The Grange Festival 2018 | Festival Programme by The Grange Festival

T H E G RA N G E F E S T I VA L 2018

DA N C E AT T H E G R A N G E June | 7, 10

AG R I P P I NA H A N DEL June | 8, 16, 23, 28 July | 6

I L BA R B I E R E D I S I V IG L I A RO S S I N I June | 9, 15, 17, 22, 27, 30

TH E AB DU CT ION F ROM T H E S E RAG LIO MO Z A RT June | 24, 26, 29 July | 1, 7

CA N D I D E BER NST EI N July | 8

Cover: Laura McCulloch. Soloist of The Royal Ballet, 2011. Photograph by Rick Guest, with Olivia Pomp

T H E G R A N G E F E S T I VA L

Patron’s Foreword I am writing to you in my role as Patron of The Grange Festival. Many of you will have experienced or at least heard about the success of our first Festival last summer under the artistic direction of international counter tenor Michael Chance. Each show gained at least one five star review and the positive messages of support were a joy. This year, there is more excitement with the introduction of dance as part of the annual repertoire. Director of Dance, Wayne McGregor and co-curator Edward Watson, Studio Wayne McGregor and dancers from The Royal Ballet will give us two nights of dance this year with more promised in future years. Three new opera productions are included – Handel’s Agrippina, Rossini’s comedy Il barbiere di Siviglia and Mozart’s The Abduction from the Seraglio. To close the season we celebrate the Bernstein centenary with Candide. Outside the summer season we are working with many Hampshire schools and colleges to encourage musical creativity and enjoyment. This foreword also gives me the chance to thank and congratulate our staff some of whom, led by Michael Moody, have worked for up to as many as twenty years here at The Grange. We had last year to very quickly form a new company and re-equip the theatre after the departure of the previous company. We still have challenges to put The Grange Festival on a sure footing and plan for growing success in the years ahead. Our ambition to become a centre of international excellence will depend on support and I want to persuade you to help us with this venture by becoming a Festival Founder or Festival Friend as outlined in the programme. You would be a part of making something rather wonderful happen in this corner of Hampshire.

ASHBU RTON

Photo: Anneliese van der Wegt

T H E G R A N G E F E S T I VA L

Fête Champêtre Second nights hold a rather different fear for performers than first. The panic and thrill of the opening yields to a more insidious worry about not rediscovering that first night energy. I am only slightly nervous about this syndrome touching our young festival. The range and quality of this year’s programme and the team tasked with bringing it all to life gives us all grounds for high expectation. The communal effort to launch last year and put on a successful and entertaining festival was remarkable and a joy to be part of. I will long cherish the intense concentration which the full auditorium gave for an unfamiliar Monteverdi opera on our opening night. The indefatigable work of so many which led to that glorious moment cannot be overpraised: our small team in the office, our Board of all the talents led by the exuberantly supportive Charles HaddonCave, and a humblingly loyal and growing band of volunteers whose unseen work throughout the year and especially during the Festival makes so much possible which otherwise simply would not happen. This year’s opening night is even more unfamiliar to both this theatre and for the whole English summer opera season. It is likely to be an important ingredient of our programme for many festivals to come. I sincerely hope so. As a singer, my work with dancers and choreographers has been amongst the most demanding and satisfying of all. Witnessing the unceasing physical and mental rigour which dance demands is always humbling. Playing host to some of the best in the land gives profound joy: our Director of Dance, Wayne McGregor, this year’s Co-Curator, Edward Watson, and their formidably talented company. Many names will be familiar to you. How this has all come about is for another time, but I must mention the unflagging determination and inspiration of Louise Verrill who has choreographed this grand jeté from the beginning, and galvanised her Dance Committee and all of us towards this historic moment.

The Grange Festival is now spreading its fledgling wings over a greater range of activity, including imaginative education projects for both dance and opera, working with committed and talented students in schools, and opening the theatre to companies and schools for both rehearsal and performance. Read more about it on page 122. And please savour all the articles in this programme – written to inform, elucidate, and above all to entertain. I know you will not be disappointed. While we can already boast artistic success, we cannot yet proclaim financial security. The generosity of so many with your labour and your money has been crucial to get us to where we are today. I cannot stress how important every contribution is both for our survival and our progress. And equally I cannot stress how grateful we are for your support. The need to widen our network of Grangers is paramount. May I encourage you to be endlessly chatty about what we do here? We work closely with the Grange Estate, and have developed a relationship which is both symbiotic and creative. We stake out our individual claims and find the common ground, all done with a passionately shared vision. And what we do is never easy. The right singer or dancer for the right music wearing the right costume in the right light on the right set with the right conductor etc etc…! We strive to produce work that is informed, supported, creatively imagined and collaboratively executed. As I write, the news reaches us that our Albert Herring from last year has been short-listed for a South Bank Sky Arts Award for the best opera in the UK in 2017. It seems we got that one rather right. Not bad for our first festival. I think all of us will always crave live performance at a high level in a wonderful setting. Just pressing a button and getting an instant small bit of it is ultimately not really satisfying. But being here and having our senses bombarded definitely is. Thank you for coming.

MICHAEL CHANCE CBE

Photo: John Millar

T H E G R A N G E F E S T I VA L

Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra

The Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra is delighted to have a long-term artistic collaboration with The Grange Festival, which sees the orchestra resident here each summer. The Orchestra loves performing in the stunning setting of The Grange and we are excited for this seasonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s new

productions of Il barbiere di Siviglia, The Abduction from the Seraglio and Candide. I always feel that the musicians of the BSO bring a freshness to the performances of these operatic masterpieces, applying their great experience and skills of the symphonic repertoire to these wonderful scores.

Dougie Scarfe Chief Executive

ÂŠ Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, March 2018

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The BSO remains at the forefront of the UK orchestral scene since its foundation in 1893. A cultural beacon, it serves communities across the South and South West and extends its influence across the whole of the UK and internationally with regular festival appearances, an extensive catalogue of recordings, numerous plays on Classic FM as the station’s Orchestra in the South of England and continued live broadcasts on BBC Radio 3. Taking its lead from founder Sir Dan Godfrey, the BSO is one of the UK’s most dynamic and innovative symphony orchestras. He established a world class ensemble and during his tenure not only did the Orchestra work with such illustrious figures as Bartók, Sibelius, Holst, Stravinsky, Elgar and Vaughan Williams, Bournemouth was also

the BSO’s new music group, which perform at smaller and more unusual venues across Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Somerset, Wiltshire, Gloucestershire and Hampshire. The Orchestra also plays the length and breadth of the UK, regularly appearing at venues in Birmingham, Cardiff, Leeds, and London, including regular appearances at the BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall. The BSO has toured worldwide, having played at Carnegie Hall and the Lincoln Center, New York; Concertgebouw, Amsterdam; Musikverein and Konzerthaus, Vienna; Rudolfinum, Prague; and Philharmonie, Berlin. Recent visits have also included return trips to Dublin and Amsterdam this year. Taking music beyond the concert hall lies at the heart of the BSO’s commitment to giving back to the community. BSO

“Taking music beyond the concert hall lies at the heart of the BSO’s commitment to give back to the community” the first orchestra to have performed all the Tchaikovsky symphonies in the UK and gave more premières than any other orchestra at the time. More recently composers who have worked with the BSO include Sir Michael Tippett, Sir John Tavener, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Rodion Shchedrin, David Matthews, James MacMillan and Mark Anthony Turnage. Kirill Karabits is the BSO’s Chief Conductor – a role which will see him lead the Orchestra through its 125th Anniversary in 2018 and beyond. He continues the fine pedigree of esteemed past Principal Conductors including Sir Charles Groves, Constantin Silvestri, Rudolf Schwarz, Paavo Berglund, Andrew Litton, Yakov Kreizberg and Marin Alsop. Each year the BSO performs upwards of 140 public performances in its home region of over 10,000 square miles – from full symphonic concerts from its home base at Lighthouse, Poole to Bournemouth, Portsmouth, Exeter, Bristol, Basingstoke, Cheltenham, Brighton, Truro, Torquay, Guildford and Winchester to a variety of ensembles, including Kokoro,

musicians take part in an extensive portfolio of learning and community projects, from national curriculum based workshops in schools, through to tea dances for the elderly, performing alongside enthusiastic amateur players, pioneering work involving people living with dementia and 18 Music Education Hubs across the region. A brand new addition to the portfolio is the creation of a disabledled ensemble which will soon be giving performances together with the full BSO. The BSO has over 300 recordings to its name since pioneering beginnings in 1914. CD releases of Bernstein, Vaughan Williams, Finzi, Howells, Dvořák, Bartók, Weill, Mussorgsky, Tchaikovsky, Khachaturian and Prokofiev have all been highly acclaimed. The recent project recording Walton’s two symphonies with Kirill has also received rave reviews. The BSO also partnered Nicola Benedetti in her CD The Silver Violin which was the top-selling classical recording of 2012, as well as her more recent recording of the Shostakovich and Glazunov violin concertos.

For more details about Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra visit bsolive.com

T H E G R A N G E F E S T I VA L

The Academy of Ancient Music

The Academy of Ancient Music is enormously pleased to be one of two Orchestras in Residence at The Grange Festival, an iconic venue in the beautiful Hampshire countryside. We continue our close association this year with Walter Sutcliffe’s production of Handel’s Agrippina, starring Anna Bonitatibus and Raffaele Pe, with musical direction by Michael Chance and Robert Howarth. Working with Michael Chance on this new musical venture at The Grange is exciting for his strong vision, and rewarding for his artistic excellence; and the AAM

is proud to be continuing its artistic collaborations, begun in 2017 with Monteverdi’s Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria and continuing in 2019 with Mozart’s Figaro (conducted by AAM’s Music Director, Richard Egarr). Our thanks to Michael Chance, Michael Moody, and all at The Grange Festival; to all those onstage and backstage; and to you, the audience – it is your enthusiasm and support that allows us to create and deliver programmes of artistic excellence in an inspiring and sublime setting such as this – thank you.

Alexander Van Ingen Chief Executive Academy of Ancient Music

Photo: Patrick Harrison

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“Compellingly original, uniformly outstanding … a triumph” Gramophone magazine

MUSIC

RECORDINGS

EDUCATION

The ground-breaking Academy of Ancient Music was formed in 1973 by the renowned scholarconductor Christopher Hogwood. The orchestra revolutionised the musical world with its historicallyinformed approach, performing baroque and classical music as it would have been heard in its original time. Today the AAM, under the leadership of Music Director Richard Egarr, continues to take inspiration from the composers themselves through meticulous research, performing on authentic period instruments and using first edition scores.

The AAM has an incredible recording history, having built up a catalogue of more than 300 CDs which have won numerous accolades, including BRIT, Gramophone, Edison and MIDEM awards. As well as recording for all the major labels, the AAM now has its own in-house record label, AAM Records. On this label, the AAM has released the original 1727 version of J.S. Bach’s St Matthew Passion, dubbed “a triumph” by Gramophone magazine, and most recently a stunning album of instrumental works by Monteverdi’s contemporary, Dario Castello.

In 2010 the AAM launched the AAMplify education scheme, aiming to nurture the next generation of young artists and audiences. Working with partners and associates around the country, AAMplify delivers inspiring workshops, masterclasses and other special projects to people of all ages and backgrounds, in addition to valuable training for young instrumentalists. The AAM is proud to be Associate Ensemble at London’s Barbican Centre, Orchestra in Residence at the University of Cambridge, Orchestra in Residence at The Grange Festival and also Orchestrain-Residence at Chiltern Arts.

Visit www.aam.co.uk to find out more

“Blazing a trail followed by baroque ensembles everywhere”

“Glorious … every detail sharply defined”

The Independent

The Observer

T H E G R A N G E F E S T I VA L

My Grange

I don’t think there is a single Grange for me, but several: during the autumn, winter and spring months, it begins as a happy recollection of the performances of the previous summer (especially the last one) and then for much of the year, it lives on in my mind as two kinds of ideal: firstly of the glorious Hampshire countryside, made all the more beautiful by the gently rolling landscape that gives it

holiday break: one knows that it’s good to be at the beginning, but this is taking one ever closer to the end. The festival experience evolves as the season progresses: at the start, everything is fresh, the parking arrangements can be a little astray and the dinner fare has a few rough edges. This is more than made up for by the knowledge that there are quite a few more weeks to go. Arriving later on in the

“Great opera is of course the very raison d'être of the Festival, and on many occasions I have walked back to the car park, marvelling at the artistry achieved” the character of being quite self-contained, untouched by pylons or telegraph poles; and in these colder months as an evocation of the English summer, that rarely encountered mixture of fecundity and greenness, blue cloudless skies, a warm breeze in the evening and a really cold glass of champagne. When June finally arrives, The Grange has something in common with an eagerly awaited

month, when things are operating smoothly and the weather is warming up, there’s a certain wistfulness as the end of the festival is in sight. Every visit also has its own special character: in the first place, the weather has a more than superficial impact. A glowing sunset, a slight haze and daintily flitting dragonflies around the lake, a still calm under the columns of the portico – this

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is The Grange at its very best. However, more often than perhaps one is willing to admit, things are not quite this perfect: bits of cloud here and there and temperatures falling below 10 degrees are perhaps typical of any early summer evening; but, as happens in some years, days of driving rain, howling winds and a muddy car park, can make one doubt the whole enterprise of the English country house opera! Of course, even the dullest and wettest evening can be redeemed by the opera itself. It is rare to encounter a poorly conceived production at The Grange, and last season in my view marked a new high in terms of the overall quality of the musical performance. Great opera is of course the very raison d'ĂŞtre of the Festival, and on many occasions I have walked back to the car park, marvelling at the artistry achieved with less than metropolitan resources. One of the most appealing aspects of The Grange today is the ambition to put on opera that is not simply the most performed repertoire, but lesser known works that are still of the highest quality. And I think the success of last season shows that the audience very much appreciates this.

Aside from curtain up, there are some particular moments during a visit that are special to me. The walk down from the car park, approaching the house with its distinctive patches of lemon yellow lichen and the hubbub of happy groups of opera-goers awaiting the first bell; emerging into the sunshine after the first act and having dinner in the ruined interior of the mansion, bare walls and ceiling-less, but still full of warmth and charm; and when the crowds have almost all departed, enjoying the quiet that descends on the house, now lit up and even more imposing in the darkness. These are just a few of the things that make The Grange greater than the sum of it parts. I hope this also explains why it has become for us one of the indispensable elements of summer in this part of Hampshire, and the venue for some of the best opera you will see anywhere in this country. I am sure that I am not alone in this view, and that we will have many years to look forward to enjoying some more wonderful performances in this preternaturally beautiful setting.

Tim Parker The Grange Festival Board Chair, Post Office & Samsonite International

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THE DORSET OPERA

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British Stage Première Jules Massenet

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Sarasin & Partners are delighted to support The Grange Festival Composing bespoke global investment portfolios for private clients and charities. For more information please contact Sophie Jewson at sophie.jewson@sarasin.co.uk or on +44 (0)20 7038 7289. www.sarasinandpartners.com

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KIRKER MUSIC HOLIDAYS F O R D I S C E R N I N G T R AV E L L E R S Kirker Holidays offers an extensive range of independent and escorted opera holidays. These include tours to leading festivals in Europe such as the Puccini Festival in Torre del Lago, Verona and the Verdi Festival in Parma, as well as Glyndebourne, Buxton and opera weekends in Vienna, Milan and Venice. We also host our own exclusive music festivals on land and at sea featuring internationally acclaimed musicians. For those who prefer to travel independently we arrange short breaks with opera, ballet or concert tickets, to all the great classical cities in Europe.

THE VERDI FESTIVAL IN PARMA

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A SIX NIGHT HOLIDAY | 9 OCTOBER 2018 The annual Verdi Festival takes place in one of Italy’s most beautiful historic cities, Parma. It is here in the countryside around Parma that Verdi lived for much of his life, and performances take place not just in the Teatro Regio, but also at the Teatro Verdi in Busseto, where he was born. This year performances include Un giorno di regno, Macbeth, Attila and Il trovatore.We will be based at the 4* NH Parma and there will be visits to the important art collection at the Palazzo della Pilotta, the small town of Busseto, where we shall see the Villa Verdi and the Museo Nazionale Giuseppe Verdi, and historic Cremona.

THREE NIGHT HOLIDAYS 11, 20 & 26 OCTOBER 2018 The opening of the Glyndebourne tour heralds the beginning of autumn every year and provides an annual feast for opera lovers everywhere. The 2018 tour includes two sharply contrasting productions – one of the world’s most popular operas, La traviata by Verdi and Cendrillon by Massenet, a familiar story but a work that can almost be described as a rarity. The 11 October departure will be based at the The Grand Hotel, Eastbourne (5*) and the two later holidays will be based at the comfortable Deans Place Hotel, Alfriston (3*). Each holiday will include one dinner at the hotel, two dinners at Glyndebourne and a talk on each opera. Price from £998 per person (11 October, single supp. £198) or £798 (20 & 26 October, single supp. £120) for three nights including accommodation with breakfast, three dinners, two opera tickets, transfers between the hotel and Glyndebourne, a talk by a guest speaker and the services of the Kirker Tour Escort.

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THE METROPOLITAN OPERA & GALLERIES AND MUSEUMS OF NEW YORK FIVE NIGHT HOLIDAYS | 25 NOVEMBER 2018 & 2 MARCH 2019 Enjoy three star-studded performances at the Metropolitan Opera featuring some of the world’s greatest opera singers including Ailyn Pérez, Anna Netrebko and Pretty Yende as well as a backstage tour of the Met. In addition to the opera performances we will visit museums and galleries including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and MOMA where we enjoy a private visit before the crowds arrive. We will also see one of the world’s finest private collections at the Frick and the library of J P Morgan. We stay at the Hotel Empire (4*), located just across the street from the Lincoln Center, and a couple of minutes’ walk from the Met. Prices include return flights, five nights’ accommodation on a room only basis, three tickets in the rear stalls with uninterrupted views of the stage, two dinners (including one at the Met’s Grand Tier), all transfers, entrance fees and gratuities and the services of the Kirker Tour Leader.

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ENGLISH HERITAGE WISHES THE GRANGE FESTIVAL ANOTHER SUCCESSFUL SEASON We hope that you enjoy the world-class opera in this remarkable historic setting. To help keep the story of England alive and ensure that future generations can continue to enjoy inspiring experiences in the places where history happened, please visit: english-heritage.org.uk/support-us

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T H E G R A N G E F E S T I VA L

Founders of The Grange Festival

Please become a Grange Festival Friend

The Grange Festival exists to bring world class opera to The Grange in Hampshire. The Festival Founders are essential to securing the brightest of futures for our theatre as we continue on this artistic adventure. As a Founder you will make a big difference by supporting its evolution into a hub of cultural excellence. You will be invited to develop a bespoke and ongoing personal relationship with The Grange and its artistic activities. We hope you will join us and take this unique opportunity to be a part of our new company from the beginning.

Our annual Festival Friends ensure the success of each festival and are essential to sustaining the high quality of our operas. Friends have access to priority booking and play an important part in making the Festival happen. Ticket income covers less than half the cost of running the festival, so we depend on our Friends’ generosity to fill the gap. Now approaching our third year, we hope our Friends will continue to be generous in supporting us. Using the jargon of theatre, we have a menu of delights from which to choose. Please spread the word – we can never have too many Friends.

