Grange Park Opera 2007 Programme

Gr ange Park Oper a

Gr a nge Pa r k Oper a 2 0 07

2007

31 May – 15 July 2007

the 10th festival at The Grange, Hampshire the 5th festival at Nevill Holt, Leicestershire

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Gr ange Park Oper a

Festival Sponsor LetsSubscribe.com

Patron’s Foreword Even those who, like me, are sceptical of the significance of anniversaries and dates such as New Year’s Day as a proof of noteworthiness, will not altogether be immune from a feeling that for a start up organisation like Grange Park Opera, a tenth festival is remarkable and worthy of celebration; and that’s where we now find ourselves.

As usual I found myself longing to say something new in my foreword. So this year I got all nine preceding programmes together and looked to see what sort of thing I was saying over that period. My moods certainly did swing from season to season.

I thought Wasfi Kani’s insistence on holding a Festival of some sort in 1998 was mad considering that Grange Park Opera’s agreements with English Heritage and me were only signed not long before Christmas. She felt that if she did not her fans would begin to drop away. So under Elgar Howarth’s baton Figaro’s Wedding, the Grimethorpe Colliery Band and a soirée with Eleanor Bron, etc. etc. occupied a week.

Note that 200 Greeks from Olympians to Athenians had also been enlisted between Christmas and the printing of the programme.

2000 was the first season with three productions: Rinaldo, Eugene Onegin and The Mikado which went extremely well. Boldly, when I had not even seen the productions, my foreword went so far as to say that I was confident that after seeing them the now considerable number of supporters would want to sign on again for 2001.

And I was right. 2001 brought the outline of the plan to build a much enlarged theatre butting onto and including the orangery. Looking back, it was a bold plan but Wasfi thrives on such things. My foreword warned that Foot & Mouth disease might conceivably force abandonment of the Festival.

Mercifully it did not.

In a way the 2002 Festival was one of the most remarkable because my foreword recorded First that, thanks to our brilliant builders, R J Smith and the architect David Lloyd Jones, together with Michael Moody, the new theatre had been virtually completed since the season before rather than needing weather protection for the performances as had been expected.

My foreword is best described as cautious but hopeful that all would go well.

Second, that of the £4 million appeal, £3.2 million had already been raised, and,

It did and 1999’s tone was therefore very different: impatience for the beginning of the Festival and enormous admiration for what was achieved in 1998.

Third that Wasfi had been given the OBE for her work with Pimlico Opera, our sister company.

2003 gave the opportunity of introducing the plan for a season at Nevill Holt in Leicestershire, while reassuring existing supporters that this did not signify any reduction of the season at The Grange.

who came to them said how enjoyable they were, even though the light and the weather that late in the year are very far from the Festival itself in high summer.

2004 looked forward to performances of Cosi fan Tutte at Nevill Holt. I also ruminated about the possibility of an occasional dance production and also a fourth production each year. Neither of these has proved practical but we have now got permission to do up to 30 performances each year.

Which brings me up to date and having returned this week from Pimlico Opera’s production of Les Misérables in Wandsworth Prison, I really do urge you all to take the opportunity next year and go to one of the prison performances. What Wasfi and Michael Moody coax from the prison inmates who are recruited to sing and act makes for a memorable and very moving experience and one which is now recognised as something that gives prisoners and prisons a brilliant glimpse of some of the possibilities beyond serial jail sentences.

In 2005 I grumbled about the difficulty of saying anything new and interesting in my foreword but nevertheless recorded the award of three prizes for the architectural achievements of the new Theatre.

We also thanked David Davies, who had decided he would retire as Chairman of the Board of Trustees after seven Festivals. He remains involved and his contacts are invaluable.

In 2006 we broke new ground with the first performance of Massenet’s Thais in this country, a recital by Bruce Ford and two performances in the autumn at The Grange by the Rising Stars of Nevill Holt. These last were very successful and everyone

I have only just managed to resist the temptation of mentioning the performances over the past nine years that I personally thought really memorable.

They have been many and the standard has been high but I am frightened of invidious comparisons being drawn from omissions. I do want to say, however, that Falstaff and Magic Flute are among my favourites.

So it’s going to be a great season, and Sally and I look forward to seeing you here in high summer.

