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grange park opera
2003
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12 June – 13 July 2003 The 6th Festival at The Grange, Hampshire The 1st Festival at Nevill Holt, Leicestershire
Grange Park Opera Giacomo Puccini
La Bohème Gilbert & Sullivan
Iolanthe Emmanuel Chabrier
Le Roi malgré lui
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Patron’s Foreword Welcome to another exciting programme of opera – our sixth, which will, I am confident, be a wonderful experience for us all. With each succeeding season here at The Grange, the supporters – Notable Greeks, members and the remarkable group of people drawn from the local community who work so hard to make the festival run smoothly – have increased steadily in size. This is a great tribute above all to Wasfi Kani but also to her immediate executive circle. Michael Moody has of course been in charge, on behalf of Grange Park Opera, of the new building while Carol Butler doubles as Finance Director and Company Secretary. Judith Becher, Rachel Pearson and Lorna Clive oversee a myriad tasks, often unseen but essential, not only during the Festival but contributing during the rest of the year to the enormous amount of preparation. There are many other volunteers from the surrounding area and elsewhere, but I know that to name individuals when all contribute so much would be invidious. I want also to mention two other people whose support has contributed enormously. First, Donald Kahn with his wife, who have been our largest donors by a considerable margin and we see them here regularly. Second, Janis Kelly, who has been associated with GPO since its early days, and either as a performer – The Turn of the Screw, for instance – or director – Così fan tutte in 2001– has been a stalwart of our activities. She is here again this year as director and I feel this level of involvement must mean she enjoys her time here. As many of you are aware, each year a small tour of one of that season’s productions has been run. Wasfi started the Pimlico Opera tour 12 years ago and it visits about 15 theatres around the country. Though each theatre only seats around 400, it actually adds enormously to the size of the audience that has access to GPO’s successes. In 2002, for example, while there were just over 10,000 tickets available here at The Grange, there were a further 4,000+ available on the tour, mostly at lower prices than here, but of course without the landscape – and the weather! Wasfi is properly proud of what has been achieved so far in this way and the Board has been discussing over quite a period how to enable more people to enjoy what is done here. With our new larger stage at The Grange, touring to larger theatres (seating 800 people) is an obvious way forward. We are putting plans in place for 2004 for such a tour and we hope that the Arts Council decides to support this. A short season in another country house in another part of the UK is an easier, though nonetheless arduous, way of tapping a reservoir of
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people who are unlikely to travel so easily to The Grange and this is what we have chosen to do this year. Immediately after the final night here at The Grange, La Bohème will be performed at Nevill Holt, a large house near Market Harborough belonging to David Ross, one of our major supporters through his firm Carphone Warehouse. This year only two performances will take place in a temporary structure, but, if it proves popular and can pay its way, the idea is to expand it next year to between five and seven performances of two productions. The great enthusiasm to be involved from individuals within Nevill Holt’s catchment area makes us optimistic about the prospects. There is no intention of turning this into competition for The Grange, nor will it be allowed to starve us of the resources we need here to improve and upgrade the quality of productions. The roots of Grange Park Opera are here, your support and involvement are our priority and, as long as this sort of Festival can be made financially viable anywhere, we shall remain here. So welcome to the sixth festival here at The Grange. The first in the completed theatre which, as you will know, is for a number of reasons something of a miracle; first because of the rate at which your enthusiastic support for Grange Park Opera has grown, second because of the speed of construction thanks to our contractors, R. J. Smith & Co. and its Managing Director, Martin Smith, and last, but crucially, a magnificent fund-raising performance by Wasfi herself, with more than 99% of donations coming from private individuals. It amazes me that the first time this was mentioned to you in the programme was just two years ago. Perhaps we shall now have time to catch our breath.
ashburton 3
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Donors to the
grange park opera appeal major donor after whom we have named the stage
Donald Kahn & family the keleustai • rowing masters
Ronnie Frost & family Lydia & Miles d’Arcy-Irvine The Carphone Warehouse The Clore Duffield Foundation Lord Harris of Peckham John & Anya Sainsbury Simon & Virginia Robertson the strategoi • generals commanded the Athenian armed forces and appointed the Trierarchs
Anonymous James Cave David & Amanda Leathers Sir David & Lady Davies
EFG Private Bank William Garrett Corus The Bulldog Trust
the trierarchs • sea captains As a matter of public duty, an Athenian citizen of high property rating and with children born in wedlock would serve for a year as a trierarch, kitting out the trireme at his own expense and paying for wages and food for his 170 oarsmen. In return he could claim exemption from income tax.
Mark Andrews Mr & Dr J Beechey David & Elizabeth Challen Mr & Mrs William Charnley Mr & Mrs Peter Dicks Simon Freakley 4
David Gilgrist & Bobbie du Bois Philip Gwyn Mr & Mrs Ian Jay James & Béatrice Lupton Donald & Jill Mackenzie
Nigel & Anna McNair Scott P F Charitable Trust The Hon & Mrs Richard Sharp Richard & Cynthia Thompson Anne Veeder The Band Trust
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the epibatai • bodyguards This elite group enforced discipline on board a trireme and prevented desertion amongst the oarsmen. They were deployed in action only if, after the ram, the ship was unable to back off quickly enough. Mr & Mrs Gerald Acher Mr & Mrs David Anderson Mr & Mrs R Atkinson-Willes Anonymous Tom & Gay Bartlam Rupert T Bentley William & Judith Bollinger Douglas Guest Bollinger James Philip Bollinger Sarah & Tony Bolton Mr & Mrs Paul Brewer Bernard Cayser Trust Mr & Mrs Tony Bugg Sir Euan Calthorpe Bt Nigel & Elisabeth Carrington Sir Peter & Lady Cazalet Mr & Mrs Bernard Cazenove Hayden Trust Pam Clarke Alastair Collett Oliver Colman & Cynthia Colman Michael Cuthbert Mr Peter Davidson Sandra & Damon de Laszlo Mr & Mrs Lionel de Rothschild Anonymous Alun & Bridget Evans Nicholas & Jane Ferguson Mr & Mrs James fforde Mr & Mrs T Floyd Hamish & Sophie Forsyth Peter & Judith Foy Mr Mark N Franks Reita Gadkari Janet & John Gaymer Jacqueline & Michael Gee Trust Enrique Biel Gleeson Lady Shauna Gosling Mr & Mrs George Goulding Sir Ronald Grierson Nigel & Diana Grimwood William Gronow Davis Barbara & Michael Gwinnell Mr & Mrs Charles Haddon-Cave QC
Mr & Mrs R A Henley Malcolm Herring Mr & Mrs John Hewett John & Catherine Hickman Dr Jonathan Holliday & Dr Gwen Lewis George & Janette Hollingbery Anonymous Dr & Mrs Peter Honey Nicholas & Jeremy Hunter Mr & Mrs David Hunter Mr & Mrs M J Isaac Hannah Jacobs Mr & Mrs David Jervis Mr & Mrs J Jervoise Neil & Elizabeth Johnson Andrew and Caroline Joy Dr R Hubert Laeng-Danner Rufford Foundation T Landon Barbara Yu Larsson Mr & Mrs Malcolm Le May Peter Leaver & Thomas Sharpe Mr & Mrs Adam Lee Jeremy Gardner Lewis Susie Lintott & Louisa Church Joe & Minnie MacHale Charles & Ann-Marie Mackay Mr & Mrs Michael Mackenzie Tessa & John Manser J P Marland Charitable Trust Wendy & Michael Max Anonymous Mr & Mrs Peter May Harvey McGregor QC Martin & Caroline Moore Elizabeth Morison Dr & Mrs Julian Muir Mr & Mrs Jay A Nawrocki The O’Hea family Sue & Peter Paice The Stevenson Trust Alexia Paterson Mark & Rachel Pearson
Nigel Perfect & Peter Tilley The Lord and Lady Phillimore Sir David & Lady Plastow Jan & Michael Potter Bruce & Lizzie Powell Mark & Veronica Powell Benjamin Pritchett-Brown Mr and Mrs Gary Ralfe Mr & Mrs Christopher Reeves David & Alex Rhodes Ros & Ken Rokison Mrs Faanya Rose Mr & Mrs Antony Rowe Mr & Mrs John Salkeld Mr & Mrs Anthony Salz Christopher & Anne Saul Mr & Mrs Richard Scopes Mr & Mrs Roderick Selkirk Mrs Christopher Sheridan Aram Shishmaniam Lord & Lady Simon of Highbury Edward M Siskind Paul & Rita Skinner Mr & Mrs Martin St Quinton Nicholas Stanley Donald and Rachael Stearns John & Lesley Stuttard Mr & Mrs R H Sutton Mrs Timothy Syder Anonymous Mr & Mrs Bernard Taylor Gordon & Sue Thorburn Mr & Mrs Anthony Townsend Wendy & John Trueman Adair Turner & Orna Ni-Chionna The Hon Lucy & Michael Vaughan Lady Jane Wallop John & Carol Wates Miss Clare Williams Hamish and Elisabeth Williams Mark and Jane Williams The Hon Geoffrey & Mrs Wilson Mr & Mrs C H R Wunderly Caroline Wyld
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‘Jeder ist jetzt ein Fee’ (Everyone is now a fairy) Richard wagner said that and so did W S Gilbert. More of that later. Of the supernatural additions to The Grange, let us begin with the helical staircase to nowhere which we have moved from the dining room to the theatre. It is something of a miracle of engineering (page 24). On stage, there is a revolve, used in Bohème for seamless set changes and in Iolanthe. It is driven by a hydraulic sub-station which in future years will power ever more wondrous machinery. There is a new picnic spot with a Georgian cast iron fountain aligned to be seen from inside the theatre. There are new shutters which, when not shut, afford a view of Lord Ashburton's fairy castle along the lake. Then there is the train set. I remarked to Lord Ashburton a few years ago that I would love there to be a train at The Grange, and he suprisingly replied: ‘So would I’. I think he had something a bit grander in mind. I had been pondering how to acknowledge Appeal donors in a more memorable way than the traditional painted board. Now I could do the two together. When I wrote to donors asking for odd bits of Hornby double–o gauge, Neil Johnson, a donor, sent an instant reply: "Dear Wasfi, There is no reason why you should know this, but I am the Chairman of Hornby plc and we voted at our board meeting yesterday to give Grange Park the train set you are looking for”. The result is in the floor of the foyer. Building work continued inside The Grange right through the winter. We were due to start outside when the weather got the better of us. The blue skies of February, March and even April were accompanied by heavy night frosts, making it impossible for Martin Smith's brilliant team (page 19) to begin creating their elaborate moulds with their running horses (page 17) and Roman cement. Frost was followed by rain and it will be a few months before it is finally finished. However, it gives audiences the opportunity to see for themselves the horses running. The work is superb and we are all delighted with the results. Fortunately, the building works for our new project, Nevill Holt, are in the capable hands of David Ross. Lord Ashburton has explained the logic of this sojourn in Leicestershire. In much the same way that we had searched
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Hampshire in 1997, Michael Moody and I had begun investigating possible opera locations near junctions 16–26 of the M1, when David Ross got wind of it. His response was confidently indignant: ‘If you choose any place other than Nevill Holt, I will never speak to you again.’ He invited us up to a mud bath of a site (home–from–home for us) in what has to be the biggest house I've ever seen. It's perfect – a wonderful medieval house in incredible countryside. Restoring it after its 80 years as a prep school has been a monumental task, but at the end of it David will have a superb home and we will have the ideal setting for an opera season. Page 10 tells you something about the house. We plan to start off slowly with just two Bohème performances in an elaborate, but temporary, structure with raked seating and an orchestra pit. Grange Park devotees have supplied names from whom we hope to build up a support base and maybe – who knows – eventually build another theatre at the bottom of David’s garden. (Is ‘everyone is a fairy’ because everyone lives at the bottom of somebody’s garden?). David is amazing. And I am grateful that he is. At The Grange we are still Appeal-ing away. The building has been paid for – bar a bit of render – and we are close to the Endowment Funds’ £2 million target. The depressing downturn in world markets and problems experienced by so many have inevitably had an effect so we are short of the final few donors. The Notable Greeks (the Fairy Godmothers who conjure up year–on–year festival costs) have hit the 1,000 target and we will not be recruiting more because we want to leave Unnotables (mortals) with tickets. (There was an unexpected run on Le Roi tickets and I must apologise to fairies and mortals for the shortage.) We hope in the autumn to gather a posse of Leicestershire Notables and that they will visit Hampshire and vice versa. I have not yet mentioned the operas themselves. All three belong to a 14 year period 1882–1896 when Wagner was to the world of opera what Beckham is to soccer. His (that is Wagner’s, not Beckham’s) influence on Puccini was sharply defined: the leitmotif, a musical theme used to depict a person, an idea etc. Wagner’s influence on Chabrier’s Paris was immense
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Natasha Marsh (The Governess) in The Turn of the Screw Grange Park Opera 2002
(page 97). It would be a shame not to draw the parallel between Murger’s bohemian characters and Chabrier’s own eclectic circle (painters and composers including Messager whose Fortunio we staged two years ago) but I suppose you can’t really be a civil servant and a bohemian. I hadn’t considered a Wagnerian influence on Sullivan and then I discovered that The Ring opened in London just a few months before Iolanthe (page 83). The thrust of the two pieces is not far apart: the vanity of the gods and their susceptibility to fairy nibelungs. None of this could happen without the myriads of fairies to whom thanks are due. The ensemble appear in all three operas and work very very hard and must be specially thanked first. Christopher and Valda Ondaatje, are supporting for their fourth year. Christopher traced Richard Burton’s steps through India and documented the trip in his fascinating book Sind Revisited. Michael Fontes cites Burton's hugely popular translation of the Arabian Nights as a further textual inspiration for Iolanthe. In those days, they couldn’t get enough of fairies. John and Victoria Salkeld perform an annual miracle with the roses. If they are going to flower too soon, the buds are slaughtered. If they are looking lethargic, they tell them to get their skates on. English Heritage, whose Chief Executive Simon Thurley visited last year, undertook the rebuilding of the steps that take you up to the theatre. Congratulations are due to Dominic Cooke on his appointment as Associate Director at the rsc. The Jerwood Foundation have again let us use their chic rehearsal facilities and supported our 6 week stretch in not–so–chic Wormwood Scrubs. Lord Ashburton will talk more about this in his speech. The Ashburtons provide support of all sorts (mental, nutritional and supernatural) and never by a flicker indicate any resentment at all the things I ask of them – even the loan of the family coronation robes (page 79). I marvel at Sally's energy with her incredibly busy life as she works full–time in her fabric showroom at Chelsea Harbour. My Chairman Sir David Davies has been midwife for the birth of Nevill Holt, having seen The Grange through to its adolescence. We are very lucky to have him to guide us. We are also lucky to have a board which is not just supportive but also amusing: Mary–Ann Sheehy, 2002 Oxfordshire Ladies Bridge Pairs champion; Iain Burnside, whom I dated at Oxford 28 years ago; Simon Freakley, the susceptible Lord Chancellor of Kroll (whose name to me says knitting patterns not corporate recovery); and William Garrett who has been behind the Appeal’s success. For 2004, the plan is Tchaikowsky The Enchantress, Rossini Cenerentola and Bernstein Wonderful Town – plus a longer festival at Nevill Holt and at The Grange levitating theatre chandeliers and a finished Smirke façade. Deo volentis. Wasfi Kani May 2003
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The Grange & Nevill Holt This sixth festival at Grange Park sees a short extension to the opera season at the historic house of Nevill Holt in Leicestershire, where we will stage two performances of La Bohème. The two houses could not be more contrasting: The Grange was conceived as a single Greek temple and built by one architect, William Wilkins, for a wealthy client, Henry Drummond. It was extended by even wealthier owners and even grander architects: the Barings commissioned Robert Smirke to add a wing (which we have now restored) and the Cockerells,
father and son, designed further extensions. In Victorian times, it was among the grandest houses of England, hosting the most fashionable house parties in the land and regularly receiving royalty. By contrast, Nevill Holt's rambling structure grew up over centuries with no seriously wealthy owners, and no famous architects (other than Papworth whose ambitious plans never happened). From its origins in the 14th century, it was a loose collection of buildings grouped around the Great Hall in which a large family and many servants lived in apparent
1263 ALICE DE FRANKLYN leases 36 acres to Hyde Abbey on which to build a grange, or granary
THE OWNERS OF THE GRANGE 1662 THE HENLEY FAMILY
1539 The estate passed to the Crown at the Dissolution
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1641 SIR BENJAMIN TICHBOURNE
ARCHITECTS OF THE GRANGE
c. 1670
1764
WILLIAM SAMWELL Builds a five–floor brick country house, possibly on an unused site
ROBERT ADAM Designs a kitchen block and a naturalistic landscape with a lake, a bridge and a folly
NEVILL HOLT - OWNERS & BUILDINGc. 1620 1200 ‘s THE DE KIRKBY FAMILY St Mary’s Church The Great Hall
1645 The Battle of Naseby HENRY NEVILL was fined £3,000
1700
The NEVILL FAMILY owned the house for 400 years
Queen Anne house
Cloisters
1600
1416 WILLIAM PALMER 1460 His son Thomas added the bay window 1474 Thomas’ daughter married WILLIAM NEVILL
c. 1720
c. 1750
Stable Block
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harmony. The Nevills, who, unlike the Barings, made no discernible impact on national, artistic or commercial affairs outside their own community, lived there for 400 years, jealously guarding their Catholic religion and their quiet lives. When they finally ran out of money, the Cunard shipping family bought the house and for a brief time Lady Emerald Cunard’s parties rivalled those given at The Grange. The Grange today stands as a splendid but empty monument of glories past. Nevill Holt, its basic medieval form still intact, has been beautifully restored
by David Ross as the family house it was for so many generations. In their different ways, both are magnificent backdrops for opera. As Iolanthe opened to great excitement in London, the Cunards were making their architectural mark at Nevill Holt, building a second bay window. And in the year of Bohème their daughter Nancy was born there. At The Grange, there were four little girls (Lord Ashburton’s aunts). Their baby brother was born two years after Bohème. His father sold The Grange in 1933 and he became 6th Lord Ashburton five years later.
1887 first performance Paris LE ROI MALGRE LIU
1817 THE BARING FAMILY
1882 first performance London IOLANTHE
1896 first performance Turin LA BOHEME
1964 JOHN BARING 1981 7th Baron Ashburton
1934 CHARLES WALLACH
1787 THE DRUMMOND FAMILY
1975 Placed in the guardianship of ENGLISH HERITAGE
1795–1800 leased to THE PRINCE OF WALES later George IV
1804
c.1820 1823
1852
ROBERT SMIRKE Builds a single–storey private wing to the west
1998 The first opera festival at THE GRANGE
1868
JOHN COX Restructures interior
F P COCKERELL Adds a second storey to C R COCKERELL Smirke’s west wing Builds the Conservatory and an elegant dining room WILLIAM WILKINS Transforms the exterior of Samwell’s house into a Greek temple
1815
1829
Waterloo clock tower above stables and banqueting hall J B PAPWORTH proposes a radical plan for modernisation
1882
Bay window
1911 Nevill Holt put up for sale
2000 DAVID ROSS
1868 HENRY GRIEVESON
1878 THE CUNARD FAMILY
1928 F S PHILLIPS (d1982) Nevill Holt school
1982 D C S PHILLIPS school continues until 1999
2000
1900
1800
1896 Nancy Cunard born
1919 REV BOWLKER from Uppingham Lower School
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Nevill Holt –
700 years of open house
T he nevills arrived in Holt, in the south-east corner of Leicestershire, in 1474 and stayed for nearly 400 years, even giving their name to the house and village. Holt was then, as now, a tiny village, no more than a cluster of houses around the church, dominated completely by the already ancient collection of buildings that was Holt Hall. Holt means a wooded hill, or copse, and the name is probably derived from the nearby woods in the rolling Midlands landscape which were cleared in the 12th and 13th centuries. Holt is not in the Domesday Book (1086) and probably dates from several hundred years later. The name Nevill was only added after the family had been established there for a century. The house that stands today is a result of more than 700 years of continuous building, demolition, adaptation and additions which have somehow left the original skeleton, form and medieval atmosphere of the house intact. Nevill Holt was never a truly grand house in the way The Grange was, which largely explains why it survived. Nor, until late Victorian times, did it have owners rich or interested enough to alter its shape radically, in the way of so many great houses (including The Grange). ‘While many medieval houses started as a collection of disjointed structures, few have survived all the improvements of
The rooves of Nevill Holt, winter 2002
following centuries without the imposition of a coordinated plan,’ wrote N A Hill in a paper for the Royal Archaeological Institute in 1999. ‘This quality of organic growth, however, has now come to be valued in its own right.’ Its current owner, David Ross, certainly does value it. He bought it in 2000 before the flotation of Carphone Warehouse, the company he founded with his partner and friend Charles Dunstone. Nevill Holt had been a prep school since the end of World War I, its long period of organic development suspended for 80 years. David has substantially restored and modernised it, preserving as much as possible of its many historic elements and, in the building process, often exposing features that had been covered up for centuries. It is now, for the first time since the Cunards owned it, a family house again, its very special medieval structure and character restored and preserved for future generations. The Nevills, although by far the most significant owners in the house's history, were not the first. Holt was associated with John de Kirkby, later Bishop of Ely, and then his brother William in 1290. William's daughter Margaret Doseville inherited it
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in 1302, by which stage the essential nature of the house had been established. Margaret's daughter in turn married Edmund Trussell whose family owned the house until 1416 when it was bought by William Palmer, whose son Thomas added the magnificent bay window to the west of the hall. His daughter Katherine married William Nevill in 1474, beginning the first of the long line of Nevills who gave their name to the house and hamlet. The Nevills were industrious and fairly undistinguished country folk who were never seriously wealthy and who seemed to prefer a relatively quiet life in their comfortable, rambling home to the world of politics or the services. They were steadfast Catholics and after Henry VIII's time they were not allowed to hold offices of profit under the crown, reinforcing their tradition as country gentlemen. The priest's hiding holes which are still in the house date from Elizabethan and Jacobean times when Nevill Holt was a refuge (there is no indication they were ever used). They were Royalists in the Civil War and Henry Nevill (whose initials HN can be seen on the fireplace in the Great Hall) fought as a colonel at the Battle of Naseby in 1645. He was imprisoned and fined the sum of £3,000 by the victorious Cromwell, an enormous sum in that day, leaving the family in debt for decades. An indication of their piety is shown by the fact that a priest was resident in the house from the 17th century onwards. Succeeding generations of Nevills seemed happy to look after their inheritance, respecting and pre-
serving the contributions of earlier periods. The house today still reflects most of those periods: there are examples of medieval, Tudor, Stuart, Queen Anne, Adam and Gothic. The splendid and mostly original roof of the central stone-walled Great Hall was for many years thought to be late fourteenth century, but a detailed study in the 1980s identified it as much earlier: the distinctive style of the roof, a base cruck roof form only used in the late 13th century, now firmly points to a probable date of 1280-1300. There is a document which records in 1288 John de Kirkby acquiring oaks from the royal forest of Rutland for ‘certain of his works at Holt’, and it is increasingly believed that this is the actual record for obtaining the roof timbers for Holt. The architectural writer Nikolaus Pevsner has described it as the best medieval domestic hall in Leicestershire. The Great Hall may be the grandest, but over the next seven centuries many other styles would emerge. The King John Tower was built, probably as a dovecote, in the 16th century (it had nothing to do with King John), and houses a priest’s hiding place under the floorboards of the staircase. The church is 13th century and the water tower dates from around 1400. The lovely cloisters were completed around 1620. The period 1700–1750 probably marked the high point of the Nevill fortunes, and after that it was all gradual decline. The Queen Anne house was added in the 1720’s and the magnificent stable block some 30 years later (the clock tower was added to commemorate the Battle of Waterloo). The banqueting hall is
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early 19th century. Some years later, the Victorian architect J B Papworth came up with a radical plan which would have largely destroyed the old house, but the Nevills could not afford it. Papworth plastered over most of the Tudor brickwork and replaced the Georgian windows with Gothic between 1829 and 1833. The Cunard shipping family, which owned it from 1878 to 1910, added a splendid bay window in 1882 plus a great deal of stabling and housing for their ten grooms and large staff. But basically, although the house owes a great deal to its successive owners, none ever transformed the essentially medieval building that had largely taken shape before the Nevills even arrived. ‘Nevill Holt escaped any major attempt to formalise its sprawling plan,’ wrote Hill. ‘Had Charles Nevill (in 1829) the strength of conviction – or more like the depth of pocket – to carry through JB Papworth's proposals, the house would have been transformed.’ He meant, of course, transformed for the worst. Fortunately Charles had neither and confined himself to a few sensible additions to the dining room and servants block. By the 1860s the Nevills finally ran out of money and the house passed into the hands of an extraordinary Victorian industrialist, Henry Grieveson, who brought in every modern comfort of the day: ‘three handsomely fitted Bath Rooms, supplied with hot and cold water . . . a Perfect system of Drainage . . . The Water Supply is perfect . . . the Water Tower being supplied by a Hydraulic Ram . . . The Heating and Ventilation System are effected by Hot Air. Gas pipes have been laid in the house.’ There was even a modern ‘capital laundry, Wash-house and Drying-room’. Unfortunately poor Grieveson soon ran out of money too and in 1878 the young Edward Cunard, grandson of Samuel Cunard, the American who created the Cunard Line, bought all of this plus 1,265 acres of land for the princely sum of £105,000. By that stage radical change to the house, as M Girouard remarked in his book Living with the Past: Victorian alterations to country houses, was unthinkable. ‘The owner of a house that was a rag-bag work of different ages found that, instead of being urged to do something about it, he was being congratulated on owning a splendid example of old English charm.’
