ABSTRACT
No Cost is too High When it Comes to High Quality
Ruth Towse told Alex the following story from the opera world. When Samson and Delilah by Saint Saëns was staged by the Royal Opera House in London it included a large chorus. All chorus members had expensive fitted silk dresses. The woman playing Delilah at one point complained that her silk dress did not stand out enough from the other dresses. So they put the expensive dresses with the exception of Delilah's in a washing machine. The effect of washing silk in a washing machine was as expected. The point of whether Delilah was unreasonably demanding or right wasn't the issue; a small improvement had been bought at great expense. The expense was unnecessary because, according to Ruth, cheap dresses could have been made for the chorus members and the silk dresses could have been saved for a later occasion. The problem could have been solved for a lot less money. Plus had the designers been more cost-minded, they would have thought twice about having all the silk dresses looking exactly alike. What shocked Ruth was the total disregard for costs.