SAMWELL FOUNDER

THE SWEET SPOT

In 1665 William Samwell is commissioned to design the original red brick mansion. £100,000 (with tax efﬁcient giving can cost the donor just £55,000).

WILKINS FOUNDER In c1804 William Wilkins turns the Samwell house into a Greek Temple. £50,000 (with tax efﬁcient giving can cost the donor just £27,500).

COCKERELL FOUNDER In c1823 Charles Cockerell builds the orangery as a Greek Temple. This is now our Theatre. £25,000 (with tax efﬁcient giving can cost the donor just £13,750).

SMIRKE FOUNDER In 1819 Greek Revival architect Robert Smirke designs the link between the house and the Orangery. £10,000 (with tax efﬁcient giving can cost the donor just £5,500).

If you would like to be a pioneer in helping us launch the Festival and secure your place in the history of this amazing Hampshire landmark, please get in touch with our Director of Development, Rachel Pearson on 01962 792201.

Suggested donations from £5,000

Every stage has that unique place that projects the voice perfectly and produces a quality of sound to tickle the hairs on the back of your neck. With this major gift you will develop a bespoke and personal relationship with the company, with invitations to events throughout the year. You can target your gift by joining a production syndicate, supporting a leading role or your chosen aspect of a production. Please contact Rachel Pearson, rachel@thegrangefestival.co.uk for the full menu of possibilities.

THE LIMELIGHT £2500

Before electricity, theatres produced intense light by directing a flame at a cylinder of quicklime. You will receive an invitation for you and your guests to meet the cast after all your visits to The Grange; an opportunity to target your gift to support a supporting role or aspect of the production; an opportunity to attend a closed rehearsal or audition, and invitations to special events during the year.

THE PROMPT CORNER £1000

Every theatre needs one. Without this, it may not be alright on the night. You will receive an invitation for you and your guests to meet the cast after all your visits to The Grange; to attend a closed rehearsal, and an invitation to attend two special events in Hampshire and London during the year.

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Legacies at The Grange Festival Have you enjoyed your summer evenings at The Grange? If you have, perhaps you might consider supporting us through a legacy in your will. It is a highly tax efficient way to help us ensure that The Grange Festival thrives and all our year-round work to instil a love of creativity and music in our community and in our schools continues to flourish. You will be making something wonderful happen each year.

THE ROSTRUM

FESTIVAL PEACOCKS

£500

The birds-eye view and position of power guiding the orchestra with a flick of the wrist You will receive an invitation to meet the cast after one of your visits to The Grange, and to one special event in Hampshire or London

THE WINGS £250

It’s all happening here in the secret, silent world. Prop tables are ready, quick changes are prepared, the crew are primed, the cast are awaiting their cues. You will receive an invitation to one special event in Hampshire or London.

THE FOOTLIGHTS £40

Rachel Pearson Director of Development

The original theatre lighting: once upon a time as candles, now used as a special effect. Enjoy priority booking before the Box Office opens in March.

THE HIGH FLYERS £10

The gloriously vibrant peacock is the ancient symbol of immortality and we invite you to join our FESTIVAL PEACOCKS and celebrate with us at an annual dinner each year. Our FESTIVAL PEACOCKS will each be named on a seat in the auditorium and will be listed each year in the programme. Your gift will ensure that this very special theatre continues to inspire artists and audiences for generations to come. Legacies can be made by way of a gift of cash, shares or property and your solicitor can advise you about writing your will. As we are a charity (no.1165859), no inheritance tax is payable on your gift. This is an effective way of reducing your tax liability whilst also helping a favourite cause.

01962 792201 | rachel@thegrangefestival.co.uk

UNDER 35s ONLY

Traditional scenery operators worked on the fly walks high above the stage. Our under 35s will be able to access discounted seats for every night of the season; free bus transfers from Basingstoke Station; a half price programme. We hold a special party for our High Flyers each year.

All levels receive priority booking. All levels except Footlights receive recognition in the Festival Programme. Please note all Friends levels are annual memberships and expire at the end of July each year. Please sign up by filling in the Festival Friends application form on the inside back cover.

T H E G R A N G E F E S T I VA L

Ways to help us

Every year ticket income covers approximately half the amount we require to stage the Festival and run our Education and Community events. There are many ways you can help us flourish with tax efficient giving. Our gratitude to all our supporters is enormous.

FESTIVAL FOUNDERS

CORPS DE BALLET PIONEERS

The Grange Festival exists to bring world class opera and dance to The Grange in Hampshire. We would not be here today if it weren’t for the generosity of our Founders and we continue to seek new supporters to join this group and help develop The Grange as a centre of cultural excellence. Our Founders have a bespoke relationship with the company and enjoy invitations to many private events.

Bringing world class Dance and Ballet to this romantic corner of Hampshire is a unique and important development. We are seeing Corps de Ballet Pioneers to help us; a group of generous individuals who will have a close relationship with its ongoing development. Commitment to something new and imaginative like this, which promises to become a high-profile part of the national performing arts scene, is philanthropy with far-reaching consequences in an appropriately inspiring setting. We seek gifts of £5000, £10,000 or £25,000

FESTIVAL FRIENDS Our annual Friends are vital to the success of each season. They help bridge the gap between ticket income and the actual cost of staging opera and dance. Their loyal support helps us to plan opera and dance of the highest quality with confidence. We are building new groups with our American Friends and Hong Kong Friends. We can assist with creating a package in exceptional accommodation that will provide a memorably special visit to The Grange

EDUCATION FUND We focus on two areas. Firstly, we offer a range of scholarships and assistant roles to help develop talents of all those areas of expertise that go in to staging a show – singers, conductors and behind the scenes technicians. Secondly, we are working with many schools delivering creative projects during the year that take pupils beyond the confines of the school curriculum. This summer 80 school children will join our summer school to work intensely over 5 days to create, devise and then perform an opera on the professional stage.

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CORPOR ATE SUPPORT

SPONSOR A SINGER OR DANCER

We invite companies to support a production or sponsor a single performance during the season. The Grange is an astonishingly beautiful setting and we take great care to ensure any visit you make is perfect from the moment you arrive. Support comes with a range of opportunities. We will even bring a singer to your Christmas or Summer Party.

Your support for a particular role of your choice enables us to cast performers of the highest standard. It includes invitations to meet the artist after rehearsals and after the performances at The Grange.

NAME A SEAT This is a perfect way to acknowledge your appreciation of the new theatre or recognise someone else who has loved this place. Your gift will be recognised with a plaque of your wording on the seat.

LEGACIES The ultimate gift that ensures the place you have loved continues to flourish for future generations. Our Festival Peacocks, named after the ancient symbol of immortality, will be recognised as supporters in their lifetime and invited each year to a celebratory event. If you would like to hear more about any of these initiatives please contact RachelÂ Pearson, Director of Development.

Email: rachel@thegrangefestival.co.uk Tel: 01962 792201 / 01962 791020

For more details visit www.thegrangefestival.co.uk

Left to right: 1 The Grange / 2 Embrace /3 Tamara Rojo, English National Ballet / 4 Education@TheGrange / 5 Black Tie / 6 Blue Velvet / 7 Katie Coventry / 8 Legacy Photos: 1 Joe Low, 3 Rick Guest, 4 Desmond Chewyn, 5 Robert Workman

T H E G R A N G E F E S T I VA L

Our warm thanks to all our supporters T H E G R A N G E F E S T I VA L F OU N D E R S SAMW ELL FOU N DERS Sarah and Tony Bolton The Linbury Trust Delfont Mackintosh Theatres

W I LK I NS FOU N DERS Richard and Rosamund Bernays Anonymous David and Simone Caukill Bernard and Caroline Cazenove Joe and Minnie MacHale Richard and Chrissie Morse Tim and Thérèse Parker Michael and Cathy Pearman Sir Simon and Lady Robertson Sir Siegmund Warburg’s Voluntary Settlement Richard and Cynthia Thompson Anonymous

COCK ER ELL FOU N DERS John and Claudia Arney Jamie and Carolyn Balfour Mark and Sophie Baring Robin and Anne Baring Glynne and Sarah Benge Daniel and Alison Benton Sophie Boden Simon and Sally Borrows

Claudia Langdon and Janie Cadbury Sir Euan Calthorpe Bt William and Kathryn Charnley Sir Vernon and Lady Ellis Catherine and Jón Ferrier Mr and Mrs James Fisher Tom and Sarah Floyd Susie, Katie, Anna, Christina and Hwfa Gwyn Sir Charles and Lady Haddon-Cave James and Rhona Hatchley Sheelin and John Hemsley Charles and Catherine Hindson Herman and Claire Hintzen Roger and Kate Holmes Adrian Hope Andrew and Caroline Joy J Paul Getty Jnr Charitable Trust Malcolm and Sarah Le May The Peter and Elisabetta Mallinson Trust Simon and Nathalie Marshall-Lockyer Nigel and Anna McNair Scott Joanna and Luke Meynell Patrick Mitford-Slade William and Francheska Pattisson Mark and Rachel Pearson Lord and Lady Phillimore Ernst and Elisabeth Piech John and Erica Simpson Graeme and Sue Sloan Tim and Charlotte Syder The Stevenston Trust Lou and John Verrill

SM I R K E FOU N DERS

COX FOU N DERS

Anonymous Peter and Rosemary Andreae David and Elizabeth Benson Anthony and Consuelo Brooke Rex and Sarah Chester Domenica Dunne Alastair and Robina Farley For Elise Peter and Judith Foy Anonymous Peter and Sue Holland George and Janette Hollingbery Graham and Amanda Hutton Owen and Jane Jonathan David and Penny Kempton Tammy Lavarello Charles and Sue Marriott James and Caroline Masterton Martin and Caroline Moore Anonymous Mr and Mrs Jonathan Moseley Colin Murray Mr and Mrs Roger Phillimore Jonathan and Gillian Pickering Bianca and Stuart Roden Giles and Sue Schofield David and Alexandra Scholey Sophie Service Paul and Rita Skinner The Band Trust Peter Tilley Esq Alan and Alison Titchmarsh Lucy and Michael Vaughan Mr and Mrs Hady Wakefield

Bill and Boo Andrewes Tony and Chris Ashford Isla Baring OAM Tom and Gay Bartlam Beaulieu Beaufort Foundation Simon and Rebecca Bladon Anonymous Simon and Julia Boadle Anonymous Anthony and Sarah Boswood Michael and Belinda Boyd Britwell Trust Julian and Jenny Cazalet Julia Chute Anonymous Colwinston Charitable Trust Henrietta Corbett Corin and Richard Cotton Carl Cullingford Edward and Antonia Cumming-Bruce The de Brye Charitable Trust Michael and Anthea Del Mar Anonymous Anonymous Mrs Marveen Flack Gamlen Charitable Trust The Golden Bottle Trust Roger and Victoria Harrison Richard and Frances Hoare Lucy Holmes Anonymous Andrew and Kay Hunter Johnston Howard and Anne Hyman John and Sara Jervoise Max and Caroline Jonas Ralph and Patricia Kanter Morgan and Georgie Krone

Anonymous Anonymous Virginia and Alan Lovell William and Felicity Mather Dr and Mrs Jonathan Moore Annette Oakes The Ogilvie Thompson Family Kevin Pakenham David and Sarah Parker Deborah and Clive Parritt The Countess of Portsmouth Richard and Iona Priestley George and Veronique Seligman Rebecca Shelley Brian Spiby Fiona and Geoff Squire OBE Clare and Richard Staughton The Bernard Sunley Charitable Foundation Robert and Tiggy Sutton Alison and Simon Taylor Peter and Nancy Thompson The Worshipful Company of Dyers The Wykeham Gallery

COR POR AT E FOU N DERS Accsys Group Artemis Investment Management Cazenove Capital Charles Stanley Wealth Managers Country Life Hawksmoor Investment Management Hiscox Hunters Solicitors

IG Group Meggitt PLC Norton Rose Fulbright LLP Sarasin & Partners Stifel The Zygos Partnership

FOU N DI NG A DV ERT ISERS Adam Architecture Architectural Plants Burrells Chalke Valley History Festival Christies Danebury Vineyards Dorset Opera Festival English Heritage Farrow & Ball Gosset Champagne Jamb. Kirker Music Holidays Limewood Hotel Longborough Festival Opera Martin and Company Moda Rosa Opus Ottoman Silks Pathe News Provident Financial Regents Park Open Air Theatre Saffery Champness Stone, Vine & Sun Wine Merchants Taylor Fladgate The Grange Estate West Green Opera

T H E 2018 G R A N G E F E S T I VA L F R I E N D S SW EET SPOT Tom and Ann Black Anonymous Jill Parker Richard and Maria Peers

LIM ELIGHT Nigel Beale and Anthony Lowrey Mr and Mrs Robert T Bordeaux-Groult Sir Christopher and the Reverend Lady Clarke Gamlen Charitable Trust Lord and Lady Lupton Sir David and Lady Plastow Lord and Lady Ribeiro Kristina Rogge Terence and Sian Sinclair Peter and Nancy Thompson Marion Wake

PROM P T Charles Alexander and Clare Mumby Lord and Lady Arbuthnot of Edrom Robin and Anne Baring Sue Baring Geoffrey Barnett Mrs Rupert Beaumont Peter Bedford Julian and Jane Benson Anthony Bird

Jonathan and Karen Bourne-May Jean Boney QC and Dr Keith Dawkins The Hon Robert and Mrs Boyle Mark and Angela Bridges Mrs Charles H Brown Robin and Penny Broadhurst Tom Busher and Elizabeth Benson Anonymous Rex and Sarah Chester Oliver and Cynthia Colman Roderick Davidson Pru de Lavison Anonymous Michael Thomas and Lydia Dunn The Farnfield Trust Howard and Lindsay Gardener Fergus and Clare Gilmour David and Pat Houghton David and Sue Humphrey Oscar and Margaret Lewisohn Anne Longden Mrs Sally Lykiardopulo John and Patricia Marden William and Felicity Mather Ian and Clare Maurice The McLaren Trust Peter and Brigid McManus Colin Menzies Denis Mirlesse Alison and Antony Milford

Dr and Mrs Jonathan Moore Ian and Jane Morrison Guy and Sarah Norrie Michael and Cathy Pearman Richard and Rose Plincke The Countess of Portsmouth April, Lady Rivett-Carnac Mark and Nicola Rowe Mrs Alicia Salter Thomas and Phillis Sharpe Anonymous Diane and Christopher Sheridan Rupert and Milly Soames Chris and Lisa Spooner Mrs Anne Storm The Tansy Trust Mark and Melissa Thistlethwayte Hugh and Ally Tidbury Peter and Sarah Vey Edward and Katherine Wake Johanna Waterous CBE and Roger Parry CBE William and Madeline Wilks Clare Williams Mary Rose Wood

ROST RU M David and Jane Anderson Anonymous Claire Bailey Ariane Bankes Mr and Mrs Nic Bentley Anonymous Bob and Elisabeth Boas

Longina Boczon Jacques Boissonnas Leslie Bonham Carter Graham and Julia Bourne Gay and Roger Bradley Peter and Pamela Bulfield Anthony Bunker Geoffrey Burnand Peter and Auriol Byrne Jane, Countess of Clarendon Peter and Jane Clarke Ian Clarkson and Richard Morris Dr Neville Conway Anthony Cooke David and Nikki Cowley Carl T Cullingford John and Susan Curtis Peter and Meg Davidson Anthony Davis Michael Davies OBE Anthony and Fiona Deal Patrick and Nikki Despard Graham and Janna Dudding Jamie Dundas Michael and Nicola Fitzgerald Tim and Rosie Forbes Lindsay and Robin Fox Geoffrey and Elizabeth Fuller Dr Angela Gallop CBE and Mr David Russell Jenny Gove Mr Robin and The Hon Mrs Greenwood Tim and Jenny Guerrier Mr and Mrs Richard Haas

Max and Catherine Hadfield Mr and Mrs Julian Harvey Christine Hardwick Will and Janine Hillary Malcolm and Mary Hogg Christopher and Jo Holdsworth Hunt Peter Hollins David and Mal Hope-Mason Mike and Margi Jennings Nigel and Cathy Johnson-Hill Anonymous Andrew and Susan Kennedy Michael and Julia Kerby James and Clare Kirkman Stephen and Miriam Kramer Liz and Roger Kramers Anonymous Mr and Mrs Bill Lawes Jane and Peter Leaver Roger and Natalie Lee Mrs Roger Liddiard Anonymous Derek and Susie Lintott Susie and James Long Chris and Clem Martin Alison Mayne Mr and Mrs Hallam Mills David and Angela Moss John and Lucy Muncey Francis and Amanda Norton Peter and Poppity Nutting Lavinia and Nick Owen Simon and Rosianne Pack John A Paine Erik and Lillemor Penser Mrs Caroline Perry

Robin and Clarkie Petherick Sir Hayden and Lady Phillips Mr and Mrs J Pinna-Griffith John and Elizabeth Platt Hugh and Caroline Priestley Robin Colenso and Chrissie Quayle Miles and Vivian Roberts Johnny and Caroline Robertson Peter Rosenthal Ginny and Richard Salter Charles and Donna Scott Rupert Sebag-Montefiore Nigel Silby Dr Anthony Smoker Marcus and Sarah Stanton Caroline Steane Mr and Mrs Nicholas Stranks Tom and Rosamond Sweet-Escott Mr and Mrs P M Thomas Sarah Thomas John and Pauline Tremlett Sir Tom and Lady Troubridge Clive and Tessa Tulloch Sir Michael and Lady Turner Kelsey and Rosemary van Musschenbroek Sir David and Lady Verey Mr and Mrs Niko Vidovich Anonymous Andrew and Tracy Wickham Barton and Rosie Wild Nicholas and Penny Wilson Louise Woods

W I NGS Philippa Abell Stewart and Julia Abbott Daphne and John Alderson Mrs Rosemary Alexander Nicholas and Sarah Allan Angela Anderson Clive Anscott Julian and Mary Ashby Anonymous Nigel and Christine Atkinson Julie and Keith Attfield Nick and Audrey Backhouse Phillip Arnold and Philip Baldwin Mrs Caroline Barber Anonymous Robin and Anne Baring Cara and Oliver Barnes Robin Barton Paul and Janet Batchelor Val and Christopher Bateman Anne Beckwith-Smith Mike and Sarah Bignell Hugh and Mary Boardman Annabel and Alverne Bolitho Anonymous Bottega dei Sapori Neville and Rowena Bowen Charles and Madeline Bracken Viscount and Viscountess Bridgeman Douglas and Susan Bridgewater Charles and Patricia Brims Alison and Michael Brindle QC Robin and Jill Broadley Michael and Val Brodrick Adam and Sarah Broke Tony and Mo Brooking George Brown and Alison Calver Hugh and Sue Brown Finn Bruce Anonymous Anonymous Martin and Sarah Burton Richard Butler Adams Mrs Maurice Buxton Nick and Nicky Cambrook Christopher and Katie Cardona Russ and Linda Carr Virgina and Hans van Celsing John and Diana Chadwick Fra' Julian Chadwick Belinda and Jason Chaffer Suzanne, Lady Chesham Julian and Josephine Chisholm John Coke and Suzanne Lemieux Michael and Virginia Collett Jonathan and Henrietta Cooke Diana Cornish Morella and Robert Cottam Jenefer Coulton