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Edward was killed in a polo accident in 1877 and the estate passed to his elder brother, Sir Bache, educated at Rugby and Cambridge, who used it as his country base for his sporting interests, notably fox-hunting. He lavished money on it, adding lots of new features: Jacobean panelling throughout, his beautiful Cunard Window, the Buffalo gates in the village and much else. Like so many previous owners, Sir Bache too ran short of money, rescuing his fortunes with a timely marriage to Maud Burke (Lady Emerald), an American heiress, in 1895. They had one child, the famous socialite Nancy Cunard, who was born at Nevill Holt in 1896, and their brief time together there probably marked the high point of its history on the social calendar with weekend parties that included the Asquiths, the Irish writer George Moore and Sir Thomas Beecham, whose mistress she later became. This social life did not suit Sir Bache and the marriage soon broke up; Emerald went off to London where she fulfilled her ambition as one of the most fashionable Edwardian hostesses. Withdrawal of his wife's financial support forced Sir Bache to put Holt up for sale in 1911, but it stood empty during World War I and was finally bought and converted into a school in 1919. The stable blocks were converted into teaching space at various times between 1920 and 1986, and fire doors were added to comply with regulations, but otherwise it remained largely unchanged for 80 years. In many ways, Nevill Holt epitomises Pugin's vision of the old English Catholic mansion, its different styles ‘not masked or concealed under one monotonous front, but by their variety in form and outline increasing the effect of the building, and presenting a standing illustration of good old English hospitality.’ It now begins a new life and new era under a new owner who has already lavished a significant part of his fortune and a great deal of love and attention on it. It is a fitting backdrop to grand opera and a worthy extension of the tradition now firmly established at The Grange.
ivan fallon
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PATRON The Rt Hon Lord Ashburton KG BOARD Sir David Davies (Chairman) The Rt Hon Lord Ashburton KG Iain Burnside Simon Freakley William Garrett Wasfi Kani OBE The Hon Mary-Ann Sheehy GRANGE PARK APPEAL COMMITTEE William Garrett (Chairman) Gerald Acher Francis Baring The Hon Mark Baring William Charnley Lady Davies Mark Evans Jacob Grierson The Hon Mrs Erskine Guinness Charles Haddon-Cave Patrick Hungerford John Jay Adam Lee James Lupton Tom Lynch Dr Harvey McGregor Lady Northbrook Dr Christopher Ondaatje David R W Potter David Pountney Bruce Powell David Ross John Salkeld Victoria Sharp The Hon Jeremy Soames Amanda Wakeley CHIEF EXECUTIVE Wasfi Kani EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR Michael Moody FINANCE DIRECTOR Carol Butler ADMINISTRATOR Jo Partridge PRODUCTION MANAGER Alison Ritchie APPEAL CO-ORDINATOR Rachel Pearson HOUSE MANAGER Judith Becher COMPANY MANAGER Fiona Trim BOX OFFICE MANAGER Alex Davidson PRESS & PUBLICITY Jill Franklin Franklin Morrow Communications
THANKS TO Bob & Elizabeth Boas Steel Charitable Trust The Golden Bottle Trust Glyndebourne Sir Martin & Lady Jacomb
R M Sage Adam Cleal Vernon Miles & Noble Jessica Smith & Mark Davies E J Wylie
Evan James Professor Colin Stevenson J Martin-Jones Alexander & Mary Creswell Itchen Stoke Estates
Lady Salomon John Redmill Mrs Louis Franck Stephen Ball David Alberman
AT THE GRANGE THE THERMOI provide invaluable help before and during the Festival Penny Ackroyd Jean Amos Nikki Barker Martha Berry Sue Bristow Sue Brown
Virginia Collett Louise Cox Pru & Douglas de Lavison Andrea Harris Lizzie Holmes Inge Hunter
Charmian Jones Angela Larard Susie Lintott Sue Paice Lucy Pease Jo Seligman
Mike & Ann Smart Joan Taylor Sarah Tillie The Hon Gina Tufnell Don & Barbara Woods Louise Woods
HOUSE & TENT KEEPER Lorna Clive
THE RESTAURANT Managed by Anthony Lane & Heidi Coles
THE GROUNDS Douglas de Lavison John & Victoria Salkeld Ian Conduct
THE THEATRE SCENIC ART / THEATRE FLOOR Liz Kramers Victoria Salkeld
Assisted by Richard Loader Tania Perkins, Henrietta Pellereau Sarah Stevens, Tracy Freeman David Gollins
Food by Nicky Sherlock Catering
Ushers Stephanie Kavanagh Susie Broughton
AT NEVILL HOLT ADVISORY COMMITTEE
SUPPORT TEAM
The Duchess of Rutland William Guinness Tim Hart Lady Heseltine
Michelle Lineker Lady Sarah McCorquodale Sir Bruce McPhail Mrs Robin Murray–Philipson
David Phillips David Ross Fi Smith–Bingham Sir James Spooner
Lynne Ross Fi Smith Bingham Sarah Forsyth Phil Oldham (grounds)
Rehearsal répétiteurs Jeremy Cooke (Le Roi) Magnus Gilljam (Bohème) Lesley Anne Sammons (Iolanthe)
Festival Costume Supervisor Sarah Bowern
Props Supervisor Jemma Gardner
Deputy Costume Supervisor Gayle Woodsend
Props English National Opera Woman in Black (West End) Tilita Rosettes Barrow & Gale Lever Faberge (washing powder)
Set construction & painting Scene & Theme (Le Roi) Bower Wood Production Services (Bohème) Chris Clark (Cyclorama painting) GPO workshop (Iolanthe build) Scene & Theme (Iolanthe painting)
Language Coach (Bohème) Gabriella Dall Olio
Wardrobe Mistress Alyson Fielden
Master Carpenter Ian Evans
Costume Cutter & Maker Martin Roberts
Deputy Master Carpenter James Jenner
Costume makers Hilary Lewis Marianne Malloy MCH Costume Alan Seltzer Emilia Simcox Elspeth Threadgold Alison Trett Judith Ward
Technical Stage Manager Declan Costello Stage technicians Anthony Bobb-Semple Mark Dunn Alan Hardcastle James McKerracher Chief Electrician Jon Clarke Deputy Electrician Tom Farrington Peter Harrison
Costume hire Angels Cosprop Academy Costume Milliner & Wing Maker Chloe Simcox
GRANGE PARK OPERA 5 Chancery Lane London EC4A 1BU Tel. 020 7320 5586 Fax. 020 7320 5429
Programme Sutchinda Thompson (design) Wasfi Kani Jo Partridge Carol Butler
Printed by Earle & Ludlow Phillip Ellis
Charity no 1068046 VAT no 710241984
Solicitors FARRER Alistair Collett
Accountants WILKINSON LATHAM Sophie Holborn
Stage Managers Fiona Greenhill Annabel Ingram Sally Lindsay-German Deputy Stage Manager Marion Auer Natalie Coury Christina Papaspyrou Assistant Stage Managers Amy Almond Sophie Higson Sophie Milne Student Placements (costume) Lucy Harris Nicola Freeman from Croydon College
Revolve & engineering Clearwater Scenery Tracking by Stage Electrics Clearwater Subsidised rehearsal facilities The Jerwood Space. Lighting by White Light Video monitors Photon (TG) Ltd
Children’s chaperone (Bohème) Lady Northbrook
Images Bridgeman Art Library Clive Barda John Salkeld Julian Sturdy Morton
Every effort has been made to trace
Planning Consultants NATHANIEL LICHFIELD Iain Rhind
Traffic Consultants RPS Colin Mackay
copyright holders. In some cases this has proved impossible. We would be pleased to hear from any copyright holder not contacted.
Grange Park Opera is a registered charity. Its Directors are the Charity Trustees and will be Trustees of the Endowment Fund Lord Ashburton and his family own the site; they placed The Grange in the guardianship of English Heritage in 1975 and have extended the term of the lease until 2018
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Final finishes to The Grange The building of the new theatre at The Grange is almost complete. It has required great skills on the part not only of the superb craftsmen we have employed (page 19) but also of a sympathetic architect who could steep himself in the history of this marvellous building. David Lloyd Jones’ response combines traditional craftsmanship with modern materials. He is a founding director of Studio E Architects and recently constructed the first commercial carbon–neutral building in Britain. The new auditorium, stage and scenery dock are enclosed in walls and roofs that either express the classicism of the surviving mansion or a restrained Modernism. The latter is inspired, not so much by the existing buildings, but by their Arcadian setting. In order to ensure that the new building did not intrude above the roof of the smaller temple (the old orangery), the works are like an iceberg: substantially hidden from view and sunk into the ground. The reconstruction of the Robert Smirke façade reunites the two temples: main house and the orangery. In a few years time, seen from across the fields to the south east, it will be hard to tell the difference between this contemporary marriage and the architectural composition of the late 1820s. Behind this replica façade, however, the new opera accommodation is expressed in a thoroughly contemporary idiom, but one that reinterprets the use of traditional and natural materials: oak, flint, brick and stone. Most natural of all is the cultivated roof to the stage block. Grasses and sedums (crassulaceous rock plants) have been planted in a high-tech sandwich of compost, filtration fleece reservoir board, damp-proof membrane and metal sheeting. The planting will take Detail at roof level of the fragmented west end of the scenery dock.
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a year or two to establish itself, but, when it has, a fringe of green will be seen softening the stage block skyline. The green roof supports the local ecology. It also helps insulate the building and deaden the drumming of heavy rain. The rear (north and west) walls to the stage block are clad in untreated, unseasoned oak boarding. Using green oak avoids the high energy process of artificial desiccation and allows the boarding to weather naturally to an attractive silver grey. The downside to this is that, over the first twelve to eighteen months, the boards will shrink and move. To avoid resulting splits in the wood, stainless steel nails secure the boards through pre-drilled, oversized holes. Also over this period, when it rains, the boards will leach tannic acid, staining adjacent materials a resinous black and corroding unprotected metal work. A concealed stainless steel gutter has, therefore, been incorporated at the bottom of the boarding and on top of the masonry base to carry this damaging acidic solution away. The wall’s base comprises a two metre high wall of local knapped flint and red clay brickwork. The adjacent retaining wall to the Victorian engine house is constructed of the same materials (as are many local buildings). This masonry base is used to tie together the various backstage elements. Along the back of the scenery dock, following the route of the subterranean performers’ passage, it dives into the ground. Here, it is surmounted by a conventional turfed roof. The north wall of the scenery dock is finished in the same sand/cement render as its south facing Smirke wall and set off the ground with a course of Portland stone. Its roof is metal sheeted and can be seen from a distance rising above the Smirke façade as its predecessor once did.
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ARCHITECTS Studio E David Lloyd Jones STRUCTURAL ENGINEERS Ove Arup Charles Walker Steve Peet, Kate Horsfall CONSERVATION ARCHITECT John Redmill CONSTRUCTION CONSULTANT Stuart McGee PRINCIPAL CONTRACTOR R J Smith & Co March 2003 Wall to the rear of the stage: traditional flint and brick with green oak cladding above
The junction between the new scenery dock and the main house caused considerable debate. The west wall of the main house, to which the scenery dock would abut, is a speculative reconstruction of the earlier William Samwell façade. Should there be a direct abutment in the manner of, say, the stylistic collisions of many Oxbridge Colleges? It was concluded that the new Smirke façade should abut – but also allow passage through it to the terraces. The scenery dock building would, however, stop short. In order to emphasise the disconnection and disruption we have stripped the construction of the scenery dock building back to reveal its constituent parts: roof sheeting, rafters, purlins, truss, load–bearing walls and exposed internal partition. This is, of course, a conceit. For reasons of economy and efficiency the roof of the building is not, in fact, supported along its length by heavy hand-made oak construction; neither are the internal partitions lined in oak veneer. But we felt this artifice appropriate to the circumstances; a workaday equivalent, perhaps, of the more cultured artifice employed in using the refined rusticity of classical components – pilasters, capitals, cornices, mouldings and such like – on the grander facades.
February 2002 Concrete to the floor of the orchestra pit has been poured – but there are no walls
STRUCTURAL STEELWORK Littlehampton Welding ELECTRICAL ENGINEERS R S Birch STAGE LIGHTING & FLYING SYSTEM Stage Electrics MECHANICAL VENTILATION Colt Group PLANNING CONSULTANT Nathaniel Lichfield & Partners ARCHAEOLOGICAL CONSULTANT Christopher Currie ACOUSTIC CONSULTANT Colin Beak PLANNING SUPERVISOR WPS Group
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Trade Secrets Martin Smith, the man who, with his team (page 19) has built our new theatre at The Grange, is a restoration specialist who has absorbed many of the skills of traditional craftsmanship, now almost lost. Where they have disappeared, Martin has had to go back to his extensive library to find them. Martin, 46, was born in Whitchurch and trained as a surveyor in Basingstoke before taking over the family business, RJ Smith, from his uncle six years ago. He has worked on many of England's most famous houses, including Fort Belvedere, The Vyne, Mottisfont Abbey, Stratfield Saye and Hinton Ampner. Here he divulges a few of the secrets of his work on The Grange: the rendering on the Smirke facade, the use of the running "horse" mould, "jib" door hinges and traditional Hampshire flint walling. ROMAN CEMENT When sir robert smirke extended William Wilkins’ Grecian revival masterpiece for the first Earl of Ashburton in 1817, he faced the brick structure of the newly extended house with the same stucco render material as Wilkins had originally used on his original conversion of The Grange for Henry Drummond. This was confirmed when we excavated the new stage undercroft and found samples of the original stucco render still in situ just below ground level on some of the old foundations. The samples found were a slightly lighter brown than those areas of existing render on the Wilkins façades of the main house. This light brown render, that both Wilkins and Smirke had used to stucco render their building, was at the time a great innovation in building technology. Indeed, it could be said that neither men could have produced their architectural masterpiece without it. This was because, until the very end of the 18th century, neither builders nor architects had durable or ‘hard cements’ to mix with sands to make an external stucco render mix that would be both durable and weatherproof on large edifices and buildings. It is true that more vernacular buildings, including cottages and small parish churches, had been rendered with lime putty-based renders and wattle and daub for centuries, but these required yearly maintenance and were not durable on large structures. By the end of the 18th century many inventors and technologists had started to experiment to produce limes or ‘cements’ that would be durable, quick setting and hydraulic (set underwater). John Smeaton had some success and invented and used
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a hydraulic cement in the construction of the Eddystone Lighthouse, although his mix mainly used a naturally occurring hydraulic lime found at Watchett in Somerset. Nearer to home, Charles Vancouver in his General View of the A griculture of Hampshire published in 1810, describes a ‘Mr Roberts of Abbotstone’ who had invented a cement ‘which seems to acquire additional hardness by continence underwater and is much used in the neighbourhood of Alresford and other parts of the county’. But it was in 1796 that the first commercially produced hydraulic cement was patented by James Parker of Northfleet, Kent, which he called ‘Roman Cement’. He described it in his patent as ‘A certain cement or terras to be used on aquatic and other buildings and stucco work’. Parker’s Roman cement, by 1810, had become a recognised method of successfully rendering large buildings and Charles Wyatt of the Wyatt architectural dynasty had purchased the patent from Parker. The Wyatt architects used the material on many of their buildings, including Hackwood House near Basingstoke. With such a prestigious reputation for its use on fine buildings, William Wilkinson must have decided to use Parker’s Roman cement as the main material for his stucco rendering at The Grange for the transformation of the Georgian Henley House into a Grecian temple, with Robert Smirke using it for the
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façades of his additions to the building in 1817. Parker’s Roman cement was made by burning septaria nodules of the London clay formation, in kilns. It was predominantly found on the Isle of Sheppey although it was also found in Weymouth Bay and various other places around the coast. The light brown colour of the Roman Cement at The Grange indicates that it probably came from the Isle of Wight and was called ‘Medina Roman Cement’. Parker’s Roman Cement was mixed with coarse sharp sand in the proportions of one part of sand to one part of cement. The biggest problem with its use was that after mixing it set hard within 15 minutes. Hence, the skilled plasterer had to work very quickly and skilfully when applying the stucco render. This may be reflected in the extreme thinness of the final coat of render applied at The Grange which, from the samples found, is only three or four millimetres thick. Unfortunately, Parker’s Roman cement has not been produced since before the Second World War. Even by the mid-19th century it had largely been superseded by the invention and development of ‘Portland Cement’ by James Aspdin in 1824. It was therefore necessary, at The Grange, to emulate the colour, texture and strength of the original pieces of Parker’s Roman Cement found on the old foundations of the Smirke wall. Fortunately, we had some years ago carried out render repairs to Marwell Hall, within the grounds of Marwell Zoological Park, which also had been stucco rendered in Roman Cement in the Gothic revival style circa 1820. We therefore decided to experiment using a similar mix. To emulate the strength of Parker’s Roman Cement, which is not as strong as Portland Cement, we used a hydraulic lime which also allows the render to breathe. To copy the texture of the original render we used a washed gritty sand and mixed this in proportion with a naturally occurring
red sand from Exeter in Devon to give the render its traditional light brown, almost pink, colour. Fortunately this mix does not start to harden for an hour or two which allows more workability than the original Roman cement.
RUNNING HORSE MOULD The mouldings that are attached to the wall are made of the same stucco render material. They are not cast off-site and then stuck on the wall, but have been traditionally run as they would have been in Robert Smirke’s time using a ‘horsed’ running mould. This consists of a timber and zinc template which is cut and accurately filed to the shape of the mould to be copied. A temporary timber batten is screwed to the wall to form a ‘runner’ for the ‘horse’. Wet render is applied to the proposed new moulding and the horse is run along the batten so that the wet render forms the mould shape of the ‘horse’. The running of such moulds is one of the most skilful arts of the plasterer and the technique is now almost lost. The Portland stone moulds, cills and copings have been faithfully copied by using a mix of Portland stone dust and hydraulic lime. Some of the moulds have been ‘run’ similar to the stucco render moulds described above. The high-level copings were cast in concrete in a mould which had been lined with the stone dust mixture. When the cast mould had set hard, then the timber mould was removed to give a ‘stone’ finished coping stone. The capital and bases of the columns are so delicate that it was decided to form them in actual Portland stone. The mouldings on these pieces have been faithfully copied using fragments found by the archaeologist during site excavation and from the extant photographs of the Smirke façade prior to its demolition.
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THE DOORS & HINGES TO THE BALCONY BOXES In order to give a seamless flow to the rear balcony wall it was necessary to construct the doors to the individual boxes as ‘secret’ or ‘jib’ doors, so that the formation of the doorway did not alter the smooth curve of the horseshoe-shaped wall. It was relatively easy to form a curved door with a plastered face both sides and over 100 mm thick. The difficult problem was how to hinge such a door so that when closed no hinges showed and both door faces lined smoothly with the curve of the wall, giving the appearance that the door had all but disappeared when closed. The most usual place to find ‘jib’ doors is in Georgian and Victorian panelled libraries, in which the doors were purposely made to look like panelling or even bookshelves with dummy leather book spines applied to the door. It was therefore necessary to consult two early eighteenth century books on carpentry and joinery by Peter Nicholson and James Newland, both standard textbooks of the time. ‘Jib’ door hinges were normally pivot hinges and a number of pivot hinge designs were cut out as full size templates and tested to find the best working hinge that gave the neatest door jamb. The best hinge solution was determined and the templates were then formed as solid hardwood mouldings that folded with accuracy into each other effortlessly to form a hinge joint that was flush with the wall both sides and showed only a thin line when closed.
TRADITIONAL HAMPSHIRE FLINT WALLING Nothing can be more pleasing to the eye than traditional Hampshire knapped flint walling framed in handmade Hampshire red bricks. Flint is the only ‘real’ building stone that we have in the county. It was usually picked from the fields by farm labourers for the farmer who then used it to construct cottages, walls and barns. To make them more suitable for building a flat flush wall, they were usually split or knapped to give a smooth face. (The term comes from the old German verb ‘knappen’ – to snap.) The skilled bricklayers knew exactly the spot to hit the flint to give the best face when built into a wall. Today it is important to source the correct ‘chalk flints’, as when you look at most Hampshire flint walls you will see that each flint has a corona of hard white chalk around the black centre of the flint. No wonder they are known as ‘Hampshire diamonds’. The bricklayer, when laying the knapped flints, carefully selects each flint for the ‘best fit’, turning the flint as necessary like turning a piece in a jigsaw puzzle. The mortar too is important. It should be slightly grey white to match the Hampshire chalk. The mortar sand should be nice and gritty to help stop hairline cracking and white lime putty should be used as the cement. The joints should be flush, left to slightly harden and then beaten with a stiff churn brush to show the gritty aggregate in the mortar. The soft mellow red Hampshire bricks finally frame the ‘picture’ panels of mortared flintwork.
martin smith 18
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The starry cast who built the theatre SITE MANAGER
FOREMAN – BRICKLAYER
FORMWORK SUPERVISOR
VENTILATION MANAGER
David Sloan
Morris Pond
Russell Churchill
BRICKLAYER
FORMWORK FOREMAN
Bob Attwood Richard Bottle
Lee Elkins Martin Bell Matthew Coal Matt Giles James Morgan Melvin Fielder
George Jenson
VENTILATION ENGINEER
EXCAVATOR OPERATOR
Gerald Paine MASTER CARPENTER
Les Lambell ASSISTANT CARPENTER
Daniel Lambell ROOFING CARPENTER
Daniel Robinson George McGhaugey CARPENTER
Daniel Bailey Michael Mills Tony Kingsnorth Greg Lawson John Snazell Chris Hurley Dan Wood Tony Smith MASTER PLASTERER
Tony Ede PLASTERER
Daniel Carpenter Peter Purver ELECTRICIANS
Jason Bayliss Jason Cutting Marc Lee Philip Law Russell Seymore Barry McDonald Gary Spencer
LABOURER
Charles Barstow Walter Parfitt Sam Sheehy FOREMAN – BRICKLAYER
Brian Sculthorpe Mark Rix Martin Flynn Alan Copeland
Alan King Stephen King Nick Lund Andrew Jacobs Matthew Jacobs LABOURER
Michael Byrne Mark Eastwood Billy Pike Lee Smith Robin White BRICKLAYER 2002-3
Malcolm Tarrant Lee Sumner Martin Lawton Jamie Smith (apprentice) DEMOLITION
Robert Goddard Dean Goodyear GROUNDWORKS SUPERVISOR
Bob Oram
Graham Hooker
MASTER BRICKLAYER
EXCAVATOR OPERATOR
Frank Mason Steve Phillimore
Chris Crow
Geoffrey Smith SCAFFOLDERS
CONCRETER
William Barnes Alan McKay
BRICKLAYER
Richard Crow Craig Gilbertson Gavin Hudders Grant Sanster Robert Lucas
Chris Alderson STEEL ERECTOR
Dave Brown Leigh Neighbour STEELFIXER
Danny Saunders Shoen Murphy STEELWORKER 2002-3
Terry Trickey WELDER
Tom Caulcutt DRY LINING SUPERVISOR
George Smith PLASTERER
William Annals TRADITIONAL METAL ROOF
Stuart Morris Mark Pellett Mark Still KALZIP ROOF MANAGER
Darren Drew
GROUNDWORKER
SCAFFOLDING SUPERVISION
Peter Gin
STEELWORK FABRICATOR BRICKLAYER
Tom Harrison Dave Longhurst Phillip Longhurst Dave Early
CONCRETE PUMP OPERATOR
Trevor King
SETTING OUT ENGINEER
Derek Robinson Paul Glendon
FORMWORK
KALZIP ROOF INSTALLER
Alan Swain Mark Fielder Gary Clothier Lee Clements Paul Farrelly Alec Turner Lewis Woods Gary Meadings Lee Clothier Darren Glott Robert Fielder Michael Attrill Lewis Renie Joe Standsbridge David Healy Michael Barnes PLUMBER
Les Merritt PAINTER
Frank Taylor FLOOR & CARPET LAYER
Roger Phillips THE OFFICE OF R J SMITH
Martin Phillips Nicholas Moore Joy Flitter Jackie Crowhurst Paul Taylor
Gus Watson Mick Thomas Benjamin Neville LEADWORK
Phillip Howells Michael Hawkins
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Founders
who contributed to the first opera festival at Grange Park in 1998
Olympians & Titans Mr Mark Andrews Mr Felix Appelbe BSc FRSA Mr Peter Arengo-Jones OBE Mr David Buchler Mr William F Charnley Professor Ian Craft
Lydia & Miles d'Arcy-Irvine Sir David & Lady Davies Mr Peter Foy Mr Simon Freakley Mr William Gronow Davis Mr Michael Hoare
Mr & Mrs Donald Kahn Mr T Landon James & Béatrice Lupton Mr & Mrs Charles Mackay Mr Harvey McGregor QC Greg & Gail Melgaard
Mr & Mrs Hugh Peppiatt Mrs Lucinda Stevens Mr & Mrs Anthony Townsend Mr & Mrs Max Ulfane Mrs Marie Veeder Mr & Mrs Graham John West
Argonauts, Pythagoreans & Arcadians Mr & Mrs Gerald Acher Richard & Delia Baker Mr & Mrs Nicholas Baring Mr & Mrs Tom Bartlam Dori Bateson Mr Peter Bedford Mr & Mrs Robin Behar Mr Alan Bell Mr Keith Benham Mrs M Bennett Sir Christopher & Lady Bland Mrs Gerald Bland Mr & Mrs Simon Borrows Mr Graham Bourne Mr Peter Braunwalder Mr & Mrs Keith Bromley Mr Robin W T Buchanan Mr & Mrs Mark Burch Mrs James Butler Sir Euan Calthorpe Bt Mr & Mrs Michael Campbell Mr Maximilian Carter Sir Peter & Lady Cazalet David & Elizabeth Challen Mr Oliver Colman Cynthia Colman Dr P M de Z Cooke Mr & Mrs Brian Cornish Mr Peter Davidson Guy Boney & Bente Dawkins Mr Peter Dicks Mr & Mrs Malcolm Edwards Austin & Ragna Erwin Mr T Alun Evans CMG Alastair & Robina Farley
Mr & Mrs J fforde Mr & Mrs Roger Fidgen Hamish & Sophie Forsyth Mr & Mrs Robin Fox Mr Andrew Frost Mr Stephen Frost Mr Nicholas R Gold Lady Shauna Gosling Mr & Mrs George Goulding Mr Verne Grinstead Mr Michael Gwinnell Mr Philip Gwyn Mr & Mrs Charles Haddon-Cave QC Mr & Mrs Philip Hallett Mr Clifford Hampton Mr Alan H Harrison Angela & David Harvey The Bulldog Trust Dr & Mrs James F Hill Mr & Mrs Hansgeorg Hofmann Mr Peter Holland Dr Jonathan Holliday Mr J P Hungerford Robin & Pat Ilbert The Countess of Iveagh Mr & Mrs Evan James Mr Martin Jay Mr & Mrs David Jervis Mr J T L Jervoise Neil & Elizabeth Johnson Mr & Mrs A N Joy Ms Walia Kani Mr Vincent Keaveny Maureen & Jim Kelly Mr Joachim Kerfack
Mr & Mrs David Leathers Mr & Mrs Adam Lee David & Linda Lloyd Jones Mr Simon Lofthouse Dr Peter Lyndon-Skeggs Mrs Stuart Macnaghten The Hon Dwight Makins Mr & Mrs Charles Marriott Mr John Marden Mr William Mather Wendy & Michael Max Mr & Mrs P N J May Mr & Mrs T McMaddy Mr Nigel McNair Scott Mr & Mrs A S McWhirter Mr James Meade Leni Lady Miller Mr & Mrs Patrick Mitford Slade Miss Charlotte Moore Elizabeth Morison Mr Michael J Morley Dr & Mrs Julian Muir Lord Neill of Bladen QC Sir Charles Nicholson Bt John & Dianne Norton John Julius Norwich Mr & Mrs Michael Orr Major General & Mrs Simon Pack Mark & Rachel Pearson Ron & Lyn Peet Mr & Mrs Nicholas Phelps-Brown The Countess of Portsmouth Mr & Mrs David Potter Bruce & Lizzie Powell Mark & Veronica Powell
Mr & Mrs Richard Priestley Mrs Barbara Rait Sir Peter & Lady Ramsbotham Mr Myrddin Rees MS FRCS Mr David Reid Scott Anonymous Mrs Eric Robinson Clare Rowland Mr & Mrs James Sabben-Clare Sir Timothy Sainsbury Mrs John Salkeld Lady Salomon Mr Richard Scopes The Countess of Selborne Mr & Mrs Mark Silver Mr Paul Skinner Mrs David Smith The Hon & Mrs Jeremy Soames Mr J G Stanford Mrs Donald Stearns Mr R Kirk Stephenson Mr & Mrs Richard H Sykes Mr Anthony John Thompson Professor & Mrs G M Tonge Adair Turner & Orna Ni-Chionna Mr & Mrs David Vaughan The Hon Mrs Lucy Vaughan Mrs Peter Vey Caroline Vroom Mr Hady Wakefield Lady Jane Wallop Dr & Mrs Oliver Wethered M Whalley & K Goldie-Morrison Mr F E B Witts Mr Charles Young
BT Alex Brown International Hays plc Wilde Sapte Barclays Private Banking
Catering & Allied Coutts & Co Biddle Denton Hall
Houston & Church Knight Frank (Winchester) Leopold de Rothschild Trust Well Marine Reinsurance Brokers
Corporate Founders Systems Union Group Ltd Ashe Park Mineral Water Baring Asset Management British Steel Distribution
Athenians Mr & Mrs James Airy John & Jackie Alexander Mr & Mrs R Atkinson-Willes Miss Anne Beckwith-Smith Mr & Dr J Beechey Sheila Lady Bernard Mr Robert Bickerdike Mrs M R Bonsall Mrs Cherida Cannon Mr Patrick Carter Mr & Mrs Bernard Cazenove Mrs Justin Clark
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Mr & Mrs M Cooper-Mitchell Mr & Mrs R G Cottam Mr David Crowe Mr Nicholas de Zoete Ms K Deuss Gillian Devas Mr Anthony Doggart Robyn Durie Walter & Jane Eddlestone Stuart & Anne Fowler Archie & Henrietta Fraser Gen Sir David Fraser GCB OBE
Mr & Mrs Wyatt Gates Lt Col David R Gilbert His Honour Judge Martin Graham QC Mr Robert B Gray Mr & Mrs J C Green Mr John Hammond Mr & Mrs Peter Hobbs Mr & Mrs G Hollingbery Mr Charles Irby Mr & Mrs Malcolm Isaac Mr Barry Jackson
Mrs Julian Jeffs Mrs Lynette G Joly JP Mrs Z L Kelton Mr John Learmonth Mr Gerald Levin Mr & Mrs Mark Lomas Mr & Mrs David Maitland Anonymous Gordon & Julia Medcalf Lord Montagu of Beaulieu Mrs Jonathan Moore Mr Barry O’Brien
Mr Laurence O’Mara Mrs Deidre Pegg Miss Mahtab Pouria Mrs C H Powell Mrs Joan L Prior Mrs Thomas Redfern Mr John A Rickards Dr Janet Ritterman Mrs Martin St Quinton Mr Anthony Salz Anne Lady Scott Mr & Mrs Philip Snuggs
Mr David F M Stileman Mr & Mrs Ian Streat Mr R H Sutton Mr Peter Tilley The Hon Mrs W Tufnell K Sandberg & T Watkins Mr & Mrs T Wightman Andrew & Emma Wilson Olivia Winterton Dr Nicholas Wright Mr Tim Wright Mrs Paul Zisman
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A fe
ww
A coustic experts are the first to say that acoustics isn’t a science. Our expert Colin Beak (who put the flying saucers into the Albert Hall in 1969) advised we finish the theatre first and decide on acoustic modifications later, when we had seen and heard how it works. This year, the two factors most likely to change the acoustic are that (a) we have repaired all the glazed panels in the ceiling of the old part and (b) we have built the last part of the balconies. Now we must test again in front of a full audience. Last year another acoustician, John Barnes, thought he noticed a particular acoustic phenomenon called comb–filtered acoustic mixing (cfam). The effect of it is a seemingly dry acoustic. cfam occurs when the direct sound from an artist is mixed with a reflection of the same sound so that there is a small time delay between the two. It has been established by scientific experiment that, if this time delay is greater than around 30 milliseconds, then the brain is able to distinguish between the two sounds. If however the delay is less then 15 milliseconds, then the two sets of sound waves interfere with each other in the listener’s ears. John took the building plans to an engineer in Germany, Herr Josef Manger, who suggested that the cfam was not a result of the area around the proscenium – which we had previously thought – but of the near-semicircle plastered surface around the rear of the stalls. (At the very back of the stalls there are seats, so it is really the wall alongside Rows l – q that we are talking about). John Barnes concludes: ‘The only way to proceed is to adopt a technique of trial and error. When the audience is present, it is my suggestion that attempts are made to drape the reflecting surfaces temporarily with absorbent material. Iterative tests will gradually indicate which surfaces need to be permanently coated and which ones can be left alone.’ We’ll be doing more work this season and each year it will be better.
