ABSTRACT
The decade of the 1930s had been an especially taxing one for Beecham, both physically and mentally. For eight years he had carried virtually single-handed the combined weight and responsibility of running the LPO in tandem with the Royal Opera House; when not in London he was criss-crossing the country on tour with his orchestra or conducting at provincial festivals; in between he made regular guest visits to the Hallé, City of Birmingham and Liverpool Philharmonic orchestras, or darted overseas to conduct concerts or operas in New York, Berlin or Munich; he had made more than 200 gramophone records, including large-scale contributions to the Delius and Sibelius Societies, and in Berlin had recorded a complete Die Zauberflöte. By the end of the 1938–39 season the strain had become too much. In his customary speech at curtain-fall on the last night of the Covent Garden season (16 June) he announced that he hoped there would be a 1939–40 season, but he would not be conducting, ‘partly on medical advice, partly for the sake of my sanity’. It transpired that a year’s rest had been advised, and he was proposing to take it abroad before picking up the threads in a tour of Australia and Canada in the middle of 1940.