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Johnny and Liz Cowper-Coles Stephen and Julia Crompton Lady Curtis Paul and Edwina Curtis Hayward Ingrid Dale Josh and Anna Dale-Harris Tineke Dales Antoni Daszewski Mr Peter Davidson Peter and Pamela Davidson Anonymous Anne and Jonathan Dawson Janie Deal Mrs Elizabeth Dean Lord and Lady Deben Anonymous Hugo and Linda Deschampsneufs Baron and Baroness De Styrcea Robert and Caroline Dixon Dr Barbara DomayneHayman Mrs Gill Drummond OBE DL Christina Dumas Christopher and Jenny Duncan Mrs Saskia Dunlop Anonymous Diana Dyer Christina and Andrew Dykes Ken and Sheena Eaton Paul and Pauline Eaton Mr and Mrs Robert Elkington Dr Julia P Ellis David and Susan Elton Martin and Eugenia Ephson Alun and Bridget Evans Alys and Graham Ferguson Andrew and Lucinda Fleming Mr and Mrs John Foster Sir Robert and Lady Francis Anton Gabszewicz and Mark Gutteridge Jonathan and Tessa Gaisman Paul and Sarah Galloway David and Jillian Gendron Peter Gerrard Michael and Diane Gibbons Brett and Caroline Gill Martin and Jacky Gillie Anonymous Charlie and Philippa Goodall Susie Grandfield Keith and Theresa Grant-Peterkin Mrs Stephanie Gretton Richard and Marguerite Griffith-Jones Mr and Mrs Alistair Groom Judy and Richard Haes Martin and The Hon Mrs Haitham Taylor Allyson Hall Rachel and John Hannyngton Susanna Hardman Keith and Sarah Jane Haydon Maggie Heath

W E A R E GR AT EF U L FOR GEN EROUS GI F TS F ROM The Band Trust Glynne and Sarah Benge The Bernard Sunley Foundation The Britwell Trust The Earl of Portsmouth J Paul Getty Jnr Charitable Trust The Golden Bottle Trust The Linbury Trust Robin and Anne Baring Sophie Boden

Simon and Sally Borrows Robert Hugill and David Hughes Michael Kluger Lord and Lady Laidlaw Joe and Minnie MacHale Mr and Mrs Roger Phillimore Brian Spiby Tim and Charlotte Syder The Tait Memorial Trust And Anonymous donors

Lady Hervey-Bathurst (Caroline) John and Catherine Hickman Michael and Geneviève Higgin Mr and Mrs I F Hodgson Daniel and Diana Hodson H R Holland Jonathan Holliday Lizzie Holmes Jill Hooker Billy and Heather Howard Mr Stephen J Howis Bart and Carole Huby Iain and Claudia Hughes Minnie Hughes-Onslow Robert Hugill and David Hughes Mrs Alastair Hume Carolyn Humphrey David and Sue Humphrey Adam and Laraine Humphryes David and Wendy Hunter Inge Hunter Juliet Huntley Barnabas and Campie Hurst-Bannister Tim and Christine Ingram Clive and Louise Irvine Allan and Rachel James Martin and Sandra Jay Mrs Jane Jervoise Philippa and Robert John Anthony Johnson and Terence Drew Rupert Johnson and Alexandra Macdonald-Smith Sally and Scot Johnston Guy Jordan Dr Philip Kay and Alexandra Jackson Kay Robin and Annabel Kealy Joan and Geoffrey Kellett Penelope Kellie Colin and Joanna Keogh Gabrielle Knights Peter and Beth Lamb Rear Admiral and Mrs John Lang Simon and Sarah Lavers Mr and Mrs Peter Lees Jan Leigh and Jan Rynkiewicz Anonymous Anthony and Fiona Littlejohn Richard Loader Desmond and Jenny Longfield Imogen Lyndon Skeggs Sue MacKenzie-Charrington Peter Macklin Ian and Jane Macnabb JJ and Victoria Macnamara Bill and Sue Main Stephen Mallet and Susan Hamilton Mr and Mrs P Manet Ian and Mandy Maple Anonymous Nigel and Sue Masters

Louise Matlock David and Janet Mayes Nigel and Maria Melville Mr and Mrs Merli Judith and Theo Mezger Malcolm and Kate Moir David and Alison Moore-Gwyn Christopher Morcom QC and Diane Morcom Anonymous Simon and Fiona Mortimore Sara Nangle Anonymous Tom and Ros Nell Anthony and Jenny Newhouse Charles and Martie Nicholson Lady (Bridget) Nixon John and Dianne Norton Hugh and Maggie Ogus Carole and Roy Oldham Cecily O'Neill Charles and Rosemary Orange Colin and Rosalind Osmer Dr and Mrs D G Paine Lucy Pease Richard and Michelle Pelly Jeremy and Bryony Pett Sally and Anthony Pfiffner David and Christina Pitman John Polak Jane Poulter Tony and Etta Pullinger Neil and Julie Record The Hon Philip Remnant Anne Reynolds Florence and Robert Rice Royston and Tana Riviere Mr and Mrs James Roberts Annie Robertson James and Catharine Robertson Alex and Caroline Roe Julian and Catherine Roskill Mrs Judith St Quinton Simon and Abigail Sargent Mr and Mrs H. Sergeant Anonymous Caroline and Mark Silver Piers and Sarah von Simson Gail and David Sinclair Jock and Annie Slater Mrs Michael Smart S L Smith Lady Snyder David and Di Sommerville Ian and Pippa Southward David and Unni Spiller John and Jocelyn Stanley Rosemary and Michael Steen John Stephens OBE John and Margo Stephens Brian and Henrietta Stevens Jeremy and Phyllida Stoke Mr Strone and The Honourable Mrs Macpherson John and Rosie Sturgis

T H E GR A NGE F EST IVA L T ICK ETS FOR CH A R IT Y EV ENTS Breast Unit Charity, Princess Alexandra Hospital NHS Cancer Research UK Countryside Alliance English National Ballet Friends of Sussex Hospices Leigh House Hospital Maggie’s Marie Curie Muscular Dystrophy UK Pilgrims’ School Parents’ Association Royal College of Music Winchester & District Samaritans Winchester Conservatives

The Archie Lloyd Charitable Foundation The Brain Tumour Charity The Conquest Hospital in Hastings The Coram Foundation The Emma Campbell Trust The Forward Trust The Honeypot Children’s Charity The Rosemary Foundation The Royal British Legion The Westgate School, Winchester Weeke Primary School Yorkshire Charity

Jeremy Taylor Tom and Jo Taylor The Margaret and Ian Posgate Charitable Trust Mr and Mrs J Theophilus Mr Jocelyn Thomas Caroline and Richard Thynne Sarah Tillie Prof and Mrs G M Tonge Anonymous Sir John and Lady de Trafford Simon and Mary Troughton Rupert Villers Mr and Mrs R Vlasto Paul and Sandra Walker Guy and Fizzy Warren Mr and Mrs Graham West Peter and Alexandra White Hamish and Elisabeth Williams Keith and Keren Williams Penelope Williams Angela M Wilson Jilly Wise William and Celia Witts David and Vivienne Woolf Richard and Noely Worthington Rosemary Wright Paul and Sybella Zisman

H IGH F LY ERS Anonymous Charlotte Baly Olivia Bangham Aurea Baring Fred Baring Thomas Baynes Cameron Benge Anonymous Anonymous Matthew Alexander Chance Natalia Chance Annonymous Anthony Chater Lucy Chiswell Lucy Clarke Dr Benedict Coxon Fergus Cross The Crowley Family Miss Anita Datta Aurian de La Noue Rose de Pass Dr Caroline Dodson Lucy Dundas Peter Eckersley Theo Elton Ann Catherine Farrer Hartigan Tom Faulkner Anonymous Miss Charlotte Freer-Smith Constance Freer-Smith Nina L Frost Will George-Carey Eleanor Gleave Edward Goodwin Jacob Goodwin Anonymous

Alexandra Grant Anonymous Anonymous Sophie Heard Anonymous Anonymous Anonymous Mr Yoon Hyung Lee Anonymous Anonymous Jacob Leland Thomas Linton Cláudia Lopes Emma Lovell Lucinda Lovell The Rev'd Graham Lunn The Lupton Family Anonymous Miss C Martin Connor McNeill Richard Menzies-Wilson Mrs Eva Morgan Hei Mun Hong Dmitriy Myelnikov Nauman Nazeer Tom and Catherine Neal Ben Pearson Anonymous Catherine Picton-Turbervill Mr J W Pinder Anonymous Anonymous Louisa Quarry Piers Quarry Sarah Reid Anonymous Anonymous Filippa Ronquist Anonymous Sebastian Salek Chloe Schneider Seenaryo: arts and education with refugees in Lebanon Ed Seymour Cressida M Shaw Ellie Sheahan Ben Sheron Anonymous Miss India Smyth Anonymous Drew Steanson Caroline St Quinton Anonymous Helen Teague Jessica Thomas Anonymous Anonymous Max Whitehead Eleanor Wilkinson Daniel and Thomas Wilkinson-Horsfield Anonymous Ellie Williams Phoebe Withrington Miss Woods Georgia Worthington

SU PPORT ERS OF SI NGI NG COM PET IT ION 2017 Anthony Bateman Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra Monique Clowes Christopher & Jane Cobley Sir Jeramiah Colman Gift Trust Professor Christopher Napier

Carol Orchard Jane Portal The Countess of Portsmouth Prue Skinner Michael Steen Marion Wake Waynflete Singers

Marianela NuĂąez and Thiago Soares Photograph by Rick Guest, with Olivia Pomp

DA N C E AT T H E G R A N G E

This production is supported by our Corps de Ballet Pioneers Justin and Celeste Bickle Peter and Judith Foy Kristina Rogge Graeme and Sue Sloan John and Lou Verrill

With additional gifts from Robina and Alastair Farley Nigel Beale and Anthony Lowrey and Anonymous donors

T H E G R A N G E F E S T I VA L

DA N C E AT T H E G R A N G E

Director of Dance@TheGrange Wayne McGregor CBE Co-curator of Dance@TheGrange 2018 Edward Watson MBE Produced by Studio Wayne McGregor

PER FOR M ERS

Company Wayne McGregor Rebecca Bassett-Graham Jordan James Bridge Travis Clausen-Knight Louis McMiller Daniela Neugebauer Jacob O’Connell James Pett Fukiko Takase Po-Lin Tung Jessica Wright

The Royal Ballet Matthew Ball Federico Bonelli Francesca Hayward Sarah Lamb Marianela Nuñez Calvin Richardson Joseph Sissens Thiago Soares

Guest artist Alessandra Ferri

Pianist Joanna MacGregor

Lighting Designer Lucy Carter Rehearsal Director Odette Hughes With thanks to Kevin O’Hare and The Royal Ballet

June | 7, 10

DA N C E AT T H E G R A N G E

Programme PA RT ON E Duet from Obsidian Tear

Duet from Borderlands

Choreography Wayne McGregor Music Esa-Pekka Salonen Fashion Direction Katie Shillingford Fashion Designer Craig Green Dancers Matthew Ball & Calvin Richardson

Choreography Wayne McGregor Music Joel Cadbury & Paul Stoney Costume Wayne McGregor Dancers Francesca Hayward

Duet from After the Rain

Duet from Woolf Works

Choreography Christopher Wheeldon Music Arvo Pärt Costume Holly Hynes Dancers Marianela Nuñez & Thiago Soares

& Calvin Richardson

Choreography Wayne McGregor Music Max Richter Costume Moritz Junge Sound Designer Chris Ekers Dancers Alessandra Ferri & Federico Bonelli

Duet from Autobiography

Choreography Wayne McGregor Music Jlin Costume Aitor Throup Dancers Rebecca Bassett-

Graham & Daniela Neugebauer / Fukiko Takase & Jessica Wright

jojo

Choreography Charlotte Edmonds Music Pandi Groove by Chinese Man Costume Charlotte Edmonds Dancer Joseph Sissens

Méditation from Thaïs

Choreography Frederick Ashton Music Jules Massenet Costume Anthony Dowell Dancers Sarah Lamb & Matthew Ball

PA RT T WO Atomos

Choreography Wayne McGregor Music A Winged Victory for the Sullen Costume Studio XO Dancers Company Wayne McGregor Interval

PA RT T H R E E Bach Forms

Choreography Wayne McGregor Music Bach The Art of Fugue Costume COS Dancers Company Wayne McGregor

& dancers from The Royal Ballet Music performed live by Joanna MacGregor

T H E G R A N G E F E S T I VA L

Dance@TheGrange

2018 has seen the start of a new partnership with two magical and enthralling evenings of classical and contemporary dance. The Dance@TheGrange Committee are thrilled to have nurtured this new and exciting dimension to the Festival programme. This has been a captivating journey for all involved, requiring self-belief, tenacity and passion, and a certain amount of education! The vision has been to create something of the truly unique within the landscape of country house opera. We are proud to be the first to fully embrace dance as part of our annual season. Dance@TheGrange will now be an integral and alluring part of the Festival for many years to come. We are delighted to announce that in 2019 Marianela Nuñez has agreed to be the next co-curator. There is so much for us all to look forward to.

Louise Verrill Chair, Dance@TheGrange Committee

Can you help us? – Become a Corps De Ballet Pioneer Bringing world class Dance and Ballet to this romantic corner of Hampshire is a unique and important development. We are seeking Corps de Ballet Pioneers to help us; a group of generous individuals who will be at the start of something remarkable. Commitment to something new and imaginative like this, which promises to become a high-profile part of the national performing arts scene, is philanthropy with far-reaching consequences in an appropriately inspiring setting. Of course, just as with opera, none of this can be achieved without generous support. Our Pioneers will make it happen. They will enjoy first priority for tickets and the opportunity to develop a close relationship with Dance@ TheGrange as it develops with access to behind the scenes events during the year. The group will be listed in our programmes We seek one off gifts of £5000, £10,000 and £25,000

For more detail please contact rachel@thegrangefestival.co.uk

Edward Watson Photograph by Rick Guest, with Olivia Pomp

DA N C E AT T H E G R A N G E

Wayne McGregor in 7 steps An essential guide to Britain’s most sought-after choreographer and The Grange Festival’s first director of dance.

Company Wayne McGregor performing Atomos Photo by Ravi Deepres

1/ He’s been making dance for 25 years Born in Stockport in 1970, McGregor’s eureka moment came aged 10, watching the hit film Saturday Night Fever. Of its star, John Travolta, he recalls: “It was his passion for dancing that hooked me – the way he came alive on that dance floor.” This inspiration led to local dance classes in disco and ballroom and, on finishing school, a place on a pioneering new dance degree course at Bretton Hall in the Yorkshire countryside. Recalling 360 degree views across the landscape and student pieces performed in the sculpture park, McGregor says, “That whole relationship between space, body, earth and buildings was really unusual. It changed the way I

think about bodies and spaces.” In 1992 he formed his own company, Random Dance (now Company Wayne McGregor,) and arrived on the scene with a new kind of choreography based on the highly articulated, undulating movement of his own 6’1” long-limbed body. In 2017, more than thirty choreographic works – including Tree of Codes, Entity, FAR, and Atomos – and a string of awards later, Company Wayne McGregor, which had previously been based at Sadler’s Wells, opened the doors on a new, inspiring contemporary dance space at Here East in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park – a fitting way to celebrate 25 years of making dance.

T H E G RA N G E F E S T I VA L

Company Wayne McGregor performing Autobiography Photo by Richard Davies

2/ He’s a prolific polymath Recently dubbed “the brainbox of British dance” by The Guardian, the choreographer is fuelled by curiosity in any and every field of knowledge, and is just as happy discussing Virginia Woolf with scholars of modernist literature, as deliberating over the psychological implications of holographic headsets with tech experts at Google, or delving into the roots of human creativity with cognitive neuroscientists at Cambridge University. Collaboration is a by-word for McGregor’s practice. He relishes the challenges and delights which emerge from “colliding different sorts of intelligence in one place” and feed into an enhanced performance language equipped to engage with a multitude of subjects: from the classical and literary to the geo-political; from existentialist abstraction to artificial intelligence, climate change and the refugee crisis. To date he has made over 250 works across contemporary dance, ballet, theatre, opera and the visual arts, with an impressive list of collaborators – including Steve Reich, Olafur Eliasson, Thomas Adès and Esa-Pekka Salonen to name but a few – while his choreography has also been found on the catwalk during New York fashion week, in art galleries and at the Brit Awards.

3/ He’s worked extensively in film As you might expect, McGregor is regularly courted by directors working in film, most recently by Josie Rourke for her forthcoming Mary Queen of Scots where the movement he created for the two queens – Elizabeth I played by Margot Robbie and Mary Stuart by Saoirse Ronan – ranged from choreographing a masked ball to dramatizing a brutal rape and graphic birthing scene. He also created movement for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire – fans will recall the martial stick dance of the Durmstrang boys, the arch lyricism of the Beauxbatons and the Yule Ball. A self-confessed tech-junkie from boyhood – he spent many happy hours working out the programming that would enable a computerised worm to wriggle across a screen – McGregor’s movie work has often involved technologies of motion-capture (through which movement can be recorded from a moving body or object and mapped onto a digital character to achieve highly naturalistic animation). Over the last 15 years he has seen these technologies transformed from laborious time-intensive operations (“really slow, they used to put sensor balls all over you and it took ages,”) into the swift and sensitive systems of today which are able to capture even subtleties of characterisation and emotion in real time. McGregor created the movement for the dancing pigs in Sing using motion capture, as well as for the Obscurus – a destructive energy that emerges from the traumatised Credence in swirling black smoke like form – in the film of J.K. Rowling’s Fantastic Beasts. For the latter, the choreographer was movement coach to the actor Ezra Miller, working with him to physicalise Credence’s inner demons in dramatic movement which was mapped onto the virtual entity.

4/ He has a love of architecture In 2004, with no previous experience of construction, the choreographer decided to build on land in Lamu, Kenya. Off the tourist track on a world heritage site, the house is used for artists’ retreats and holidays. More recently, McGregor and his partner restored a dilapidated Grade II listed building in Devon. Built in 1934 in the Bauhaus style, the house was originally the home of German modern dance pioneer Kurt Jooss, who had escaped Nazi Germany and was then based with his company on the Dartington Estate. Despite the inevitable challenges and frustrations of such ambitious projects, for McGregor dance and architecture are natural bedfellows, both creating beauty from relationships of space, body and time. Nowhere is this more aptly demonstrated than in Studio Wayne McGregor, the company’s new home in East London. Housed within the former broadcast centre of the London Olympics, and variously described by journalists as “playful” and “intriguing”, the interior of this vast, industrial space has been transformed by architectural practice We Not I into a light-drenched, seemingly weightless zone which conveys more a fluid, shifting experience of space than of its limits. The enormous white studios which dwarf the body; the staircases that encourage visitors to negotiate the spaces from different directions; all is designed to free up the searching, questioning mind. McGregor’s unique perspective on architecture has led to him being invited onto the Grand Jury for the prestigious RIBA International Prize which biennially selects a winner from a distinguished list of visionary and influential new buildings around the world.

