SIR;—Mr. Christie provides the best answer to his letter in
his own reference to the 'envy and malice with which we have for years been attacked.' The envy and malice exist only in his own imagination, and so does the abuse of him that he has read into my article of July 13.
That he is 'not noted for favouritism towards English singers' is a simple fact, creditable rather than otherwise. The observation was certainly not made as a criticism. On the con- trary, in attempting to support my contention that we have first-rate English singers by point- ing out Mr. Christie's favourable opinion of them, obviously I was commending his judg- ment.
Similarly in suggesting that unmusical snobs might take note of Glyndebourne's choice of English singers, I was not suggesting that Mr. Christie was a snob, nor even that the Glynde- bourne public were snobs. There are plenty of snobs there, of course, as in any opera audience, but my reference in this case was clearly to the snobs in the Covent Garden audience, who do not know the excellence of the English singers they hear there, but will probably take Mr. Christie's word for it.
Finally, the State does not pay Covent Gar- den £270,000 per annum `to compete with Glyndebourne' but to provide the country with a national opera company in the capital city, which Glyndebourne, a private festival, obvi- ously never can be and has never attempted to
be.—Yours faithfully, COLIN MASON Caledonian Hotel, Edinburgh
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