Ashburton 8 March 2007

On Thursday 7 June 20 ten years of opera at

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Founding Donors

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1998–9

These donors provided the start–up costs of Grange Park Opera. This is their tenth and final listing in the Festival Programme

Olympians & Titans Mr Mark Andrews

Lydia & Miles d’Arcy-Irvine

Mr & Mrs Donald Kahn

Mr & Mrs Hugh Peppiatt

Mr Felix Appelbe BSc FRSA

Sir David & Lady Davies

Mr T Landon

Mrs Lucinda Stevens

Mr Peter Arengo-Jones OBE

Mr Peter Foy

James & Béatrice Lupton

Mr & Mrs Anthony Townsend

Mr David Buchler

Mr Simon Freakley

Mr & Mrs Charles Mackay

Mr & Mrs Max Ulfane

Mr William F Charnley

Mr William Gronow Davis

Mr Harvey McGregor QC

Mrs Marie Veeder

Professor Ian Craft

Mr Michael Hoare

Greg & Gail Melgaard

Mr & Mrs Graham John West

BT Alex Brown International Hays plc Wilde Sapte Barclays Private Banking

Catering & Allied Coutts & Co Biddle Denton Hall

Houston & Church Knight Frank (Winchester) Leopold de Rothschild Trust Well Marine Reinsurance Brokers

Mr & Mrs James Airy

Mr Anthony Doggart

Mrs Julian Jeffs

Mr John A Rickards

John & Jackie Alexander

Robyn Durie

Mrs Lynette G Joly JP

Dr Janet Ritterman

Mr & Mrs R Atkinson-Willes

Mr & Mrs W L Eddlestone

Mrs Z L Kelton

Mrs Martin St Quinton

Miss Anne Beckwith-Smith

Stuart & Anne Fowler

Mr John Learmonth

Mr Anthony Salz

Mr & Dr J Beechey

Archie & Henrietta Fraser

Mr Gerald Levin

Anne Lady Scott

Sheila Lady Bernard

Gen Sir David Fraser GCB OBE

Mr & Mrs Mark Lomas

Mr & Mrs Philip Snuggs

Mr Robert Bickerdike

Mr & Mrs Wyatt Gates

Mr & Mrs David Maitland

Mr David F M Stileman

Mrs M R Bonsall

Lt Col David R Gilbert

Anonymous

Mr & Mrs Ian Streat

Mrs Cherida Cannon

His Honour Judge

Gordon & Julia Medcalf

Mr R H Sutton

Mr Patrick Carter

Lord Montagu of Beaulieu

Mr Peter Tilley

Mr & Mrs Bernard Cazenove

Mr Robert B Gray

Mrs Jonathan Moore

The Hon Mrs W Tufnell

Mrs Justin Clark

Mr & Mrs J C Green

Mr Barry O’Brien

K Sandberg & T Watkins

Mr & Mrs M Cooper-Mitchell

Mr John Hammond

Mr Laurence O’Mara

Mr & Mrs T Wightman

Mr & Mrs R G Cottam

Mr & Mrs Peter Hobbs

Mrs Deidre Pegg

Andrew & Emma Wilson

Mr David Crowe

Mr & Mrs G Hollingbery

Miss Mahtab Pouria

Olivia Winterton

Mr Nicholas de Zoete

Mr Charles Irby

Mrs C H Powell

Dr Nicholas Wright

Ms K Deuss

Mr & Mrs Malcolm Isaac

Mrs Joan L Prior

Mr Tim Wright

Gillian Devas

Mr Barry Jackson

Mrs Thomas Redfern

Mrs Paul Zisman

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Corporate Founders Systems Union Group Ltd Ashe Park Mineral Water Baring Asset Management British Steel Distribution

Athenians

Figaro's Wedding 1998 Jeffrey Lloyd Roberts (Basilio)

Martin Graham QC

Figaro's Wedding 1998 Quentin Hayes (Count Almaviva)

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Les Mamelles de Tiresias 1999 Stefan Holmstrom (Gendarme) Kevin West (Lacouf), Richard Suart (Presto) Jeffrey Lloyd Roberts (The Husband)