DA N C E AT T H E G R A N G E

5/ He’s a passionate believer that everyone can dance “We all have a body, we all express ourselves through the body, the sense of our self rests in the body,” McGregor says, affirming a simple, yet profound principle: namely that, from our earliest infant interactions – sensing sound, discovering motion and balance, perceiving colour – we encounter and understand our world through our bodies. Theories of embodied cognition, which the choreographer has investigated for many years, posit that developing greater awareness and command of the body’s potential – whether physical, creative or rational – through the natural and instinctive route of movement can help people to live happier, healthier lives. Studio Wayne McGregor’s extensive Learning and Engagement programme bases its projects on continuously evolving methods created by the choreographer in collaboration with cognitive scientists, anthropologists and software designers, and to date has worked with over 100,000 participants across the world and from all walks of life. Moreover, McGregor’s commitment to transforming lives by getting people dancing has spawned a new model of working with professional dance companies trying to balance the need for rehearsal time against the ever-increasing cost of studio space in the capital. His state-of-the-art HQ which boasts three of London’s largest dance studios offers free space to a number of artists and companies annually – 60 in its first year. In return, those artists deliver free participatory projects across the country, devised with the support of McGregor’s visionary team.

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6/ He is Resident Choreographer at The Royal Ballet “Ballet is not a fixed form – ballet is a form which is always looking for new horizons and new adventures,” McGregor insists. Following the runaway success of his ballet Chroma – winner of the Olivier, the Critics’ Circle and South Bank Show awards, the wunderkind of contemporary dance was invited to instigate the Royal Ballet’s next adventure in 2006 by the then Artistic Director, Dame Monica Mason. It may have been a maverick move, but if Mason had any nerves around how traditionalists might regard McGregor’s lack of formal ballet training, she kept them well-hidden, not even blinking when her Resident Choreographer brought a six-person rock band on stage to perform with her virtuoso dancers in Carbon Life. Meanwhile, McGregor continued to break fresh ground with works such as Infra, Live Fire Exercise and Raven Girl – attracting occasional controversy but also a steady stream of accolades; and in 2015 his first full length ballet, Woolf Works, played to sell-out audiences and garnered a cluster of awards including the Olivier and the Critics’ Circle. The work passed instantly into the repertory and also earned an Olivier Best Dance Performance award for legendary prima ballerina assoluta Alessandra Ferri whom McGregor had persuaded out of semi-retirement to play the role of Virginia Woolf. By the time The Royal Ballet celebrated his 10th anniversary in 2016 with an all-McGregor triple bill, the one-time interloper had cemented his role as a fans’ favourite who now talked pas de bourrées and chaînés with the best of them.

7/ He has had his genome sequenced Scientists working on a study entitled The Genetics Clinic of the Future sequenced McGregor’s entire genome in the summer of 2017. This McGregor used as inspiration for choreographic material in an autobiographical piece to mark 25 years of his dance-making, which premiered at Sadler’s Wells the following October. For McGregor the notion of autobiography or “life-writing” was not retrospective but forward-looking – “life unfolds continuously as experience in real time rather than a chronologized sequence of remembered events.” Inkeeping with this view, choreography created from the stimulus of his personal memories, documents and artistic influences was fed into a software system, designed by composer and software architect Nick Rothwell. Driven by an algorithm based on McGregor’s genetic code, the system selected which sections of choreography would be presented, by which dancers and in which order, for every performance. No sequence thus selected could ever repeat itself either, since each time the system “hijacked” a section of code it would subsequently discard it. Dance critic Luke Jennings described the piece as having replicated “the texture of life itself” – although he also called into question his own function, pointing out that he himself had witnessed a different performance from one which a reader of his review might subsequently see! Autobiography is still on tour so the life-rewriting continues afresh and – given the thousands of potential organisations of the choreography – will continue to do so long into the mysterious future.

Uzma Hameed

Studio Wayne McGregor in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park Photo by Gilbert McCarragher

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McGregor and Watson

Obsidian Tear. Matthew Ball and Calvin Richardson © ROH, 2016. Photograph by Bill Cooper

Wayne McGregor has been choreographing works on Royal Ballet Principal Edward Watson for more than 17 years. Now they have curated The Grange Festival’s first annual evening of dance together. Here they look back on their long partnership and talk about the ideas behind Dance@TheGrange 2018. Ed Watson recalls vividly the first time he walked into the studio to work with Wayne McGregor. It was 2001 and former Royal Ballet Principal Deborah Bull was inviting new artists into the Royal Opera House as part of a project called Outside In, and matching them up with dancers from the company. “She said there was this amazing guy and he and I might be a good fit, but it would mean working lunchtimes and evenings on top of other rehearsals,” says Watson. “At the time I was looking for a new challenge so I went along. And then Wayne turned up and I thought, ‘OK that's new!’” He laughs. “I’d never seen anyone move in that way. My initial reaction was to think, ‘I can’t do this – or that!’”

Apparently, however, he did not transmit any such doubts to McGregor who specifically remembers Watson’s “can-do attitude” alongside his “striking physicality, long limbs and a quality of something ‘other’, almost alien, about him which held enormous expressive potential.” This first encounter was the beginning of a prolific artistic relationship that has seen McGregor create starring roles for Watson in more than 12 new works for the Royal Ballet as well as numerous collaborations in opera, contemporary dance and beyond. The total immersion required by the creative process means that Watson responds to the question of his favourite role with, “usually whichever I’ve done last!” Top two? He picks Acis in Acis and Galatea – a rare collaboration between the Royal Opera and Ballet companies which McGregor directed in 2009 – and Woolf Works, the choreographer’s multi-award-winning ballet of 2015, in which Watson dances (among other parts) the shell-shocked war veteran Septimus Warren Smith from Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway.

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McGregor is the most restless, constantly questing of artists – forever in search of new potentials in human movement and greater expressive possibilities for dance. Over the years, Watson has become one of the foremost exponents of his choreography, honing the virtuosity, precision and emotional power he brings to whatever challenge he is presented with. Typically modest, it is this willingness to explore rather than his extraordinary talent, to which he attributes the richness and longevity of the partnership. “I’ve always offered myself up to whatever it is. I don’t have a particular thing that I will or won’t do – I imagine that kind of person is useful to Wayne. I don’t want to be typecast. I’m different every day, so I enjoy the challenge of doing something different every day.” The choreographer agrees, describing Watson as an outstanding artist who is continuously developing. “He’s a hard-working team player who doesn’t set limits for himself. People always ask, is a great dancer born or made? I think they’re made. Ed has a hunger to keep pushing outside his limits – as well as of course, amazing facility and creativity.” McGregor has a history of mentoring and championing dance-makers whether through supporting emerging choreographers or encouraging established dance-artists to extend the application of their talents and experience. When General Manager Michael Moody asked him to help bring dance to the Grange Festival, he hit upon the idea of involving some of the eminent dancers he has been associated with over the years – inviting them not just to perform but to work alongside him in the role of co-curator. “These are incredibly creative individuals with a vast knowledge and understanding of dance,” he says. “Not only does the opera festival benefit from that, but the dancers get to exercise another part of their creative brain and we broaden our collaboration with a new direction.” The choreographer plans to invite a different dancer each year to curate the evening alongside him, “and it made sense to ask Ed in this first year precisely because of our long-standing artistic partnership.”

The Grange is the first country house opera venue to programme dance. How have the curators of the inaugural evening of Dance@TheGrange approached the challenge of programming for an opera-loving audience who may also have enjoyed ballet but perhaps be less familiar with contemporary dance? “The idea is about blurring boundaries,” McGregor says. “If you think about the shoulders of greatness that we’re standing on, they could be Merce Cunningham’s shoulders or Frederick Ashton’s – these days it doesn’t matter. We want to show that you can see a beautiful, classical pas de deux alongside something more gritty and contemporary and follow the golden thread that runs between them.” McGregor himself comes from a contemporary dance background and has been making works for his own company for over 20 years. Despite a lack of formal ballet training the huge success of his ongoing appointment as Resident Choreographer at The Royal Ballet since 2006 is testament to the inclusivity of dance in modern times.

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Infra. Edward Watson © ROH. Photo by Bill Cooper

“The idea is to take excerpts of Wayne’s works for his own company and also in ballet and then put them alongside classical pieces. It might be ballet dancers performing the contemporary works or vice versa. We want to show a range of what dance is, what it can do, and how it looks on different kinds of dancers,” says Watson. So how does one go about selecting an excerpt from such an iconic oeuvre? “We’ve gone for dances that were originally standalone pieces, rather than ripping something like the balcony scene out of Romeo and Juliet and making it fit somewhere else,” Watson explains. “For example, Méditation from Thaïs was inspired by a musical intermezzo in Massenet’s opera Thaïs. But the pas de deux that Ashton created was made for Antoinette Sibley and Anthony Dowell to perform at a gala and wasn’t connected to the plot of the opera. So the classical pieces we’ve picked

were character studies or episodes that later became the starting points for longer works.” McGregor and Watson are hopeful that their ambitious and diverse programme will prove an exciting experience for both the uninitiated and those with extensive knowledge of dance. “It’s not a traditional evening by any means,” says Watson. “More like a snapshot of British dance over the last couple of centuries. Even if people have an idea about dance, or the kind of music that suits it – it will hopefully open up their minds to what else it can be.” “Dance technique has developed to facilitate artistic freedom, not the other way around,” says McGregor. “Technique isn’t fixed – it’s pliable and has endless potential. It can be taken out of its traditional context and still be rigorous, just rigorous in a different way. Hopefully audiences will see that common thread in all the performances and be and intrigued to find out more.”

Uzma Hameed

AGR I P P I NA H A N DEL

T H E G R A N G E F E S T I VA L

AG R I P P I NA H A N DE L

Sung in Italian with English surtitles by Kenneth Chalmers

Conductor Robert Howarth Director Walter Sutcliffe Musical Preparation Michael Chance Designer Jon Bausor Lighting Designer Wolfgang Göbbel T H E AC A D E M Y O F A N C I E N T M U S I C Leader Bojan Čičić Assistant Conductor Oliver John Ruthven Assistant Director Katharina Kastening Repetiteur Oliver John Ruthven Language Coach Matteo Dalle Fratte Production Manager Tom Nickson Costume Supervisor Sydney Florence

CA S T Claudio Ashley Riches Agrippina Anna Bonitatibus Nerone Raffaele Pe Poppea Stefanie True Ottone Christopher Ainslie Pallante Alex Otterburn Narciso James Hall Lesbo Jonathan Best This production is proudly supported by

The performance on 28 June is sponsored by

Sarasin & Partners

June | 8, 16, 23, 28 July | 6

Premièred in Venice at the Teatro San Giovanni Grisostomo on 26 December 1709. The British première of the opera was at Abingdon, Oxfordshire, on 27 June 1963. The edition of Agrippina used in these performances is published by Bärenreiter-Verlag, Kassel, edited by Patricia B Brauner. Performed by arrangement with Faber Music Ltd, London.

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Synopsis An Empire

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When her husband, the Roman emperor Claudius (Claudio), is apparently drowned at sea, Agrippina plots for her son Nero (Nerone) from a previous marriage, to be his successor. In fact, Claudius has been saved by Otho (Ottone) and the imminent coronation of Nero is abandoned. Otho arrives and tells Agrippina that Claudius, in gratitude, has appointed him his successor. Otho also tells her that he, Otho has fallen in love with Poppea. Agrippina, aware that Claudius also loves Poppea, tells Poppea that Otho has agreed to give her to Claudius in return for the crown. She suggests to Poppea that by telling Claudius that Otho has refused Poppea access to him, the emperor will dismiss Otho from the throne.

Poppea explains to Claudius that whereas she once thought Otho had betrayed him, it was in fact Nero, whom she then reveals hiding behind a curtain in her room. Claudius dismisses his stepson, who informs his mother of Poppea’s treachery. Agrippina confronts Claudius, berates him for succumbing to Poppea’s influence, and claims that Otho loves Poppea, thereby forcing Claudius to summon all three. He orders Nero to marry Poppea and leaves the succession with Otho, who requests that he might forego the crown for Poppea’s hand in marriage. Claudius agrees, and blesses Poppea and Otho’s marriage.

Interval

AC T T WO Otho claims his reward from Claudius who denounces him as a traitor. He is then vilified by Agrippina, Poppea and Nero. But Poppea begins to doubt his guilt, and eventually Otho convinces her of his innocence. Agrippina then tells Claudius that Otho is plotting against him and persuades him to appoint Nero emperor.

Historical note: Agrippina was unique amongst Handel’s well-known operas in not being performed in London in the 18C. The first UK performance, 254 years after the Venice premiere of 1709, occurred on 27 June 1963 at the Unicorn Theatre in Abingdon, Oxon. It was the third of a series of 15 Handel revivals, the brain-child of former actor and Handel enthusiast Alan Kitching. He translated and directed; the conductor was Frances Kitching.

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Of Demigods and Monsters The Royal Place, Stockholm, circa 1650. Her Majesty Queen Christina of Sweden was in a reverie, sitting in a great carved oak chair, staring at nothing in particular – a book had slipped from her hands and was lodged in the thick folds of her scarlet silk dress. She was dreaming of … music, of singing, of ONE singer in particular. A light tap on the door broke the silence. “Come”, she said. A secretary, young, dark, clad in black, entered, stood just within the door, and bowed. “Majesty …” “Yes, what is it?” “I beg Your Majesty’s pardon for intruding, but you wished to be told when the ambassador returned …” “Ah, so he is back … and about time, too!” “Yes, Ma’am.” “Well, don’t just stand there, send him to me!” “Yes, Ma’am.” He scuttled out of the door, and Christina once more stared into space – but now a smile played on her lips, and her eyes were full of expectation. A minute passed, then there came another tap at the door. “ … at last …,” she murmured. Then, out loud, “Come.” This time a much older, grey-haired man entered, tall, bearded and moustachioed, almost painfully thin, slightly stooping. Clad from head to foot in dark blue brocade, he bowed to the young queen, whom he had known all her life. “Majesty …” “Ah, Mister Ambassador, you are right welcome!” She almost ran across the room, hands out before her. He bent his knee and kissed her hand. “Come now, what news of our enemy?”

“The Polish camp is in some disarray, a whole band of mercenaries has just departed for want of pay, and this wet weather makes them all miserable, His Majesty in particular.” “What, in spite of all the musical entertainment I understand he is enjoying? Did you hear any of that?” “Yes, Majesty, most opulent and extraordinary.” “Ah, and the singing?” “Most remarkable.” “Did you hear … him? Did you hear Maestro Ferri, the musico?” “Yes, Ma’am.” “Well, man?! … and …?” “An artist of unbelievable brilliance, a voice of unimaginable beauty.” “I knew it, I knew it! … and … did you give His Most Gracious Polish Majesty my letter?” “Of course, Ma’am”. “Well, well – and will he come? Will Maestro Ferri come to us as I requested?” “His Majesty was most amused by your letter.” “Was he, indeed!” “Yes, Ma’am … but he is a man of culture, and told me that, for him, the lyre of Apollo has more power than the sword of Mars: he agrees to an armistice so that Maestro Ferri may pass through his lines.” “God be praised! When?” “The Italian singer is even now en route, and should be here within three days.” “Capital, capital … thank you, Mister Ambassador, you have made me very happy, and I shall not forget.” “Yes, majesty.” He bowed again and left. Christina’s reverie returned: “at last, at last …”, she murmured.

Costume drama this may be, but such a scene was certainly played out: Queen Christina of Sweden was one of many, noble and ordinary, to be captivated by the musici, (a euphemism for castrati), and no war was going to get in the way of her desire to hear Maestro Baldassare Ferri, the first of the star castrati. For more than two hundred

years these extraordinary “machines made for singing” excited fanaticism and disgust in equal measure, giving rise to gossip and scandal every bit as much as they inspired some of the finest music ever written for the human voice. They can certainly be regarded as the first rock stars of music, singing demigods of genius and notoriety.

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The origins of singing eunuchs in European society are still uncertain – there were many such in Byzantium until the sacking of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade in 1204, when they disappear from all historical record. They reappeared in Spain, France and Italy during the first half of the sixteenth century. During Spain’s long Muslim occupation, eunuchs had been frequently employed as “useful” servants in the harem (and elsewhere), but were not known as singers. Perhaps under the influence of the Italian Queen Catherine de Medici (married to Henri II, King of France from 1547 to 1559), castrati were “all the rage” at the French court, to a degree never matched afterwards (French opera preferred the high tenor hautecontre for its heroes). In Catherine’s native

Basilica in Rome to include “four eunuchs, if skilful ones can be found”. Already recognised as more powerful than contemporary falsettisti, and more long-lasting than the more transitory boy treble, within a few years their destiny was sealed by the rise of the form which was to remain their principle sphere of operations for two centuries, namely opera. The conventions of Italian serious baroque opera, the opera seria, took several decades to become fixed, but those conventions and the castrati were a perfect fit: high voices suited roles of high status, so soprano kings, gods, and emperors became the rule – tenors and basses were fit only for generals, old men, and other people of little importance. A young castrato trained in singing and all other branches of musical and rhetorical art

“Excited fanaticism and disgust in equal measure, giving rise to gossip and scandal every bit as much as they inspired some of the finest music ever written for the human voice” Italy, several noble families showed an early interest in castrati, perhaps thinking of them as a “must-have-latest-thing”, in a very modern sense. Guglielmo Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua from 1550 to 1587, was clearly as crazy about them as Christina was, as many surviving letters of his bear witness. One of his talent scouts, frustrated by problems in obtaining such singers, even suggested that the Duke’s doctors could perform the notorious “operation” on suitable local boys to preserve their voices in the required unbroken state. Aristocratic fashion-following is one thing, but it is a far cry from more generalised fame and fortune. It is perhaps down to coincidence as much as to anything else that the castrati became as famous as they did. In 1589 Pope Sixtus V’s bulla “Cum pro nostro pastorali munere” reorganised the choir of St Peter’s

for hours per day during a period of six or seven years. With no adolescent “voice break” to interrupt this process, he would usually make his début in his late teens. If he had a good face and figure, he might do so in a female role – in Rome, all parts in the opera, irrespective of gender, were played by men – this was also promulgated by Papal ordinance. It is not difficult to discern how such matters led to the multi-layered reputations that many castrati enjoyed. Their vocal prowess resulted from endless hours of practice combined with a unique and anomalous anatomy: testosterone not only signals the adolescent “growth spurt”, it also informs the bone-joints when they should harden, and without that signalling many castrati became very long in the limb as well as huge in the chest. The latter gave them

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huge breath capacity to be used on child-sized vocal cords, resulting in astounding abilities in both flexibility and “breath control”. One aria in the repertoire of perhaps the most famous castrato of all, Carlo Broschi, known as “Farinelli”, has a passage containing around a thousand notes in a phrase lasting about a minute, and with nowhere to breathe. To him this was meat and drink, but no wonder one of his high-class admirers in London reacted to his singing with the notorious blasphemy, “One God, one Farinelli!” By many accounts a modest, cultured man, Farinelli was nonetheless pilloried endlessly in the popular press, the gossip columnists of the day accusing him of debauching the youth of England, wrecking the nation’s economy (because of his huge fees), and of “being a wench with child”(!) Like many castrati, his extended arms and legs made him a frequent subject of caricature. Sex and money are always “good copy”, and controversies about both followed the castrati everywhere. Farinelli’s great contemporary and rival Gaetano Majorano (“Caffarelli”), though a great artist, was perhaps the ultimate “scandalous divo”. A notorious womaniser, he was once caught in flagrante by his noble mistress’s husband, and had to take refuge overnight in a water cistern in her back garden. He caught a cold and had to cancel a month’s performances. One might well ask how such an affair could have been

consummated – many modern authorities would aver that without testosterone, normal sexual activity is impossible, but others have said that hormones aren’t essential, just nerve-endings. In any case, what exactly did Caffarelli’s mistress want from him? A piece of his fame, or of his notoriety? Had she heard the story that a eunuch lover was slow to rise, but of great endurance? Or was he less of a threat to her than a “whole” man would have been? Such myth-making has always been a part of stardom, and always will be. Stars rise and fall by the whim of fashion, and in all of music history, no star rose more vertiginously than that of the castrati. Even before the ancien régime began to crumble in the fires and slaughter of the French revolution, the opera seria’s hegemony in the European theatre had begun to weaken. “Simplicity” and “realism” were the new watchwords, and the very artificiality of almost everything about the castrati counted against them. They faded from operatic stages by the 1820s and only lingered in the choirs of Rome’s basilicas, the “Last Castrato”, Alessandro Moreschi, retiring from the Papal service in 1913. Known as “The Angel of Rome”, he can even be heard on recordings, a distant echo of those exquisite monsters of the eighteenthcentury stage, whose performances gave rise to the ecstatic cry, “Long live the knife!” ©

