letter:Going for a tenor

FIAMMETTA Rocco's article "Royal Opera House seeks pounds 100m" (4 June) about the ROH endowment fund, "some of which will be used to reduce seat prices", fails to point out that even if the full amount were found and all of it went to subsidise tickets, a yield of, say, 6 per cent would provide enough to reduce prices by only pounds 15. Thus the top price of pounds 133.50 (doubling to pounds 267 for any of the "Three Tenors" performances), would fall to pounds 105: this hardly reverses the trend of "putting opera beyond the pockets of most music-lovers"!

Michael Varcoe-Cocks

London W6