ord s
ab o
st ou ac ut
ics
Passengers on board the SS Leviathan in Anything Goes Grange Park Opera 2002
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Corporate Supporters 2003 production sponsors
dr christopher ondaatje the carphone warehouse m C dermott, will & emery
ICAP plc Rolls Royce SBJ Group UBS Warburg Baring Asset Management Hornby
Cartier Clifford Chance EFG Private Bank Eversheds Global Asset Management ING Kroll Saffery Champness White & Case
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Greenhill Pickett Fine Leathers Thornhill Investment Management Linklaters Rathbones Merrill Lynch Investment Managers Swan Hellenic
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who have made generous contributions towards the festival
alfred mcalpine construction ltd birmingham midshires the learning point presentation school & winning presentations national express group
Allied Irish Bank C J Coleman European Travel Plan Ltd La Salle Investment Management Royal Bank of Scotland
Corporate Synergy Reed Elsevier Reuters Simon Morray Jones Architects Withers
special contributions Capital International Ltd Denton Wilde Sapte The Jerwood Foundation Laurent Perrier Ashe Park Water
Steel Charitable Trust The Golden Bottle Trust Dyers Company Lauchentilly Foundation Hady Wakefield
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The Helical Staircase to Heaven Most visitors to Sante Fe have heard the legend of the Miracle Staircase, so cleverly built that no one could figure out how it supported itself. Or who built it. This article, taken from The Independent, suggests that the 125-year-old mystery has been solved. But there is another helical staircase also of French provenance: a couple of years ago, Wasfi Kani and Michael Moody, browsing through Drummonds, dealers in architectural salvage at Devil's Punch Bowl, came upon it. It is now in the theatre at the Goldfish end of the foyer. Sooner or later every visitor describing Rochas as ‘an expert to Santa Fe is confronted with a worker in wood [who] built the mystery: the enigma of the sostaircase in the Loretto chapel’. Ms called Miracle Staircase, one of the Straw Cook also found in the city’s most popular tourist sites in Sisters’ logbook an entry for a chapel dedicated to a Catholic March 1881: ‘Paid for wood Mr order of nuns known as the Sisters Rochas, $150.00’. of Loretto. The findings, in Ms Straw The staircase linking the nave Cook’s book, Loretto: The Sisters to the choir loft above is a mystery and Their Santa Fe Chapel, suggest because nobody is quite sure how the staircase was built in France it was built. Its craftsmanship is and fitted by Rochas. That would undisputed – it twists round upon explain why it appeared so itself in two tight 360 degree turns suddenly, and why it might have without the support of a central given rise to the legend of the beam – but its authorship has miraculous saint. seemingly been lost in the 121 years Why was Rochas’ identity since it was built. The order says concealed for so long? Ms Straw the staircase was the work of a Cook says: ‘There were those who The staircase in Sante Fe is of very similar strange, bearded man who spent knew his name but who did not construction and appearance to the staircase in six months on his masterpiece, and wish to betray the legend. The the theatre foyer at The Grange. disappeared when it was completed. The nuns had staircase builder’s identity was of little interest to the been unable to find anyone to devise a staircase for the public until his accomplishment reached legendary tight space and so, as a last resort, said a novena – a proportions nine-day intercession of prayers – to St Joseph, patron sometime during the early decades of the 20th censaint of carpenters. The suggestion is that St Joseph tury. did the work. The Sisters claim no record was found By then, those who had known or worked with of the carpenter’s expenses. So for decades, local histo- Rochas were dead.’ rians have tried to dig up the truth with scant success. Remember, too, that New Mexico is a state rife Until now. with elaborate beliefs. It is home, for example, to the The descendants of various late 19th-century ‘tortilla Jesus’ – a suggestively-shaped burn mark on a craftsman laid claim to the feat, but had no proof. Mexican pancake that has become an object of worldNow, a local historian, Mary Jean Straw Cook, wide veneration. The Sisters of Loretto, who came to has found evidence to suggest the craftsman was New Mexico in the pioneering days of the Wild West, the French-born François-Jean Rochas, who came to also had their own tradition of fantastical stories; the the United States as a member of a celibate order of founding legend of their order is that the Virgin artisans and settled in New Mexico. Mary’s house was magically transported from the Items pointing to his authorship include a Holy Land to Loretto near the Adriatic coast of Italy. death notice in The Santa Fe New Mexican in 1895,
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The Notable Greeks 2003 Our members, The Schools of Hippocrates, Archimedes and Plato, support Grange Park on an annual basis. Without their donations, the festival simply could not happen – ticket revenues alone cannot meet the cost of productions. Their numbers now exceed 1,000 and as this is the upper end of the target we originally set we have closed these schools. We will begin building a new Midlands membership to support opera at Nevill Holt.
The School of Hippocrates Brian Abbs Mrs J Adrienne Amos Veira & Andrew Bailey Mrs Julian Baring Jane Bird Mrs Toby Blackwell Mr & Mrs Michael Bolton Adrian Bott Anonymous Mr & Mrs Roy D Brown Anonymous Hayden Trust John & Judy Clark Mr & Mrs Peter Clarke Christopher Clarke QC & Rev Caroline Clarke Ian Clarkson & Richard Morris Sir Anthony Cleaver Veronica Cohen Mr Jeremy Cole Sally Coryn David & Nikki Cowley Mr Carl Cullingford Michael Cuthbert Kathrine Davies Mr Mervyn Davies CBE Mr & Mrs John Dear Michael & Rachel Dickson Mr John Dunstan Mr Michael C A Eaton Ms Ros Edwards Mr & Mrs Graham Elliott Mrs Stuart Errington Niall Fitzgerald KBE Mark & Madeleine Fleming Mr & Mrs Geoffrey Fuller Graham & Pamela Fuller
Mr & Mrs David Gawler Marc & Melanie Gillespie Mrs & Mr Granziol Mr & Mrs Christopher Grierson Mr & Mrs Timothy Hamilton Keith Hann Mr & Mrs David Harris Mr Patrick Harrison & Mr Roger Birtles Jonathan Harvie QC Kjell O Hauge Malcolm Herring Mr Philip Heslop QC Liz Hewitt Lord & Lady Holme Holmes Wood Ian & Noelle Irvine Martin Jay CBE DL Mr & Mrs Ian Jay Mr Derek Johns Mr Anthony Johnson Michel Kallipetis QC Liz & Roger Kramers Mr & Mrs Andrew E Law Mr & Mrs Malcolm Le May Paul Lee Lady Lever Mr & Mrs Alistair Mackintosh Ms Sarah B Mason Mr William Massey QC William & Felicity Mather Mr & Mrs Ian McIsaac Mr B B Money-Coutts Jeffry Morgan Mr Richard Morse Cameron & Heike Munro Colin Murray Mr Murray Stuart CBE
Mr & Mrs Peter Nathan Mr & Mrs Jay A Nawrocki Lt Col The Hon Guy Norrie H S H Princess Paul Odescalchi Mrs Charles Parker Anonymous Stephen & Isobel Parkinson Michael Pearl Anonymous Mr & Mrs Anthony Pitt-Rivers Mr Charles Purle Mr & Mrs Nigel Reavley Mr Andrew Rome Jeremy A F Rothman Barry & Anne Rourke Mr Andrew Soundy Sir James & Lady Spooner Geoff Squire OBE Mr Denis K Tinsley Beatrice Vincenzini-Warrender Nick Viner & Victoria Boyarsky Mr & Mrs Anthony Vlasto Mr Chris Ward Mr Philip Warner Anonymous Mr John L P Whiter Mr & The Hon Mrs S Wigart Mr Philip Williams Mark and Jane Williams Nigel Williams Mr & Mrs Andrew Woollett Mr & Mrs David Wootton Mr Paul H Stapley-Tovey & Anonymous Anonymous Rt Hon Lord Young of Graffham DL
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The School of Archimedes Ann & Martin Adeney Janet and Michael Aidin Mr & Mrs Robin Aisher Mr & Mrs Christopher Aldous John & Jackie Alexander Louise & Anthony Alexander Lady Allan Mrs Genie Allenby Jilly Allenby-Ryan Mr & Mrs David Anderson Anonymous Jenny & Paul Aynsley R B Backhouse Richard & Delia Baker Mr & Mrs J Balfour Anonymous Mr Nicholas Barker Mr Charles Bartholomew Stanley Bates Anne Beckwith-Smith Mr Julian Benson Mrs Grace Benson Mrs Michael Beresford-West The Hon Mrs Julian Berry Mr & Mrs D Betancor Mr & Mrs Peter B P Bevan Charles Wallach admirer Mrs Alastair Black Halldora Blair Melanie de Blank Anthony E Bodie Lisa Bolgar Smith Mr & Mrs Ernest Boost Mr John A H Bootes Mr Edward Bostock CBE Anthony Boswood QC Mr Robert Bowler Mr Jan Bowlus B D Bramley Mr & Mrs Nigel Ă Brassard Mr & Mrs David Brewer Mr & Mrs Douglas Bridgewater Mr Michael Briggs QC Mr Nicholas Brigstoke Robin & Penny Broadhurst Robin & Jill Broadley Adam & Sarah Broke Dorothy & John Brook Consuelo & Anthony Brooke Mr & Mrs Antony Brooking
Mr & Mrs Charles H Brown Mrs Sue Brown Mr Chris Brown Anthony & Monique Browne Nicholas Browne Finn Bruce Mr & Mrs Robin Buchanan Mr & Mrs Thomas Buckley Mr & Mrs D M Bullough Anthony Bunker Anonymous Mr Alan Burdon-Cooper Mr Keith Burgoine Mr & Mrs C Butler Richard Butler Adams Mr David Butler Nick & Libby Callinan Mr & Mrs David Carrow Andrew & Jacquie Cartwright Mrs Marigold Charrington Mr Shane Chichester Lord Chorley Anonymous Lady Clark Mrs Anthony Clark Ann Clarke Toby Clements Gore Mr & Mrs Timothy Cockroft John Coke Mr & Mrs Richard Collin Robert Constant Dr Neville Conway Mrs Donna M E Cooper Annie Cosh Robert & Morella Cottam Mr & Mrs Richard Cotton Richard Cowen David Craig Mr Colin Craig OBE Mr Nick Crean Mr J G Curtis William Dacombe Mr Clifford R Dammers Helen Davies Mr & Mrs Douglas de Lavison Mr Toby de Lotbiniere Mr T C B Dehn MS FRCS Michael & Anthea Del Mar Krystyna Deuss Mr & Mrs Lindsay Dibden
Caroline Doggart Miss Helen Dorey Anonymous Mrs Christopher Duffett Mr R C Dutton-Forshaw Mark Dyer Richard Findlater & Mairi Eastwood Mr & Mrs Kenneth Eckett Lee MacCormick Edwards Mr & Mrs Symon Elliott Mr Peter J Ellis Mr Peter Evans Alan Evans Mr & Mrs M Farr Mrs Noel Faulkner Mrs Basil de Ferranti Ms Sian Fisher Mrs Nick Fisher James Fisher Esq Richard Fitzalan Howard Mrs L J Fleming Mr & Mrs T Floyd J A Floyd Charitable Settlement Michael & Margaret Fowle Mr & Mrs Robin Fox Mrs Jane Fraser Dr & Mrs H J Freeman Mr Hideki Fujihara Mr & Mrs David Gamble Mrs Lindsay Gardener Pam Garside & Simon Carter Sir Mark & Lady Garthwaite Mr & Mrs Bamber Gascoigne Mr & Mrs W Gates Mr Ian Gatt QC Mr John George Mr Roger Gifford Mr David Giles Ian & Edwina Gilroy Mr & Mrs James Glancy Enrique Biel Gleeson Cassandra Goad Mrs Charles Gooch Mr & Mrs Graham Maw Suzanne Graham-Dixon Mr & Mrs Richard Grant The Hon Mrs Jane Green Mick & Denise Green Alistair & Sally Gregory-Smith
Krishna & Sophie Guha The Hon F B Guinness Mrs Susie Gwyn Max and Catherine Hadfield Mrs David Hagan Andrew Haigh Mrs Peter Hall Ms Susan Hall Mrs J Hall Louise Hallett Mr Eben Hamilton QC John Hammond Richard & Janet Hanna Mr Patrick Harbour Mr & Mrs Richard Hardman Mr Benjamin Hargreaves Lorna Harper Jocelin & Cherry Harris Marie & Alan Harrison Mr & Mrs Christopher Harwood John & Sophie Hastings-Bass Lady Hawkings Lord Hayhoe Mr & Mrs Paul Henderson Miss Jane Henry Mr Philip Henstock Martin & Alicia Herbert Lady Heseltine Mr & Mrs Peter Hewett Mr Michael Hewett John & Catherine Hickman Michael & Genevieve Higgin Camelicat Anonymous Sir Trevor & Lady Holdsworth Mr Christopher Holdsworth Hunt Mr Anthony Holland Mr David Holland Mr John Hollier Mrs Alexandra Homan David & Mal Hope-Mason Mr & Mrs Robert Horne Mr & Mrs Richard Howorth Mrs Max Hunt Mrs Marie-Josee Hunter Mr & Mrs David Hunter Mr & Mrs G M Hurst Mr & Mrs Peter Hutson Howard & Anne Hyman Mr Charles Irby
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Dr Peter & Mrs Judith Iredale Jane & Jimmy James Mr & Mrs Peter James Mr John Jarvis QC Rowan Jarvis Thalassa Trust Mr & Mrs Michael Jodrell M F G Johnson Dr & Mrs I C Johnson Mrs Sally Johnston Mr Owen Jonathan Alan & Judi Jones Mrs Hilary Jones Anonymous Dr Alan Jordan Prof Heather Joshi OBE Anonymous Jonathan Kane Vincent & Amanda Keaveny Judith Kelley Mr & Mrs G N Kennedy Andrew Kennedy & Lindsay Cornish Mr & Mrs Colin Keogh Mrs Dana Kinder Richard King Mr Charles Kirwan-Taylor Mr Kevin Kissane Count & Countess Labia Mrs Henry Labram Mr Garry Lace Anonymous Mrs Patricia Latham The Hon Isabelle Laurent Mr Bill Lawes Anonymous Mr John Learmonth Belinda Leathes Mr & Mrs Robin Leuchars Judy Lever Mr & Mrs Dan Levin Jeremy Gardner Lewis Mr & Mrs Gareth Lewis R J E Liddiard Esq Anonymous Susie Lintott & Louisa Church Mr & Mrs James Lonsdale Mr Henry Lumley Luttman-Johnson Family Trust Dr P Lyndon-Skeggs Mr & Mrs Nicholas Lyons Anonymous London & Cambridge Properties
Mr Robin Mackenzie Mr Ian MacNabb Bill & Sue Main Mr & Mrs David Maitland Mr Tim Martin Mr & Mrs Nicholas Mason J Masterton Brian Matthews Esq Mr & Mrs A Mayhook-Walker Mrs Gillian McGregor Dr Valentine U McHardy Mr & Mrs Cliff Middleton Mr & Mrs Hallam Mills Mr & Mrs D B Mitchell Brigid & Freddie Monkhouse Mr & Mrs J Moreton Mr & Mrs G Morfey Mr Peter Morgan Evelyn Morgner & Ian G L Hogg Mrs Roger Morris Mr & Mrs Ian Morrison Lady Muir Wood Chris & Annie Newell Bruce & Pamela Noble Mr Peter Nutting JP DL Mr Barry O’Brien Anonymous Mr & Hon Mrs J Ogilvie Thompson Victoria O’Keeffe Mrs Richard Oliver Mr & Mrs Michael Orr Sir Peter Osborne Surg. Capt and Mrs Osborne Mr Robert Ottley Nick & Lavinia Owen Mrs A Pakenham Dr A R Owen-Reece Major General & Mrs Simon Pack George & Christine Palmer Mr & Mrs Donald Payne Nigel & Liz Peace Mr & Mrs Donald Pearse Mrs June Pearson Mr & Mrs Peter Peddie Ron & Lyn Peet Mr & Mrs Peter Peirse-Duncombe Mr & Mrs Robin Petherick Roger Pincham CBE Matthew Pintus David & Christina Pitman Mr & Mrs John Platt The Countess of Portsmouth Mr & Mrs Ian Posgate
Jan & Michael Potter Mrs Jane Poulter Mrs Caroline Poulter Mrs A E Pound Mr & Mrs Julien Prevett Richard R Price Peter & Sally Procopis Mrs Jean Pryor Mr & Mrs Andrew Pucher Mr Anthony Pullinger Grant & Shirley Radcliffe Mr John Rank Mr John Redmill Mike & Jessamy Reynolds Mr & Mrs A Richmond-Watson Mrs Sarah Rickett Mr Andrew Robb Mr & Mrs J Roberts Susan Robins Mr Nigel Robson Mr & Mrs E J M Ross Mr Helmut Rothenberg OBE Hilke L Roundell & Simon P Fisher Mr & Mrs James Roundell Mr & Mrs Antony Rowe Anonymous Mr & Mrs Michael K Sandberg Mr & Mrs Peter Scoble Sir James & Lady Scott Mr Charles Scott Mr & Mrs Gordon Scutt Mrs Elizabeth Selzer Tony Shearer Mrs C J Shepherd-Barron Mr & Mrs Donald Sherlock Mr & Mrs Mark Silver Colonel Smart MBE Mr & Mrs Martin Smith Mrs Marveen Smith Fiona Smith-Bingham Prof & Mrs Peter Sonksen Crispin & Joanna Southgate Mrs Charles Speke Mr & Mrs C Spooner Nigel & Johanna Stapleton Mr Peter Stevens David & Pam Stevens Mrs Christopher Stone Julian Sturdy-Morton Mr & Mrs Tom Sweet-Escott Mrs Timothy Syder Caroline & Phillip Sykes Mr L W Tanner
Mr & Mrs Robert Taylor Mrs Fleur Taylor Anonymous Mr & Mrs Nigel Teare David & Joana Thomas Mr David Thomson Peter Thomson Mrs James Thorp Simon Thorp Mr & Mrs Max Thum Professor Glyn M Tonge Sir Alan Traill GBE QSO J D Tremlett Mrs Michael Tussaud Mr Leonard van Geest John & Louise Verrill Brigadier & Mrs Anthony Vivian Mrs Peter Wake DL Mr & Mrs David Wake-Walker Mrs Jeremy Walker Mr & Mrs David Walker Mrs Denise Wallace Mrs Malcolm Wallis Mr & Mrs Simon Ward Mr & Mrs Tim Watkins Mr James Watkins Dr Kenneth Watters Mr & Mrs Richard Westcott Mrs A M G Weston Mr & Mrs Graham Westwell Guy & Sarah Whalley Mrs Geoffrey Wheating Piers & Antonia Whitley Mr & Mrs Christopher Wilkins Mr & Mrs H Wilkinson Mrs Helen Wilkinson Mrs Charles Williams Prof Roger Williams CBE & Mrs Williams Mr & Mrs Patrick J d’A Willis Anonymous Mr Jeremy Willoughby Mr P S Wilmot-Sitwell Mr & Mrs Nicholas Wilson Mr & Mrs Olof Winkler von Stiernhielm David & Vivienne Woolf Mr Richard Woolnough Mr Peter Wrangham Ms E J Wylie Richard Youell
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The School of Plato Tim & Philippa Abell Mrs Tikki Adorian Mrs Peter Ainsley Mr & Mrs James Airy Rosemary Alexander Professor B G Allison Anonymous Mr J C P Amos Mrs Angela Anderson Mr Christopher Anderson Dr Pamela Ashurst Robert & Janice Atkin Jane & Robert Avery Mr & Mrs Nicholas Backhouse Mrs Felicity Bagenal Mrs N Bagshawe Mrs Grenfell Bailey Margaret Bailey Richard & Jean Baldwin Mrs A Balfour-Fraser Mrs George Band Anonymous Lady Emma Barnard Mr & Mrs H V Baron-Cohen Mr Simon R Barrow Mrs Charles Barton Howard Baveystock Richard Bayley Mr Jeremy Bayliss Nigel Beale Lord & Lady Beaumont of Whitley Mr Rupert Beaumont Baron C von Bechtolsheim Nicholas Bedford Mr Peter Bell Anonymous Christopher Bellew Christina Benn Sheila Lady Bernard Mrs J Bevan Mrs Christopher Bevan Mr Robert Bickerdike Roger W Binns Mr & Mrs Charles Blackmore Tricia & Michael Blakstad Mrs Jenny Bland Elisabeth & Bob Boas Mrs Margaret Bolam A G Bompas Mrs D C Bonsall Mr & Mrs Edward Booth-Clibborn Mr Jamie Botting Mr & Mrs W Neville Bowen Julian Bower The Hon Robert Boyle Stephanie & Michael Brahams Mr Peter Braunwalder Viscount & Viscountess Bridgeman Mr & Mrs David Briggs Charles Brims Dr Amanda Britton Mr Charles Bromfield Mr & Mrs James Bromhead Mr Keith Bromley Mr & Mrs Simon Brooks Jonathan Brown David & Penny Buik John Bunnell Mr & Mrs Geoffrey Burnand Mr & Mrs M J Burton Mr Clive Butler Sarah Butler-Sloss Mr & Mrs Murray Bywater Malcolm Campbell Mr & Mrs Peter Carden Mr A J Carruthers Patrick & Julia Carter Mr Max Carter Denis & Ronda Cassidy Clifford & Judy Catt Peter & Di Cawdron Mr Graham Cawsey The Hon Mrs A R Cecil George & Avril Chapman Mr & Mrs Dominic Cheetham The Lord Chesham
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Ann Chillingworth Mrs Kate Christopherson MBE Mrs Justin Clark Mr Christopher Clark Mrs J Clarkson Mr & Mrs Henry Clay Mrs Michael Clayton Adam Cleal Esq Mrs Susan E Clegg Mrs Laurence Colchester Dr Mavis Conway Mrs Mary Cooke Prof R C Cookson Mr H R Cookson Mr George Cooper Mike & Liz Cooper-Mitchell Mrs Stuart Corbyn Matthew & Bianca Cosans Mr David A Cowan Mr & Mrs Alan L Craft Lady Julia Craig-Harvey Dr D N Croft Mr J D Crosland Tom Cross Brown Mr David Crowe Mr Carl Cullingford Mrs Elizabeth & Mr Rene Dalucas Mr Michael R Davis Mr Robert Dean Bonnie Dean Mr & Mrs James Denham Mr Patrick Despard Mr Adrian C Dewey Mrs Sally B Dewey Dr & Mrs Michael Dingle Robert & Caroline Dixon Mr & Mrs Matthew Dobbs Christine Douse Mrs Dorothy Drew Captain & Mrs Spencer Drummond Mr & Mrs R Drury Jamie Dundas Mrs Dickie Dutton Mr J M Dyson Eleri Ebenezer Philippa & Sean Eddie Mr & Mrs W L Eddlestone Yvonne & Malcolm Edwards Mr & Mrs Jeff Eldredge Mr & Mrs Julian Ellis Vernon & Hazel Ellis Michael & Wendy Evans Mr Roger Facer CB Steven F G Fachada Nicholas & Jane Ferguson Miss Clare M Ferguson Mr Michael Fitzgerald Mr & Mrs Brian Fitzpatrick Mr Leslie Fletcher Dr T H & Dr J M Foley Michael Forrest Jerome Foster Patrick & Anne Foster James Fox-Andrews Mrs Joyce Fuller Mrs A D Gavin Mr & Mrs Robert Gayner Jacqueline & Jonathan Gestetner Mr Michael Gibbons Lt Col D R Gilbert Keith Gilham & Christine Cutler Mr & Mrs Martin Gillie Mrs & Mrs Bruce Ginsberg Mr & Mrs Tim Goad The Reverend Simon Godfrey TD Anonymous Stuart & Elinor Goldsmith Dr & Mrs S Goodison Mr Adrian Goodman Colin & Letts Goodwin John & Tanny Gordon John Gordon Mr Jean Grall Mr Robert B Gray Mr & Mrs A M Green David & Barbara Greggains