Nicholas Clapton

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Handel and Hampshire

Portrait of George Frideric Handel John Theodore Heins ÂŠ Dauerleihgabe der Stiftung der Saalesparkasse

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Few people in Hampshire may be aware that the County Record Office in Winchester holds an important collection of letters relating to Handel in the years from 1736 to his death in 1759. The letters form part of the papers of the Harris family, Earls of Malmesbury, and centre on James Harris (1709–80). The family seat is now in Hampshire but this James lived in Salisbury Cathedral Close. Harris made frequent visits to London and other places and became well known to Handel, and during his absences from London like-minded friends and relatives sent enthusiastic accounts of Handel’s doings. These correspondents included his two brothers, Thomas and George; his half-sister Katherine Knatchbull; and his cousin the fourth Earl of Shaftesbury; Charles Jennens, the librettist of Messiah and godfather of one of Harris’s children; and John Robartes Earl of Radnor who gave his fine collection of Handel music manuscripts to Harris. This collection once included ‘some songs in the opera of Agrippina’ which Jennens asked to borrow to complete his own set of Handel’s works; sadly this volume is no longer there. What do these letters tell us about Handel? They show him as a prodigious worker; they (mostly) enthuse about his growing corpus of music; they reflect his changing fortunes as he faced opposition and ill-health; and they picture him at leisure, meeting friends about town, visiting and entertaining them. Shaftesbury visited Handel at home in January 1736, when Handel ‘played and sung’ his newly completed Alexander’s Feast, ‘not yet transcribed from his own hand’, so eagerly that there was little time for conversation. The next year he spent an hour with him after the paralytic attack brought on by over-work. In 1739 he described an evening with his brother-in-law James Noel and Handel, when

Noel read Milton’s Samson Agonistes, Handel improvising ‘whenever he rested to take breath’, his harmony ‘perfectly adapted to the sublimity of the poem’. In the same year Harris himself heard Handel play in Shaftesbury’s London house. We know too that Handel visited Shaftesbury at his country home of Wimborne St Giles because of the survival of a scrap of music composed by Handel there ‘extempore, & afterwards by desire of the company writt down in his own hand writing’. In 1737, while he was still recovering from his paralytic attack, Handel visited Tunbridge Wells and became friendly with another of Harris’s correspondents, John Upton; they ‘dined together every day of the week’ and talked in praise of their mutual friend. The following year Katherine Knatchbull reported a conversation with Handel about his forthcoming oratorio Saul, for which he had ‘introduced the sackbut, a kind of trumpets with more variety of notes… Despise not this description, for I write from his own words.’ Thomas Harris, with Handel and others, dined with Charles Jennens in 1740, when Handel, ‘in good spirits,’ played ‘finely’ on Jennens’ pianoforte’, one of the first to be imported to England. In 1741 Handel dined twice with Radnor (and they drank Harris’s health). George Harris met Handel after another health setback in 1743, ‘airing himself on foot in the Park’; he blamed Handel’s health problems on self-indulgence; he was ‘so much of the Epicure, that he cannot forbear going back to his former luxurious way of living’. And one of the rare letters in the collection from Harris himself records a visit by Handel to Harris’s Salisbury home, where Harris and his friends put on a concert; Handel ‘did us the honour to give us much applause’ and himself played both on the harpsichord and on an organ which Harris had just acquired.

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At the time the correspondence started Handel had been in London for some 25 years and had produced an astonishing output of music, including many Italian operas. Despite his enthusiastic supporters, he faced opposition. Two rival opera companies in succession poached singers, musicians and audience. Powerful disaffected individuals deliberately set up rival attractions; in 1744 Lady Brown ‘engaged every soul that she knew at the play’ on a performance night, and ‘ten assemblies’ were made against him on another occasion, leading to a ‘desolate forsaken house, to the great shame of the Town’. The subscription programme for 1738/9 had to be cancelled for lack of support. Partly in reaction,

‘There seems to be a fair opportunity at present of throwing aside all foreign nonsense and resolving to seek our own good from ourselves.’ Of course the quality of the performers also had its effect. Shaftesbury in 1736 thought the 19-year-old castrato Conti ‘all things considered the best singer I ever heard’ as well as ‘very handsome, a good actor, and very genteel’, while Annibali, the second new castrato, sang ‘with the greatest ease imaginable’, ‘in the most natural rational way’. But Serse in 1738 was sung ‘very indifferently’. ‘For brevity’s sake’ there was no recitative between the airs making it ‘difficult to understand’. At the first performance of Deborah in 1744 Radnor reported that

“At the time the correspondence started Handel had been in London for some 25 years and had produced an astonishing output of music, including many Italian operas” Handel turned increasingly from Italian operas to English oratorios, to the delight of Harris and his friends. Katherine Knatchbull found a performance of Alexander’s Feast in 1739 ‘very warlike and gay’, with ‘a most crowded audience of all the fine world’. The following year Handel reverted to Italian opera with Imeneo. Jennens thought it ‘the worst of all Handel’s compositions’, Radnor that ‘harmony goes on but heavily in these parts’. Thomas Harris was ‘sorry he is leaving English and good choruses for anything of that kind’. In 1744 another friend, Mary Smith, was even more outspoken:

Susanna Cibber had a cold and could not be heard, Mrs Robinson’s voice was ‘but middling’, and Francesina was ‘monstrous fat’ – though the ‘arcaster’ was numerous and ‘very magnificent’. Worse still at the opening of Hercules, Mrs Cibber was taken violently ill, no substitute could be found, and the bass singer Waltz was pulled in ‘to read a few lines here and there of recitative to carry on the sense of the drama’. Harris may have been particularly interested to hear from Jennens in 1740 of additions Handel was making to L’Allegro, since these papers showed for the first time that the

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libretto of this version of Milton’s poem was initially drafted by Harris before completion by Jennens. Jennens knew that more choruses would have been popular with Harris and his friends, but Handel was ‘positive against’ them with three new soloists to provide for. But one of these soloists could sing only in Italian, a second singing in English ‘as well as she can’; Jennens (reasonably) feared that the performance would be prejudiced ‘by reason of the mixture of languages’. His admirers accepted that Handel sometimes contributed to his own problems. He fell out with people who were important to his progress and who had served him well. In 1743 he quarrelled with John Rich, the manager of Covent Garden theatre, about the payment of expenses for an extended oratorio season. The following year he refused a request for help from the ailing Middlesex opera company. Christopher Smyth, his principal copyist, thought he was flying in the face of the Prince of Wales, ‘the Quality’, and ‘even his friends’. Smyth was deeply hurt at Handel’s treatment; ‘according to his repeated promises I expected a better reward for 24 years of slavery and services I have done him.’ In 1739 – the one reference in these letters to Hampshire – Shaftesbury warned Harris of an ‘unaccountable report’ that Handel had been ‘very surly at Southampton’, calling out as he was playing on the organ, ‘Shut the doors or I shall leave off instantly’. Shaftesbury thought this could not be true, but nobody denied Handel’s other problem, his love of high living, which exacerbated his health problems.

Periods of ill-health occurred through the period, causing grave concern to Handel’s admirers. Harris himself wrote of the paralytic attack in 1733, ‘When the fate of harmony depends on a single life, the lovers of harmony may well be allowed to be solicitous’. There are comments that his head seemed sometimes less clear than was wished, and his playing was affected. Serious problems came in 1752 when he lost the sight of one eye, eventually becoming completely blind. He continued working almost to the end, still occasionally playing in public. A small band of loyal supporters remained, for whom he remained ‘our Orpheus’, ‘our great genius’, but audiences were small and often unenthusiastic. Shaftesbury’s wife described him in 1753 as ‘overplayed in musicks cause’; his playing was described in 1756 as ‘the monument of a great genius, not at all a living one’. Nevertheless he kept active, visiting Thomas Harris less than two months before his death. James was urged to come to town to ‘pay a visit to the old blind prophet’. It is gratifying to know that he did, and that the performance of Messiah on 30 March, a fortnight before Handel’s death, was made to a full house. James Harris, whose voice we hear so much less than his correspondents’, should have the last word. ‘Our great genius Handel is dead, the Homer of music’. Fitting praise from a classicist and philosopher.

Rosemary Dunhill

I L BA R B I E R E D I S I V I G L I A RO S S I N I

T H E G R A N G E F E S T I VA L

I L BA R B I E R E DI SI V IG L I A RO S SI N I Sung in Italian with English surtitles by David Parry

Conductor David Parry Director Stephen Barlow Designer Andrew D Edwards Choreographer Mitchell Harper Lighting Designer Howard Hudson B O U R N E M O U T H S Y M P H O N Y O RC H E S T R A Leader Amyn Merchant T H E G R A N G E F E S T I VA L C H O RU S

Chorus Master Tom Primrose Assistant Conductor Assistant Director Repetiteur Language Coach Production Manager Costume Supervisor

Mark Austin Crispin Lord Nick Bosworth Matteo Dalle Fratte Tom Nickson Josie Thomas

CA S T Almaviva Bartolo Rosina Figaro Basilio Berta Fiorello

John Irvin Riccardo Novaro Josè Maria Lo Monaco Charles Rice David Soar Jennifer Rhys-Davies Toby Girling

This production is proudly supported by

Lord and Lady Laidlaw Performance sponsors:

15 June Charles Stanley Wealth Managers / 17 June Meggitt plc / 27 June Stifel June | 9, 15, 17, 22, 27, 30 Première, 20 February 1816, Teatro Argentina, Rome. First performed in England on 10 March 1818 at the King's Theatre in London The edition of Il barbiere di Siviglia used in these performances is published by Bärenreiter-Verlag, Kassel. Performed by arrangement with Faber Music Ltd, London.

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Synopsis Seville

AC T ON E Outside Dr Bartolo’s house, a group of musicians, with the disguised Count Almaviva, serenade Rosina. Rosina, the ward of Bartolo, offers no answer to the musicians’ serenade, the count pays them off and sends them away. Figaro enters, singing about being the city’s factotum. Almaviva asks Figaro for help to win over Rosina. Bartolo leaves the house with plans to marry Rosina. Almaviva serenades Rosina again, telling her his name is Lindoro and that love is all he has to offer. Figaro suggests that Almaviva disguise himself as a poor drunken soldier ordered to stay with Bartolo. Almaviva is so delighted with the plan, and pays Figaro generously. Inside Bartolo’s house, Rosina taken with Lindoro’s song, sings about the voice she has just heard. She writes a letter to Lindoro, while secretly planning a way to escape from Bartolo. Moments later, Figaro joins her, but the two quickly leave at the sound of footsteps. Bartolo arrives with Don Basilio, a music tutor. Basilio tells Bartolo that Almaviva competes with him to win the hand of Rosina, and that Bartolo must slander Almaviva’s name. Figaro overhears that Bartolo plans to marry Rosina the following day, and persuades her to give him the letter she has written to Lindoro so that he can deliver it. Alone with Bartolo, Rosina is questioned and reminded that Bartolo is unable to be tricked. Midway through his interrogation, they are interrupted by the sound of vigorous knocking on the door. Berta, Bartolo’s maid, answers the door to find Almaviva as the drunken soldier. She brings him up to Bartolo. As the two men argue, Almaviva manages to pass a letter to Rosina, whispering to her that he is Lindoro. Bartolo sees this and demands Rosina hand him the letter. She complies, but gives him her laundry list instead. Figaro rushes into the room, warning them that their incessant arguing has attracted a crowd, and that authorities are on their way to settle the dispute. Bartolo, Berta and Basilio take pleasure in watching the authorities take the disguised Almaviva away from the house.

Before he is escorted to jail, they are quickly amazed when he is released without any fuss. Almaviva only had to whisper his identity to them before they complied with letting him go. Interval

AC T T WO Disguised as the substitute music teacher of Don Basilio, Almaviva arrives to tutor Rosina. Bartolo is hesitant at first to let him in, but after Almaviva shows him Rosina’s letter to Lindoro, Bartolo invites him in. Almaviva tells Bartolo that he plans to discredit Lindoro, as he thinks he is a servant to and doing the bidding for Count Almaviva. When Almaviva enters the room, Rosina instantly recognises him as her suitor and the two begin their lesson. Figaro arrives to give Bartolo his scheduled shave and takes him to another room, stealing a key to the balcony along the way, leaving Almaviva and Rosina alone. Don Basilio shows up looking much better, but is quickly turned away when Almaviva bribes him. Almaviva and Rosina discuss their plans to elope, but are overheard by Bartolo. He immediately pushes Figaro and Almaviva out of the house and sends Rosina to her room. Bartolo, then, calls for Basilio. Berta is in a faff from all the confusion. Bartolo convinces Rosina that Lindoro is just a henchman of Count Almaviva. Later that evening after a large thunderstorm, Almaviva dressed as his true self arrives with Figaro. The two men climb up to the balcony and unlock Rosina’s door. As they begin to abduct Rosina, she initially protests. After Almaviva explains that he has been in disguise as Lindoro the whole time, she quickly falls for him. As they start to leave the house, Basilio arrives with a notary intending to marry Rosina and Bartolo. After another bribe, Basilio allows the notary to marry Almaviva and Rosina instead. Once the marriage is officiated, Bartolo arrives. Almaviva makes a deal with Bartolo that allows Bartolo to keep the dowry, and Rosina and Almaviva remain together without any objections.

Fig. 1: The Golden Throated Profit in full voice.

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I L BA R BI ER E DI SIV IGLI A

Rossini’s Radical Jest

Costume designs for Il barbiere di Siviglia by Andrew D Edwards

‘Above all, make lots of Barbers!’ Beethoven is said to have told Rossini when the two men met in Vienna in 1822. Beethoven might have had doubts about the ability of this new young Italianborn superstar to write operas on heavyweight subjects, but he clearly threw his cap in the air when he encountered Il barbiere di Siviglia, the dazzling two-act opera buffa which the 23-yearold Rossini had written for Rome in 1816. And no wonder. The opera’s verve, originality and sudden detonations of comic energy have all the hallmarks of a work such as Beethoven’s own uproarious and subversive Eighth Symphony, completed just four years earlier. The opera was based on Le Barbier de Séville, a prose comedy by the French entrepreneurturned-playwright Pierre-Augustin Caron – Beaumarchais as he renamed himself – first staged in 1775. Such was the popularity of the play, and its more radical sequel Le Mariage de Figaro, both works were quickly turned into operas. The earlier comedy was adapted by the Italian court composer Giovanni Paisiello (St Petersburg, 1782), whose setting quickly became one of the most frequently revived operas of the age; the later one by Mozart, whose Le nozze di Figaro enjoyed rather more modest success with contemporary audiences after its premiere in Vienna in 1786. Since known texts could be appropriated and treated in striking new ways, the young Rossini

was often attracted to subjects older or less able composers had already used. One such target for a hostile takeover was Paisiello’s Il barbiere di Siviglia, an unnecessarily decorous setting of Beaumarchais’s revolutionary comedy, with its sense of the imminent subversion of the politics and class divisions of the Ancien Régime. Rossini and his 31-year-old librettist, Vatican treasury official and man of letters Cesare Sterbini, read Beaumarchais’s play with a keener eye. That said, it was the disruptive drive of Rossini’s music – a phenomenon we encounter the moment Figaro steps on stage with his famously explosive entrance aria – that took the public by the ears, unnerving audiences and challenging settled opinion. We tend to forget that during the composer’s lifetime Il barbiere was not, by some distance, Rossini’s most popular opera. Reviewing the London première in March 1818, the essayist Leigh Hunt condemned the piece outright, snootily remarking that the challenge to Paisiello ‘was not a piece of ambition in the best taste’. It was left to oddball music-lovers, such as the satirical novelist Thomas Love Peacock, to catch the work’s measure. As he put in, in terms Adam Smith might have admired, ‘The public taste has changed, and the supply of the market has followed the demand. There can be no question that Rossini’s music is more spirit-stirring than Paisiello’s, and more essentially theatrical’.

T H E G R A N G E F E S T I VA L

It used to be said that the opera was written in ‘thirteen days’. Fifty-seven days is nearer the mark but such rapidity of dispatch was not unusual for composers who had honed their skills and perfected their forms early. As Verdi observed, ‘[Handel’s] Israel in Egypt in fifteen days, [Mozart’s] Don Giovanni in a month, Il barbiere di Siviglia in eighteen [sic] days. Those men did not have exhausted blood, were well-balanced natures, had their heads on squarely, and knew what they wanted’.

