FESTIVAL HALL EXHIBITIONS SIR, — 'Why,' asks Pharos, 'if Mr. Bean .really
believes that the Festival Hall is sacred to concert-goers . . . are winers and diners allowed in without buying concert tickets?'
There is a simple answer. The restaurants are public restaurants situated outside the ambulatory area of the auditorium. The upper bars and buffets, on the other hand, like the Exhibition Suite itself, are situated within that area and must, on that account, be reserved for the concert-goer. In the same way, the crush-bar at Covent Garden, the re- freshment bars in any theatre and the art treasures in the foyers of the Paris and Vienna Opera Houses are reserved for the enjoyment of the opera- or theatre-goer respectively.
According to Pharos's expository footnote, an unmusical person with a taste for oil-paintings (or lager?) is entitled to regard these restrictions, un- avoidable though he acknowledges them to be in pradtice, as being 'unjustifiable in theory.' This may well be so : but it lifts the discussion into the stratosphere of Kantian metaphysics where I hesitate to pursue it.
On the lower level of practical expediency may I assure such of your readers as may still be follow- ing this bewildering correspondence that though we are unable, for the reasons already stated, to arrange public exhibitions open to all, we shall continue to house limited exhibitions for the enjoyment of concert patrons. The fact that the Festival Hall in its present stage of completion is not equipped to attempt the larger aim seems an inadequate reason for abandoning the smaller.—Yours faithfully,
Royal Festival Hall, SE1
T. E. BEAN
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