John & Ann Grieves Andrea Grinstead Mr & Mrs Edmund Grower Mr Marcus Grubb Mrs Gerard Guerrini Mrs Rodney Hall Mrs Allyson Hall Mrs Robin Hambro David & Judith Hankinson Mr R W Harris Wendell Harris Esq Mr Julian Harvey Dr Fred Haslam Mr & Mrs Roy Hatch Mr Brian Haughton Basil Henley Mr & Mrs Alan Herring Dr & Mrs Hession Mr & Mrs John Hewett Dr & Mrs G R Hext Mr John Heywood Mrs P M Hingston Mr & Mrs P R Hinton Marianne Hinton Mr & Mrs Peter Hobbs Mr & Mrs Edward Farquharson Mr R E Hofer Mr B G C Holding-Parsons Mr & Mrs Mark Holford John & Hilary Holmes Mr Roger Holmes Anonymous Juliet Horsman Ian & Valerie Hopkins Mr Christopher Hopkinson Elaine & Nigel Horder Barbara Hosking CBE John Houston Mr & Mrs Billy Howard Steven Howarth Anon John Howkins Miles Hudson Mrs William Hughes Robert Hugill Ms Siu Fun Hui Mr Nigel Humphreys Mr & Mrs C D Hunt Mr & Mrs Andrew Hunter Johnston Mrs June Hurst-Brown Graham & Amanda Hutton Colonel & Mrs Colin Huxley Mrs Madeleine F Hyde Mrs E Hyde Lord & Lady Inchyra Dr & Mrs G Stuart Ingram Sir Barry Jackson Christopher Jackson Mr & Mrs Allan James Mr & Mrs C J Jamieson Mrs E C Jamieson Mr & Mrs David Jamieson Mr Peter Jay Mr David Jeffers Mrs Julian Jeffs Lady Jellicoe Mr Nicholas Jonas OBE DL Anonymous Avril Jones Russell Jones FCIM John Gordon Jowett Lord & Lady Judd Dr Walia Kani Dr Leon Kaufman Dr Daniel Kaufmann Mr Charlie Kehela BSc MBCS Mrs Penelope Kellie H M Kellie Mrs Peter Kent Joachim Kerfack Mr Jonathan G N King Mr & Mrs Oliver Kinsey Mr & Mrs Nadim Korban Dr R Hubert Laeng-Danner Mr Brian Lanaghan Toby Landau & Nudrat Majeed Rear Admiral John Lang Mrs B Langevad
Mr & Mrs D Laurillard Mrs N J Lee John A Leek Mrs June S L Lees-Spalding Jan Leigh & Jan Rynkiewicz David Lester Mrs Brian Levy Mrs Jeremy Lewis Mr & Mrs Eric Leyns Mr & Mrs A J Lightfoot Mr & Mrs Anthony Littlejohn Mr & Mrs David Livermore Mrs Caroline Lomas Anonymous Anne Longden Brigadier Desmond Longfield Mrs Simon Loup Eric & Clare Lowry Mrs Charlotte W Lulham J A Lundberg Mrs S MacDermot Mr James Macdonald-Buchanan Mr Bruce Macfarlane Mr & Mrs James Mackintosh J J Macnamara Mr Andrew Maconie Sir Nevil Macready BT CBE David & Mary Male Tom & Sarah Manners Mrs C A Marston Bruce & Sara Mauleverer Christopher & Clare McCann Rosalind McCarthy Philippa McGeough Christopher McLaren The Hon Michael & Mrs McLaren Mrs C McNeil Mrs Jane McVittie William Merton Dr Bryan Middle Mr William Middleton-Smith Dr & Mrs Patrick Mill Dr John Millbank Peter Miller Sir John Milne Mrs Sara Milne Dr Michael & Elizabeth Minton Mr & Mrs Charles Mitchell Mr & Mrs P W Mommersteeg Vivienne Alexandra Monk Lord Montagu of Beaulieu Dr & Mrs Patrick Moore Mrs Jonathan Moore Mrs Michael Morel Mr & Mrs Ian Morrison Clive & Sue Mortimer Alastair & Sara Morton Tom & Brenda Muir Bill Muirhead Mrs Sudhir Mulji Dr Douglas Munro-Faure Mrs R R L Munro Ferguson Mrs John Nangle Sir Paul & Lady Neave Mr & Mrs Pedro Neuhaus Mr & Mrs B W Neumann Jeremy & Elizabeth Nicholson George Nissen Sir Edwin Nixon CBE DL Hon Michael & Mrs Nolan Mr Mark Norris The Lord & Lady Northbrook John & Dianne Norton Mr F E Norton Mr & Mrs D Novakovic Mr John Offord Mr & Mrs A Ogden Mrs John Oldacre Laurence O’Mara Charles & Ro Orange Mrs Colin Osmer Mr & Mrs Robert Page John & Jackie Paine Mr Patrick Palmer Mrs Charles Palmer-Tomkinson Mrs Roderick Parker Mrs Blake Parker Clive & Deborah Parritt Paul Pattinson
Drs N & J Pearce John & Jacqui Pearson Ann & Nigel Pearson Mr & Mrs Alexander Pease Mr & Mrs Tim Peat Mr & Mrs Anthony Peck Anonymous Claudia Pendred Mr Erik Penser Max & Julia Perrin Mr Charles Petre Mr R B Petre Jonathan & Gillian Pickering Mr & Mrs Anthony Pinsent Mrs Barry Pinson Richard Plummer Mr & Mrs David Potter Richard & Nicole Pound Mrs C H Powell Mr & Mrs Dominic Powell Mr & Mrs Michael Pragnell Ms Irene Preiswerk Mr James K Prentice LLB George & Jean Price Judith Prickett & Raymond Sutton Jennifer Priestley Judith and David Pritchard Mr & Mrs Stephen Proctor Libby Purves Mrs Rosalind Quaife Mrs Chris Quayle Mr & Mrs Gerald Raingold Sir Peter & Lady Ramsbotham Mr & Mrs Angus Rankine Denzil Rankine Anonymous Mr & Mrs John Rees Mr & Mrs David Reid Scott The Hon. Philip Remnant Mr Bill Birch Reynardson CBE Mrs A A Dales John A Rickards Mrs Anthony Rimell Jill Ritblat Cdr & Mrs Miles Rivett-Carnac Mr & Mrs C Road Mr & Mrs Miles Roberts Mrs D Roberts Mrs A A Robertson Mrs Eric Robinson Mr & Mrs Alexander Roe Cdr Keith Rogerson RN Rtd. Mr Michael Rogerson T D Mr Alan Roxburgh Joan & Lewis Rudd Ken & Lesley Rushton Mrs David Russell-Jones Zsalya Mr & Mrs William Saunders Mr Peter Saverys Mrs Peter Sawdy Mr John Schofield Sebastian & Lindsey Scotney Mr & Mrs A M Scott Colin Scott-Malden Mr & Mrs C J Sehmer Mr George Seligman Mrs Simon Shaw Tom & Mimi Siebens Prof David & Mrs Gillian Silverman Andrew H Simon OBE Mr & Mrs Peter Simor Mr & Mrs Mark Simpson Ian Skeet Sir Jock Slater Mr & Mrs Anthony Slingsby Mr Nicholas Smallwood Russell A Smart Mr & Mrs Robin Smeeton Jessica Smith Mr & Mrs T H Snagge Mr Philip Snuggs Mr Ian Southward Mr & Mrs Jeremy Spencer Mr Ian St John Mr J G Stanford Mr & Mrs C O Stenderup Brian Stevens
Mr & Mrs Christopher Stewart Mr & Mrs Hugh Stewart The Hon Henry Stewart Mrs David Stileman Mr & Mrs Roger Stiles The Countess of Strafford Mr & Mrs Ian Streat Toby Stubbs Major John Sturgis MC Mrs A P Sutcliffe Anonymous Mr & Mrs Richard H Sykes Mr & Mrs Tim Sykes Richard Pierpoint Woods Mr & Mrs John Taylor Mrs P M Taylor Mr & Mrs S A Taylor Mr & Mrs P M Thomas Mr & Mrs Anthony Thompson Mr Anthony John Thompson Mr & Mrs John Thompson-Ashby Mrs A J Thorman Mrs Ann Thornton Mr & Mrs R Tickner Mrs Colin Tillie Mr & Mrs G W Tindley Jill & Michael Todd Mrs Sue Todd Mrs Anna Tognetti & Mr Claude Baignere Veronique & Alexander Trotter Eric & Penelope Tudor Michael Tudor-Craig CBE Lady Tumim OBE L C Varnavides Mr Mano Vayis Mr & Mrs Peter Verity Brigadier & Mrs H R W Vernon Katharine Verrill Mr & Mrs Hugo Vickers X N C Villers Maj Gen Charles Vyvyan CB CBE Sir Stephen Waley-Cohen Mrs S R S Walker Sir Tim & Lady Walker Mr Anthony Walker Mrs Jane Walllace George & Pat Wallace Anonymous Mr Roger Wallhouse Dr Sarah Wallis Graham & Margaret Walsh Mr & Mrs K Watson Colin & Suzy Webster Mr Simon Wedgwood Mr Niels Weise Christian Wells Miss M Wells Mr & Mrs Graham John West Mr Simon Wethered Mr & Mrs Julian Whately Mr & Mrs R A M Whitaker Mr & Mrs Harvey White Mrs Christopher Whitley Dr J & G A Williams Mr & Mrs Geoffrey Williams Anonymous Mr Hamish Williams David Wills Michael and Alyson Wilson Lady Wilson Andrew & Emma Wilson Mr Tom Wilson Mr Roy Withers CBE Mr F E B Witts Mr W S Witts Jonathan and Candida Woolley David & Vicky Wormsley Richard Worthington Dr & Mrs Wright Tim Wright Anonymous Ian Wylie & Sian Griffiths OBE Mr R B Yearsley Mr Christian Zenoff Mrs Paul Zisman Mr & Mrs Nicholas de Zoete
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La Bohème is the fourth production at Grange Park to have been generously supported by
The Christopher Ondaatje Foundation Previous productions supported by the Foundation La Traviata 2002 I Capuleti e I Montecchi 2001 Eugene Onegin 2000
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opera in four acts
Giacomo Puccini (1858 - 1924) to a libretto by Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica Based on Henri Murger’s novel Scènes de la vie de bohème Sung in Italian with surtitles by Lee Blakeley by arrangement with Glyndebourne First performance Teatro Regio, Torino, 1 February 1896 First UK performance Manchester 1897 Performances at The Grange June 13, 15, 17, 21, 29, July 1, 5, 10 2003 Performances at Nevill Holt July 12, 13 2003
La Bohème Stephen Barlow Conductor
Dominic Cooke Director
Robert Innes Hopkins Designer
Sue Lefton Movement Director
Chris Davey Lighting Designer
Ptolemy Christie Assistant Director
mimì musetta rodolfo a poet marcello a painter colline a philosopher schaunard a musician benoit their landlord alcindoro a politician parpignol a toy-seller cafe owner Act 3 sergeant Venetia Baring, Cosima Baring Patrick Baring, Flora Baring, Isabella Wild, Jamie Bentley, Dominic Biggs, Finn Bruce, Charlie Metcalf, Jade Vaughan
Jane Wyatt, Jaqui Austin, Jennifer Fisher
the orchestra of grange park Leader Andrew Court
Anne-Sophie Duprels Elena Ferrari John Hudson Mark Stone Andrew Foster-Williams Frank Church Deryck Hamon Darrell Forkin Alistair Moore Rob Gildon
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La Bohème Paris. Rodolfo, a poet, lives an impoverished life with his friends: Marcello, a painter, Colline, a philosopher and Schaunard, a musician. He meets and falls in love with Mimi and they begin a passionate affair. Marcello is reunited with Musetta who deserted him for the attractions of the elderly but wealthy Alcindoro. Rodolfo becomes unreasonably jealous of Mimi and decides that they should separate: he admits to Marcello, however, that his concern is really for Mimi herself. It is apparent that she is dying of consumption and Rodolfo cannot afford to provide the comforts she needs. They part and Mimi finds a rich protector. The artists return to their old life. Musetta arrives with Mimi, on the point of death. Mimi and Rodolfo are reconciled as Mimi dies. Rooves under snow, Paris 1878 by Gustave Caillebotte (1848–1894) Musée d’Orsay, Paris © Bridgeman Art Library
act one An attic in the Latin Quarter of Paris; Christmas Eve Rodolfo and Marcello are bitterly cold. They need fuel to light their stove: Marcello suggests using a chair, but Rodolfo offers the manuscript of the play he is writing. Colline returns and the remaining acts of the play are burned. Schaunard explains that an Englishman engaged him to play incessantly to hasten the death of a neighbour’s noisy parrot – after three days he had the bird poisoned. The friends decide to go out to eat but are inter-
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rupted by their landlord Benoit who has come for the rent. They ply him with wine until he boasts of his amorous conquests – he prefers plump women to skinny ones like his wife. The Bohemians pretend outrage and push him out and prepare to leave for the Café Momus. Rodolfo says he will stay behind to finish an article. There is a knock on the door. It is a girl asking for a light for her candle. She is faint from climbing the stairs and, as she leaves, her candle flickers out again and she realises that she has lost her key. As he helps her, Rodolfo’s candle goes out too. He takes her icy hand (Che gelida manina) and he tells her of his life as a poet. She describes her life as a flower embroiderer (Mi chiamano Mimi). Rodolfo’s friends call up to hurry him along. Mimi is bathed in moonlight (O soave fanciulla) and they declare their love for one another. Mimi asks if she may join them all in the Café Momus. Rodolfo would prefer to stay but they go to join the others.
act two A café in the Latin Quarter It is a bustling Christmas scene as Rodolfo and Mimi wander through the crowd. They order dinner and Rodolfo introduces Mimi to his friends. Parpignol, a toyseller, passes, followed by a crowd of children.
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When Mimi shows her new friends the bonnet Rodolfo has bought her, it saddens Marcello: he thinks of his faithless Musetta. Musetta arrives with Alcindoro, an elderly politician whom she is tormenting. She becomes increasingly agitated that Marcello is ignoring her and determines to win him back with a spectacular vocal display (Quando me’n vo’). She complains of a painful foot and dispatches Alcindoro to buy new shoes. The bill for supper appears and no-one has any money. Musetta saves the situation by placing the bill on Alcindoro’s plate who returns, finds the bill, and sinks dumbfounded into a chair.
and Marcello has seen Mimi dressed like a queen. Rodolfo and Marcello realise how much they miss Mimi and Musetta. Schaunard and Colline arrive with food. They fool around. Suddenly Musetta appears – she has brought Mimi, who is desperately ill. Rodolfo fetches Mimi. Musetta explains that she met Mimi in the street and that Mimi, sensing she was dying, begged to be taken to Rodolfo. Musetta tells Marcello to sell her earrings to pay for medicine and a doctor. Colline agrees to pawn his old coat (Vecchia zimarra). Mimi expresses her deepest love for Rodolfo. They reminisce about their first meeting. The others return with medicine but it is too late – Mimi dies.
* dinner interval (85 minutes) *
act three The Outskirts of Paris; Early Morning Workers arrive as young Bohemians leave a bar on their way home. Mimi arrives. She is ill, racked with coughing and asks for Marcello. He tells her that he and Musetta have been living there and that Rodolfo is with them. Mimi explains that Rodolfo’s jealousy is destroying their relationship and that he has left her. Marcello advises Mimi to go but she hides. Rodolfo appears explaining that he must break with Mimi – her flirting has driven him mad. Eventually, however, he reveals the real reason: she is so ill that his miserable poverty offers her nothing but the prospect of death. Mimi breaks down. As Rodolfo hurries to her, Musetta is heard laughing and Marcello goes to see what she is up to. Mimi says goodbye to Rodolfo: all she asks is that he send her things, but if he wishes he may keep the pink bonnet. Marcello and Musetta, quarrelling, separate acrimoniously. Rodolfo and Mimi resolve to postpone their separation until the spring.
act four The Attic – some months later Marcello and Rodolfo are working and at the same time discussing their loves. Rodolfo has seen Musetta
Lunchime by Peder Severin Kroyer (1851-1909) Skagens Museum, Denmark © Bridgeman Art Library
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Puccini’s Bohemian rhapsody The original Bohemians were an extraordinary band of students and artists living in the Latin Quarter of Paris in the 1840s: Courbet, Millet, Borel, Baudelaire – and Henri Murger. Murger’s highly successful account of his student life, published in 1851, at one stage had both Leoncavallo and Puccini competing to turn it into an opera. Puccini, fascinated by the character Mimi and the intensity of her frailty, won – basing Rodolpho on Murger himself. Anyone who has lost a young friend knows what Bohème is about, writes Michael Fontes, who retires as senior master at Winchester College. He is moving to Najac in the Aveyron district of France with his two salukis.
I magine being halfway through com-
words after they had been rejected. He should have posing La Bohème, meeting Leoncavallo in a Milan told Leoncavallo he’d changed his mind. Perhaps he café, and learning that he is hard at work on just didn’t like Leoncavallo’s libretto; perhaps we just an opera on the same subject. Looking from shouldn’t expect a genius to be reasonable. Leoncavallo’s perspective, imagine offering Puccini Murger’s account of his student life was not such a libretto on Henri Murger’s an obvious subject. Episodic in Scenes from Bohemian Life, style, autobiographical, amushaving him reject the subject ing, but rambling: too many as unsuitable, and so setting characters to make effective to work on the music yourself; drama, one might think. It then, when you are well came out in instalments in advanced with the piece, the Parisian literary periodical meeting Puccini in a Milan Le Corsaire, between 1847 café. You hear him tell you and 1849. Before its publicahe’s changed his mind and tion in book form, in 1851, it has nearly completed his had considerable success as own version. a musical play, for which What followed that meetMurger collaborated with the ing was a kind of competition; playwright Barrière. Barrière not so much about who could has a good story about calling write Bohème first, but who on Murger to work on the could write it best. Puccini play and finding him in bed. won on both counts: in his He assumed Murger was ill, cottage in Torre del Lago, at only to find that, on the conthe western end of the Lago trary, he was very well, but he Massaciuccoli, between Lucca couldn’t go out because he had and the coast, he got into the lent his only pair of trousers to spirit of the opera by forming a friend the previous day. the ‘Club la Bohème’ from Murger’s circumstances were Eggs by Manuel Lopez de Villasenor (b 1921) friends made in the village. transformed by his literary © Bridgeman Art Library He excluded all ‘bores, pedants, success: he said he felt like grumblers and fools’, enforced statutes such as ‘It is for- an Emperor of Morocco who had married the Bank bidden to play cards honestly’ and ‘Silence is prohibited’. of France. My sympathies have always lain with Leoncavallo; Puccini’s librettists, Illica and Giacosa, had to Puccini will have guessed that the gifted composer of condense and to select; they often compressed several Pagliacci, who had a degree in literature and, like characters into one: thus while Rodolpho is based Boito, wrote his own libretti, would set his own on Murger himself, Colline is drawn from two
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philosophy students: the conceited Jean Wallon, who went everywhere with books stuffed into his pockets, and Marc Trapadoux, called in the novel, ‘the green giant’, because of his height and because of his dirty old overcoat, which had once been black – this is the coat to which he addresses his strangely touching farewell in the final scene of the opera, ‘vecchia, zimarra, senti.’. Schaunard was based on Alexandre Schanne, when Murger knew him as a composer as well as an artist, who was to become a well-known painter of the Northern school which congregated round Le Havre, joined there by English painters like the Fielding brothers and Bonington. He was to have been called Schannard in the play but a printer’s error turned him into Schaunard and Schaunard he remained; he even published his memoirs of the Bohemian life, ‘Souvenirs de Schaunard’, in the 1880s; they give interesting alternative insights into the characters in Murger’s stories. By that stage Schaunard was a wealthy manufacturer of children’s toys, having inherited his father’s business. Marcel is loosely based on the writer Champfleury and two painters, one of whom, Francois Germain Leopold Taber, really did paint a ‘Crossing of the Red Sea’. The Bohemians, so called because they likened themselves to the gypsies, another group on the edge and alien to polite society, were the band of students and artists around Murger, who were based in the Latin Quarter and Montmartre. They included Courbet, Millet, Borel, Barber d’Aurevilly, Baudelaire: no mean talents – Courbet was the leading painter of the realist school, Baudelaire perhaps France’s greatest poet. Murger depicts their life as exuberant, independent and disrespectful of bourgeois conventions, particularly those of dress and of aesthetic taste. The Scènes are at once realistic and romantic; stories of poor students – they called themselves ‘the Water Drinkers’ – who went to the cafés, and to the Café Momus in particular, to keep warm rather than to drink. The Café Momus was in the Rue des Prêtres de St Germain l’Auxerrois, the narrow street running down the south side of the church which faces Perrault’s East front of the Louvre, across the Seine from the Quartier Latin, but not as far North as Montmartre, the other main centre of Bohemian life. Puccini, for obvious reasons, has the Bohemians at a
ground-floor table, but Murger explains in the Scènes that he and his friends preferred an upstairs room. While in the opera the Momus scene is a boys’ night out, except that Rodolfo brings Mimi, Murger describes how they went as couples, Rodolfe and Mimi, Marcel and Musette, Schaunard and Phemie (who isn’t in the opera); Colline joins them unaccompanied. Murger explains how they had the ladies order the drinks: Musette wants champagne because it makes a noise, Phemie chooses parfait amour, a sugary liqueur, because it settles the stomach. Mimi asks for Beaune, red burgundy. Rodolfe asks if she has lost her senses; she replies: ‘No, I haven’t, but I would like to’. Not quite the Mimi of the opera. To go with the wine Mimi orders ham; again more characterful, perhaps, than the crême caramel she orders in the opera. If you had been wondering how our heroes could pay for the spread, the answer is that they couldn’t; they were rescued by another diner, not Alcindoro, but a total stranger, who regards their bill of 25 francs and 3 quarters as good value for the entertainment he has had.