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Argonauts, Pythagoreans & Arcadians Mr & Mrs Gerald Acher Richard & Delia Baker Mr & Mrs Nicholas Baring Mr & Mrs Tom Bartlam Dori Bateson Mr Peter Bedford Mr & Mrs Robin Behar Mr Alan Bell Mr Keith Benham Mrs M Bennett Sir Christopher & Lady Bland Mrs Gerald Bland Mr & Mrs Simon Borrows Mr Graham Bourne Mr Peter Braunwalder Mr & Mrs Keith Bromley Mr Robin W T Buchanan Mr & Mrs Mark Burch Mrs James Butler Sir Euan Calthorpe Bt Mr & Mrs Michael Campbell Mr Maximilian Carter Sir Peter & Lady Cazalet David & Elizabeth Challen Mr Oliver Colman Cynthia Colman Dr P M de Z Cooke Mr & Mrs Brian Cornish Mr Peter Davidson Guy Boney & Bente Dawkins Mr Peter Dicks Mr & Mrs Malcolm Edwards Austin & Ragna Erwin Mr T Alun Evans CMG Alastair & Robina Farley Mr & Mrs J fforde

Mr & Mrs Roger Fidgen Hamish & Sophie Forsyth Mr & Mrs Robin Fox Mr Andrew Frost Mr Stephen Frost Mr Nicholas R Gold Lady Shauna Gosling Mr & Mrs George Goulding Mr Verne Grinstead Mr Michael Gwinnell Mr Philip Gwyn Mr & Mrs Charles Haddon-Cave QC Mr & Mrs Philip Hallett Mr Clifford Hampton Mr Alan H Harrison Angela & David Harvey The Bulldog Trust Dr & Mrs James F Hill Mr & Mrs Hansgeorg Hofmann Mr Peter Holland Dr Jonathan Holliday Mr J P Hungerford Robin & Pat Ilbert The Countess of Iveagh Mr & Mrs Evan James Mr Martin Jay Mr & Mrs David Jervis Mr J T L Jervoise Neil & Elizabeth Johnson Mr & Mrs A N Joy Ms Walia Kani Mr Vincent Keaveny Maureen & Jim Kelly Peter Kerfack & Russell Townend Mr & Mrs David Leathers

Mr & Mrs Adam Lee David & Linda Lloyd Jones Mr Simon Lofthouse Dr Peter Lyndon-Skeggs Mrs Stuart Macnaghten The Hon Dwight Makins Mr & Mrs Charles Marriott Mr John Marden Mr William Mather Wendy & Michael Max Mr & Mrs P N J May Mr & Mrs T McMaddy Mr Nigel McNair Scott Mr & Mrs A S McWhirter Mr James Meade Leni Lady Miller Mr & Mrs Patrick Mitford Slade Miss Charlotte Moore Elizabeth Morison Mr Michael J Morley Dr & Mrs Julian Muir Lord Neill of Bladen QC Sir Charles Nicholson Bt John & Dianne Norton John Julius Norwich Mr & Mrs Michael Orr Major General & Mrs Simon Pack Mark & Rachel Pearson Ron & Lyn Peet Mr & Mrs Nicholas Phelps-Brown The Countess of Portsmouth Mr & Mrs David Potter Bruce & Lizzie Powell Mark & Veronica Powell Mr & Mrs Richard Priestley Mrs Barbara Rait

L'heure Espagnole 1999 George Mosley (Ramiro), Elena Ferrari (Concepcion), Richard Suart (Don Inigo)

Sir Peter & Lady Ramsbotham Mr Myrddin Rees MS FRCS Mr David Reid Scott David & Alex Rhodes Anonymous Mrs Eric Robinson Clare Rowland Mr & Mrs James Sabben-Clare Sir Timothy Sainsbury Mrs John Salkeld Lady Salomon Mr Richard Scopes The Countess of Selborne Mr & Mrs Mark Silver Mr Paul Skinner Mrs David Smith The Hon & Mrs Jeremy Soames Mr J G Stanford Mrs Donald Stearns Mr R Kirk Stephenson Mr & Mrs Richard H Sykes Mr Anthony John Thompson Professor & Mrs G M Tonge Adair Turner & Orna Ni-Chionna Bill Tustin Mr & Mrs David Vaughan The Hon Mrs Lucy Vaughan Mrs Peter Vey Caroline Vroom Mr Hady Wakefield Lady Jane Wallop Dr & Mrs Oliver Wethered M Whalley & K Goldie-Morrison Mr F E B Witts Mr Charles Young f

Sponsors a 2007 The Geoff & Fiona Squire Foundation Tulchan Communications ICAP plc The Christopher Ondaatje Foundation a