Rossini, who had a congenital fear of any form of violence, wasn’t there to enjoy it. At first glance, Beaumarchais’s play is a stereotypical comedy: lascivious elderly gentleman (Dr Bartolo) fancies his pretty teenage ward (Rosina) who has eyes only for a handsome young buck (Count Almaviva disguised as ‘Lindoro’). What gives the comedy an entirely new dimension is the extraordinary resourcefulness of the character who stage-manages the action: a witty,

“It is not often that Rossini is compared with Shakespeare, yet he shares with Shakespeare the trick of being able to ‘layer’ his comedy” Since Rossini had probably been imagining his own adaptation of Le Barbier since he was a teenager, it’s hardly surprising that when an opportunity arose during the carnival season in Rome in 1816 he seized it with avidity. Out of deference to the elderly Paisiello, he called the new adaptation Almaviva. Not that it helped. The opera’s first night was wrecked by a hired claque of Paisiello followers, ably assisted by local bovver boys and an underprepared cast that was more than usually accidentprone. The grotesquely made-up Don Basilio, for instance, tripped on a loose board, broke his nose, and had to sing his ‘Calumny’ aria whilst trying to staunch the flow of blood. The next morning, Rossini scribbled a note to his mother declaring that his opera had been solemnly booed by a characteristically unpredictable Italian audience but that the music was ‘very fine’ and would be better received when it was actually heard. The second night was, indeed, a triumph, though

peripatetic specialist in ‘shaves, romances and marriages’, Almaviva’s erstwhile valet Figaro. A vital enough figure in Beaumarchais’s play, Figaro becomes even more so in Rossini’s opera, thanks mainly to Rossini and Sterbini stripping out Figaro’s often gloom-laden memories of his childhood and his years as a literary hack. What we are left with in the opera is Figaro the fixer: a barber-cum-valet whose impulse and concentrated energy echo the world of mechanised, high-speed motion which, by 1816, science, technology and a quarter of a century of war had unleashed across Europe. Rossini and Sterbini also proved to be masters of distillation. Take the moment near the start of Act 1 when Almaviva prepares to serenade Rosina beneath her balcony. In the original play, we are told (at some length) that the Count has no idea what he is going to sing, is nervous about his guitar technique, and is fearful of waking Rosina’s guardian, Dr Bartolo. None of this detail survives in Sterbini’s libretto, yet

I L BA R BI ER E DI SIV IGLI A

Almaviva’s canzone (‘Se il mio nome’) says it all. Sterbini’s verse lines are deliberately fractured, whilst Rossini’s music is similarly irregular in key, phrasing and the lie of the vocal line. The result is an aria that is both a bel canto classic and a realistic portrait of a man sick with nerves. Rosina’s cavatina ‘Una voce poco fa’ similarly distils Rosine’s letter-writing monologue in Le Barbier de Séville in a way which captures to perfection a character who, paradoxically, is both coy and assertive. As Beaumarchais explains, ‘an unjust man will make a schemer out of innocence itself’. It helped that Beaumarchais was himself a gifted musician whose plays are freighted with music and musical references. When Figaro describes Bartolo as ‘a stoutish, shortish, oldish, greyish, cunning, smarmy, posing, nosing, peeping, prying, creeping, whining, snivelling sort of man’, Beaumarchais is conjuring up the kind of verbal firework display Rossini loved to mimic in music. In Don Basilio’s calumny speech, Beaumarchais actually catalogues the dynamic extremes Rossini will later use in his musical treatment: piano, piano – pianissimo – rinforzando – crescendo – the great colpo di cannone [cannon-blow] itself. It is not often that Rossini is compared with Shakespeare, yet he shares with Shakespeare the trick of being able to ‘layer’ his comedy, building sequences from the most abstruse musical materials that are capable of delighting groundlings and cognoscenti alike. How his teachers back in Bologna must have wondered at the quick-fire second part of Dr Bartolo’s Act 1 aria which is in full sonata form, as befits the doctor’s academic status. And how they might have marvelled at the scene in Act 2 where Figaro is desperate for the lovers to escape, which they inconveniently fail to do. There are

reasons for their fatal delay. First, they can’t stop canoodling. Secondly, the Trio needs its cabaletta: that quick-fire coda without which no big-scale musical movement is formally complete. Many of Rossini’s best jokes are the musical ones, a skill he learned from Mozart and, more particularly, from Haydn whose string quartets he had studied, played and loved from an early age. The great Act 1 finale and the Act 2 Quintet, in which Don Basilio is bribed back to bed having been convinced by the assembled company that he is suffering from scarlet fever, are other examples of movements that make witty use of all manner of abstruse musical devices. However radical a piece like Il barbiere seemed at the time, Rossini himself was a kindly, conservative-minded soul who preferred to play the role of bystander, observing humanity’s follies and intrigues from a distance. Born in 1792 into a time of war and revolution, he was acutely aware of the thinness of the ice on which civilisation skates, as we can hear in those whirring ‘stop the world I want to get off’ Act 1 finales, where the characters are reduced to a state of catalepsy as they desperately try to work out who is duping whom. Verdi, like Beethoven, harboured doubts about some of Rossini’s grander opere serie but he loved Il barbiere. ‘For abundance of ideas, comic verve, and truth of declamation, I cannot help believing that it is the most beautiful opera buffa in existence’. Coming from the composer of Falstaff that is no mean tribute.

Richard Osborne Richard Osborne’s books include the Master Musicians Rossini (revised edition, Oxford University Press, 2007) and Herbert von Karajan: A Life in Music. His edition of Ferdinand Hiller’s absorbing 1855 Plaudereien mit Rossini [Conversations with Rossini], the first to be published in English, appeared earlier this year.

T H E G R A N G E F E S T I VA L

Opera Buffa

I L BA R BI ER E DI SIV IGLI A

Think for a moment, not of Seville (or of Westphalia, or of rural Turkey). Think of Naples. Think of ice-cream, gaudily-coloured and delicious. Of pizza that dribbles down your chin. Of impassioned, exuberant lovesongs that vault the arpeggios. Of passion unrestrained, and perhaps a certain roughness around the edges. A vigorous and delightful exuberance in its underclasses, a sexiness, a rebelliousness against undeserving authority. A place of hot sun and hot tempers. Think of a tendency to volcanic eruptions. Think of opera buffa, which is all of these. In the early sixteenth century those seething Neapolitan streets provided the setting for that most Italian of theatrical forms, the commedia dell’arte. Thanks to our

our ‘Englishman, Irishman, Scotsman’ gags, and our Carry On films.) The consequent confusions and misunderstandings drove the plots. Further mirth bubbled from the frequent use of gender-reversal, of class-representatives in disguise, and of the skilful handling of hecklers. A pair of young lovers. You had to have at least one pair of young lovers. Love had, however, to conquer a great deal. The obstacles in its way were outwitted by ziani, scheming, resourceful male servants who could trace their ancestry back to ancient Rome, and of whom Arlecchino – Harlequin – is the classic example. The comic front-men of Plautus may have been his ancestors: his descendants were called Figaro, Leporello, Pedrillo, Candide. But we are getting ahead of ourselves…

“A place of hot sun and hot tempers. Think of a tendency to volcanic eruptions. Think of opera buffa, which is all of these” familiarity with twenty-first century improvised comedy, these entertainments are no longer the province of Venetian souvenir mask-shops. We would laugh at commedia today. Its success in performance depended then, as improvised comedy does now, on the skill of professional actors who could conjure up unscripted dialogue within a predetermined scenario. The stock character-types were stereotypical of the regions – indeed the different kingdoms and principalities – of Italy, delivered in dialects incomprehensible to the other members of the cast. (You know the technique. Even we had

The amorous obstacles were raised by a father, guardian, lawyer or doctor: the authority-figures at which Neapolitans in particular loved to cock a snook. This was Pantalone: a walking coconut-shy for mockery and for the practical jokes of the subversive younger generation. He himself, as often as not, would also be in love, making a fool of himself by chasing a much younger girl from a lower social caste. In commedia, she would be Columbina, and she would add to her charm and sentimentality a jigger of knowledgeable pertness, and even a dash of the shrew.

Arlecchino und Colombina. Artist: Giovanni Domenico Ferretti ART Collection / Alamy Stock Photo

T H E G R A N G E F E S T I VA L

(Rosina, Susanna, Blonde, Cunegonde … but let’s not jump the gun.) Harlequin and Columbine were, by definition, made for each other, and they too paired up at the end. Come the early seventeenth century, and Italy already had its serious opera – opera seria, particularly in the northern regions. In Venice, Monteverdi and Cavalli were telling their tales of queens and of gods. Gesualdo and Strozzi were writing their beautiful madrigals and their heart-breaking cantatas. But for the Neapolitans, with their sunshine and their irreverence, this was too unremitting. They would insert (much as the Ancient Greeks used to do) simple, front-cloth entertainments on basic sets, across which the well-loved characters from commedia would strut and fret, but this time singing to music. Such divertimenti were variously called commedia in musica, drama bernesco, divertimenti giocoso. And when in 1733 the great Pergolesi produced La Serva Padrona, opera seria found that it had a livelier little sister. Opera buffa had arrived.

It was not yet what the Germans and Austrians would call Singspiel, nor the French opéra comique. Those two genres would use spoken dialogue between the arias, as is the case with Die Entführung aus dem Serail. The Neapolitans (and quickly following them, the Romans and the Venetians) sang their dialogue, in what was termed recitativo secco. Opera buffa in its early days was characterised by its everyday settings, its vernacular dialects, and its simple style of vocal writing. Its secret weapon was the basso buffo, who had to have very clear diction and a facility with rapid-fire delivery. Here was an operatic form to which the common man could more easily relate. Opera seria was made for, and displayed, royalty, deities, nobility. Opera buffa dealt with ordinary people, with recognisable problems. No high-flown language or abstruse allegory here. No fawning flattery either. As Stephen Sondheim put it (in his own version of opera buffa, A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum): Nothing with kings, nothing with crowns, Bring on the lovers, liars and clowns. …

Its musical style was dictated by the comic text, fleetly responding to the chaotic sequences of events. The result tended to be shorter phrase-lengths, strong melodic catchiness, and simpler orchestral writing. The feel was much more modern. There was variety. Madrigals and serenades which might have been heard in the streets were tossed in, and the prize was to delight rather than to move. From Pergolesi, the flame passed, and opere buffe were written by the likes of Scarlatti, Logroscino and Galuppi. Across Europe it spread during the following centuries. Donizetti’s Don Pasquale, Ristori’s Calandro, Storace’s Gli Equivoci, Cimarosa’s La Finta Parigina, and – very much later – Menotti’s Amelia Goes to the Ball are the Italian exemplars still performed today. From further North came Haydn’s Il mondo della luna and, of course, Mozart’s La Finta Semplice, Lo sposa deluso, and, magnificently, La nozze di Figaro. In more recent times, Stravinsky’s Mavra and Penderecki’s Ubu Rex have borne the torch. Sullivan’s Major-General salutes them. And Bernstein’s Candide, cross-grafted onto the American musical, flashes its same gaudy, albeit by now diluted, ancestry.

Beaumarchais was the librettist who brought us Figaro. In Mozart’s hands, in 1786, his story could also encompass pathos and nobility. Rossini – more feted and long-lived than Mozart – brought different qualities to his sequel. With huge success, he had standardised the characters in the deluge of opere buffe which he would produce. The soprano, or mezzo, was the prima donna soubrette whom Bernstein would later satirise. There was a light, lovelorn tenor. The basso cantante was a baritone able to express himself lyrically, and usually ironically. And the basso buffo had also to join in with the baritone in comic duets. These combined, particularly in Rossini’s writing, in what was the genre’s most important innovation: its elaborate ensembles. Opera seria focussed on the solo arias which showed off the singers’ vocal skills. In buffa, the respect was accorded to those composers who could keep several

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The Music Party, 1774. Artist: Trinquesse, Louis Rolland (c.1746–1800) Heritage Image Partnership Ltd / Alamy Stock Photo

melodic ping-pong balls atop the fountain, each displaying comic contrast and conflicting emotions. As the critic Michael Tanner wrote: ‘However much Rossini’s characters may loathe one another, they love collaborating.’ The result is that these ensembles are given ‘an incremental force not to be found in Mozart’s operas, where the characters maintain their individuality, rather than joining their voices for purely musical effect.’ Verdi was, in 1898, to declare Il barbiere di Siviglia ‘the most beautiful opera buffa in existence.’ If one agrees that Mozart took

his own treatment of the Figaro story beyond and above the boundaries of the genre, Verdi was right. Beethoven certainly agreed. When in 1822 the ebullient Rossini met the great German, who was living in squalor in Vienna, he was less than thrilled to receive the compliment “Never try to write anything but opera buffa; any attempt to succeed in another style would endanger your nature. Give us only Barbers.” It was not what Rossini wanted to hear, but many would second Beethoven’s verdict on what is beyond question Rossini’s masterpiece.

Kit Hesketh-Harvey

THE A B D U C T I ON F ROM T H E S E R AGLI O MO Z A RT

T H E G R A N G E F E S T I VA L

T H E A B DU C T ION F ROM T H E SE RAG L IO MOZ A RT Sung in English in a new translation by David Parry

Conductor Director Designer Lighting Designer Translation and Dialogue

Jean-Luc Tingaud John Copley Tim Reed Kevin Treacy David Parry

B O U R N E M O U T H S Y M P H O N Y O RC H E S T R A Leader Amyn Merchant T H E G R A N G E F E S T I VA L C H O RU S

Chorus Master Tom Primrose

Assistant Conductor Assistant Director Repetiteur Director's Dramaturg Production Manager Costume Supervisor

Tom Primrose Christopher Moon-Little Richard Leach Calvin Wells Tom Nickson Kate Lyons

CA S T Pasha Selim Alexander Andreou Konstanze Kiandra Howarth Blonde Daisy Brown Belmonte Ed Lyon Pedrillo Paul Curievici Osmin Jonathan Lemalu This production is proudly supported by

Performance sponsors:

26 June Hunters Solicitors June | 24, 26, 29 July | 1, 7 Première 16th July 1782 in the Burgtheater, Vienna First performed in England at Covent Garden on 9 November 1827. The musical edition used in these performances is published by Bärenreiter-Verlag, Kassel. Performed by arrangement with Faber Music Ltd, London.

T H E A B D U C T I O N F RO M T H E S E R AG L I O

Synopsis Turkey

AC T ON E

AC T T WO

Pasha Selim has bought three slaves from pirates – Konstanze, a young Spanish lady; Blonde, her English maid; and Pedrillo, who is the servant of Konstanze’s fiancé, Belmonte, and in love with Blonde. Belmonte has traced them to the Pasha’s palace, where Konstanze has become the Pasha’s favourite. The Pasha has made Pedrillo his gardener and has given Blonde to Osmin, his palace overseer. At the palace gate, Belmonte meets Osmin, who treats him coolly and flies into a rage when Belmonte asks about Pedrillo, Osmin’s rival. Osmin drives Belmonte away and then rants at Pedrillo when he suggests that they should finally make peace. Belmonte returns and learns from Pedrillo that the pasha has fallen in love with Konstanze but will not force himself on her. Pedrillo will try to arrange a meeting between Konstanze and Belmonte and an escape by boat with Blonde. Konstanze returns from a pleasure trip with the Pasha. He has been treating her with respect but she cannot forget Belmonte and keeps rejecting his advances. Pedrillo introduces Belmonte to the Pasha as a promising young architect and Selim welcomes him. Osmin tries to bar the way as Belmonte and Pedrillo enter the palace, but they force their way past him.

Konstanze finds Blonde and laments her sad situation. When the Pasha again asks her to marry him, she tells him she would prefer torture, even death, to betraying her fiancé. Blonde and Pedrillo discuss the escape plan: they will get Osmin drunk and the four of them will leave on Belmonte’s ship. Even though Osmin’s religion forbids him to drink wine, Pedrillo has no difficulty in getting him drunk, leaving the coast clear for the two couples to meet.

AC T T WO

PA RT T WO

AC T T H R E E That night, Belmonte and Pedrillo come to the ladies’ window with a ladder. Pedrillo sings a serenade as the signal for escape, but this wakes Osmin, who is not too hungover to realise what is going on. The four are locked up. When brought before the Pasha, Belmonte suggests he collect a ransom from his wealthy family. At the mention of this name, the Pasha realises that Belmonte is the son of an old enemy, the man who exiled him from his own country. He decides to repay evil with good, freeing Konstanze and Belmonte, and even Blonde and Pedrillo. The grateful couples praise their benefactor as they prepare to set sail.

PA RT O N E

In the palace garden, Blonde explains to Osmin how a European woman should be treated. Interval

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The Harems No Ottoman institution has attracted more scrutiny over the centuries, or fuelled more prurient speculation, than the harem. Thomas Dallam, a London organ maker sent to assemble an organ for the sultan in Constantinople, as a gift from Queen Elizabeth I, took a rare peep inside the sultan’s seraglio at Topkapi Palace in 1599. Standing at the grilled window, he thought he was looking at a crowd of boys before he noticed their plaits, and ‘britchis of scamatie, a fine cloth made of coton woll, as whyte as snow and as fine as lane; for I could desarne the skin of their thies through it.’ His guide got nervous, ‘and stamped with his foute to make me give over looking; the which I was verrie loth to dow, for that sighte did please me wondrous well.’ Yet the popular image of the harem as a place where scores of scantily dressed odalisques vied to satisfy the sexual demands of a single man is misleading. Even sultans, with some notable exceptions, tended to be family men who liked nothing better than a quiet night in. The word ‘harem’, from an Arabic word meaning ‘sacrosanct’ and ‘forbidden’, applies to the division of a traditional Muslim home into two discrete areas. Selamlik was the all-male, public region, linked directly to the world outside, haremlik the areas enjoyed exclusively by the head of the house and the wives, children, female slaves and eunuchs who made up his extended household. The greatest harem, with the largest number of women and eunuchs, was of course the sultan’s seraglio, from the Turkish ‘serail’, meaning palace. It had been a part of Topkapi Palace since the reign of Suleyman the Magnificent, who ruled for decades at the pinnacle of his empire’s grandeur and power in the 16th century, like an Ottoman Queen Victoria. At Topkapi, approached through a small door from the third, imperial court and controlled by a retinue of black eunuchs, the harem was a warren of more than 400 rooms, some mean and small, others airy and beautifully decorated, with baths, reception halls and apartments for the leading ladies of the court. It was hardly the lascivious honey pot of popular imagination. The Ottoman state was a meritocracy, in which the only hereditary power was the family of Osman: all other functionaries, at least in the early centuries, were recruited as slaves. Harsh as it may seem, it was a system which could give even a poor shepherd boy the opportunity to rise by his talents, and aspire to the highest offices in the empire. The sultan’s household was run on similar lines, something like a cross between an exclusive girls’ boarding school and a department of state. Costume designs for The Abduction from the Seraglio Costume designs by Tim Reed

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Its purpose was to ensure the continuity of the dynasty by providing a steady supply of heirs. To the slave-girls who entered the harem, it offered absolute equality of opportunity and advancement on merit, which they might accelerate with a dose of good luck, and their own strategic flair. Most girls entered the sultan’s harem as slaves, bought at markets or abducted by corsairs, raiders and bandits; once at Topkapi they joined hundreds of others in the House of Novices, sleeping in dormitories and learning to deport themselves as Ottoman gentlewomen. They would learn, too, the skills of language and survival. Those with grace and talents might attend on women of higher rank, helping them to dress or do their hair; others would simply perform domestic chores, fetching water, carrying trays, managing the baths or laundry. Even menial positions conformed to their own hierarchies: it was an honour, for instance, to be in charge of the sultan’s underwear, or the wardrobe of the valide, Queen Mother. For those with keen wits, good looks and the desire to get on, the harem was also a school. Here a girl would learn the rudiments of her new faith – as a slave, she could not be a born Muslim, since no-one could enslave a Muslim – and perhaps to read and write. More significant was the mastery of the new language, Ottoman Turkish, truffled with fashionable Persian and Arabic loans and spoken in the harem, by all accounts, with a lisp. The lisp suggested Circassian origins. Florence Nightingale once described Circassian women as “the most graceful and the most sensual-looking creatures I ever saw”, and with their dark brows, blue eyes and pale complexions, Circassians made up the majority of the harem population. Especially in later years the lisp was a fashionable affectation. So, too, was a high, sweet voice. Some hierarchies within the seraglio were more open-ended than others. Women might vie to be noticed, patronised, and promoted, ultimately to win the approval of the valide, and to catch her son the sultan’s eye. Hedged about by the protocol and etiquette that encrusted behaviour at any great European court, sultans neither met nor slept with any woman at will. Many of the girls who lived in the harem apartments never so much as saw the shadow of God’s shadow on earth. The path to the sultan’s bed lay through the queen of the harem, the valide,

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who was the sultan’s mother, head of his household, and in control of everything that went on within the walls. The valide was no pushover: she had, after all, climbed the slippery pole herself, and in general it was she who decided who was to share the sultan’s bed. Favoured by the valide, or by one of the kadins, or ladies, who had already borne the sultan children, a novice selected to sleep with the sultan would customarily enter between the sheets from the foot. From then on, her destiny was in her hands. Sultans, with very rare exceptions, never married their consorts. At best, as ikbal, or favourite, a consort would hope to produce a child. Girl children were adored, petted, largely without value and secure,

More frightening for an ambitious pasha was the honour of marriage to a princess of the royal blood, one of the sultan’s daughters. Her rank outstripped his, and he would be expected to toe her line, absolutely. Despite their seclusion, women could wield considerable power within the empire, and amass fortunes. The eunuchs, mostly black Africans from the Sudan, guarded the inviolability of the harem and acted as go-betweens with the outside world; they accompanied women on outings and were often as powerfully built and imposing as the women were beautiful. Women received allowances according to their rank and could own and amass property in their own right, receiving permission to endow charitable institutions and

“Most girls entered the sultan’s harem as slaves, bought at markets or abducted by corsairs, raiders and bandits” but boys, as potential heirs, were never completely out of danger, raised in an atmosphere of intrigue and jealousy. There could be only one valide. Having produce a male heir, she was the woman who not only succeeded in raising him safely but who finally engineered his elevation to the imperial throne. As Ottoman gentlewomen, girls educated in the harem who did not attend directly on the sultan would, in time, have an opportunity of marrying into the parallel institution of the palace, where boys were trained to take on responsibilities in the machinery of state. The rest would remain in the palace until the death of the sultan, whereupon the valide, with the disappointed mothers and the rest of the household, would be moved, weeping and railing, to the Old Palace, while the new sultan established his favourites and their attendants at Topkapi. The harems of pashas, or ministers, and other high officials, conformed to the same pattern. Once married to a pasha, a woman would set up her own harem household, replicating in miniature the arrangements at Topkapi (some seem to have found marriage a disappointment: the archives suggest that several harem women petitioned to return, claiming that the eunuchs had made better lovers).

mosques. In the seventeenth century during the so-called Sultanate of the Women, a succession of feeble sultans allowed the valide and her court to exercise power over the machinery of state and the direction of policy. For all that, harems were forbidden places. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, wife of the British Ambassador to the Porte in 1716–18, was the first foreign visitor to broach the sanctuary of the harem, to which the wives of pashas invited her. Her hugely popular ‘Turkish Letters’, published only in 1763 after her death, just twenty years before Mozart wrote the Abduction, for the first time revealed lively details of harem life. At the baths, the Ottoman ladies regarded her corset as a sort of infernal cage into which her husband must have imprisoned her. Lady Mary was a wit and not, perhaps, an entirely reliable witness. ‘Upon the Whole,’ she wrote to her sister, ‘I look upon the Turkish Women as the only free people in the Empire,’ and she gleefully described how they ‘lead a life of uninterrupted pleasure, exempt from cares, their whole life being spent in visiting, bathing, or the agreeable Amusement of spending Money and inventing new fashions.’