Corner of a Studio 1845 by Octave Tassaert (1800-74) © Bridgeman Art Library
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The early Bohemians, as described by Murger, rejected bourgeois values and championed the impecunious life. Some of them chose the impecunious life, like Baudelaire, whose comments in the cafes (‘Isn’t this cheese delicious; don’t you think it tastes just like child’s brains’) managed to scandalise even the bohemians. Others had it thrust upon them, like Murger, whose father had left his concierge mother in the semi destitution in which he had found her. Grisettes were the inseparable companions of these Bohemians; the name came from the cheap dress made of grey fabric, chosen by these independentminded young women. The Grisette provided inspiration, an audience, and romance for the bohemians. She cared more for looks, talent and personality than money. If in the end she left Bohemia for a rich bourgeois husband, she often remained committed to the Bohemian way of life, and Murger suggests that the conventionally minded husband will never understand her properly. Musetta’s fierce independence, her willingness to leave the rich Alcindoro to join the Bohemians at the Café Momus, mark her as a grisette. In Murger’s novel we learn that the original Musetta was Marie Roux, the mistress of Champfleury, who modelled for Ingres and had a delightful voice but sang out of tune; hence the name ‘Musette’, French for bagpipes. The Joint of Meat 1864 by Claude Monet (1840-1926) Musée d’Orsay, Paris © Bridgeman Art Library
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Mimi is sometimes inaccurately described as a grisette; she is a compound character, based on several of Murger’s women friends: Marie Vimal, a frail, naïve young girl, who got involved in a fraud and ended up on the streets; Lucille Louvel, a charming midinette, a shopgirl, who died of consumption very young and whom Murger often calls Mimi. ‘Mi chiamano Mimi, ma il mio nome è Lucia.’ She lacks the grisette’s intrepid spirit, and her simplicity puts her apart from the Bohemians, who were more obviously intellectual and artistic than she could ever be. It also contributes powerfully to her vulnerability, which makes her illness and death the more poignant. Several of Murger’s friends in the book die of consumption. In Jean Renoir’s film La Grande Illusion, Pierre Fresnay’s character, the Capitaine de Boildieu, puts forward a theory that each social class has its particular disease, stomach ulcers for the middle classes, gout for the aristocracy and so on; 18th century chimneysweeps were disastrously prone to cancer of the scrotum: the Bohemians died of tuberculosis. Murger described himself as ‘un poete de l’Ècole poitrinaire’, and said that Bohemian life was a preface to ‘the Hospital, the Academy, or the Morgue’. I came across a striking gloss on Mimi’s disease in a review of the hit rock musical Rent, based on Bohème. Set in the East Village, New York City, it presents a group of similarly independent, poor young men in a seedy urban environment: ‘In La Bohème, Mimi is dying of rheumatism; in Rent, Mimi is dying of AIDS’. I wonder how the writer came round to the view that Paris in the 1830s saw a plague of rheumatism, which killed off many of the shopgirls, caused, no doubt, by poor diet and primitive sanitary arrangements. Thurber’s great uncle, Zenas, died of the Great Chestnut Blight in 1866, but that was in the United States where diseases of trees might reasonably be expected to jump to human beings, at least certainly to members of Thurber’s immediate family. Even Thurber admits that his relations felt sensitive about Zenas’ illness and preferred not to mention it. Some say that in Puccini’s Bohème the characters never develop, that the action is fragmented and lacks direction. This criticism could be levelled at Murger’s book, or indeed at life itself. Puccini said of Bohème that ‘the facts had little importance and poetic
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Bed of Anemones 1901 by Pierre August Renoir (1841-1919) Noortman, Maastricht © Bridgeman Art Library
opportunities abounded’. His dramatic sense, his way of finding an unforgettable melody to point the big moments, together with his new flowing conversational style in music, admirably suited to projecting the natural spontaneity of Bohemian life, have ensured Bohème’s enormous success. These days I find myself enjoying its less obvious strengths, like its classical virtues, those double chords which act as a framing device for the tollgate scene, the plain, unrhetorical way in which the quartet at the end of that scene develops. The composer’s willingness to be succinct, to be almost casual, to avoid the big
gesture for the most part, make the great moments overwhelming when they come. Puccini responded to Mimi’s frailty. Few qualities in operatic heroines have the power of her intense fragility. You feel of Mimi what Arkel says of Mélisande at the end of Pelléas: ‘C’était un petit être si tranquille, si timide et si silencieux. C’était un pauvre petit être mystérieux comme tout le monde.’ Her tragedy touches us because Puccini makes us feel so close to it. Anyone who has lost a young friend to serious illness knows what Bohème is about. I must stop now; I’m dying of rheumatism.
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Iolanthe is very generously supported by
The Carphone Warehouse Previous Grange Park productions supported by The Carphone Warehouse The Turn of the Screw 2002 CosĂŹ fan tutte 2001 The Mikado 2000
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a comic fairy opera in two acts
Text by W S Gilbert (1836 - 1911) and music by Sir Arthur Sullivan (1842 - 1900) Additional words by Ian Hislop First performance Savoy Theatre, London, 25 November 1882 Performances at The Grange June 12, 14, 22, 27, July 3, 4, 9 2003
Iolantheor The Peer and the Peri Robert Dean Conductor
Janis Kelly Director
Francis O’Connor Designer
Chris Davey Lighting Designer
the lord chancellor earl of mountararat earl of tolloller private willis of the Grenadier Guards strephon queen of the fairies iolanthe phyllis
Richard Suart Glenville Hargreaves David Llewellyn Richard Angas Jeremy Carpenter Stephen Wallace Ruth Peel Mary Hegarty
an A rcadian Shepherdess and Ward in Chancery
Claire Glaskin Choreographer
celia leila
the orchestra of grange park
Sarah Jane Whyte Karina Lucas
Leader Andrew Court
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iolanthe in arcadia
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IOLANTHE the prima fairy – banished for 25 years for marrying a mortal
THE LORD CHANCELLOR
fairies
bereft husband of Iolanthe and both guardian and suitor of
PHYLLIS
a Ward in Chancery in love with
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THE LORDS AT WORK in pursuit of high ideals
more fairies
STREPHON
half-man, half-fairyson of
THE LORDS AT PLAY in pursuit of
is there not a bit of fairy in us all?
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Once a fairy, light & airy, married with a mortal Gilbert got the idea for Iolanthe from Sir Richard Burton’s newly published translation of the Arabian Nights - particularly the Tale of Prince Ahmed and the Peri Banou, an account of three princes in chase of a beautiful princess. The result, says Michael Fontes, will ever be popular for Gilbert’s ability to sustain the nonsense (a peri is basically a fairy), and Sullivan’s Herculean struggle to match him.
'it was here that the Emperor used to put on his grand al fresco spectacles.’ Every time I put on my own grand al fresco spectacles to correct my pupils’ work I look forward to some unconscious ambiguity, some reminder that the language of today’s 17-year-old is not the language I knew back in the 50s. I get such reminders every lunchtime, of course, as I struggle above the tumult of young England getting outside its 1500 calories, first to hear and then interpret what is said to me. I become used to about 20 new Americanisms every year and am still holding out against ‘hopefully’, and won’t say ‘down to’ for ‘up to’. I can handle, passively of course, the Australian interrogative inflection, which comes, I’m told, from ‘Neighbours’, and is ingrained in some of our children’s speech, in much the same way as curvature of the spine became endemic in Glasgow children from swaggering about with their hands in their jeans pockets imitating gunslingers in westerns. I lament the fact that the Governor of the Bank of England says we are not yet out ‘of the woods’ – don’t holler till you’re out of the wood, please Eddie – and I smile in a self-satisfied way when people tell me that the proof is in the pudding. Of course the proof is in the pudding; where else could it be? I’m a boring old fart. My colleague Lachlan MacKinnon told me last term of one of his pupils writing a story about a man who was developing what some people call a ‘drink problem.’ ‘He began by sipping a small glass of sherry or some local wine before hitting the sack,’ the boy wrote, to Lachlan’s unbridled amusement. When the ambiguity is sexual the schoolmaster’s life becomes more hazardous: an oriental pupil of mine who liked to preserve his personal mystery was sitting next to me at lunch. I asked him, and the question seemed innocent enough at the time, just how Burmese he was. ‘My grandmother,’ he said slowly, rolling his eyes like the Buddha, ‘ran away with a mainlander.’ He then
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paused, giving me time to wonder if this was a sufficient answer, before leaning forward and adding confidingly: ‘they tried it first on the back of an elephant.’ My father was a pretty severe man but even on one of his worst mornings, he wouldn’t have expected me to keep a straight face at this. If I had told him that I was going to see an opera in which the hero was a fairy from the waist upwards, he would have told me to leave the room at once. Gilbert liked to keep his plots free of the suggestiveness which was the staple of French operetta of his time, so ‘fairy’ cannot have had the overtones in 1882 which amuse a modern audience. I also wonder about ‘why did five–and–twenty conservative peers come down to fish your pond?’ or ‘I heard the minx remark, she’d meet him after dark, inside St James’s Park, and give him one!’, always good for an astonished titter today; people have usually missed the fact that Iolanthe has just promised Strephon to provide him with a boat (an ark, to rime with bark and dark, and evoke thoughts of Noah and floods) in the event of inclement weather. Such is love. When Gilbert called Iolanthe a Peri rather than a Fairy, he did so not just to provide alternative rhymes, or for the Peer-Peri joke. He doesn’t rhyme peri in the singular throughout the opera, though he rhymes peris with series in the ‘Soon as we may’ finale to Act II. A peri is a particular sort of fairy, called genii, djinn, or deev in Indian and Persian mythology. Like Pope’s Rosicrucian sprites in the Rape of the Lock, they can assume many forms: ‘For Spirits, freed from mortal Laws, with ease assume what Sexes and what Shapes they please’. Certainly a djinn can assume any shape or sex it pleases, a very painful wrench, and lives, I like to think, in Djinnestan, when not sitting in Aladdin’s lamp, or appearing in Iolanthe, or residing at Number seventy, St. Mary Axe. They are dispersed through the earth, and they endear them-
Coronet worn by Lord Ashburton’s mother and grandmother for royal coronations (facing page)
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selves to a locality by taking up residence in baths, wells, latrines, ovens and ruined houses, though this is a fact which Gilbert doesn’t mention. The Muslim equivalent of Satan, Ebla, is described in the Koran as a djinn and belief in the djinn is common amongst Muslims. Seeking the advice of a djinn is common practice, though considered deeply sinful in orthodox Islam. We should hesitate to call the Arabian Nights ‘fairy’ stories. Gilbert was acknowledging his debt to the Arabian Nights, newly translated by Sir Robert Burton; where do you think that magic lozenge came from? The Night which most clearly influenced Gilbert for Iolanthe is the Tale of Prince Ahmed & the Peri Banou. You will remember it as a delightful story, full of the usual overlapping symmetries, an account of three princes’ quest for the hand of a beautiful princess. After the ritual ‘who can shoot an arrow furthest?’ competition, one of the disappointed princes, Ahmed, is comforted by and taken in marriage by the Peri Banou, who is capable of all sorts of magic. Unfortunately, Ahmed’s father, the Sultan, wants to know too much about his son’s new circumstances, so the Peri Banou sent her
brother, Schaibar, to sort him out. Djinn, when good, surpass all mortals in beauty and sex appeal; when evil they veer alarmingly in the other direction. Schaibar fell into the second category: ‘he was but a foot and a half high and came forward with his heavy bar on his shoulder; his beard thirty feet long which supported itself before him, and a pair of thick moustaches in proportion, tucked up to his ears, and almost covering his face: his eyes were very small, like a pig’s, and deep sunk in his head, which was of an enormous size, and on which he wore a pointed cap: besides all this, he had a hump behind and another before.’ He would clearly have looked conspicuous even in the House of Lords. He came obviously from the same stable as Chernomor, the dwarf in Glinka’s Ruslan & Ludmilla, except that Chernomor’s beard, also thirty feet long, in which his power resided, had to be carried by pages on cushions before him. What matters for the Iolanthe story is that Ahmed, a mortal, married a peri, and this caused problems. One problem which intrigued Gilbert, husband and wife aging at different speeds, does not arise in the story of Ahmed & the Peri Banou. Gilbert exploits the comic possibilities of an apparently young fairy having a grown up son with all his usual high spirits: ‘This gentleman is seen, with a maid of seventeen a-taking of his dolce far niente; and wonders he’d achieve, for he asks us to believe she’s his
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mother – and he’s nearly five-and twenty.’ Gilbert loved Arabian Nights marriages are contracted the moment all that nonsense: ‘I am a little boy of five!’ exclaims a proposal is accepted, as seems to happen between Frederick in Pirates of Penzance – he has to remain a Prince Ahmed and the Peri Banou, and this means pirate and unmarried until his 21st birthday, but as he that, as Private Willis accepts the Queen’s blackwas born on the 29th of February in a leap year this mailing proposal before he sprouts wings, he was a means he will have to wait until he is 84. mortal when she married him. In Gilbert’s original Gilbert, who trained as a barrister, clearly also sketch of the plot, the Lord Chancellor, the peers and became interested in the legal aspect of marriage Private Willis all become fairies before they marry, between mortals and fairies. When the Peri Banou thus obviating any need for the change in fairy law. proposes to Prince Ahmed, they move from courtship Why Gilbert altered his plans remains a mystery; the to marriage with quite striking speed: ‘Well, Prince original scheme involved many of the attractions of Ahmed,’ said she, ‘will you pledge your faith to me, as I the new one, the charming business of the peers and do mine to you?’ ‘Yes, madam,’ replied the prince, in the sentry sprouting wings, for example. an ecstasy of joy. ‘What could I do to In 1878, four years before bring more luck and pleasure upon Iolanthe, Thomas Keightley myself ? Yes, my sultaness, I give it published his well-known book on you with all my heart and without fairies, The Fairy Mythology. the least reserve.’ ‘Then,’ answered Keightley discusses the whole the fairy, ‘you are my husband, and I question of fairies and immortality, am your wife. Our fairy marriages coming down, rather worryingly are contracted with no other cerefor Gilbert, against the immortality monies, and yet are more firm and of djinn: ‘The Djinn are not indissoluble than those among men, immortal; they are to survive with all their formalities. But as I mankind, but are due to die before suppose,’ pursued she, ‘that you have the general resurrection. Even at eaten nothing all day, a slight repast present many of them are slain by shall be served up for you while other Djinn, or by men; but chiefly preparations are making for our nupby shooting-stars hurled at them from tial feast this evening, and then I will Heaven. The fire of which they were show you the apartments of my created, circulates in their veins palace.’ I suspect that this lightning instead of blood, and when they arrangement is the model for the receive a mortal wound, it bursts Fairy Queen’s marriage to Private forth and consumes them to ashes. Willis. I also like the idea of They eat and drink, and propagate Ahmed’s being given a few dozen their species. Sometimes they unite Lord Cecil by Max Beerbohm (1872-1956) oysters and half a bottle of good with human beings, and the offspring Spectator 1931 Private Collection © Bridgeman Art Library Chablis to tide him over till the partake of the nature of both parents. nuptial feast. Some of the Djinn are obedient to the will of God, and Gilbert’s resolution of the plot raises as many believers in the Prophet, answering to the Peris of the djinn as it puts to rest. Commentators have pointed Persians; others are like the Deevs, disobedient and maligout that as the Queen of the Fairies marries Private nant. Both kinds are divided into communities, and ruled Willis after he has sprouted wings, she has herself over by princes.’ Gilbert must have read this, and taken broken the fairy law as amended by the Lord on board the point about the offspring partaking of Chancellor; she has not married a mortal, the nature of both parents – Strephon’s ‘mortal’ lower so she must die. However we must not forget that half is strong evidence – but was clearly attracted to Sarah A. Cole, in her authoritative Treatise on Fairy the idea of everyone going off into the sky to create a Law as it relates to marriages, points out that in the House of Peris in heaven, where ‘pleasures come in endless
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series’, so he wanted immortality as part of the package. direct their cold cascade on their chief. Sullivan would have had little time for such Sullivan’s music is less sophisticated, more questions; after all he was not kidnapped by Italian strophic, than that of Offenbach and Lecocq. A critic bandits and ransomed at the age of two, an experience on the radio was arguing recently that conductors which clearly marked Gilbert. The music of Iolanthe usually take the speed the music goes from some idea has often attracted compliments from serious music they have in their head of the correct pace of a tune. critics. We hear that the overture was written in a If this is true Sullivan would be easier to conduct single night, though why this should be regarded as than his French contemporaries, for the Frenchmen a merit I have always wondered. Is La Clemenza di often only put forward the tune halfway through a Tito the better for having been written mostly in number, as we saw in Messager’s Fortunio two years the coach between Vienna and Prague? The Iolanthe ago here. Iolanthe shows Sullivan perhaps at his most overture is even praised for being one of the few subtle; the moto perpetuo for the nightmare song is an written by Sullivan himself, and it’s certainly the bet- inspiration which matches Gilbert’s virtuoso words, ter for that, and praised also for making us even mistake the verse having a theme which doesn’t beginnings: ‘And he and the crew appear in the opera itself, the bubare on bicycles too – which they’ve bling staccato melody for the high somehow or other invested in . . .’ wind against which Oh Foolish Fay The effect reminds me of those is played on the lower strings. moments in the Bach C Minor pasUnfortunately even that is not a sacaglia where the upper parts very positive recommendation, contradict the horizontal divisions though the counterpoint at that implied by the ground bass. moment is wonderful, nor even Is Sullivan parodying Wagner unusual practice: where do we find in Iolanthe? People have cited the the bustling opening to the Figaro Lord Chancellor’s leitmotif – the overture, or the fugue theme in the fugato on the lower strings, and overture to The Magic Flute in the nobody who knows the Ring can operas themselves? Sullivan hear the Fairy Chorus’s cry of responds in his own stately way to Willahalah! Willaloo!, Willahalah! Gilbert’s wild inspirations; for Willaloo! without wondering when instance in the sentry’s song, the first London performance of Sullivan perfectly catches Private Rhinegold took place. Answer: 5th Willis’s self-satisfaction at his jeu May 1882 at His Majesty’s, as part d’esprit. Oh Foolish Fay is not only of the Ring. Iolanthe opened on an attractive number, it powerfully 25th November at the Savoy Titania 1866 by John Simmons (1823-76) projects one of Gilbert’s very best Theatre. Sullivan regarded his stay Bristol City Museum jokes, the aside for the chorus, ‘Oh, in Germany as a critical part of © Bridgeman Art Library Captain Shaw! Type of true love kept under! Could thy his musical education: ‘I often tried to think what would brigade with cold cascade quench my great love, I won- have become of me had I never come to Germany’. We der!’ Captain Shaw, an Irishman, earned fame and the shouldn’t perhaps become too exercised by such possikcb for turning the old-time independent fire-fight- ble parallels. Sullivan’s serious opera Ivanhoe and later ing teams, financed by insurance offices, into Savoy operas, like the Yeomen of the Guard, suggest a London’s Metropolitan Fire Brigade. He came to the Wagnerian influence rather more obviously than first performance of Iolanthe and is said to have Iolanthe, which will ever be popular for its blushed gratifyingly at this moment; whether he had unwagnerian high spirits, for Gilbert’s ability to time to take in the suggestion that he was the spirit of sustain the nonsense, and Sullivan’s Herculean sexual repression I doubt; his officers had no need to struggle to match him.
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1882
Gilbert as Writer and Producer
W S Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan first met in 1869, and by 1882, when Iolanthe first appeared, had enjoyed huge success: Trial by Jury, HMS Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and Patience had all made them rich. Each now enjoyed incomes of £10,000 a year, twice as much as the Prime Minister, Mr Gladstone. Yet on the day Iolanthe opened at the Savoy Theatre, Sullivan discovered his stockbrokers had gone bust – and he was almost ruined. Iolanthe saved him. Extract from The Gilbert & Sullivan Book by Leslie Bailey (publ Cassell & Company, 1952) – lent by Louise Verrill whose great-great-grandfather was Sir Henry Lytton, Sullivan’s lead singer. S ullivan (the music half) spent freely on entertaining, race–horses, the casino, travel. Gilbert instructed an architect to design a large mansion to be built in Harrington Gardens, Kensington, equipped with such amenities as central heating and four bathrooms. He was already trying out that remarkable innovation, the telephone at 24 The Boltons where he sat at his desk struggling with the libretto that brought fairyland to Westminster and made fun of the sacred subject of British politics. The stillness of the room was disturbed by the tick of a grandfather clock, the fall of coals in the fire, the scratch of a quill-pen, as the characters were born into Iolanthe. He created Strephon, the arcadian shepherd who is half fairy, half mortal, and elected him to parliament; and on this blotting pad of his the Lord Chancellor of England first gambolled in wig and robes, and was provided with one of the cleverest comic lyrics ever written in the English language (page 87). At the end of a day’s writing, Mrs Gilbert would come softly into the study and lean over the dramatist’s shoulder, and he would often read to her the pages he had written, and, putting them in an envelope addressed to Sullivan, he would weigh it on his letter-balance and remark ‘I wonder what it will be worth to us? Fivepence postage, or five figures in the bank?’ Penning the final libretto was the last of many days, months and years of gestation. In his plot-books it is possible to trace the embryo of Iolanthe through its stages of development. These plot-books are twoinch-thick leather-bound volumes of ruled paper into which Gilbert scribbled any ideas for the operas or plays whenever they occurred to him; they are the
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reservoir of his fancies, to which he would turn when working out a libretto. But the first germ of Iolanthe is in a Bab Ballad published some twelve years previously, The Fairy Curate Once a fairy Light and airy Married with a mortal – this fairy chose an attorney of Ealing as her spouse, and then – Twelvemonths, maybe Saw a baby – whom they name Georgie, and this half–man–half–fairy grew up to be a curate in the Church of England. Through hundreds of pages of the plot books, the idea is developed, amended, re-stated and elaborated. Many notions are introduced only to be abandoned. At the first the fairies fall in love enbloc with the barristers of the northern Circuit. Then ministers of the crown begin to creep into the plot; during several pages the Fairy Queen is married to the Foreign Secretary; another fairy weds the Home Secretary. After developing an idea through scores of pages Gilbert would turn a clean page and start all over again, writing out the entire plot from beginning to end. One of these trial plots for Iolanthe begins with a scene on the rustic banks of the Thames ‘with Naiads sitting about, whose duty it is to watch over and protect all counties through which the river flows’ – a scheme which he abandoned but the next idea was retained – ‘ they are very much distressed at the unsatisfactory character of British legislation and attribute much of this to the House of Peers which they consider should be abolished. They discuss the absurdities of hereditary legislature, and argue that a man should be legislator by reason of his own fitness rather than on account of the fitness of his ancestors.’ Some versions later he
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writes ‘Suppose Atty-Gen brings in Bill providing that promotion to the Upper House shall be by Competitive Examination. Then the Peers are annoyed because: 1. The prestige of the House will be destroyed 2. A number of clever men will get into the House who will entirely revolutionise its character 3. The existing members will be nowhere. They can’t expect to contend with Wranglers and Double Firsts 4. The House will become a merely intellectual body 5. Who ever heard of rewarding ability with a seat in the upper House? It is unprecedented Very little of this remains today in Iolanthe where Gilbert narrows it into one gloriously ambiguous speech: ‘It so happens that if there is an institution in Great Britain which is not susceptible of any improvement at all, it is the House of Peers!’ So, by this process of refining and rewriting, the plot is worked out until at last it is crystal clear to Gilbert, then he turns a new page in his plotbook and sets about writing the final script. Only after all this does he come to that evening when he turns to Mrs Gilbert and says ‘I wonder what it will be worth to us?’ Sullivan and Gilbert wrote the operas by post in friendly but business–like letters. They intended to have the new opera ready by November. As usual the music was late. Sullivan had composed very little of Act 1 when Gilbert put Act 2 into rehearsal at the end of September 1882. Rehearsals would begin by Gilbert reading the ‘book’, giving full value to every word and every phrase. Next came Sullivan’s music rehearsal, the composer sitting at an upright piano on the stage while Gilbert listened and made notes – he never decided the stage business exactly until he had heard how the lyrics had worked out to music.
There was some anxiety about the Censor’s attitude. This is shown in a letter from Richard D’Oyly Carte to the team in New York preparing the American Iolanthe. He warned them not to reveal anything to the Press, because ‘if it gets over to the Lord Chamberlain’s office that the sacred orders of the Garter, Thistle, Patrick and Bath are going on the stage, the office may come down bang and forbid it being done.’ Piracy of their property in the usa was still depriving Gilbert, Sullivan and Carte of many thousands of pounds a year, so they tried to put the pirates on the wrong path by rehearsing Iolanthe under a false name, Perola, which appeared in the printed libretti used at rehearsals. They also took legal action over incidents in the usa but several American judges ruled against them. Sullivan said, rather bitterly: ‘It seems to be their opinion that a free and independent American citizen ought not to be robbed of his right of robbing somebody else.’ At the final rehearsal of Iolanthe at the Savoy, Sullivan addressed the assembled company: ‘Ladies and gentlemen. You have been rehearsing Perola but when the curtain goes up the opera will be called Iolanthe. Will you please change the name Perola to Iolanthe throughout.’ Consternation and surprise. The name occurred many times. What if they made mistakes? ‘Never mind’ said Sullivan ‘So long as you sing the music.’ One of the players feared she would forget the name of Iolanthe. ‘Use any name that happens to occur to you! Nobody in the audience will be any the wiser, except Mr Gilbert – and he won’t be there.’ Mr Gilbert was not there. He was nervously prowling up and down the Thames Embankment on the evening of 25 November 1882. A Gilbert & Sullivan first night was now a Social Occasion.
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The new electric light had made it doubly exciting. The electric lamps – the sparkle of diamonds – the starchy sheen of dress shirts – the creamy shoulders of celebrated beauties – the turning and gazing and gossiping as the audience came in, the leaders of fashion, literature, politics, the law, science, art and business in the stalls. And the gallery burst into cheers as the man who had given them the tunes they loved mounted his rostrum and beamed through his eyeglass and bowed. They little realised that Arthur Sullivan was penniless. In the morning he had received the news that his brokers had gone bankrupt. Most of his savings were lost. The next day the world opened its newspapers. The thing the public was burning to know was what Mr Gilbert had decided to satirise this time. They found it was the Legislature And while the House of Peers witholds Its legislative hand And noble statesmen do not itch To interfere with matters which They do not understand As bright will shine Great Britain’s rays As in King George’s glorious days. To show he was not taking sides, Gilbert had a gibe at the Lower House When in that House MPs divide If they’ve a brain and cerebellum, too They’ve got to leave that brain outside And vote just as their leaders tell ‘em to But then the prospect of a lot Of dull MPs in close proximity All thinking for themselves, is what No man can face with equanimity. On the first night Strephon, on entering Parliament, rudely tells the Legislature that he intends to bring in ‘some rather urgent measures’ and sings that ‘crime begins at home’ Take a wretched thief Through the City sneaking Pocket handkerchief Ever, ever seeking: What is he but I Robbed of all my chances –
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Picking pockets by Force of circumstances? I might be as bad– As unlucky, rather – If I’d only had Fagin for a father! This brought a storm of protest from the critics and Gilbert took out the offending lyrics, bowed in the knowledge that his job was a jester’s. But in Gilbert’s prompt–book may be found a song, scratched out at rehearsal, which would have horrified his critics even more, had they heard it. Its theme is the snobbery of riches. It is about a Mr de Belvill, who was highly talented as a poet and painter too, but nobody in civilized Britain could think of a way to reward this very gifted man. He tried being an inventor and proved himself to be a very great and very learned man, but remained penniless and unrecognised. And then: At last the point was given up in absolute despair, When a distant cousin dies, and he became a millionaire! Then suddenly to all it seemed ridiculously clear Such a universal genius ought of course to be a Peer! And it’s pleasant to reflect that his decendants by the score In the stately House of Lords will legislate for ever more; And who so fit to sit in it, deny it if you can, As the offspring of a very great and very gifted man? Though I’m more than half afraid That it sometimes may be said That we never should have revelled in that source of proper pride – However great his merits – if his cousin hadn’t died! This song was never heard in Iolanthe.