Bentley Reid & Co Morgan Stanley e The Carphone Warehouse LetsSubscribe.com e Kroll

a Clemmow Hornby Inge e Kleinwort Benson Edeus e Alfred McAlpine plc JPMorgan Private Bank e Laurent–Perrier Champagne a The Learning Point Presentation School e Grohe e Hotel du Vin Dixon Wilson e Corporate Synergy plc e SBJ Group Limited

The Barber of Seville 1999 Robert Poulton (Bartolo), Paolo Pecchioli (Basilio)

Eugene Onegin 2000 Brindley Sherratt (Prince Gremin), Majella Cullagh (Tatyana)

Eugene Onegin 2000 Robert Poulton (Onegin) kills Jeffrey Ll

\ Baring Asset Management e Reed Elsevier e Clyde & Co Royal Bank of Scotland e I N G e Hiscox GAM (UK) Limited e Rolls–Royce e Allied Irish Bank plc

\ advertisers Catalyst Investments e Chase Erwin e Clifford Chance e EFG Private Bank e Elite Hotels Euromoney e Goldsmiths Company e Greenhill e Jardinique e John Armit Wines e Lainston House e Linklaters e Merrill Lynch

Pickett Fine Leathers e Schroders Private Bank Stanlake Park Vineyard e Thornhill Investment Management e William Bartholomew Party Organising

thanks to Anthony Bolton • Faanya & Robert Rose • The Golden Bottle • Deutsche Bank Oliver & Felicity Wethered • Hubert Laeng–Danner • Donald Kahn

\ The Mercers Company • The Saintbury Trust • Capital International Ltd • John Coates Charitable Trust J Paul Getty Jr Charitable Trust • Inverforth Charitable Trust • The Links Foundation • The Mackintosh Foundation Matthews Wrightson Charity Trust • The Bernard Sunley Foundation • The Ingram Trust • The Dyers Company

in) kills Jeffrey Lloyd Roberts (Lenski)

The H B Allen Charitable Trust

Rinaldo 2000 Emma Bell (Almirena, the princess) and Sara Fulgoni (the Christian knight, Rinaldo)

The Mikado 2000 Alfred Boe (Nanki-Poo, son of the Mikado) and Nicholas Garrett (Pish-Tush, Noble Lord)

The

Glass Ceiling Society

f

2007

These are our highest level of annual donors who contribute towards projects to improve various technical aspects of the theatre. We are most grateful to them for their generosity

10

Peter Bedford Mrs J Blackwell Mrs Jenny Bland Anonymous Anonymous The Hon Sir Christopher Clarke Ian Clarkson & Richard Morris Kate Donaghy Mr & Mrs Johnny Gallagher Steve & Linda Garnett Ian Gatt QC Susie Gaunt Philip & Dilly Hallett Anonymous Mr & Mrs Raymond Henley Liz Hewitt

Caspar & Cathy Ingrams Anthony Johnson Timothy Jones & Martin Mason Richard Leonard David & Sue Lovett Anonymous Ian & Clare Maurice Ian & Debrah McIsaac Mr & Mrs Roger Morris Mr & Mrs R S Morse Cameron & Heike Munro Pierre & Beatrice Natural Mr Charles Outhwaite Tim & Therese Parker Anonymous The Countess of Portsmouth

Dominic & Katherine Powell Anonymous Tim & Barbara Roberts Mrs Faanya Rose Dr Angela Gallop & Mr David Russell Lord & Lady Sharman Dominic Shorthouse Mrs Marveen A L Smith John & Louise Verrill Mr & Mrs Kevan Watts Mr John Whiter Anonymous Thomas & Margaret Wolf Mr & Mrs C H R Wunderly

Supporting the Opera Without the donations of individuals listed on the following pages, the festivals at The Grange & Nevill Holt simply could not happen – ticket revenues alone cannot meet the cost of the festivals. If you are able to help, please use the form at the back of this programme or contact Rachel Pearson 01962 868 700 rachel@grangeparkopera.co.uk I Capuleti e I Montecchi 2001 Brindley Sherratt (Capellio) with his henchmen including Finnur Bjarnason (Tebaldo)

I Capuleti e I Montecchi 2001 Susan Bickley (Romeo) and Emma Bell (Giulietta)

ll (Giulietta)

The School of Hippocrates

Robin Allen QC & Gay Moon Genie Allenby Camilla Baldwin Mrs Isla Baring Mr & Mrs Julian Benson Mrs Michael Beresford–West Roger Birtles Mr & Mrs Michael Bolton Anthony Boswood Adrian Bott Mrs Clemens Brenninkmeyer Mr & Mrs Roy D Brown Anthony Bunker Anonymous Mr & Mrs Peter Clarke Mrs Carolyn Conlan Stephen & Julia Crompton Carl Cullingford Kathrine Davies The Lawrance Messer

