Every eager collector of books and scores has their special searcher, primed to keep an eye open for long out-of-print rarities at reasonable prices. Mine, like Jesus’ blood, ‘never failed me yet’. Her latest triumph is to have procured a copy of Ernest Chausson’s opera Le roi Arthus, posthumously produced in 1903, four years after his death at 44; never yet staged in this country, though there was a memorable concert performance at the Edinburgh Festival a few years ago.

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