S ullivan’s diary, 22 dec 1882 Tom Chappell called to say that over 10,000 vocal and pianoforte scores of Iolanthe had been sent out from Bond Street the night before, all hands staying till nearly midnight.
Mr Gilbert moved into his expensive new house in Harrington Gardens. Mr Sullivan quickly recovered his spirits and his bank balance.
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The Lord Chancellor’s Nightmare W hen
you’re lying awake
with a dismal headache, and repose is taboo’d by anxiety, I conceive you may use any language you choose to indulge in, without impropriety; For your brain is on fire – the bedclothes conspire of usual slumber to plunder you: First your counterpane goes, and uncovers your toes, and your sheet slips demurely from under you; Then the blanketing tickles – you feel like mixed pickles – so terribly sharp is the pricking, And you’re hot, and you’re cross, and you tumble and toss ‘til there’s nothing ‘twixt you and the ticking. Then the bedclothes all creep to the ground in a heap, and you pick ‘em all up in a tangle; Next your pillow resigns and politely declines to remain at its usual angle! Well, you get some repose in the form of a doze, with hot eye–balls and head ever aching, But your slumbering teems with such horrible dreams that you’d very much better be waking; For you dream you are crossing the Channel, and tossing about in a steamer from Harwich – Which is something between a large bathing machine and a very small second–class carriage – And you’re giving a treat (penny ice and cold meat) to a party of friends and relations – They’re a ravenous horde and they all came on board at Sloane Square & South Kensington Stations. And bound on that journey you find your attorney (who started that morning from Devon); He’s a bit undersized, and you don’t feel surprised when he tells you he’s only eleven. Well, you’re driving like mad with this singular lad (by the by, the ship’s now a four–wheeler), And you’re playing round games, and he calls you bad names when you tell him that ‘ties pay the dealer’; But this you can’t stand, so you throw up your hand, and you find you’re as cold as an icicle, In your shirt and your socks (the black silk with gold clocks), crossing Salisbury Plain on a bicycle: And he and the crew are on bicycles too – which they’ve somehow or other invested in – And he’s telling the tars all the particulars of a company he’s interested in – It’s a scheme of devices, to get at low prices all goods from cough mixtures to cables (Which tickled the sailors), by treating retailers as though they were all vegetables – You get a good spadesman to plant a small tradesman (first take off his boots with a boot–tree), And his legs will take root, and his fingers will shoot, and they’ll blossom and bud like a fruit–tree From the greengrocer tree you get grapes and green pea, cauliflower, pineapple and cranberries, While the pastrycook plant cherry brandy will grant, apple puffs, and three–corners, and banburys The shares are a penny, and ever so many are taken by Rothschild and Baring, And just as a few are allotted to you, you awake with a shudder despairing – You’re a regular wreck, with a crick in your neck, and no wonder you snore, for your head’s on the floor, and you’ve needles and pins from your soles to your shins, and your flesh is a–creep, for your left leg’s asleep, And you’ve cramp in your toes, and a fly on your nose, and some fluff in your lung, and a feverish tongue, and a thirst that’s intense, and a general sense that you haven’t been sleeping in clover; -
But the darkness has passed, and it’s daylight at last, and the night has been long – ditto ditto my song –
and thank goodness they’re both of them over! 87
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This production is supported by
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opera comique in three acts Emmanuel Chabrier (1814 – 1894) to a libretto by Emile de Najac and Paul Burani Sung in English with lyrics by Kit Hesketh Harvey and dialogue by Simon Callow First performed in Paris, 18 May 1887 Performances at The Grange June 28, July 2, 6, 8, 11 2003
Le Roi malgré lui henri de valois King of Poland nangis French courtier laski Polish nobleman and Grand Palatine le duc de fritelli Roderick Brydon courtier in the Polish court
Stephan Loges
alexina his wife and neice of Laski Simon Callow minka Laski’s slave Director liancourt French gentleman Ashley Martin–Daviesvillequier head of the King’s guard Designer caylus French courtier maugiron French gentleman Quinny Sacks Choreographer d’elbeuf French gentleman soldier Chris Davey Lighting Designer vassa an innkeeper
Mary Plazas
Fredrik Strid Deryck Hamon Kevin Sharp
Conductor
by arrangement with Enoch & Cie, Paris and United Music Publishers, London
courtiers, soldiers
Alison Roddy Julian Alexander Smith Ewan Taylor Nathaniel Gibbs Rob Gildon Matt Smith Alistair Moore Jennifer Meldrum Mike Denman Stewart Crowly Stee Billingsley Nunzio Lombardo
the orchestra of grange park Leader Andrew Court
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Le Roi malgré lui Henri de Valois, son of the Queen of France, has been elected King of Poland. A powerful faction of Polish nobles, led by Laski, conspire to oust Henri in favour of the Austrian Archduke, Ernest. At Laski’s Masked Ball, Henri disguises himself as his best friend, Nangis, and joins the conspiracy. The conspirators seize Nangis, believing him to be the king, but he escapes. The conspiracy collapses when Ernest pulls out and Henri is triumphantly proclaimed king.
act one
A castle near Crakow Henri's courtiers and friends are repining, bored, under house arrest until the Coronation. Henri’s best friend, Count nangis , returns from Crakow but can only report that the city is a grey and depressing place. henri himself enters; he too is chafing against his confinement, the climate and the landscape. He receives his letters from home, and sinks into a reverie over la belle France. His mother, Queen of France, is asking him to form a matrimonial bond with the daughter of the last of the Jagiellons. As for the people of Poland – he has not been allowed to see them and they have not been allowed to see him. The head of Henri’s Guard, Villequier, has discovered a conspiracy against him, led by the Grand Palatine, Albert laski. Henri must be closely guarded. Henri proposes that he should get to know his new subjects in the capital Cracow by passing among them in disguise, but Villequier swiftly squashes this A Fencing Scene by Adolphe Ladurner (1798-1865) © Bridgeman Art Library
plan. The Duke of fritelli , an Italian at the Polish court, appears, hoping to secure an interview with the King for his wife the Duchess Alexina. Villequier has discovered that Alexina, Laski’s niece, is a leading member of the conspiracy against Henri. Fritelli gives Henri and the courtiers his somewhat disenchanted view of Polish men, while praising their women. Henri reminisces about his recent visit to Venice – where Fritelli comes from – in particular his amorous escapade with an unknown young woman whom he rescued from abduction. Fritelli quickly guesses that the young woman in question was probably his own wife, and is suddenly less interested in securing an audience for her, but Henri insists that he must meet her. Nangis now gives the King his report, having recruited a spy, minka , a slave girl at Laski’s court. Henri quickly works out that Minka is Nangis' lover. There is a commotion: a soldier is pursuing Minka. Nangis assumes that she has important news for him, but no, she simply wanted to see him again. She tells him that there is a Masked Ball at Laski’s; Nangis realises that this will be an important event that they should try to infiltrate. Nangis is summoned to the King; he tells Minka to meet him in the park. Before Minka can go, however, Fritelli and his wife, alexina , appear, and she hides herself. They bicker and discuss the plot to banish and, if necessary, kill the King. Alexina is deeply insulted when she is told that the King is unable to give them audience and she sweeps off with her husband.
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Remembrance of Johann Bremen by Caspar-David Friedrich (1774-1840) Schloss Charlottenburg, Berlin © Bridgeman Art Library
Minka, appalled at what she has overheard, finds Nangis, who is with Henri. Nangis introduces the King simply as his best friend – his other self. Henri, enchanted by Minka, sends Nangis off and Minka tells him about the Ball and the plot. As Fritelli returns, she runs off to wait for Nangis in the park. Henri plays with Fritelli, first appointing him his Chamberlain, then dictating a royal command to him decreeing his arrest and death, accusing him of plotting to drive the King back to France. The only way he will pardon him is if Fritelli will get him admitted to the Ball as a disaffected courtier – as Nangis, in fact. The only problem is to think of a reason why Nangis should have such a grudge. The Guard arrive, noisily. Villequier explains that he has heard that Henri and Nangis intend to go incognito to Crakow. Henri seizes on this as a perfect opportunity to seem to have a public falling-out with Nangis: he accuses him of disobedience, confining him to quarters. In asides, he tells Nangis to go along with the ruse. All withdraw except for Fritelli, who is joined by Alexina. Unexpectedly, the King enters, in his dressing gown. Alexina immediately recognises him as the man with whom she had a night of love in Venice. Fritelli presents him, describing him as the Comte de Nangis, eager to join the conspiracy. In the park Minka sings ecstatically and the Guard patrol. Henri, Alexina and Fritelli, filled with excitement and danger, set off for the Ball.
* dinner interval
(85 minutes) *
act two
The palace of the Grand Palatine Laski Wild dancing. As the dancers swirl, wondering about the Frenchmen they expect soon to meet, the conspirators plot. Minka sees Alexina and Fritelli and hides, to overhear a conversation, this time between Alexina and her uncle Laski. Alexina introduces Laski to the man she calls Nangis (but who is, of course, the King). Laski demands he take the oath to unseat the King, which he fervently does. Laski and Alexina lay the plot; Fritelli is nervous. Henri proclaims himself more than willing to despatch the King, but counsels cunning. Laski probes into his motives for joining the conspiracy: wasn't he the King's best friend? Alexina and Henri observe how close are love and hatred. Laski, satisfied, goes off to meet more conspirators. Minka re-appears, shocked that the man she met in the previous act, who was supposed to be Nangis's best friend, is preparing to kill the King. Minka's fellow serfs discover her alone and want to know who she's in love with. She sings them an old song she once heard a gypsy sing about love's irresistible power. As she sings, the voice of Nangis is heard elsewhere, blending with hers. She is enraptured to realise that he must have escaped and they are all hustled back into the Ball to work. As she leaves, Minka bumps into the King, whom she denounces for his treachery.
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Coronation crown of Prince Stephen Bocskay of Transylvania 1605 Wetliche und Geistliche Schatzkammer, Vienna © Bridgeman Art Library
When Alexina enters, the King tries to approach her. She initially will have none of him, but soon they dissolve into a blissful reminiscence of their time in Venice. Alexina (still thinking that the King is Nangis) wonders whether Henri is as handsome as they say. She leaves when Fritelli appears and the King quizzes him about her – not knowing, of course, that she is Fritelli's wife. Fritelli tells him that she's married and crippled. The King tells Fritelli that he's in love with her, and is going to ask to be relieved of his oath. Fritelli is now more determined than ever that the King must be deposed. Minka has a brief conversation with him, then sings of her love. Soon Nangis joins her, but then disappears into the throng. The King, he says, must never know he's at the Ball. The room begins to fill up – everyone is looking for the King. Henri himself appears, and is about to leave the Ball when the Conspirators triumphantly proclaim that they've caught the King. It is Nangis, who denies that he is any such thing: he is the Comte de Nangis, he says. Henri prompts him to change his story. Yes, he is the King, after all, he says. Laski demands that he signs an act of abdication. Despite the whispered urgings of the King, Nangis refuses to sign, to the delight of Alexina and Minka, both of whom want the man they think is Nangis to remain in Poland. Laski requires the man he thinks is the King to retire to a nearby room while they deliberate what to do. He cheerfully agrees as long as Minka can attend on him. The plotters determine to kill the King. Seeing that they are entirely serious about this, Henri reveals that he is in fact the King; no one believes him. On the other hand, none of the conspirators feels quite up to killing the King. They unanimously elect Henri to do the deed. Minka runs in to say that "the King" – that is to say, Nangis – has got away. She has released him. Henri swears passionately that he'll drive de Valois – the King – from Poland's ancient land.
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* short pause *
act three
please remain seated Vassa’s inn on the bor-
der of Poland Peasants are putting up garlands in honour of the new King under Vassa’s supervision. Fritelli hurries on to say that all the H's that they've hung up must be taken down in favour of E's: Henri de Valois is no longer King; Archduke Ernest has been elected in his place. Vassa takes this calmly; it's all the same to her. Fritelli spots some bags embellished with a ducal crown and immediately assumes that they belong to the Archduke, presumed to be staying in Room 8. He summons the peasants to sing a rousing song in Ernest's honour; when the door opens, Fritelli is confronted with Henri who explains that he was speeding back to France but his coachman insisted that they re-horse. He despatches Fritelli to get him some hot water to shave with. Minka and Alexina arrive, both in search of their lovers. Fritelli appears, reporting that Henri and Nangis have both left the country and that the Archduke Ernest is here. Alexina is immediately roused to honour the new King and summons the peasants, who again sing a welcoming ode to him, and are again dismissed when it is Henri who opens the door. The lovers fall into each other's arms. Fritelli returns. Then Minka appears with news that Laski is on his way. They urge the King to escape the impending danger which he reluctantly does. But when Laski arrives, he is looking for the King only to ask him to remain on the throne: the Archduke has pulled out at the last moment and the conspirators were very impressed by the spirit shown by the King at the Ball. The King and Nangis return, to the acclaim of all, reunited with their respective lovers. The King's first act is to make Fritelli Ambassador to Italy; universal happiness ensues.
simon callow
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The civil servant who wrote like an angel – Emmanuel Chabrier
At age 40 Emmanuel Chabrier, art collector, friend of Manet and the poet Verlaine, and music lover, threw up his job as a French civil servant to write opera full time. His España was a big success and Le Roi malgré lui though written after his fateful encounter with the music of Wagner, was generally reckoned his masterpiece. By the age of 53 he was dead, leaving behind one of the best collections of Impressionists and a great deal of unfinished music. This personal view by Trav is an extract from his appraisal for International Record Review in April 2000.
’dear chabrier, how we all love you!’ – the final sentence of a touching book on his great hero which Francis Poulenc published in 1961 and a perfect opening to this tribute to one of my own most beloved composers – and I mean beloved. Chabrier is more than just a favourite, he’s one of those artists whose whole humanity is transmuted into music. His legendary bonhomie, wit and big heart are the only possible source of the sheer joy and zest for life which permeate every note of his sadly small output. The only source? An amateur for most of his life, Chabrier never underwent the kind of academic training in which the methods and mannerisms of past masters are held up as a crushing exemplar. Sadly small! Well, a civil servant and a family man has all too little time for composing. What time Chabrier had was cut short by a mysterious illness – the veil of discretion has only recently parted to make syphilis look like the all too probable cause – which killed him by the age of 53. But Chabrier is more than just a lovable amateur who somehow wrote adorably – he was profoundly important to the development of French music. He showed a way out of the stylistic dilemma – the organ loft or the bordello? – in which it found itself mired in the last decades of the 19th century. ‘Great art’, he wrote to a singer friend, ‘can be gay as well as tragic; you can have Meistersinger and you can have Tristan. But it’s generally agreed that great art must be tragic – and if Meistersinger didn’t exist it would be hard to name a single gay work which is treated as seriously, in terms of actual workmanship, as any ordinary opera’. Again, to the same friend: ‘Art with a capital letter, serious Art, is bogged down and stagnating. The time for any serious effort is past.’ Chabrier had the genius to forge
a musical language which subliminally motivated a whole generation of coming composers to make this new aesthetic central to their work. Debussy (laconic) ‘Chabrier, Mussorgsky, Palestrina – voilà ce que j’aime.’ Ravel ‘The première of Le Roi malgré lui changed the direction of harmony in France.’ Poulenc ‘Chabrier represents, with Fauré, Debussy, Ravel and Satie, the best in French music since 1880.’ The facts of Chabrier’s life can be summed up in a few sentences. Born in 1841 of a prosperous bourgeois family in the backward, mountainous region of the Auvergne, Alexis Emmanuel’s early aptitude for music was indulged by his mother, one of whose ancestors emblazoned his coat of arms with a guitar. But his father, a barrister and leading citizen, commanded his son to follow him into public service – which he meekly did: after studying law in Paris, Chabrier entered the French Home Office aged 20 and stayed there until he was just short of 40. He married, had two sons. He wrote España. His career as a freelance composer lasted less than a decade and a half. He died. That’s it. Pouf! The real action was outside Chabrier’s official life. As a child he’d had piano lessons from two Spanish refugees and in Paris he continued with a Pole, onetime pupil of Chopin’s – significant influences on the future composer of España and Le Roi malgré lui (set in Poland). Chabrier’s musical gifts, as well as his conviviality, must have made him welcome in Paris’s more advanced circles, artistic, literary and musical. He became the intimate of an important group of
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henri of valois – king of poland and france le roi malgre lui is based on the real story of Henri of Valois, Duke of Anjou, son of Catherine de'Medici (1519-89), and grandson of the legendary Lorenzo de'Medici. In 1572, the last king of the Jagiellon line, which had reigned in Lithuania, Poland, Hungary and Bohemia for two centuries, died without an heir. The Polish throne was an elected one, and the powerful Catherine, wife of one king of France and mother of three (one of whom, Francis II, was Mary Queen of Scots' first husband), ensured that her son Henri was elected to it. Henri was 21 at the time and already an experienced soldier who had commanded the army at the battles of Jarnac and Monconteur against the Huguenots in 1569. Most famously, he was responsible, almost certainly with his mother, for instigating the slaughter of the Huguenots in Paris at the St Bartholomew Day Massacre in 1572, one of the bloodier episodes of the French War of Religions which devastated France between 1562 and 1598. Elected kings of Poland had very little legal power and no standing army. They could only rely on their own personal troops against the powerful landowners and magnates, as well as foreign kings who coveted land from the break-up of the most medieval community in all of Europe. Henri's election was strongly opposed, and his reign was brief. Within months of his coronation he had to return to France to ascend the French throne as Henri III after his brother (Charles IX) died, and a year later he was deposed as King of Poland. Henri's reign in France was characterised by incessant civil war between Catholics and Protestants (Huguenots), and between Catherine's sons. Catherine died in 1589, and shortly afterwards Henri was assassinated by a monk incensed by his betrayal of the Catholic League. With him died the Valois line. Henri of Navarre became Henri IV and inaugurated the Bourbon line.
writers and poets known as Le Parnasse, who gathered at a famous café in one of those wonderful arcades which survive near the Stock Exchange. And he was a friend and patron of the Impressionists, buying their paintings for fun, not as an investment, long before they were accepted or prized – The Bar at the FoliesBergères used to hang above Chabrier’s piano, on which he celebrated in tones the same humble, everyday subjects and moods as the Impressionists did in paint. After his death, a much-publicised sale of his remarkable collection was held in the Paris auction rooms. It was to the wife of his friend Manet that he dedicated his first significant piano piece, the Impromptu of 1865. Chabrier had also begun indulging his greater ambition, to write for the stage. Not only was opera the most prestigious forum for artistic expression – a place which film and television have usurped today – but Chabrier was a very early convert to Wagner and became one of his leading champions in France. He copied out the entire score of Tannhäuser for his own edification and many years later the conductor
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Lamoureux engaged him to help prepare the first performances of Tristan in France. Personally I think Chabrier’s infatuation with Wagner was something near a tragedy – it made Chabrier too easy for illwishers to pigeon-hole and dismiss, and it set him an impossible example to emulate. He wasted his talents and almost killed himself trying. One of Chabrier’s early friends at this time was the poet Verlaine, who immortalised their collaborations in a beautiful verse: ‘At my mother’s, charming and saintly as she was, your genius improvised at the piano, and all around was like a burning circle of love and radiant ease.’ Together Chabrier and Verlaine worked on a couple of operettas which only survive in fragments – not surprisingly, since Chabrier never finished them. The punningly titled Fisch-Ton-Kan (‘Buz Orf’) and Vaucochard et Fils Ier scarcely prepare us for Chabrier’s first operatic masterpiece, L’Étoile. It was L’Étoile, his farce about King Ouf 1st, looking for a victim for a public execution with which to celebrate his birthday, that made me fall in love with Chabrier in 1984. So why did this masterpiece
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open to great acclaim at the off-Broadway Thêatre des Bouffes Parisiens in November 1867, run for only a few dozen performances and then disappear for half a century? There have been mutterings of foul play. But Roger Delage, who has devoted his life to Chabrier, has dug out the original box office returns and shown that audiences fell off inexorably and alarmingly during those few weeks. The only explanation is that Chabrier, amateur, civil servant, but also newly a member of the prestigious Société Nationale de Musique, had written music which was simply beyond the reach of the public. In 1934, L’Étoile was revived on French radio. That unique singer and composer, Reynaldo Hahn, was listening: ‘Chabrier’s L’Étoile! For the past 50 years, those magic words have haunted the minds of artists.’ The stage-struck Chabrier soon followed L’Étoile with a slighter bit of fluff, a one-act operetta, again with dialogue, performed at a sort of club in 1879. Requiring only two sopranos (one a trouser role) and a baritone, Une Education manquée develops a tendency already heard in L’Étoile: the perfectly orchestrated accompaniment has a semi-archaic, semi-modern timelessness which hovers between Offenbach and Poulenc. Sprightly chords with added dissonances punctuate modal melodies from nevernever-land, especially in the opening ‘Pastorale:
perhaps it was Chabrier’s auvergnat background that opened his ears to the tonal ambiguities of traditional French song, because it’s hard to see what other models he could have had for what became one of the most attractive and characteristic features of his music – but you’ll say Bizet, and you might be right, since Chabrier, a later starter than his contemporary, knew his music well (a colleague, Benjamin Godard, once lamented: ‘What a pity, my dear Chabrier, that you started composing so late!’ to which Chabrier, in a rare snit of malice: ‘And what a pity, my dear Godard, that you started so early!’). But I’ll tell you what was a real pity. The next year, 1880, saw Chabrier’s fateful trip to Munich to hear Tristan, which he’d dreamed of for so long – the famous Prelude was apparently accompanied by his half-stifled sobs of fulfilment. Back home, he took the bold step of retiring from the Ministry of the Interior to devote himself to music full time. For me, it’s downhill all the way from here for Chabrier as an operatic composer. Soon, he produced Gwendoline, his idea of a Wagnerian opera. How he could ever have contemplated this ridiculous farrago set in 9th century Britain is beyond me. Naturally, Gwendoline, daughter of the duplicitous Saxon chief, falls in love with the tall, rough Harald, chieftain of the nasty Norseman. Unfortunately her father has other plans
A bar at the Folies Bergère 1881 by Edouard Manet (1832–1883) Courtauld Gallery, London © Bridgeman Art Library
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for her: at what should have been the couple’s nuptial feast he ambushes the Danes, the pair rush off to the beach where, Custer-like, they meet their death in a futile duet, imagining themselves winging their way up to Valhalla on a white steed. It was Chabrier’s dearest ambition to have Gwendoline played at the Paris Opera and sadly he succeeded – right at the end of his life, when he suffered from general paralysis and was too ill to appreciate the belated honour. At the end of his life he left unfinished an ambitious opera based on Goethe’s poem The Bride of Corinth, and renamed Briséis after the ill-starred heroine. What makes me angry is that Chabrier wasted years of his life, holed up at his country house on the Tourainse, trying to make this totally unnatural work succeed, instead of saving his energies for what he was really good at. What that was, I’ll come to in a minute. First, I’ll relax my grimace for what’s generally reckoned to be Chabrier’s operatic ‘masterpiece’, Le Roi malgré lui. At the premiere the audience booed the librettists; and the composer himself wrote on the cover of a draft, ‘We have here a bit of everything – a bouillabaisse of Najac and Burani, cooked by Richepin and spiced by myself. Looks like a regular scrap!’ The fates obviously agreed because in 1887 they burnt down the Opéra–Comique after only three performances of Le Roi. They were being a bit harsh because the opera contains some of Chabrier’s most remarkable inven-
tions. Ravel was not alone in his reaction. ‘This is real music,’ marvelled d’Indy, ‘ – but I don’t understand the play.’ He called his friend the ‘angel of drollery’. Here Chabrier’s subtle palette of unprepared dissonances and modal melody was mixed to perfection with dashes of Polish machismo and matchless brushwork in the orchestra. The opening chords made such an impact on Satie that he immediately sent Chabrier a calligraphed copy of one of his own compositions. As an habitué of literary salons Chabrier showed finer disrimination in poets than in librettists. No less a couple than Edmond Rostand (if only Chabrier had set Cyrano!) and his fiancée Rosemonde Gérard provided four delightful sketches of farmyard animals which Chabrier moulded into a slight but very influential cycle, with echoes in the songs of Ravel, Poulenc, Milhaud and many others. Chabrier had lost patience with the ‘endless flower beds in three verses where dimwits pick dog-roses and chrysanthemums, where people fall in love at the season of pretty little flowers, in April and May; let’s give those two poor months a rest – they seem quite exhausted to me – and leave the little flowers in their gardens.’ Instead, with these portraits of wobbling ducks, perky pink pigs, pompous turkeycocks and chirruping cicadas, Chabrier did away with all the maudlin musings of etiolated poetasters and introduced a breath of fresh air into French song, faintly perfumed with manure. With few orchestral works, his most lasting and
Around the Piano 1885 by Ignace Henri Jean Fantin-Latour (1836-1904) Musée d’Orsay, Paris © Bridgeman Art Library
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wagner and paris in the 1880’s and 90’s From 1885 Wagner’s work acted directly or indirectly on the whole of artistic thought, even on religious and intellectual thought of the most distinuished people of Paris ... Writers not only discussed musical subjects, but judged painting, literature and philosophy from a Wagnerian point of view ... The whole universe was seen and judged by the thought of Bayreuth Rolland A remarkable evidence of this enthusiasm was the flourishing periodical La Revue Wagneriénne (1885–88), contributors to which included Verlaine, Mallarmé, Huysmans and practically every other important writer in Paris (Baudeliaire had been converted already in 1861). One effect of all this was to introduce the subject of music to many people who would not otherwise have taken an interest in it; another was to stimulate symphonic composition. In opera, the risks involved in the magic garden of Wagnerism were so patent that composers for the most part withstood temptation, though not always without effort. It is sometimes difficult to decide what is to be called imitation of Wagner and what is simply acceptance of new ideas, such as the abolition of formal separate arias and recitatives. Taken altogether, however, the direct influence of Wagner on French opera, in both literary and musical treatment, is seen most strongly in works by three composers: Chabrier, D’Indy and Chausson. Donald Jay Grout A Short History of Opera 1947
most profound gift to music-lovers was his piano music. Throughout his career as a civil servant Chabrier had continued to perfect his piano playing until he realised, said d’Indy, ‘an extreme of delicacy and maximum expression that few of the great pianists have bettered – at a pinch I would except Liszt and Rubinstein.’ In the Musée d’Orsay, in a wonderful painting by Fantin-Latour, sits a dignified Chabrier at the keyboard in the centre of a circle of admiring friends, the score of Carmen open on the stand. The wife of painter Renoir, herself an excellent amateur pianist, described Chabrier playing España for her: ‘It sounded as if a hurricane had been let loose. He pounded and pounded the keyboard. It was summer time; the window was open. I happened to look into the street – it was full of people, listening, fascinated. When Chabrier reached the last crashing chords, I swore to myself that I’d never touch the piano again!’ So, there you have it: an extreme of delicacy and maximum expression; a thunderstorm. No half measures demanded from the Chabrier pianist, nor should they be because his best piano music is truly unprecedented in French literature. His early pieces show the influence of his Polish teacher and of the current craze for waltzes and nocturnes. After hearing Chabrier’s masterpiece Dix Pièces Pittoresque,
César Franck pronounced: ‘We have just heard something extraordinary. This music connects our time to that of Couperin and Rameau’. The feeling for harmony as colour and for modal inflexions, which permeates Chabrier’s operas and orchestral music, takes its purest form in these keyboard pieces and defines their irresistible appeal. In his book on Chabrier, Francis Poulenc made a touching confession about the sixth Pièce Pittoresque, Idylle. As a young man, infatuated with Stravinsky and Schoenberg, he foolishly believed that Chabrier was a minor composer. One day on the Boulevards he put a coin into an automatic record player and heard one of his favourite pianists playing Idylle: ‘even today it makes me tremble with emotion to think of the resultant miracle; a whole universe of harmony suddenly opened up before me, and my music has never forgotten that first kiss.’ What is equally remarkable is that, in his careful arrangement of textures, tempos, colours and moods, Chabrier shows exactly the sense of musical dramaturgy which so sadly deserted him in his Wagner-inspired operatic fiascos. A tired and dispirited Chabrier summed up in a letter towards the end of his life: ‘Poor dear music, my poor dear friend, so you no longer want me to be happy? I love you though, and I rather think you’ll be the death
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Jeffrey Lloyd-Roberts (Peter Quint), William Sheldon (Miles) in The Turn of the Screw Grange Park Opera 2002
The orchestra
VIOLIN 1
FLUTE
Andrew Court (leader) Megan Pound Nicolette Brown Joanna West Matthew Fairman Carole Howat Bridget Davey Jayne Spencer Fiona Chesterman Jeff Moore Nicki Hutchins
Alison Hayhurst Janna Hueneke Elizabeth May piccolo
VIOLIN 2
Zoe French Jenny Gibbs Alain Petitclerc Catherine Smart Vernon Dean Chris Koh Nicki Bradford Anna Bradley VIOLA
Angela Bonetti Martin Fenn Justin Ward John Murphy James Pullman John Rayson
OBOE
Andrew Knights Owen Dennis Judith Allen cor anglais CLARINET
Mark Simmons Mark Lacey Helen Bishop bass clarinet BASSOON
Julia Staniforth Rebecca Menday HORN
Richard Berry Peter Merry Tim Ball Miles Hewitt TRUMPET
Steven Stewart Clare Duncan Jo Atkins TROMBONE
CELLO
Lionel Handy Jo Easthope Andrew Fuller Matthew Forbes
Rob Workman Richard Ward Rob Goodhew TIMPANI & PERCUSSION
DOUBLE BASS
Mark Taylor timpani Joanne May percussion
Caroline Harding Andrew Wood
HARP
Gabriella Dall Olio ORCHESTRA MANAGER
Mark Lacey
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The ensemble
ROBERT AMON trained at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama and has performed with Opera Holland Park, Mid Wales Opera and D’Oyly Carte. Roles include Edguardo Lucia di Lammermoor and The Italian Tenor Der Rosenkavalier.