Charitable Trust Mr & Mrs Simon de Zoete Mr & Mrs John Dear Mr Patrick Despard Miss Helen Dorey FSA T V Drastik Anonymous Peter Dwerryhouse LVO

Mr Michael C A Eaton John & Ann Eldridge Graham & Jenny Elliott Stuart Errington CBE DL Niall Fitzgerald KBE Mr & Mrs Mark Fleming Mr & Mrs John Foster Oliver & Asha Foster Mr & Mrs Geoffrey Fuller Mr & Mrs Wyatt Gates Mr David Gawler Mr & Mrs Graham–Dixon Mrs Manuela Granziol Marcus & Susan Grubb Louise Hallett Wendell & Andrea Harris Mr & Mrs Robin Herbert Madeleine Hodgkin Lord & Lady Holme Lucy Holmes & Alex Wood Gordon Hurst Robin & Judy Hutson Mr Charles & Lady Iona Ind Dr P & Mrs J M Iredale Ian & Noelle Irvine John Jarvis QC Rowan Jarvis Martin Jay CBE DL

Cosi fan tutte 2001 Alfred Boe (Ferrando) and Mark Stone (Guglielmo)

f

Mr & Mrs Anthony Jennens Hilary Jones Keith & Lucy Jones Mr & Mrs Patrick Ker Dr Ingo Klocker Roger & Liz Kramers Mr & Mrs Andrew E Law Mrs Sarah Leader Jamie & Laura Lonsdale Alistair & Sara Mackintosh Ms Sarah B Mason Mr & Mrs William Massey William & Felicity Mather Mr & Mrs B B Money–Coutts Mr & Mrs Peter Morgan Ian & Jane Morrison Colin Murray Piotr & Liza Nahajski Guy & Sarah Norrie Princess Paul Odescalchi James & Nicky Palmer Stephen & Isobel Parkinson Nigel & Liz Peace Sir Desmond & Lady Pitcher Mr & Mrs John Platt Steve & Geraldine Powell John & Victoria Raymond Nigel & Elizabeth Reavley

La Traviata 2002 The nightclub

2007

Tineke Dales Mr & Mrs Michael Rice Nigel & Viv Robson Mr Andrew Rome Barry & Anne Rourke Sir James & Lady Scott Brigitte & Martin Skan Andrew & Jill Soundy Geoff Squire OBE Mr David Taylor Mr & Mrs Nigel Teare Mr & Mrs Hugh Tidbury Denis K Tinsley Mrs M Vernon Mr & Mrs Anthony Vlasto Chris & Miranda Ward Mr & Mrs Philip Warner Johanna Waterous & Roger Parry Kevin & Sonia Watson Anonymous Mr & Mrs Edward Weston Anonymous Nigel Williams Nicholas & Penny Wilson Anonymous Mr & Mrs R J Woolnough David & Liz Wootton Charles Young f

The Mikado 2000 Alfred Boe (Nanki-Poo, son of the Mikado) and Nicholas Garrett (Pish-Tush, Noble Lord)

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The School of Archimedes

12

Mr & Mrs David Acland Anonymous Robin Aisher OBE Mr & Mrs Christopher Aldous John & Jackie Alexander Lady Allan Anonymous The Lady Armstrong Roger & Lisa Backhouse Mr & Mrs J Balfour The Band Trust Val & Christopher Bateman Professor Richard Beard Mr & Mrs Peter Beckwith Ms Anne Beckwith-Smith LVO Mr Peter Bell Keith Benham Christina Benn Mr & Mrs Mark Benson Mr & Mrs Richard Bernays Anonymous Adrian Berrill-Cox The Hon Mrs Julian Berry Mr & Mrs P B Bevan Mike & Alison Biden Anthony Bird Admirer of Charles Wallach Mrs Alastair Black Anonymous Mr David Blackburn Halldora Blair Mrs Simon Boadle Elisabeth & Bob Boas Mr & Mrs Ernest Boost Anonymous Mr & Mrs Graham Bourne Mr Jan Bowlus Mr & Mrs B D Bramley Mr & Mrs David Brewer Dr & Mrs Douglas Bridgewater Robin & Jill Broadley Dorothy & John Brook Consuelo & Anthony Brooke Mr & Mrs Antony Brooking