Jason Goodwin Country Life columnist Jason Goodwin is the author of Lords of the Horizons: A History of the Ottoman Empire, and of a series of thrillers set in 19th century Istanbul, beginning with The Janissary Tree, translated into over 40 languages.

Costume designs for The Abduction from the Seraglio Costume designs by Tim Reed

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Patronage in Opera

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Emperor Joseph II wanted the best opera composer in the world to be writing operas for his theatre in Vienna. So it was that in 1782, at the age of twenty-six, Mozart came to be writing his first great comic opera The Abduction from the Seraglio for the Burgtheater, the theatre heavily subsidized by the emperor. He went on to write Figaro and Così fan tutte for that theatre and Don Giovanni was played there soon after its premiere in Prague. The people of southern England want the best opera at The Grange. There is no longer a single emperor; but a wide group of patrons, giving support in both large and small amounts, have taken his place as the key to keeping opera alive. Mrs Pendarves, neighbour and friend of Handel, who often walked down Brook Street to hear his latest aria being performed in his house, complained in 1727, “I doubt operas will not survive longer than this winter; they are now at their last gasp; the subscription is expired”. There was a moment when we might have thought that operas were at their last gasp at The Grange; but Monteverdi’s Ritorno d’Ulisse miraculously appeared in June last year. The subscriptions after all had not expired. Handel had his own opera company, which was called the Royal Academy of Music. There was some sleight of hand in his approach to raising money. The Academy was set up as a company and he let his donors believe that they were investors. He persuaded his king, George I, to be the lead investor with a commitment of £5,000 over five years and others followed, 58 original subscribers including seven dukes, thirteen earls and three viscounts – an early example of crowd funding. Within eight years the

venture had run out of money; but not one of them seems to have complained. Richard Edgcumbe, whose grandfather had been a director of the Academy, described Handel as a master of fund-raising. “Thro’ the whole course of his life he exemplified the maxim “Et spes et ratio studiorum in Caesare tantum” – that the hope of the arts lies in the patronage of the Sovereign.” Queen Anne, monarch when Handel arrived in England in 1710, provided him with £200 a year; this had reached £600 by the time of George II. He was careful to give his monarch what he wanted. He dedicated Radamisto to “the particular Approbation Your Majesty has been pleased to give to the Musick of this Drama”. Coincidentally, Mainwaring wrote in his memoir of Handel that in 1720 the applause for Radamisto was “almost as extravagant as that which his Agrippina had excited”. But Handel did not forget his less important supporters. Here in Hampshire he was particularly close to James Harris, to whom was given Handel’s best portrait, the Mercier which shows him without wig at his home in Brook Street. Mozart too liked to spend time with his smaller supporters. His Sunday afternoons were often spent in the house of Gottfried van Swieten, who, in addition to being a great supporter of Mozart, played a role in encouraging his interest in the music of Bach and Handel. John Rosselli has analysed the arithmetic of putting on opera in his book The Opera Industry in Italy from Cimarosa to Verdi. Between 1701 and 1865 the average takings as a percentage of costs in the opera houses he examined were approximately 70 per cent. Antony Feeny, in an article in Opera in

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Painting by Barbara Krafft © Deutsch, Otto Erich (1965) Mozart: A Documentary Biography. Stanford: Stanford University Press

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February 2018, shares the conclusions of his analysis of all opera companies in Britain. In 2016 the total cost of putting on opera was £238 million. Of this approximately half came from earned income (ticket sales £73 million and other commercial £39 million) and half from donated income (government £71 million and private £55 million). There is, as he says, “little new in the business of opera”. The government has taken the place of the emperor and the proportion of donated income has come down from 70 to 50 percent – but the funding scene is not very different. The Grange Festival is no exception: this season, total expenditure will amount to approximately £2½ million, half of which will have been donated. Agrippina was written during Handel’s years in Italy. There was no emperor in Italy, but in Rome he had the support of Cardinal Ottoboni and of Marchese Francesco Maria

impresario as the wealthiest burgher in the town who undertakes to run the theatre in the town whose leading citizen he has the honour to be. The office carries with it considerable social prestige and not a few other advantages, although it frequently turns out to be financially ruinous! Rossini was able, according to Stendhal, to put on five operas a year thanks to such impresarios around the country. Earned income has always been as important as patronage. In 1809 Domenico Barbaja moved to the San Carlo theatre in Naples from the north of Italy where he had developed into a fine art the business of raising money by using the opera house foyer for gambling outside the season. In Naples the combination of this large commercial contribution and the financial support of Murat, which was continued by the Bourbons after 1815, made San Carlo

“Opera is a magical art form that is brought into being through the support of both the ticket purchaser and of the investor” Ruspoli. In 1709, having completed his last cantatas for Ruspoli, a sort of warm-up for opera, the 24-year-old moved to Venice and there completed his first operatic masterpiece, Agrippina. A musical cardinal Grimani owned the S. Giovanni Grisostomo Theatre – and he it was who wrote Handel’s libretto. A not dissimilar impresario commissioned Rossini (only 23) to write Il barbiere di Siviglia in 1816. Duke Francesco Sforza-Cesarini owned and ran the Teatro Argentina in Rome. Stendhal in his biography of Rossini describes a typical

the richest opera house in the land. Rossini worked with Barbaja for seven years. In Britain we lost the idea of the responsibility for the arts lying with its leading burghers in the 1940s, when we had a great vision that the state would pay for everything. Hugh Dalton, Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1946, while working hard to finance the start of social security and national health schemes, said that he would not forget opera. And the state has not forgotten opera. In addition to the £71 million given

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by government in 2016, a significant element of the £55 million of private donations is actually provided by them. Not only may opera companies claim the Gift Aid, but also higher rate tax payers are able to claim back the higher rate tax. Some gifts are made by way of shares on which there is a capital gain. The tax saving can result in as much as half the gift being covered by government. Our tax environment for charitable giving is every bit as attractive as that in the United States. Donors today are motivated in different ways, as they have always been. Some want to be recognized; some take quiet pride in the fact that they have been part of making something special happen; some have a particular enthusiasm for a particular aspect of a company’s work, a new production, the education work, or a scheme to encourage young people to attend opera; some, like Emperor Joseph, just do not want this quality of art to go elsewhere. Some donors like to be anonymous and of course their wishes must be respected. One of the seats at The Grange has been bought by Oliver, a dog. But although his name might have been designed to provide a certain anonymity, he ended up generating a considerable social media response through a picture of him looking bedraggled on the portico on a day of torrential rain. It was useful for Handel’s opera company to be able to name the king. In March this year the most recent opera house to be built in this country was opened, the new opera theatre at today’s Royal Academy of Music, the leading conservatoire. It was named the Susie Sainsbury Theatre. No doubt that modest and generous donor, who is also a most persuasive fund-raiser, allowed her

name to be used only because it thereby encouraged others – just as King George encouraged all those dukes and earls. Patronage of opera by government remains essential; but private patronage does things government cannot do. It can take risks; it can take a lead; it can move quickly; it can provide passion. Sometimes the opera business is described as having a permanent financial deficit. Deficit is a word we would use in other more conventional businesses; and the word implies that the business has been badly managed, that costs must be cut. But this is wrong. Opera is a magical art form that is brought into being through the support of both the ticket purchaser and of the investor (I dare to use Handel’s word). That donor may not get a financial return but his or her return in terms of satisfaction is worth much more. The patronage is an integral part of the business model for the creation of high art. When we leave The Grange Theatre this evening, every one of us can take satisfaction from the fact that we have been patrons. Whether we have bought tickets, made donations large or small, bought a glass of champagne, spent money in the splendid shop (which may not be quite the same as Barbaja’s gambling salon but it has some excellent things for sale), we can know that we have been part of the patronage that has allowed us to hear side by side three great operas composed by three very young men, all of whom also were given their opportunity by the generous patronage of their times.

Christopher Purvis Christopher Purvis is President of both the Academy of Ancient Music and Handel House. He is a past governor of the Royal Academy of Music.

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Conductor Alfonso Casado Trigo Director Christopher Luscombe B O U R N E M O U T H S Y M P H O N Y O RC H E S T R A Leader Amyn Merchant T H E G R A N G E F E S T I VA L C H O RU S

Chorus Master Tom Primrose

Repetiteur Richard Leach

CA S T Narrator/Pangloss/Martin Richard Suart Candide Rob Houchen Cunegonde Katie Hall Maximilian Charles Rice Old Woman Rosemary Ashe Paquette Kitty Whately Cacambo/ Robert Murray Governor/ Vanderdendur/ 1st Agent

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Candide first opened on Broadway as a musical on December 1, 1956 at the Martin Beck Theatre. The first London production debuted at the Saville Theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue on 30 April 1959 (after playing for a short time at the New Theatre Oxford and the Manchester Opera House). Performed by arrangement with Boosey & Hawkes Music Publishers Limited.

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Synopsis Westphalia

B E R N S T E I N I N T RO DU CE S CA N D I D E Instead of presenting the full intracacies of the tortuously complicated plot, we thought we would let the Narrator do his job in the performance. We think you will understand why, and thank us for sparing you a demanding read. To give you a flavour of the background, here is an extract from a spontaneous introduction the composer gave before a concert performance in London, which he then conducted. “…In Candide, Voltaire lashed out against all established authority: royal, military or mercantile, but most of all at the power of the church, which actually was burning heretics at the time – burning them alive

to prevent earthquakes. In other words, says Voltaire, sectarian religion is always an incitement to conflict, and optimism as a strict belief therefore breeds complacency, induces lethargy, inhibits the human power to change, to progress to rise against injustice or to create anything that might contribute to a genuinely better world. During my incredibly extensive research for this lecture which you are now suffering, I came across the following quite succinct summing up of the whole of Voltaire-ism: ‘Voltiare was acting as an eclectic who had synthesised the ideas of the stoics, the epicureans, the sceptics –’ oh the hell with it, let’s play the overture!”

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Candide Camera

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LB was born on August 25th 1918 in the mill town of Lawrence, Massachusetts. His parents were both immigrants from Czarist Russia: his grandfather was a rabbi. The family moved to Boston; father Sam prospered in the hair supply business and planned for his son to follow him. He was later heard to complain: “How was I to know my son would grow up to be Leonard Bernstein?” LB studied music and aesthetics at Harvard, then moved on to the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia for piano, composing and conducting: he loved them all with equal abandon. Aaron Copland saw in him the brilliant maestro and spokesman the emerging American composers needed. Meanwhile his conducting skills were honed by top-draw teachers Fritz Reiner and Serge Koussevitsky. Aged only 25, exempt from military service because of asthma and flat feet, he landed the plum job of assistant at the New York Philharmonic where a lucky break led to a sensational début. An annus mirabilis followed. He conducted orchestras all over the US while simultaneously finding his voice as a composer, first with a symphony, the “Jeremiah”, then a ballet, Fancy Free and finally a Broadway musical, On the Town. The pattern of refusing to follow a pattern was established and never left him. He developed extra skills as an educator, teaching adults about music through the Omnibus series on US network television and inspiring a generation of children through his Young People’s Concerts; it was all part of being a musician, the profession he gave in his passport. He married in 1951 and for a while concentrated on composition (and raising a family); in the 1960s he was the first American music director of the New York Philharmonic; after relinquishing that post aged fifty he became a world figure both as composer (West Side Story, Chichester Psalms, Candide) and as the titanically gifted maestro of such orchestras as the LSO and the Vienna Philharmonic. He died in 1990, only 72 years of age but having packed four or five lives into the one Leonard Bernstein.

With LB’s Candide I personally go back a long way. Not to the very beginning: I was a lowly sound effects man at Broadcasting House when Bernstein’s satirical operetta opened (and flopped) on Broadway in December 1956. But I was very much around two and half years later when LB came to London. With a different producer and some new lyrics he was having another shot at mounting Candide – at the Ambassadors Theatre with Dennis Quilley in the title role. This version flopped, too, but not before I had fallen in love with the show and met LB at my new BBC habitat, the Monitor television studio in Lime Grove. He played the piano divinely, smoked incessantly and spoke most eloquently about music in a melodious voice that was already a little nicotine and whiskey-stained. It seemed unfair how gifted he was but he told his interviewer, Huw Wheldon (my boss and mentor) that he certainly had not achieved success too easily, as some were insinuating: on the contrary, he said, he worked very hard at every musical activity he undertook, whether it be conducting a Mahler symphony or composing “a Valentine card to European music”, which is how he described Candide. Fast forward six years. I am in a cathedral whose dean, Walter Hussey, has commissioned a new work for choirs and orchestra from LB, the Chichester Psalms. We’ve become good friends and he’s invited me to attend the world première. At the end of the dress rehearsal, which has not gone well, he turns to his wife Felicia and mutters “all we can do now is pray.” I discover that the orchestra had come down from London that morning and was sightreading. “The Psalms went off well”, he reported to his assistant, “in spite of a shockingly small amount of rehearsal. The choirs were a delight! They had everything down pat, but the orchestra was swimming in the open sea. They simply didn’t know it, but somehow the glorious acoustics of Chichester cathedral cushion everything so that even mistakes sound pretty.” He was generous on that occasion

Leonard Bernstein, conductor and musical director of New York City Symphony © Library of Congress. New York World-Telegram & Sun Collection

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but next year I saw that LB could dig in his heels. The BBC was televising Mahler’s Symphony of a Thousand. It was part of Bernstein’s historic complete Mahler cycle on disc and the Royal Albert Hall was packed to the rafters with performers. This time it was the amateur vocal element that was causing the crisis: LB came to me at the tea break complaining that he was having to work with “a chorus of ladies in hats who couldn’t sing at all except in tea-time voices”. We spent a small fortune overnight on recruiting professionals to boost the performance. Which of course was phenomenal. The BBC couldn’t buy Bernstein’s American television shows in the 1960s because the picture quality was so fuzzy: their transmission system was called NTSC which we said stood for Never The Same Colour. Instead I got Bernstein working for BBC Television with an ambitious concert series called Symphonic Twilight featuring the London Symphony Orchestra: what LB brought to Stravinsky and Sibelius felt more like blazing dawn than symphonic twilight.

Requiem in St Paul’s Cathedral, London. Next month. Will you do it?” Reader, I said yes and never regretted it: I worked with Bernstein for a month or more every year from 1970 until he died two decades later. I had other jobs, of course, among them hosting Aquarius on ITV for five years, and inventing Arena and Young Musician of the Year at the BBC. But LB became a central figure in my life and remained so even after his death because I then spent three years writing his biography and another making a radio series about him for Classic FM. That Verdi Requiem, a magnificent gamble that luckily for me came off, was an ordeal for LB in an unexpected way: the cathedral would not permit him to smoke, even in the vestry which was his temporary dressing room. Before the performance LB’s manager found a back staircase which led directly to the cathedral roof allowing LB to indulge in a crafty interval drag but post performance on a cold February night the staircase route was no option. Backstage I heard him groan: “I’d give anything for a cigarette”. The dean

“This is Gregory Peck speaking. A few of us have formed a company to ensure that everything our friend Leonard conducts should in future be preserved…” The LSO’s first rehearsal was held at the TV Centre for my Workshop series. David Attenborough was running BBC 2 in those days and I took him to watch LB beating the living daylights out of the players in Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony: David was so impressed by LB’s dynamism that he rang his planners on the spot and postponed a couple of scheduled programmes so the Bernstein show could continue for an extra hour after the news. Those were the days! In 1967 I jumped ship after twelve years at the BBC to help David Frost start a new ITV company called London Weekend. I took LB with me. We celebrated his fiftieth birthday with a televised relay of Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique from the Royal Festival Hall. A mind-blowing interpretation! Eighteen months later something miraculous happened. I was at home when the phone went. “This is Gregory Peck speaking. A few of us have formed a company to ensure that everything our friend Leonard conducts should in future be preserved on video for teaching students and for private domestic consumption (VHS was round the corner). We want you to be our director. The first show is Verdi’s

relented. Invoking “the unbelievable beauty” that Bernstein and his musicians had just given the public, he announced an exception to the smoking ban and then reached through his clerical robes to produce a cigarette lighter with which to get LB’s coveted Marlboro going. After the Verdi and a two hour Beethoven centenary documentary LB’s team pulled off a longterm contract with the German company Unitel, kicking off with a Mahler symphony cycle with the Vienna Philharmonic and then working through the entire classical repertoire. By 1990 we had made 182 music films. LB was a model of patience on these productions which were all done live with a regular paying public. He and I would go through scores in advance like teacher and student, he pointing out salient themes or instruments for me to emphasize with the cameras. Unlike another photogenic conductor with whom I sometimes worked, he asked me to cut down the number of conductor shots though these are what it is so fascinating to study almost half a century later. But of course what really mattered for LB was not the pictures but the sound track.

