BJ. William Plomer

23. To Earl Miner, ca. 1967-70. Quoted in Miner (A47), 1971-72.

The ‘church operas’ (18, 19, and 21), Plomer writes, ‘are not imitations of noh plays, but without the strong responses . . . to the noh theatre’ by both Plomer and Britten ‘they wouldn’t have come into being’. Miner’s suggestion that Plomer ‘took Britten to a Tokyo performance of the noh play’ SUMIDAGAWA is a misunderstanding. Plomer recommended to Britten that he attend the nô while in Japan, but the two were not there together (see 22). According to Miner, Plomer writes that Britten’s ‘feelings about noh before seeing the play were . . . negative’, but SUMIDAGAWA stirred him to a new understanding of possibilities inherent in the form. The letter is presumably in the Miner papers at UCLA (CB3).