Anything Goes 2002 Reno's evangelising "angels" limber up for a transatlantic crossing

Mr & Mrs Charles H Brown Hugh & Sue Brown Mr & Mrs Nicholas Browne Mr David Bruce Mr & Mrs Robin Buchanan Mr & Mrs Thomas Buckley Mr Nicholas Buckworth Mr & Mrs D M Bullough Mr & Mrs K Burgoine Mr & Mrs C Burrows Mr Clive Butler Richard Butler Adams Mr & Mrs Peter Carden Russ & Linda Carr Anonymous Mr & Mrs Hugh Carter Andrew & Jacquie Cartwright Mr & Mrs M Casini Mr & Mrs D Caukill Peter & Di Cawdron Mr & Mrs Jason Chaffer Mr Shane Chichester Mr & Mrs P Chivers Mr & Mrs Andrew Christie Tim & Maria Church Ann Clarke Michael & Angela Clayton Sir Anthony Cleaver Mrs Susan Clegg John Coke & Suzanne Lemieux Mr & Mrs R Collin Dr Neville Conway Andrew & Donna Cooper Mike & Liz Cooper-Mitchell Stuart Corbyn Matthew & Bianca Cosans Richard & Corin Cotton David & Nikki Cowley Alan & Heather Craft Mr & Mrs John Curtis Mr Thomas Davies Mr & Mrs Robert Dean Douglas & Pru de Lavison Krystyna Deuss

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Mike & Rachel Dickson Noreen Doyle His Hon Mark Dyer Mr & Mrs Kenneth Eckett Mr & Mrs Walton Eddlestone Mr & Mrs S D Elliott Mr & Mrs Peter Ellis Robert Enslow Mr Peter Evans Anonymous Martin & Maureen Farr Jeremy & Rosemary Farr Mr & Mrs Nicholas Ferguson Richard Findlater

& Mairi Eastwood Ms Sian Fisher Mr & Mrs Simon P Fisher Mr & Mrs James Fisher H J N Fitzalan Howard Dr T H & Dr J M Foley Michael Forrest Mr & Mrs Robin Fox Robert Francis QC

& Alison Meek Mr & Mrs David Gamble Lindsey Gardener Mark & Vicky Garthwaite Rosalind & John George North Street Trust David & Anne Giles Ian & Edwina Gilroy Mr & Mrs Bruce Ginsberg Cassandra Goad Mr B Goater Mr Kenneth Grange CBE Mr & Mrs P Grant Mr & Mrs Richard Grant Mick & Denise Green The Hon Mrs Greenwood Alistair & Sally Gregory-Smith Kingsley Griffiths RIBA Max & Catherine Hadfield Mrs David Hagan Mrs Peter Hall

2007 Mr & Mrs D Hall Mr Eben Hamilton QC John & Janet Hammond Mr & Mrs Richard Hardman Benjamin Hargreaves Paul & Kay Henderson Basil Henley & Caro Barton Valerie & Peter Hewett Michael & Sarah Hewett Mr John Heywood Michael & Genevieve Higgin Mr & Mrs Patrick Higham Mr & Mrs Christopher Hills Mr & Mrs H C Hintzen Frank Hitchman Mark & Vicki Hodgkinson Mr & Mrs Hansgeorg B Hofmann Mr Christopher Holdsworth Hunt Mr David Holland Roger & Kate Holmes Mr Charles Holroyd Mrs Alexandra Homan David & Mal Hope-Mason Gabrielle Howatson Mr & Mrs Richard Howorth Mrs Marie-Josee Hunter Mrs Juliet Huntley Howard & Anne Hyman Mr & Mrs James Illingworth Mr Charles Irby Ramsay Ismail & David Crellin Mr & Mrs Peter James Mr & Mrs Timothy Jenkins Mrs Margi Jennings Sir Peter & Lady Christine Job Mr & Mrs Michael Jodrell Dr & Mrs Ivan Johnson Sally & Scot Johnston Dr & Mrs Max Jonas Owen & Jane Jonathan Alan & Judi Jones Anonymous Mr & Mrs Edward Jones Anonymous

Fortunio 2001 Quentin Hayes (Clavaroche) and Natasha Marsh (Jacqueline)