ROBERT GILDON studied at the Manhattan School of Music and at Tanglewood. Roles include Golem Golem, Amantio Gianni Schicchi (Aspen) Aeneas (Bruges Early Music Festival), Papageno, Masetto (Opera Project), Belcore (New Sussex Opera), Captain Corcoran, cover Strephon (D’Oyly Carte), Schaunard (Surrey Opera), Bernstein’s Songfest (Westminster Philharmonic). SUSIE GOSSLING is Brazilian and trained at Brunel University. She has recently been filming on Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.
MAX BERENDT
EVE CHRISTIE trained in New Zealand, Australia and UK. Roles include Giorgetta Il Tabarro, Gutrune, Wellgunde Gotterdammerung, Katya Katya Kabanova, Countess Marriage of Figaro, Poppea The Coronation of Poppea and Ellen Orford Peter Grimes. DARRELL FORKIN trained at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. He has toured Europe with William Christie in Thesée and Australia with Nanki–poo Mikado (Carl Rosa Opera). He was Lysander at Aix–en–Provence, winning the prestigious Festival Prize. DAVID FREEDMAN’s roles include Sarastro, Commendatore, Mozart’s Bartolo, Rossini’s Basilio, Calchas La Belle Hélène, Dragon Dragon of Wantley, Benoit/Alcindoro La Bohème, Dr Spinelloccio Gianni Schicchi, Pasha Selim Seraglio, Ramphis Aida, Calatrava Force of Destiny, Father A Childhood Miracle (European premiere). NATHANIEL GIBBS’ recent credits include Nicely Nicely Johnson Guys & Dolls (Pimlico Opera / Wormwood Scrubs), The Mik ado, Pirates of Penzance (D’Oyly Carte), A ida, Carmen (Royal Albert Hall), Emmerdale, A Touch of Frost (Yorkshire Television).
BRIDGET HARDY trained at Birmingham University, in Berlin and London. She has covered Pitti-sing The Mikado and appeared in Trial by Jury (Covent Garden Festival), Madame Butterfly (London City Opera), Edith The Pirates of Penzance (Carl Rosa), Rosa Gondoliers, Annina La Traviata (Opera Holland Park). CHERYL HIGGS trained at the Royal Academy of Music. Roles include First Boy Magic Flute (Royal Opera House), Barbarina (British Youth Opera), Phyllis Iolanthe, Mabel Pirates of Penzance, Sarah Guys & Dolls (Pimlico Opera/Wormwood Scrubs). EMMA MARY JONES studied at the Welsh College of Music & Drama (Sir Geraint Evans Scholarship) and Guildhall School of Music. She has appeared in Beatrice di Tenda, title role Suor Angelica and in masterclasses with Dame Gwyneth Jones. LINDA LARGE Since graduating from Drama Studio in 2002, Linda Large has performed in Everywoman (Barons Court) and Black Milk (Royal Court) and two films The Dictaphone and Shortage of Angels.
ANNA LEDWICH trained at Rose Bruford where she played Rose Dancing at Lughnasa and Elizabeth Barry The Libertine. Since leaving college she has performed at the Soho, Pleasance and Latchmere theatres and Hoxton Hall.
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KARINA LUCAS is currently a postgraduate student at the Royal Northern College of Music. Opera includes Annina La Traviata (Pimlico Opera), Sextus Julius Caesar (Yorke Trust), Pauline Queen of Spades, title role Tamerlano, Meg Falstaff, Cinderella’s Mother/Granny/Giant Into the Woods and Third Singer Busqueda (RNCM), Chorus Glyndebourne Festival 2002. ANDREW MACNAIR embarked upon a career in music after gaining a doctorate in nuclear physics at Kent University, He has performed for D’Oyly Carte in HMS Pinafore, Pirates of Penzance, Iolanthe, Yeoman of the Guard and Mikado and on Swan Hellenic cruises. TANIA MATHIAS graduated from Oxford School of Drama. Theatre includes a one-woman show The Last Flapper, Nobody’s Perfect with Simon Williams, Maudie in Terence Rattigan's Flare Path (national tour). Tania has appeared as a paramedic in ITV's A&E.
(Fortune
Theatre),
JENNIFER MELDRUM trained at Mountview. Theatre includes Beyond the Barricade (national tour), Maggie May (Royalty Theatre), Guys & Dolls (Pimlico Opera / Wormwood Scrubs), Macgreggor (Bridewell), 110 in the Shade Les Miserables (Palace Theatre), Amphibius–Spangulatus (Greenwich Theatre).
ALASTAIR MOORE trained at the Welsh College of Music & Drama. Opera includes Chorus Rigoletto, La Rondine (Covent Garden), 2nd guest Osud, cover Der Justizrat/Der Kammersinger Intermezzo (Garsington), Chorus Carmen and Aida (Royal Albert Hall), Dr Grenvil La Traviata, cover Innkeeper Manon (ETO). REBECCA NAYLOR trained at Drama Studio London and Exeter University. She recently appeared in Ben Hur at the Battersea Arts Centre.
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OLIVIA ROBINSON has appeared in London, Birmingham, Manchester, Madrid, Malaga, Lucerne, Geneva, Milan and Rome with Trevor Pinnock’s English Concert, BBC Singers, The Sixteen and Polyphony.
IMOGEN ROOSE studied in Adelaide, Sydney and London. Appearances include Riders to the Sea, Die Fledermaus, The Mikado, Mahagonny Singspiel, title role Treemonisha and Miss Jessell Turn of the Screw (State Opera of South Australia), Susanna, Queen of the Night, Pamina, Musetta and Helena. GILLIAN SCOTT was born in Glasgow and studied Russian & French at Strathclyde before training at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music & Drama. She has appeared in Macbeth, Carmen, L’Elisir d’Amore, Ines de Castro (Scottish Opera) and The Mikado (D’Oyly Carte), Popova The Bear and cover Valencienne The Merry Widow (London City Opera). KELLY SHARP studied at Huddersfield and Trinity College of Music. Roles include: Susanna and Second Bridesmaid Le Nozze di Figaro (Huddersfield University), Iolanthe Iolanthe (Theydon Bois), Juno Orpheus in the Underworld, Chorus Yeomen of the Guard (British Youth Opera), Kit Kat Girl Cabaret (Trinity). JULIAN ALEXANDER SMITH studied at Trinity and the Royal College of Music. Roles include Famigliari di Seneca/Consuli Poppea (Athens), Samson Samson, Archas Cadmus and Hermione, Don Basilio Le Nozze di Figaro (Opera Mint), Ted Flint The Albatross, The Judge Beatrice Cenci ( Spitalfields Music Festival), Orfeo L’Orfeo (Trinity College of Music), cover Contadino Pagliacci (Royal Albert Hall), Chorus Glyndebourne. MATTHEW SMITH gained a Masters in Music in Wisconsin where he performed with Philadelphia Opera. Returning to England, Matthew appeared in Tess (Savoy Theatre), Piangi Phantom of the Opera (National Tour), Goro Madame Butterfly, cover Danilo The Merry Widow (London City Opera), Gaston La Traviata (Echo Opera) and cover Marco Gondoliers (Carl Rosa).
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Janis Kelly (Miss Jessel) in The Turn of the Screw Grange Park Opera 2002
ANNETTE STEIN was born in Germany. Roles include Third Boy Magic Flute (Nuremberg ), title role La Périchole, Olga Eugene Onegin, Maddalena Rigoletto, Mercedes Carmen, Third Lady Magic Flute, Sorceress Dido & Aeneas, Prince Orlofsky Fledermaus, Dorabella Così, Nancy Albert Herring, Zita Gianni Schicchi, Cherubino and Octavia Poppea. EWAN TAYLOR studied at the University of Cape Town Opera School. Roles include Sacristan Tosca, Marullo Rigoletto, Figaro Le Nozze Di Figaro, Masetto Don Giovanni, Olin Blitch Susannah, Dr Grenville La Traviata, Bartolo Le Nozze di Figaro, Gugliemo Cosi, Lautsprecher Der Kaiser Von Atlantis, Colline La Bohème. BRANDON VELARDE studied singing in his native California and Guildhall School of Music. Recent engagements include Orpheus in the Underworld (British Youth Opera), Beatrice di Tenda (Opera Omnibus), and Così (New Chamber Opera Oxford) in a staged workshop with Graham Vick. MIRANDA WESTCOTT studied music at Birmingham University. She has worked with British Youth Opera and Opera Holland Park and her roles include Third Boy Magic Flute, Woodpecker/Chief Hen/Innkeeper’s Wife Cunning Little Vixen and The Drummer The Emperor of Atlantis. SARAH JANE WHYTE studied at Trinity College of Music and the Britten-Pears School. Roles include Frasquita Carmen (USA), Zerlina Don Giovanni (UK and Ireland) and Cis Albert Herring (Aldeburgh).
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Biographies RICHARD ANGAS Private Willis Iolanthe Richard studied in London and Vienna, making his début at the Royal Opera House as Erster Handwerkbursche Wozzeck. In Germany his roles have included Mephistopheles, König Heinrich, König Mark, Pogner, Paland, Baron Ochs, Kecal, Rocco, Sarastro/Speaker, Alfonso and Osmin. Many were repeated during his fifteen years as Principal Bass with ENO where his varied repertory included also Pluto/Charon, Don Basilio, Pimen, Arkel, Doctor Wozzeck, Reciter Pacific Overtures and the title roles in The Mikado and Don Pasquale. A favourite guest at Opera North, roles have included Cook Love for 3 Oranges, Waldner Arabella, Water Sprite Rusalka, Basilio, Parson The Cunning Little Vixen, Tree/Armchair L’enfant et les Sortilèges. Recent appearances include Netherlands, Paris, Strasbourg, Bregenz Festival, Barcelona, Venice and Covent Garden. STEPHEN BARLOW Conductor La Bohème Stephen was educated at King’s School, Canterbury, was an Organ Scholar at Trinity College, Cambridge and studied under Vilem Tausky at Guildhall School of Music. His engagements include: Associate Conductor Glyndebourne Festival Opera 1980–81, Resident Conductor ENO 1980–83; Music Director Opera 80 1987–90 and Queensland Philharmonic 1996–1999; Artistic Director Opera Northern Ireland 1996–1999. His
conducting début was The Rake’s Progress (Glyndeboume Touring Opera) in 1977 leading to appearances with Scottish Opera, Dublin Grand Opera, Opera North, Covent Garden, Garsington, Vancouver Opera, Netherlands Opera, San Francisco Opera, Florida Grand Opera, Victoria State Opera, Opera New Zealand; orchestras conducted include: LSO, LPO, OAE, LMP, RTE, CBSO, ECO, BBC Scottish, Bournemouth Symphony, Scottish Chamber, City of London Sinfonia, all the major symphony orchestras of Australasia, Detroit Symphony, Belgrade Philharmonic, Tafelmusik; recordings include Joseph James’ Requiem, Graham Koehne Ballets, Peter & the Wolf and his own composition Rainbow Bear. Plans include Elektra and Faust (Seville) and Cunning Little Vixen (Berlin). RODERICK BRYDON Conductor Le Roi malgré lui Roderick Brydon was born in Edinburgh. During the early years of his operatic career he was closely associated with Sadler’s Wells Opera and Scottish Opera. Foreign engagements include Hanover, Augsburg, Dortmund, the Banff Festival, Copenhagen, Karlsruhe, Bordeaux, Munich, Cologne, Los Angeles, Palermo, Venice and Dublin. In addition, he has conducted Florencia en al Amazonas and Billy Budd (Los Angeles Opera), Billy Budd (L’Opéra National de Paris-Bastille), Billy Budd (Tel Aviv), Le Nozze di Figaro (Opera North), Xerxes (Geneva) and Don Giovanni and Salome (Savonlinna Festival). Roderick made his Covent Garden début with A Midsummer Night’s Dream and his Australian début in 1991 conducting the Ken Russell production
Reno Sweeney’s ‘Angels’ Tiffany Graves, Carly Hainsby, Helen Harper, Summer Strallen in Anything Goes Grange Park Opera 2002
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of Madama Butterfly (Victoria State Opera) and has since worked with Opera Australia, Opera Queensland and State Opera of South Australia. He has conducted Melbourne Symphony, Queensland Philharmonic, Adelaide Chamber, Tasmanian Symphony and Queensland Symphony Orchestras.
Frau ohne Schatten and Capriccio (Australian Opera). He assisted on Götterdämmerung and Die Walküre (Tiroler Festspiele Erl, Austria) and Jenufa (Hanover Oper). He made his début at Grange Park in 2001 assisting on I Capuleti e I Montecchi and revived La Traviata for the Pimlico Opera tour 2002.
SIMON CALLOW Director Le Roi malgré lui Simon’s many directing credits include Les Enfants du Paradis (RSC), Snoo Wilson’s HRH (West End), Shirley Valentine (West End, Broadway), Shades (West End) and most recently Jus’ Like That (tour and West End). In opera/ music theatre his credits include Così fan tutte (Switzerland), Die Fledermaus (Scottish Opera), Carmen Jones (Old Vic, tour), My Fair Lady (tour), Il Trittico and Il Turco in Italia (Broomhill Opera), La Calisto (Glimmerglass Opera USA) and The Consul (Holland Park). His feature film direction includes The Ballad of The Sad Café (Merchant Ivory). Simon’s most recent stage appearances are Through the Leaves (Southwark Playhouse), The Mystery of Charles Dickens (tour, West End, Broadway, Australia), Falstaff Chimes at Midnight (Chichester) and The Importance of Being Oscar (West End). On film his appearances include Four Weddings and a Funeral and Shakespeare in Love. Simon has written several books including Being an Actor, Shooting the Actor and books on Charles Laughton, Orson Welles and Peggy Ramsay.
FRANCIS CHURCH Schaunard La Bohème Frank Church was born in Liverpool and studied at the RSAMD and the NOS. His opera appearances include Baron Douphol La Traviata, Angelotti Tosca, Benoit La Bohème, Starveling A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Sid Albert Herring, Pacuvio The Touchstone, Guglielmo Così fan tutte, Fieramosca Benvenuto Cellini and Smirnoff The Bear. He has worked with Scottish Opera, WNO and Clonter Opera and most recently as Sharpless Madama Butterfly in Japan (Pavilion Opera) and on tour in America with London City Opera. On the concert platform, he has performed throughout Scotland, the north of England and the south of France in works such as Elgar Coronation Ode, Mendelssohn Elijah, Handel Messiah, Tippett Five Negro Spirituals and Fauré’s Requiem. He has appeared in masterclasses with Benjamin Luxon, Roger Vignoles, John Streets, Dame Josephine Barstow and a televised masterclass with David Pountney. Francis has also studied with Sir Thomas Allen at the Britten-Pears School in Aldeburgh.
JEREMY CARPENTER Strephon Iolanthe Born in Bournemouth, Jeremy was a chorister at St Paul’s Cathedral and went on to the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. Roles include Scarpia Tosca, Dancairo Carmen, Figaro and Count Almaviva The Marriage of Figaro (Dorset Chamber Opera). Jeremy was a member of Glyndebourne Festival Chorus where he sang small roles in the 2000 season. For Glyndebourne Touring he understudied the title role in Don Giovanni and Count Almaviva The Marriage of Figaro and sang Customs House Sergeant La Bohème. This season’s engagements include Kuligin Katya Kabanova (Glyndebourne Festival), Sid Albert Herring (Glyndebourne Touring) and the understudy of Marcello La Bohème (Opera North). Plans include the Count Le Nozze di Figaro (St Gallen), Orff Carmina Burana (Welsh Proms) and Brahms Lieberslieder (Opéra National de Paris).
DOMINIC COOKE Director La Bohème Dominic has recently been appointed Associate Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company. At the Royal Court, where he was for 4 years Associate Director, his credits include This is a Chair (co-directed with Ian Rickson), Identical Twins (both by Caryl Churchill), The People Are Friendly, Plasticine, Fucking Games, Redundant, Spinning into Butter, Fireface, Other People. Other theatre includes The Malcontent (RSC), The Eccentricities of A Nightingale (Gate Theatre, Dublin), Arabian Nights (also adapter) which won a TMA award (Young Vic, UK and world tour, New Victory Theatre, NY), Hunting Scenes From Lower Bavaria, The Weavers (Gate), Afore Night Come, Entertaining Mr Sloane (Theatr Clwyd), The Bullet (Donmar Warehouse), My Mother Said I Never Should (Oxford Stage Company, Young Vic); Of Mice and Men (Nottingham Playhouse), Kiss Of the Spiderwoman (Bolton Octagon), Autogeddon which won an Edinburgh Fringe First Award (Edinburgh Assembly Rooms), The Marriage of Figaro which won the Manchester Evening News Drama Award (Pan Optic Theatre Co, national tour), Caravan (National Theatre of Norway), The Importance of Being Ernest (Atlantic Theatre Festival, Canada). Opera includes I Capuleti e I Montecchi (Grange Park Opera). Dominic will direct Cymbeline for the RSC.
PTOLEMY CHRISTIE Assistant Director La Bohème Ptolemy Christie studied social anthroplogy & film at Manchester University and has worked extensively in film and television. In opera he assisted John Cox on Die Frau ohne Schatten (Covent Garden), The Rake’s Progress (San Francisco), Albert Herring, Die
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CHRIS DAVEY Festival Lighting Designer Chris’s extensive experience in theatre includes designs for Closer (Abbey Theatre, Dublin, Nominated Best Lighting Design Irish Times), The Force of Change (Royal Court), The Way of the World, A Woman of No Importance (Manchester Royal Exchange), Family, Passing Places (Traverse, Edinburgh), Beauty & The Beast, Lavender Blue (Lyceum, Edinburgh), Shining Souls (Peter Hall Season, Old Vic), Cause Célèbre, Then Again (Lyric, Hammersmith), In A Little World Of Our Own, Endgame (Donmar Warehouse) Blood Wedding, Grimm Tales (Young Vic and Leicester Haymarket). For the RSC designs include Alice in Wonderland, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, A Month in the Country and The Comedy of Errors. His designs for Shared Experience include Anna Karenina, Jane Eyre, The Tempest and War & Peace (RNT). He has also designed extensively for the Tricycle Theatre, Theatre Royal Stratford East, Palace Theatre Watford and for Method and Madness. Among his work in dance theatre Jekyll & Hyde (Northern Ballet Theatre), The Car Man (Adventures in Motion Pictures, Old Vic and tour, Winner Best Musical Event Evening Standard Awards) and Shobhana Jeyasingh Dance Company. Opera credits include 2001 Grange Park Opera Festival, La Traviata (Castleward Opera), John Tavener The Fool (Gogmagogs), Gli Equivoci Nel Sembiante (Batignano Opera Festival) and The Picture of Dorian Gray (Opera de Monte Carlo).
