5 SEPTEMBER 1981, Page 17

Perverse

Sir: Really, Mr Milnes (29 August) makes remarkably heavy weather of my innocent query.

As for the 'private spat' of which he threatens an explanation (surely he means `joke'), there is nothing private about it. He has already told your readers that Rigoletto has an incestuous passion for his own daughter; that Hoffman cannot 'make it with women' but has 'a perfectly good boyfriend whom he passes off as his muse' ; and that there is something depraved about Der Rosenkavalier, regarded by most of us as essentially the story of a young man's 'education sentimentale'.

Julian Budden External Services Music Organiser, British Broadcasting Corporation, London WI