Vaughn Williams on Bellini

"Personally," says John Klein, "I have never been able to understand the violent prejudice against [Vincenzo] Bellini in English musical circles; it was glaringly revealed in [Ralph] Vaughn Williams's strange outburst on the historic occasion of the successful revival of Norma at Covent Garden in 1952. 'We have only two opera houses here,' he exclaimed, 'but in the centenary year of [Charles Villiers] Stanford's birth, when they might have given us an opportunity of hearing such splendid works as Shamus O'Brien or Much Ado, they chose to shake the dead bones of Norma.'" (Source: John Klein's review of Bellini by Leslie Orrey (London:1969) in Music and Letters, Vol. 50, No. 4, October 1969, p. 491)