Megan Kelly (Flora), Janis Kelly (Miss Jessel), William Sheldon (Miles), Jeffrey Lloyd-Roberts (Peter Quint) in The Turn of the Screw Grange Park Opera 2002
ROBERT DEAN Conductor Iolanthe Robert Dean made his conducting début at the Batignano Festival after a successful singing career. During his three years as Head of Music at Scottish Opera, he conducted over 100 operatic performances as well as concerts with Luciano Pavarotti, Dennis O’Neill and Jane Eaglan. He has appeared with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra as well as opera companies in Calgary, Kentucky and San Francisco where repertoire included La Bohème, Roméo et Juliette, La Traviata and Madama Butterfly. In Europe he has conducted The Marriage of Figaro, The Magic Flute, Così fan tutte, La Traviata, La Calisto and Madama Butterfly. British appearances include Gianni Schicchi, I Pagliacci, Rigoletto, The Magic Flute, La Traviata and, at Grange Park, Così fan tutte. Concert work includes performances in Hong Kong and with the Manchester Camerata, Royal Philharmonic, Royal Scottish National Orchestra and Children’s Classic Concerts in addition to his work as Artistic Director of the Philharmonia Chorus. ANNE–SOPHIE DUPRELS Mimi La Bohème French soprano Anne–Sophie Duprels studied at the Conservatoire National Supèrieur de Musique de Paris in 1998. Opera appearances include Clitoria Le Grand Macabre (Ensemble Intercontemporain under Markus Stenz), the world première of Carillon by Aldo Clementi (La Scala di Milano), La Sorcière Grignote Hänsel und Gretel (Opéra de Limoges), Papagena Zauberflöte
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(Opéra de Massy), title role La Traviata (Holland Park) Susanna Le Nozze de Figaro (Angers), Despina Così fan tutte and Adina L’Elisir d’Amore (Opéra de Dijon), Naiade Ariadne auf Naxos (Opéra de Lyon and Châtelet Paris), La Voix Humaine (Limoges) and Thérèse Les Mamelles de Tiresias (in conjunction with La Scala). Recent concert appearances include Young Soloists’ Series at La Scala, and, in June 2000, her UK début with arias by Charpentier, Gounod, Poulenc and Fauré with the BBC Concert Orchestra at Saint David’s Hall in Cardiff. Plans include Die Erste Zofe Der Zwerg in Geneva, Il Matrimonio Segreto with Opéra de Lyon, Tebaldo Don Carlo and later Amanda Le Grand Macabre in San Francisco. ELENA FERRARI Musetta La Bohème Elena studied at LCM, NOS and Arts Ed and she received a Countess of Munster scholarship to study with Janice Chapman. She made her operatic début at Opera North as Musetta La Bohème, followed by Fiordiligi Così fan tutte, Violetta La Traviata, Bice in Korngold’s Violanta and Miss Wordsworth Albert Herring. Elena has appeared as Lauretta Gianni Schicchi, Sister Genevieve Suor Angelica (ENO), Countess Marriage of Figaro, Violetta La Traviata (ETO), Cinna Lucio Silla (Garsington), Tamiri Il re pastore (Classical Opera Company), Donna Anna Don Giovanni, Antonia Les Contes d’Hoffmann (Diva Opera), Rosalinde Die Fledermaus (Opera Holland Park), Eltrude Arne Alfred (Early Opera Company, Covent Garden Festival 2000), Tartagliona in Jonathan Dove’s L’augellino belverde (Batignano Festival), Lusya in Shostakovich’s Cheryomushki (Pimlico Opera), Conception L’heure Espagnole (Grange Park Opera) and the lead role Elsie in the world premiere of Wim Henderick’s The Triumph of Spirit over Matter (joint production Theatre Royal de la Monnaie, Brussels and Musiektheater Transparent, Antwerp). ANDREW FOSTER-WILLIAMS Colline La Bohème Andrew Foster-Williams was born in Lancashire. He studied at the Royal Academy of Music. Operatic engagements have included Garibaldo Rodelinda and Melisso Alcina with Nicholas McGegan at the Göttingen Handel Festival, Podesta The Thieving Magpie, Colline La Bohème and Angelotti Tosca (Opera North), and Don Fernando Fidelio (Glyndebourne Touring Opera). On the concert platform Andrew has appeared in the St Matthew Passion in Japan with the English Concert and Trevor Pinnock, Christus St Matthew Passion with Sir Roger Norrington and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Handel’s Allegro with William Christie and Les Arts Florissants, The Creation with the Hallé and Mark Elder, and Vivaldi’s La Senna Festeggiante with the King’s Consort, also recorded for Hyperion. Plans include Der Sprecher Zauberflöte and Voice of
Neptune Idomeneo (Glyndebourne Tour), Charpentier’s David et Jonathan with Emmanuelle Haim, Argante Rinaldo (Handel Festival, Göttingen) and Schubert’s Winterreise with Chris Gould in a project for Opera North. CLAIRE GLASKIN Choreographer Iolanthe Claire Glaskin was born in London and educated in Nottingham and at the Laban Centre in London. She taught movement at the Webber-Douglas Academy of Drama, London, becoming increasingly interested in theatre leading to four months as Movement and Chroeography Intern with Shakespeare & Co. in Massachusetts, USA. On her return to London she began to teach movement at the Opera School of the Royal College of Music where her interest in operatic choreography grew. Claire has worked with such directors as Christopher Alden, Mike Ashman, Vernon Mound, Tina Packer, Ceri Sherlock, Andrew Sinclair, Keith Warner and David Williams. Recent and forthcoming highlights include Le Nozze di Figaro and La Fanciulla del West with Opera Zuid in Maastricht, Keith Warner’s La Cenerentola for Opera Zuid and his Siegfried in Tokyo (also to be televised), Rusalka at Opera North, and Christopher Alden’s new production of Macbeth in San Francisco. DERYCK HAMON Alcindoro and Benoit La Bohème Laski Le Roi malgré lui Deryck has appeared in Macbeth (City of Birmingham Touring Opera), Katya Kabanova (Opera Theatre Company, Dublin), Tosca (Mid Wales Opera), Magic Flute (Music Theatre Kernow) and La Traviata (Diva Opera). He also sang the role of Sarastro Magic Flute and Bonze Madame Butterfly (Mid Wales Opera), Sulpice La Fille du Regiment, Commendatore Don Giovanni and Dr Miracle and Coppelius Tales of Hoffmann (Diva Opera). More recently his roles included Valoucky Smetana’s The Kiss (Opera Theatre Company) and Commendatore Don Giovanni (English Touring Opera). He was recently Nathan Detroit in the Wormwood Scrubs / Pimlico Opera collaboration of Guys & Dolls. In 2003 Deryck’s engagements include Bartolo in The Marriage of Figaro with Diva Opera. GLENVILLE HARGREAVES Lord Mountararat Iolanthe Born in Yorkshire, Glenville studied at the Royal Northern College of Music, London Opera Centre and Liverpool University, making his début in 1981 singing Figaro Il Barbiere di Siviglia in Maastricht. 1982 saw his début at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden as Hermann Contes d’Hoffman. He has since sung for all the major British companies where roles include Mandryka,
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Musiklehrer, Count Capriccio, Marcello, Germont, Tonio, Scarpia, Falstaff, Ankarstroem, Sharpless and Rigoletto. His concert career has taken him all over Europe and recent engagements include The Kingdom (Buenos Aires), Germont (throughout France), Kolenaty The Makropulos Case (Opera Zuid), title role The Mikado (Carl Rosa Opera), Sharpless (Cork), Fortunio (Grange Park Opera) and Don Alfonso (Opera Holland Park). Recent and planned highlights include Death in Venice (Opera Zuid), Trulove (Bordeaux), Tonio I Pagliacci (Opera Holland Park) and Baron La Traviata and Krusina Bartered Bride (Opera North). KIT HESKETH HARVEY Translator Le Roi malgré lui Kit was educated at Canterbury and Clare College, Cambridge. After producing BBC arts documentaries, Kit wrote screenplays for Merchant Ivory, including Maurice. Subsequent screenwriting has included Full Throttle and The Vicar of Dibley (Tiger Aspect) and Hans Christian Andersen and Treasure Island/Return to Treasure Island (Hallmark). In 1982 he co-created Kit and the Widow, a two-man musical satire, thrice nominated for Olivier Awards. Apart from their own radio and TV series, and playing all over the world, they have starred in Salad Days at the Vaudeville Theatre, and are currently touring their guide to opera, The Fat Lady Sings. As a librettist/lyricist, he won the Vivian Ellis award and did a post–graduate degree at Oxford, under Stephen Sondheim. His work has included Yusupov (Bridewell), The Caribbean Tempest (Sydney, Barbados and Edinburgh) and translations including The Daughter of the Regiment (ETO), The Turk in Italy (ENO), The Bartered Bride (ROH) and Die Fledermaus and The Magic Flute (Scottish Opera).
MARY HEGARTY Phyllis Iolanthe Mary was born in Cork and trained at the National Opera Studio. Roles include: Naiad Ariadne on Naxos, Papagena Magic Flute, Norina Don Pasquale, Elvira Italian Girl, Frasquita Carmen, Tanterabogus Fairy Queen, First Niece Peter Grimes, Jessie Silver Tassie (ENO); Ninetta Thieving Magpie, Columbina The Jewel Box, Laoula L’Etoile, title role Gloria, Susanna Marriage of Figaro, Elisa Il re pastore, Adina L’elisir d’amore, Lisette La Rondine (Opera North); Nerina La fedelta premiata, Fiorilla Il Turco in Italia, Blonde Seraglio (Garsington); Blonde (Glyndebourne Touring Opera); Casilda The Gondoliers (BBC Proms) and Susanna (Grange Park Opera). Recordings include: Patience (Sony); Euridice Orpheus in the Underworld (D’Oyly Carte), Frasquita Carmen (Chandos). Other engagements include Flight Controller Flight (Reisopera and Flanders Opera), Frasquita (Glyndebourne), Nedda I Pagliacci (Gubbay), Clorinda La Cenerentola (Opera Zuid) and First Niece Peter Grimes at La Monnaie and in Bilbao. ROBERT INNES HOPKINS Designer La Bohème Robert has designed for opera, theatre, film and television. Most recent productions include Charodeika (Teatro Nacional de Sao Carlos), The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui with Al Pacino (National Actors Theatre New York), Rigoletto (Welsh National Opera), The Malcontent (Royal Shakespeare Company and also West End), The Elixir of Love (Opera North and Welsh National Opera), Redundant (Royal Court Theatre), Wozzeck (Santa Fe
John Guerrasio (Moonface Martin) in Anything Goes Grange Park Opera 2002
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Opera) and The Inland Sea (Oxford Stage Company). He has also designed Paradise Moscow and The Bartered Bride (Opera North). Other work includes The Servant of Two Masters and The Comedy of Errors (Royal Shakespeare Company) and Romeo and Juliet and The Villain’s Opera (Royal National Theatre). Future projects include The Cunning Little Vixen (Bregenz Festival and San Francisco Opera) and Simon Boccanegra (Santa Fe Opera). JOHN HUDSON Rodolfo La Bohème John Hudson studied at the Guildhall of Music & Drama with Laura Sarti and subsequently with Josephine Veasey. He is currently a company principal at English National Opera where roles include: Macduff Macbeth, Rodolfo La Bohème, Ottavio Don Giovanni, Alfredo La Traviata, des Grieux Manon, Leicester Mary Stuart, Nadir The Pearl Fishers, Ernesto Don Pasquale, Steersman The Flying Dutchman, Tamino Magic Flute, Duke Rigoletto, the title role in Ernani, Pinkerton Madam Butterfly, Turiddu Cavalleria Rusticana and Cavaradossi Tosca. For Welsh National Opera he has sung Alfredo and Don José Carmen. For Scottish Opera he has sung Rodolfo, Don José, Manrico Il Trovatore and Duke Rigoletto. Abroad he has sung Alfredo (Auckland Opera) in New Zealand and the title role of Ernani (Nationale Reisopera) in the Netherlands. He has a busy concert career and has performed in the UK, Europe and Canada. Future engagements include Don José (ENO) and Radames Aida and Gustavus Un ballo in maschera (Scottish Opera). JANIS KELLY Director Iolanthe Janis studied at the RSAMD in her native Glasgow and the RCM. Repertoire includes Countess (ON, ENO), Musetta (ON) Rose Street Scene (ON, ENO), Magnolia Showboat (ON, RSC), Dorabella (Garsington), Semele (Aix-en-Provence, ENO), Finta Semplice (Buxton). She recorded four award-winning Inspector Morse albums (Virgin), and videos include all the Mozart/da Ponte Operas, The Knot Garden, Hänsel und Gretel and Semele. Other engagements include The Fairy Queen, Yum Yum The Mikado, Despina Così fan tutte, Romilda Xerxes, Alcina, Mrs Nixon Nixon in China (ENO), Rosalinda (Opera Ireland, Scottish Opera), Violetta La Traviata, Magda La Rondine and Vixen The Cunning Little Vixen (Opera North), as well as her directorial début, Così fan tutte (Grange Park). Recent appearances include Despina (ENO), Miss Jessel The Turn of the Screw (Grange Park) and Marschallin Der Rosenkavalier and Electra Idomeneo (Opera North). Janis can currently be seen singing Liu in the movie The Life of David Gale.
Katarina Jovanovic (Violetta Valery) in La Traviata Grange Park Opera 2002
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SUE LEFTON Choreographer La Bohème Sue trained in dance at the Royal Ballet School and Rambert, then as an actress at the Central School of Speech and Drama. She is generally recognised as one of the pioneers of physical theatre in this country and has worked with companies including the Royal Court, the Royal National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company where her recent productions include Pericles, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Brand (Haymarket Theatre, London). In opera Sue has worked extensively with Jonathon Miller, including productions of Orfeo and La Traviata. She directed the movement for David Pountney’s award-winning production of Doctor Faustus (ENO) and Deborah Warner’s Don Giovanni (Glyndebourne). Most recently Sue has been working in Germany with Adrian Noble on Il Ritorno D’Ullisse (La Festival des Arts Florissants). Her next opera will be Magic Flute (Glyndebourne 2004). Recent film work includes Elizabeth and East is East. Films to be released include The Four Feathers, Nicholas Nickleby and Thunderbirds.
Kim Creswell (Reno Sweeney) in Anything Goes Grange Park Opera 2002
DAVID LLEWELLYN Earl Tolloler Le Roi malgré lui Whilst studying at Birmingham Conservatoire David performed for two seasons with D’Oyly Carte Opera Company and went on to a full-time chorus position with De Vlaamse Opera in Antwerp, where he sang many small roles including Joe La Fanciulla del West and the lead in a chamber version of Mamelles De Tiresias. On leaving Antwerp he spent three years at Scottish Opera where he understudied many roles and created the role of Charles Gray Friend of the People by David Horn. David has since performed in The Mikado (D’Oyly Carte, Savoy season) and has returned to Scottish Opera to understudy Victor Francpierre Monster by Sally Beamish. He now studies with Linda Esther Gray. STEPHAN LOGES Henri Le Roi malgré lui Dresden-born Stephan Loges studied in Berlin and at the Guildhall School. In 1999 he won the Wigmore Hall International Song Competition. He has worked with Gardiner, McCreesh, Herreweghe, Rattle and Sawallisch and appeared with the National Symphony Orchestra Washington, the San Fransisco, Chicago, London Symphony and London Philharmonic
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Orchestras and the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome. For DG he has recorded Bach with Gardiner and McCreesh. In recital he has performed at the Wigmore Hall, La Monnaie Brussels and Carnegie Hall and has recorded Schumann and Mendelssohn lieder for Hyperion. Opera appearances include Count Le Nozze di Figaro, Schaunard La Bohème (Opera North), Aeneas Dido & Aeneas (Nancy) and in staged performances of Bach’s B Minor Mass (Los Angeles Opera). Last season he made his début at La Monnaie Brussels. Plans include the Count Le Nozze di Figaro (Chicago Opera Theater), Messiah (Detroit Symphony) and recitals at the Schleswig Holstein and Klavier Ruhr Festivals. ASHLEY MARTIN–DAVIS Designer Le Roi malgré lui Ashley Martin-Davis studied at Margaret Harris’s Motley Theatre Design School. He has since designed internationally for opera and theatre. His recent work includes Scaramouche Jones with Pete Postlethwaite (on tour and Riverside Studios), The Comedy of Errors (Gorky Theatre Berlin) directed by Martin Duncan, The Winter’s Tale directed by Nicholas Hytner and Tartuffe directed by Lindsay Posner (National Theatre), Murder in the Cathedral directed by Stephen Pimlott (RSC) and Die Walküre (Opera Amazonas, Manaus, Brazil) directed by Aidan Lang. FRANCIS O’CONNOR Designer Iolanthe Francis trained at the Wimbledon School of Art. His opera credits include Der Vogelhandler (Komische Opera, Berlin), Maometto II (Opera du Rhin, Strasbourg), Fortunio (Grange Park Opera) and 1001 Nights (Anvil, Basingstoke), Ariadne auf Naxos (Castleward), May Night (Wexford), La Vie Parisienne (D’Oyly Carte). Theatre credits include My Brilliant Divorce (Dawn French at the Apollo), Hinge of the World (Guildford), House of Bernarda Alba, The Plough and the Stars (Abbey, Dublin), Making Waves (Scarborough), Grestfall (Gate, Dublin), The Daughter in Law and Andorra (Young Vic), The Lieutenant of Inishmore (RSC and transfer to Garrick), Romeo & Juliet and As You Like It (Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre), The Wonder of Sex (National Theatre of Brent/Royal National Theatre), Putting it Together (Chichester). His numerous productions for Druid Theatre Company, Galway include the award winning Beauty Queen of Leenane which transferred to Royal Court, London, Walter Kerr Theatre, New York – winning four Tony Awards on Broadway – and Toronto, Sydney and Dublin.
RUTH PEEL Iolanthe Iolanthe Ruth Peel studied at the RNCM, winning the Kathleen Ferrier Decca Prize in 1993. She made her operatic début as Third Lady Die Zauberflöte in Geneva and again in Aix–en–Provence and Stuttgart. She made her Royal Opera House début as the Page Salome. Since then roles have included Kate Pinkerton Madam Butterfly (Antwerp), Kate Owen Wingrave (GTO), title role The Rape of Lucretia (with Steuart Bedford), Erda Das Rheingold (London) and Hippolyta (Strasbourg and Opera North). Recent engagements include Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony at the opening of the Japan Winter Olympics conducted by Seiji Ozawa, Messiah at Glyndebourne, Mahler’s Eighth Symphony and Verdi’s Requiem in Australia, Boys and Girls Come out to Play (Sadler’s Wells) and Countess of Essex Gloriana (Opera North and Barcelona). MARY PLAZAS Alexina Le Roi malgré lui Mary Plazas made her operatic début in 1992 with English National Opera as the Heavenly Voice Don Carlos, and from 1995 spent three years with ENO as a company principal. She has also performed for The Royal Opera, Opera North, Glyndebourne and Garsington. She sang the Duchess Powder Her Face (Almeida Opera and at the Aldeburgh Festival) and also recorded the role for Channel 4 Television. Opera abroad includes Anne Trulove (New Israeli Opera), Mimi (Bregenz Festival) and Mrs Coyle Owen Wingrave (Concertgebouw). She has a wide concert repertoire and has sung with many leading conductors including Haitink, Previn, Sinopoli, Skrowacewski, Oramo, Maksymiuk, Mark Elder, Paul Daniel and Richard Hickox. She has recorded for Deutsche Gramophon, Chandos, Sony Classical and Opera Rara. She studied at the RNCM and NOS and awards include the 1991 Kathleen Ferrier Memorial Scholarship. She is supported by the Peter Moores Foundation. Future engagements include Fiordiligi (ENO) and Mimi (RAH). ALISON RODDY Minka Le Roi malgré lui Born in Dublin, Alison Roddy studied at the Royal College of Music and National Opera Studio in London. Her professional career started in 2000 as a company principal at English National Opera. Her roles at ENO have included Yum Yum The Mikado, Dunyasha War and Peace, Nannetta Falstaff, Adina The Elixir of Love, Jessie The Silver Tassie. Plans at ENO include Rosina The Barber of Seville, The Woodbird Siegfried, Michaela Carmen and Moira The Handmaid’s Tale. Elsewhere in London she sang the role of Despina Così fan tutte for Holland Park Opera. Alison
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Roddy appears frequently in her native Ireland and has sung the role of Magda La Rondine in Dublin as well as Arsena The Gipsy Baron for the RTE. Appearances abroad have included The Maid Powder her Face in Vienna, Wellgunde Rheingold in New Zealand and Frasquita Carmen in Ottawa. Concert appearances have included Handel’s Messiah in Bielefeld and Carmina Burana with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. Alison Roddy is a member of the ENO Jerwood Young Singers Programme. QUINNY SACKS Choreographer Le Roi malgré lui Quinny Sacks has danced with Ballet Rambert and the Bejart Ballet. Her work in opera includes The Adventures of Mr Broucek, The Fairy Queen, The Elixir of Love, The Rake’s Progress and The Turk in Italy (ENO), The Voyage (Met NY), L’Etoile, La Bohème, Playing Away (Opera North) and Capriccio (Garsington). Theatre work includes Machinal and The Lady in the Dark (RNT), Threepenny Opera (Donmar), Hamlet and A Winter’s Tale (RSC), Mouth to Mouth and Mojo (Royal Court), Private Lives and Shades (West End) and Summer Holiday, The Boyfriend and Lautrec (musicals). Her film and TV work includes The Singing Detective, Lipstick on your Collar, Shakespeare In Love, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, The Importance of Being Ernest, Dido and Aeneas, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, RKO 281 and the Halifax commercials. Quinny is now focussing on producing and recently produced Through The Leaves at Southwark Playhouse. KEVIN SHARP Le Duc de Fritelli Le Roi malgré lui Kevin was born in Colchester, Essex. After graduating in physics from Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, he worked for HSBC in Asia and the Middle East before embarking on a
singing career. He studied at the Royal Academy of Music and subsequently joined Glyndebourne, undertaking small roles and understudies including Raimbaud Le Comte Ory, Dr Bartolo Le Nozze di Figaro, Sergeant of Archers Manon Lescaut and Capitano dei Balestrieri Simon Boccanegra – the latter two televised by Channel 4. He has sung with companies throughout the UK and performed in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and the Caribbean. Roles include: Figaro Le Nozze di Figaro (Holland Park and Longborough); Count Almaviva; Imperial Commissioner and cover Sharpless Madam Butterfly (Royal Albert Hall); Guglielmo Così fan tutte, (European Chamber Opera); Marcello La Bohème, Belcore L’Elisir d’Amore, (Garden Opera); Leporello Don Giovanni (Longborough); Silvio I Pagliacci and Lescaut Manon Lescaut (Kentish Opera); Papageno Die Zauberflöte (Central Festival Opera); and the title role in Eugene Onegin (SOGR). He made his début for Grange Park Opera in summer 2002 as the Marquis La Traviata and a solo sailor in Anything Goes. MARK STONE Marcello La Bohème Mark Stone was born in London and studied at King’s College, Cambridge and at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. He has performed for Opera North, Glyndebourne Touring Opera, Welsh National Opera, Garsington Opera, Grange Park Opera and Opera Holland Park, and abroad for Montpelier, Liceu Barcelona, Nationale Reisopera Holland, Rheinsberg, Opera Atelier Toronto, Opera New Zealand and New Israeli Opera. His operatic roles include Figaro (Rossini and Mozart), Don Giovanni, Onegin, Guglielmo, Marcello, Escamillo, Haraöta, Demetrius, Sid, Junius and Hector. In concert he has sung at all the major UK halls with the LSO, RPO, LPO, City of London Sinfonia, BBC Concert Orchestra, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, RLPO, Hallé, CBSO and the Hanover Band. Plans include Marcello (Gubbay/RAH), Yeletsky Pikovaya Dama
Passengers bid their fond farewells as the SS Leviathan sets sail, Anything Goes Grange Park Opera 2002
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and Ottakar Der Freischütz (Montpelier), Don Giovanni (English National Opera) and concerts throughout the UK. FREDRIK STRID Nangis Le Roi malgré lui Fredrik Strid was born in Sweden and studied at the Royal University College of Music and the University College of Opera in Stockholm. For ENO he has sung Gaston La Traviata, Remendado Carmen, First Friend/Second Gentleman David Sawer’s opera From Morning to Midnight and covered the roles of Don Ottavio Don Giovanni, Tom Rakewell The Rake’s Progress and Ferrando Così fan tutte. Fredrik Strid’s other opera roles include Tamino Die Zauberflöte (Confidencen Stockholm), Belmonte Die Entführung aus dem Serail (Volksoperan Sweden), Don Ottavio Don Giovanni (Norrlandsopera), Orfeo Peri’s Euridice (Drottningholm Court Theatre), Nerone L’incoronazione di Poppea (Schloss Rheinsberg, Germany) and The Mayor Albert Herring (Royal University College of Music). He has an extensive oratorio repertory and has toured regularly throughout Scandinavia, Germany, Switzerland and Estonia. In March 2001 he sang Kurt Weill’s Berlin Requiem with the Royal Flanders Philharmonic under Philippe Herreweghe at the Konzerthaus, Vienna. Plans include Ramiro Cenerentola at Grange Park. RICHARD SUART Lord Chancellor Iolanthe Born in Lancashire, Richard studied at St. John’s College, Cambridge and the RAM. Engagements include Ko–Ko Mikado (ENO, New York City Opera, Vancouver, Malaysia, La Fenice), Frank Die Fledermaus, Benoit/Alcindoro La Bohème (ENO), Stan Stock Playing Away (Opera North, Munich, Rotterdam), Antonio Figaro, Caspar Genoveva, Don Magnifico La Cenerentola
(Garsington), Jack Point The Yeoman of the Guard (ROH, WNO), Shostakovich’s Cheryomushki (Almeida), Param Vir’s Snatched by the Gods and Broken Strings (Almeida, Amsterdam, Munich), Strauss’ The Donkey’s Shadow (ENO Studio), Lord Chancellor Iolanthe (D’Oyly Carte), Le Grand Macabre (Paris, Salzburg), Sacristan Tosca (RAH), Swallow Peter Grimes (Reisopera), Donizetti’s L’ajo nell’imbarazzo (Batignano) and Eight Songs for a Mad King (Gelsenkirchen, Milan, Helsinki, Strasbourg, Stavanger, Paris). Recordings include many of the Savoy Operas with WNO/Mackerras, The Geisha, Candide, The Fairy Queen, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Rose of Persia and The Maid of the Mountains. Richard enjoys a varied concert career and presents his one–man show As a Matter of Patter around the world. STEPHEN WALLACE Queen of the Fairies Iolanthe Stephen Wallace studied at the RNCM. Repertoire includes Athamas Semele (ENO), title role Orfeo and Euridice (ETO), Orlofsky Die Fledermaus (RPO Flanders), The Last Supper (Berlin, Glyndebourne) and Death in Venice (Opera Zuid). Other appearances include Semele (Berlin), Speranza Orfeo (Brussels, London, Aix–en–Provence), Human Frailty/Anfinomus The Return of Ulysses (Opera North), Osmino Solimano and Semele (Innsbruck), Orlofsky Die Fledermaus (Dublin), Madam Bubble The Pilgrim’s Progress (RNCM). Recordings include Dido and Aeneas for Harmonia Mundi. Recent highlights include Monteverdi’s Orfeo for ENO, The Last Supper at the Staatsoper, Berlin and Glyndebourne, the UK premiere of Orlando finto pazzo, Death in Venice with Opera Zuid and Bach’s Magnificat with the Israel Camerata. This season’s plans include a new production of Gassmann’s Opera Seria and Athamas Semele at Théâtre Champs–Elysées in Paris, Didymus Theodora with Glyndebourne Touring Opera and Narciso Agippina at Chicago Opera Theater.
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House
&Garden
by Diva
The puzzle's title locates 26 and 23. The first correct solution opened on 30th August will receive two tickets for the 2004 festival. Send solutions to our temporary address: Grange Park Opera (Crossword), Home Farm, Chawton, Nr Alton, GU34 1SJ
ACROSS 7 Dramatic 30 showing corn on the network (6) 9 Could turn the corner to see sprite love verbal exchange (10) 11 Bottom’s head comes off the lower part – and hey presto! (3) 12 Short 30 queen is more beautiful (6) 13 Type of circular bench ... (5) 14, 28 ... high, where he sits, proposing to turn up after Launcelot sustains broken chords (4,10) 15 Like some relationships in Le Petit Trianon – reaching a singular conclusion (10) 16 Dramatic 30 may finally be full of holes (5) 19 Show appearing in 13 – former greeting – it’s from the horse’s mouth! (7) 21, 31 Dramatic 30 devised a desert swamped by sludge (11) 22 Thoroughfare passing east to church is sometimes two-way (7) 24 See 27 27, 24 Dramatic 30 set vegetable sphagnum rising round rotting boles (12) 28 See 14 31 See 21 33 Naughty pup infiltrates artificial intelligence. It’s from the horse’s mouth! (5) 34 Blast! Punctured tyre’s unserviceable (6) 35 Bread for Thomas distributed as aid (3) 36 Literary 30 (one of Pan’s People) sees William sink in the pavement (10) 37 Noblesse not obliged to be? Indeed! (2,4) 1
2
7
3 8
4
5
DOWN 1 Operatic 30 dancing in a hotel (8) 2 Sends out engagement for battle – cast about for gnome’s condition (12) 3 14’s permit lacks a number (8) 4 Sarah’s fresh soup consumed for the wedding (7) 5, 30 Child’s bedtime visitor hit a toy for kicks (5,5) 6 14’s turning Liberal in the end (4) 8 14’s empty stable? Empty if you say so (5) 10 Tailless decoy chased by pop star makes greyhound cross (7) 17 ‘If we shadows have offended’ – beat it! Sound advice here (12) 18 Say, are you familiar with this goddess? (4) 20 Bright Robin Goodfellow without the right pence? Dollar will do (4) 23 See 26 24 Good–for–nothing French maid (unnamed) lied outrageously (4,4) 25 14’s tent almost constructed on ship (8) 26 and 23 1 or service pipe 33 (3,4 and 3,4) 29 Intrinsically feel fine like a little 30 (5) 30 See 5 32 14’s expected to engage knight (4)
Solution to last year’s puzzle NICKNAMES
6
9
10
11 12
13
The puzzle was dedicated to Pimlico Opera and the theme, defined by Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw, was prison dramas, inmates and their warders.
14
15
16
17
18
22
21
20
19
24
23
25
26 29
28
27 30 31
32
34
33
Last year’s winner Tony Phillips of Chalfont St Giles
35 36
37
Other correct solutions William Godfree, Penny Proudlock, William Mather, John Henly, Miss D F Milne
112
Cover:Cover 19/05/2011 10:32 Page 1
grange park opera
2003