Mr & Mrs Pierre Jungels Vincent & Amanda Keaveny Mrs Judith Kelley Dr John Kelynack Mr & Mrs Graham Kennedy A Kennedy & L Cornish Mr & Mrs James Kiernan Kevin Kissane W B Knowles Anonymous Stephen & Miriam Kramer Mr Terence Kyle Mr & Mrs Bill Lawes Belinda Leathes Mr & Mrs Brian Levy Mr & Mrs Gareth Lewis Sonya Leydecker Mr & Mrs J Liddell Mrs Roger Liddiard Mr & Mrs Anthony Littlejohn Mr & Mrs Simon Lofthouse QC Mr Dieter Losse Mr & Mrs Henry Lumley Nicholette MacDonald-Brown Robin Mackenzie Mr & Hon Mrs Ian MacNabb Mr & Mrs J J Macnamara Bill & Sue Main Mr & Mrs David Maitland Andrew & Claire Marchant Anonymous Tim Martin Brian & Penelope Matthews Mr & Mrs A Mayhook-Walker Mr & Mrs Douglas McGregor Mrs Jane McVittie Mr & Mrs C L Middleton Mr D & Dr J Mitchell Brigid Monkhouse Mrs Jonathan Moore Mr John Moreton Anonymous Mr Simon Mosley David Moss

Cosi fan tutte 2001 Sally Matthews (Fiordiligi)

Lady Muir Wood Dr Douglas Munro-Faure Richard Murray Bett Chris & Annie Newell Mr & Mrs Michael Nicholson Pamela & Bruce Noble Mr & Mrs Peter Nutting Barry & Sue O’Brien Anonymous Mr & the Hon Mrs J Ogilvie Thompson Victoria O’Keeffe Janet & Michael Orr Mr Robert Ottley Nick & Lavinia Owen Nicola Ozanne Mrs A Pakenham George & Christine Palmer Mrs Charles Parker Sir Michael & Lady Parker Mr & Mrs Jonathan Patrick Paul & Vicky Pattinson Anonymous Mr & Mrs Donald Pearse Mr & Mrs Tim Peat Peter & Charlotte Peddie Ron & Lyn Peet Mr & Mrs P Peirse-Duncombe Mr & Mrs Erik Penser Mr & Mrs R Pertwee Mr & Mrs Robin Petherick Jonathan & Gillian Pickering Matthew Pintus David & Christina Pitman Anthony Pitt-Rivers Sally Posgate David & Jill Potter Mrs Jane Poulter Julien Prevett Michael Pullan Mr Anthony Pullinger Mr & Mrs Charles Purle Lady Purves Dr Shirley Radcliffe Neil & Julie Record

David & Clare Reid Scott Hilary Reid Evans Mike & Jessamy Reynolds Mr Clive Richards OBE Mr & Mrs A Richmond-Watson Mr & Mrs Christopher Road Mr Stuart Roden Alex & Caroline Roe Nicolas Rogerson Emma Rose & Quentin Williams Peter Rosenthal David & Julia Rosier Mr & Mrs E J M Ross Anna Rostand Lady Rothermere Mr & Mrs James Roundell Mrs R Sandars Mrs Lilly Scarpetta Peter & Carolyn Scoble Gordon & Sally Scutt Rupert Sebag-Montefiore Mr & Mrs G Seligman Jonathan & Elizabeth Selzer Tony Shead Tony & Pam Shearer Robert & Felicity Shepherd David & Jeni Sieff Nigel Silby Richard & Amanda Slowe Dr Anthony Smoker Joe & Lucy Smouha Peter & Sue Sonksen Crispin & Jo Southgate Mr & Mrs C D Spooner M J G Stanton Nigel & Johanna Stapleton Brian Stevens David & Debbie Stileman Lisa Stone Alastair Storey Mr John Strachan J Sturdy-Morton & M Morris Mr & Mrs Tom Sweet-Escott Camilla Swiderska

