sundays or whenever B. B. C. becomes too deadly. Radio sponsor of the orchestra: Beecham's Pills, Ltd. (coupon clipper: Sir Thomas). So Covent Garden had a seven-week opera season, which last week reached its end.

Attendance was poor, artistic excellence nothing to cable about. Sir Thomas Beecham called it quits. Said he: "Support this year has been entirely inadequate. The public has not yet recovered from that contemptible condition of nervous prostration caused by the entirely anticipated events of last autumn and this spring." Declaring that he would never, never conduct opera again, Sir Thomas announced he might enter politics.

As a politician, puckish Sir Thomas would undoubtedly alarm his more sober countrymen. Typical Beecham attitude: "It is safe to prophesy that the ideological lunatics who abound in every country will, both in the press and out of it, continue their unhappy endeavors to widen the breach between one country and another. I look forward, therefore, to a highly ironical and diverting climax to the current epoch of political myopia."

* One of several plugging British products for International Broadcasting Co. (see p. 74).

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