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I was also called in to work on the telecasts of his six Norton lectures at Harvard – mammoth affairs up to three hours in duration and the pinnacle of LB’s life as a teacher. While in the US he invited me to attend the new production of Candide which opened in the Chelsea studio theatre in Brooklyn in 1973 before transferring to Broadway. After refusing to have anything more to do with the show of which she was co-author, the cantankerous dramatist Lillian Hellman had been dropped, and in came a new script by Hugh Wheeler and new lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. It was a drastic makeover: about 40% of the show was cut; the orchestra was reduced to fourteen; the stage was a narrow strip in the middle of the theatre surrounded by the audience on all sides. It was still intoxicating to hear one’s favourite numbers once again and to marvel at the musical variety and spontaneity. The moving force behind this revival, which ran for two years, over 700 performances was Harold Prince, producer of West Side Story and many other Broadway hits, among them Lloyd Webber’s Evita. The tireless Prince re-vamped Candide again in 1982, this time expanding the show to operahouse proportions; it played several seasons at the State Theatre though I wasn’t the only spectator to deplore the use of amplification. LB told me privately that despite these New York triumphs he remained uneasy: he was not ready to authorize the definitive score. Enter another key figure, the conductor John Mauceri who won LB’s trust by re-shaping Bernstein’s big family tragedy opera A Quiet Place. When Mauceri was picked to run Scottish Opera in the mid-80s he proposed yet another Candide revision, restoring a clutch of numbers that had been cut during the 1956 try-out and bringing in the English satirist Jonathan Miller to direct the show and re-vitalise the dialogue. LB came to Glasgow for the première. He was placed next to the company’s patron, the Duchess of Gloucester. After a long but thoroughly enjoyable evening he went back-stage to greet the cast. I know because I was there, directing the BBC cameras. “I loved the show” he told the delighted singers. “Dr Jonathan loves the show. Even the f-----g Duchess loved it.” We ran this endorsement, discreetly edited, under the closing titles. But sadly the production was never seen after the original Christmas broadcast and never issued as a DVD because – unforgivably in my opinion – LB’s manager thought our Cunégonde was insufficiently pretty. Prettiness should not be an issue: Cunégonde may have been raped repeatedly but the character remains a lady pure at heart and Scottish Opera’s casting was impeccable. The show transferred to the Old Vic and won a Best Musical award. Patricia Routledge sang the Old Lady.

LB’s mind was made up. It was time for what he called the “final revised version”. The orchestra of which he was president, the London Symphony, presented Candide at the Barbican in December 1989. DG was on hand to make a studio CD. I was entrusted with producing the stage show and capturing it on camera for DVD and television. Two world-class American opera singers, the soprano June Anderson and the tenor Jerry Hadley, took the leading roles. Christa Ludwig, one of LB’s favourite partners in Mahler, sang the Old Lady’s Tango, complete with castanets. LB’s oldest show business friend, Adolph Green, did the narration and sang Dr Pangloss. The second performance almost came to grief because of an influenza bug that was crippling London. Not even Buckingham Palace was spared which led LB to dub it “the royal flu”. The two stars succumbed and the only tenor in Europe who knew the Candide role, Don George, was tracked down to Berlin where he was performing in a German production. He arrived at the Barbican with only ten minutes to spare, having been coached en route by LB’s devoted music editor Charlie Harmon. There was only time for a dressing room hug from LB (they had never met) and he was on the platform. The only snag: he had learnt Candide in German. But the brave stand-in faltered only once: when Candide asks Dr Pangloss about the evil influence of war Donald George actually sang the phrase “ But what about Krieg?” Candide was LB’s last London appearance. He had never stopped believing in it and now it was crystal clear that both as an opera and as a concert hall work Candide’s future was secure. It is up there now, gay and glittering, with LB’s other great theatre works which will surely never lose their appeal. Since his death John Caird and the Royal National Theatre have found convincing ways of revising the final revision – among them Richard Wilbur’s new lyrics for “What’s the use?” replacing his originals which were knocked off, he told me, in an afternoon during the Boston try-out. The moral of my tale? There is no definitive version of Candide and it really doesn’t matter. I conclude with a “Bravo” to Michael Chance, artistic director of The Grange Festival. A few weeks ago he wrote to me as follows: “I sense Candide was dear to Bernstein’s heart, and seems pertinent to today’s zeitgeist of humbug and fakery and dread”. LB couldn’t have put it better himself.

Humphrey Burton Writer of the Faber biography of Leonard Bernstein

AC K N OW L E D G E M E N T S

F O R T H E G R A N G E F E S T I VA L BOA R D OF T RUST EES Chairman The Hon Sir Charles Haddon-Cave The Hon Mark Baring Daniel Benton Rosamund Horwood-Smart QC Sam Jackson Owen Jonathan Malcolm Le May Richard Morse Tim Parker Rebecca Shelley Alan Titchmarsh Company Secretary Annabel Ross

DEV ELOPM ENT COU NCI L Chairman Malcolm Le May Vice-Chair Sophie Grenville Sophie Boden Nick Bowers Peter Foy Katie Holmes Andrew Joy Barry O’Brien The Countess of Portsmouth Sarah Purdon (Hong Kong) Peter Ralls QC Louise Verrill

With special thanks to Wendy Game

COM PA N Y Artistic Director Michael Chance CBE General Manager Michael Moody Director of Development Rachel Pearson Director of Artistic Administration Scott Cooper Box Office Manager Caroline Sheahan Finance Officer Annabel Ross Head of Learning Susan Hamilton

LIGHT I NG

T R A NSPORT

Chief Electrician Ben Terry

Boom Couriers KD Productions Paul Mathews Transport

Deputy Chief Electrician Paddy Hepplewhite

DA NCE @ T H E GR A NGE COM M IT T EE Louise Verrill Chair Michael Chance Diana Ellis Robina Farley Judith Foy Amanda Haddon-Cave Michael Moody Andrew Morrison Rachel Pearson

AGR I PPI NA Stage Manager Di Holt

Deputy Stage Manager Annette Burnby

Lighting Get-in Mike Smith Emily Irish

Assistant Stage Manager Ela Schmid

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Digital Marketing Officer Alice Blincoe Development Officer Becky Mills Events & Regional Engagement Emma Neal Office Assistant Emily BlackmanGibson Project Manager Bridget Shegog Company Manager Nicholas Simpson Front of House Mananger Sophie Hayes

Technical Manager Ben Nickson Deputy Technical Manager Tun Nutt Crew Nick Hughes Tim Turnbull Sam Allen Andy Pye Chris Smith James Wicker Props Supervisor Robyn Hardy Surtitle Operator Issy Thorn

STAGE M A NAGEM ENT

Cover Stage Manager Ellen Dawson

Programmer David Ayton

STAGE

I L BA R BI ER E DI SIV IGLI A Stage Manager Checca Ponsonby Deputy Stage Manager Maria Gurevich Assistant Stage Manager Ella Corcoran

THE ABDUCT ION F ROM T H E SER AGLIO

CA N DI DE

Stage Manager Ellen Dawson

Deputy Stage Manager Sarah Sweet

Stage Manager Ellen Dawson

Assistant Stage Manager Tegan Cutts

WA R DROBE

W IGS

Head of Wardrobe Kat Day-Smith

Dresser Emma Hughes

Head of Wigs Helen Keelan

Deputy Head of Wardrobe Rosy Emmerich

Dresser Laila Jam

Deputy Head of Wigs Becky Rungen

SCEN ERY Wigs Supplied by The Wig Room Ltd Darren Stalmach-Ware Pav Stalmach-Ware

Agrippina Visual Scene Il barbiere di Siviglia Bowerwoods Scenery Painted by Richard Nutbourne Studios

The Abduction from the Seraglio Visual Scene Techncal Drawing Will Bowen

COST U M ES & W IGS AGR I PPI NA Costume Makers Vanessa Coupe Jane Colquhoun Adrian Gwillym @ Academy Graham Burn Clio Alphas Amanda Bothwell

I L BA R BI ER E DI SIV IGLI A Dying/breaking down Gabrielle Firth

Alterations Assistant Rebecca Hopkins

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Costume Assistant Rebecca Barnett

Costume Assistant Chase Moody Samantha Mathis

Costume Assistant Nedine Backman O’Brien Shoemaker Kevin Garlick Leatherworker Kelly Jones

Costume Makers Nicole Small Chris White Kirsti Read Hires Cosprop Bartlett and Butcher

T H E ABDUCT ION F ROM T H E SER AGLIO Costume Makers Claire Emmerson Rebecca Macdonald Susan and Carmen at Cosprop Millinery Jen Levet

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CH AM PAGN E Pol Roger Paul Graham Freya Miller ENGLISH SPA R K LI NG Exton Park Kit Ellen WINE Stone, Vine & Sun Wine Merchants Simon Taylor The Wine-Man Ltd DI N I NG @ T H E GR A NGE Oliver Shute Victoria Shute Jasmine Ebdon-Taylor The Wild Fork Team

S E A S O N P RO G R A M M E 2 018

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SIT E ST RUCT U R ES Designed by John Simpson Architects John Simpson Joanna Wachaowiak John Smylie

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F U N DR A ISI NG EV ENT HOSTS Hallam and Alison Mills Alidad and Gilly Norton Robert Pasley-Tyler Lord and Lady Ashburton Lucy and Michael Vaughan Mark and Sophie Baring Sir James and Lady Scott Robert and Caroline Bordeaux-Groult Sir Peter Michael and The Vineyard Hotel The Chelsea Arts Club The Wallace Collection The Lansdowne Club The Earl and Countess of Malmesbury

ACCOMMODAT ION GEN EROUSLY DONAT ED BY Sarah and Peter Vey Richard and Chrissie Morse for Michael Moody for Tom Nickson and Robyn Hardy Alison and Daniel Benton John and Wendy Trueman for the Conductors for the Directors

F EST IVA L VOLU NT EERS Volunteer Co-Ordinator Nicky Cambrook Rota Co-Ordinator Carol Hawkins

Festival Volunteers Judy Bishop Annabel Blake Sue Brown Hugh Brown Jan Burgess Marie-Caroline Burgess Nick Cambrook Rose Cambrook Rose Carter Henrietta Cooke

Celia Cox Pru de Lavison Janie Deal Chris Dyne Julia Ewens Jules Flory Martin Gillie Jacky Gillie Anne Glyn Andrea Harris Wendell Harris

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Sue MackenzieCharrington Catherine Maddock Jenny Makins Belinda Mitchell Tricia Neri Sue Paice Peter Paice Diana Peisley Steve Penn Caroline Perry Jane Powlett

Hugh Powlett Clare Read Jan Sampson Jo Seligman Katherine Sellon John Theophilus Di Threlfall Sarah Vey Emmy Watt

AC K N OW L E D G E M E N T S

B O U R N E M O U T H S Y M P H O N Y O RC H E S T R A R E S I D E N T O RC H E S T R A 1ST V IOLI N Leader Amyn Merchant Edward Brenton Kate Turnbull Karen Leach Magdalena GrucaBroadbent Jennifer Curiel Tim Fisher Julie Gillett-Smith Kate Hawes Laura Kernohan Joan Martinez

2N D V IOLI N Carol Paige Jens Lynen Penny Tweed Vicky Berry Lara Carter Rebecca Clark Agnieszka Gesler Ines Montero Fuentes V IOLA Tom Beer Ugne Tiskute Jacoba Gale Eva Malmbom Liam Buckley John Murphy Judith Preston

CELLO Jesper Svedberg Garry Stevens Philippa Stevens Auriol Evans Hannah Innes Roger Preston Kate Keats Double Bass David Daly Nicole Boyesen David Kenihan Nickie Dixon Jane Ferns F LU T E/ PICCOLO Anna Pyne Owain Bailey

OBOE/ COR A NGLA IS Edward Kay Rebecca Kozam CLA R I N ET/ BASSET HOR NS Kevin Banks Elizabeth Drew Helen Paskins BASSOON Tammy Thorn Emma Selby HOR N Jocelyn Lightfoot Ruth Spicer Kevin Pritchard Edward Lockwood

T RU M PET Chris Avison Peter Turnbull T ROMBON E Kevin Morgan Robb Tooley BASS T ROMBON E Kevin Smith

BSO

MANANAGEMENT

Chief Executive Dougie Scarfe Head of Concerts & Programming Heather Duncan Head of BSO Participate Lisa Tregale Head of Marketing Anthony Brown

T U BA Andy Cresci

Orchestra Manager Liz Williams

T IM PA N I Geoff Prentice

Deputy Orchestra Manager Adam Glynn

PERCUSSION Matt King Alastair Marshallsay Ben Lewis Sacha Johnson

Senior Stage Manager Scott Caines

T H E AC A D E M Y O F A N C I E N T M U S I C R E S I D E N T O RC H E S T R A V IOLI N I Leader Bojan Čičić Persephone Gibbs Liz MacCarthy Elin White Connor Gricmanis Oliver Cave V IOLI N I I Rebecca Livermore William Thorpe Alice Earll Pierre Joubert Joanna Lawrence V IOLA Jane Rogers Marina Ascherson Clare Barwick Emma Alter

CELLO Joseph Crouch Imogen Seth-Smith George Ross Henrik Persson Josh Salter DOU BLE BASS Judith Evans Dawn Baker OBOE (/ R ECOR DER) Leo Duarte Hanna Lindeijer Lars Henriksson BASSOON Sally Holman

T H EOR BO William Carter

A AM M A NA NAGEM ENT

T RU M PET David Blackadder Robert Vanryne Phillip Bainbridge

General Manager Anthony Brice

T IM PA N I Benedict Hoffnung Robert Howes H A R PSICHOR D Oliver John Ruthven

Chief Executive Alexander Van Ingen

Head of Concerts and Planning Chloë Wennersten Concerts and Projects Co-ordinator Alice Pusey

Development Manager Ellen Parkes Development Assistant Leonore Hibou

Marketing Consultants Chloe Priest Griffiths Bethan Sheppard

Development Consultant John Bickley

Pr Consultant Damaris Brown, Orchid Media

Librarian Hannah Godfrey

K EY BOA R D T ECH N ICA N Malcolm Greenhalgh

T H E G R A N G E F E S T I VA L C H O RU S CHORUS M AST ER Tom Primrose

SOPR A NOS Jennifer Clark Stephanie Edwards Emily Garland Frances Israel Andrea Tweedale Cally Youdell

M EZZO SOPR A NOS Rebecca Barry Caroline Daggett Lara Harvey Elizabeth Humphries Simone Ibbett-Brown Claire Williams

T ENORS Daniel Bartlette Simon Gilkes Ranald McCusker Tom Smith William Smith Woodrow Hughes

Finance Manager Elaine Hendrie

BASS Robert Garland Edward Kay Lawrence Halksworth Jevan McAuley Michael Ronan James Wafer

S E A S O N P RO G R A M M E 2 018

F O R T H E P RO D U C T I O N S DA N C E @ T H E G R A N G E DI R ECTOR Wayne McGregor CO-CU R ATOR Edward Watson

FOR ST U DIO WAY N E McGR EGOR Artistic Director Wayne McGregor Executive Director Rebecca Marshall Associate Director Odette Hughes Director of Learning and Engagement Jasmine Wilson Director of Development and Communications Polly Hunt Finance and Operations Director Marcel Jenkins

AG R I P P I N A

Administrative Director Hazel Singleton Principal Restager Antoine Vereecken Technical Director Christopher Charles Design Associate Catherine Smith Company Producer Lucy Glover Studio Producer Lucy Atkinson (Acting) Technicians Ashley Bolitho Kate Elliott

CR EAT IV E

PER FOR M ERS Company Wayne McGregor Rebecca Bassett-Graham Finance Manager Jordan James Bridge Sharminy Ragunathan Travis Clausen-Knight Louis McMiller Studio Manager Daniela Neugebauer Kathryn Jacob O’Connell Stephens-Berry James Pett Development Officer Fukiko Takase Holly Britton Po-Lin Tung Jessica Wright Company Coordinator Bethan Ecclestone Communications and Content Manager Kate McCurdy

The Royal Ballet Matthew Ball Federico Bonelli Francesca Hayward Sarah Lamb Marianela Nuñez Calvin Richardson Joseph Sissens Thiago Soares Guest artist Alessandra Ferri Pianist Joanna MacGregor

Studio Administrator Valeria Carrassa

CAST

Conductor Robert Howarth

Lighting Designer Wolfgang Göbbel

Language Coach Matteo Dalle Fratte

Claudio Ashley Riches

Poppea Stefanie True

Narciso James Hall

Director Walter Sutcliffe

Assistant Conductor Oliver John Ruthven

Production Manager Tom Nickson

Agrippina Anna Bonitatibus

Ottone Christopher Ainslie

Lesbo Jonathan Best

Musical Preparation Michael Chance

Assistant Director Katharina Kastening

Costume Supervisor Sydney Florence

Nerone Raffaele Pe

Pallante Alex Otterburn

Designer Jon Bausor

Repetiteur Oliver John Ruthven

I L BA R BI ER E DI SI V IGLI A CR EAT IV E

CAST

Conductor David Parry

Lighting Designer Howard Hudson

Language Coach Matteo Dalle Fratte

Almaviva John Irvin

Figaro Charles Rice

Director Stephen Barlow

Assistant Conductor Mark Austin

Production Manager Tom Nickson

Designer Andrew D Edwards

Assistant Director Crispin Lord

Costume Supervisor Josie Thomas

Bartolo Riccardo Novaro

Rosina Josè Maria Lo Monaco

Choreographer Mitchell Harper

Repetiteur Nick Bosworth

Berta Jennifer Rhys-Davies Fiorello Toby Girling

Basilio David Soar

T H E A B D U C T I O N F RO M T H E S E R AG L I O CR EAT IV E

CAST

Conductor Jean-Luc Tingaud

Assistant Conductor Tom Primrose

Director's Dramaturg Calvin Wells

Pasha Selim Alexander Andreou

Blonde Daisy Brown

Pedrillo Paul Curievici

Director John Copley

Assistant Director Christopher Moon-Little

Production Manager Tom Nickson

Konstanze Kiandra Howarth

Belmonte Ed Lyon

Osmin Jonathan Lemalu

Cunegonde Katie Hall

Old Woman Rosemary Ashe

Maximilian Charles Rice

Paquette Kitty Whately

Cacambo/Governor/ Vanderdendur/1st Agent Robert Murray

Designer Tim Reed Lighting Designer Kevin Treacy

Repetiteur Richard Leach

Costume Supervisor Kate Lyons Translation and Dialogue David Parry

CA N DI DE CR EAT IV E Conductor Alfonso Casado Trigo Director Christopher Luscombe

CAST Repetiteur Richard Leach

Narrator/Pangloss/ Martin Richard Suart Candide Rob Houchen

The Grange Festival chorus

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T H E G R A N G E F E S T I VA L A RT I S T IC B IO G R A P H I E S

Christopher Ainslie OTTONE

AGRIPPINA

Sponsored by Robert Hugill and David Hughes

Christopher Ainslie started his singing career as a chorister in Cape Town and moved to London in 2005 to study at the Royal College of Music. Ainslie has rapidly established himself as a leading interpreter of the countertenor repertoire and is also active in exploring repertoire not usually associated with the voice-type. He has appeared at the ROH, at Glyndebourne, ENO, Opéra de Lyon, and Central City Opera. He previously sang Ottone Agrippina (Göttingen Handel Festival). Other recent engagements include Unulfo Rodelinda (Teatro Real), Athamas Semele (Garsington), Orfeo Orfeo ed Euridice (Opéra de Lyon and for Opéra National de Lorraine), and David Saul (Glyndebourne). In 2017/18, he sings Giulio Cesare (ETO), Oberon (ENO), and appears with Les Musiciens du Louvre and Mark Minkowski, and with Philharmonie Zuidnederland.

Alexander Andreou PASHA SELIM

THE ABDUCTION FROM THE SERAGLIO