Anything Goes 2002 They set sail from New York

Caroline & Phillip Sykes Jeremy & Marika Taylor The Hon Louis & Kate Taylor Simon Thorp Esq Mr & Mrs Max Thum Prof & Mrs G M Tonge W P M Tops Mr & Mrs John de Trafford Mr & Mrs Brian Trafford Mr & Mrs J Tremlett Joanna Trollope Sir Thomas & Lady Troubridge Mr & Mrs James Turner Sir Michael & Lady Turner Mr Peter Village QC X N C Villers Paul & Alyson Viner Mr John von Spreckelsen Rosy & David Walker Mr & Mrs Andrew Walker Mrs Denise Wallace Mrs Jane Wallis Dr Kenneth Watters Iain Webb-Wilson Christian Wells Mr & Mrs Graham J West Richard & Susan Westcott Richard Westmacott Mr & Mrs Ian White Mr & Mrs Howard Wilkinson Mrs Helen Wilkinson Mr & Mrs Owain Williams Isobel Williams Mr & Mrs Patrick J d’A Willis Claire Wills & Oliver Strachan Mr & Mrs W von Stiernhielm Thomas & Margaret Wolf Peter Wrangham Richard Youell f

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The School of Plato

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Rick Abbott Tim & Philippa Abell Mr & Mrs David Abrahams Mrs Tikki Adorian Mrs Peter Ainsley Mrs Rosemary Alexander Mr Mark Almond Mr & Mrs Jeremy Amos Angela Anderson Phillip Arnold & Philip Baldwin The Hon Nicholas & Mrs Assheton Robert & Janice Atkin Mr M E Austen Jane & Robert Avery Mr & Mrs Nicholas Backhouse Felicity Bagenal Mr & Mrs N Bagshawe Mrs Grenfell Bailey Margaret Bailey Nicholas Baker Jean & Richard Baldwin Mr & Mrs George Band Anonymous Mr & Mrs J Barlow & Miss K & G Barlow Sir James & Lady Emma Barnard Mr & Mrs S R Barrow Caroline Barton Stanley Bates Mr Michael Bauch Richard Bayley Lord & Lady Beaumont Baron C von Bechtolsheim Anonymous Mr & Mrs D Betancor Mr & Mrs John Bevan Mr Robert Bickerdike Roger W Binns The Hon Mrs Diana Birtwistle Mr & Mrs C Blackmore Mr & Mrs Simon Bladon Mrs Emma Bleasdale Mr & Mrs Anthony Bodie Mrs Margaret Bolam Lisa Bolgar Smith A C Bompas QC Mrs D C Bonsall Mr & Mrs Edward Booth-Clibborn John & Lillie Boumphrey

Mr & Mrs Neville Bowen Julian Bower Mr & Mrs David Bowyer The Hon Robert Boyle Mr & Mrs Andrew Brannon Mr & Mrs D Briggs Charles & Patricia Brims Dr Amanda Britton Robin & Penny Broadhurst Adam & Sarah Broke Mr Charles Bromfield Mr & Mrs James Bromhead Mr Andrew Brooke Mr Chris Brown Mrs Nicky Brown Finn Bruce Mark & Victoria Burch Mr & Mrs Geoffrey Burnand Mr & Mrs M J Burton Mr & Mrs Murray Bywater Donald Campbell Dr & Mrs M J Carawan Mr & Mrs Nicholas Carter Mr & Mrs Charles Cassels Denis & Ronda Cassidy Mr Graham Cawsey The Hon Mrs A R Cecil The Lord Chesham Anonymous Julia Chute Trevor & Ann Clarke Diana Clarkson Mr & Mrs Adam Cleal Bruce Cleave Mrs Janice Coates Dr John Cobb Mrs Sandra Cockram Mrs Laurence Colchester Mr Adrian Cole FRICS Mr Robert Colvill Mr Howard Colvin Mrs John Colwell Dr Mavis Conway Mr Hugh Cookson Robert & Morella Cottam Anonymous Mr & Mrs Simon Crawshay Jones The Earl of Cromer Tom Cross Brown

The Turn of the Screw 2002 Janis Kelly (Miss Jessel) and Jeffrey Lloyd Roberts (Peter Quint)

Mr & Mrs C Crouch Mr David Crowe Mr Andrew D Cummins Lady Curtis Mr Etienne d’ Arenberg Mrs Elizabeth & Mr Rene Dalucas Dr & Mrs C Davenport-Jones Anonymous Mr & Mrs Mark Davies Jones Mike & Suzette Davis Anonymous Mr & Mrs Andrew de Ferranti Bonnie Dean Toby de Lotbiniere Mr & Mrs James Denham Mr & Mrs Lindsay Dibden Dr Michael Dingle Mr & Mrs Robert Dixon Mr & Mrs Matthew Dobbs Mrs S Dodson Dr Barbara Domayne-Hayman Christine Douse Professor & Mrs T A Downes Mr & Mrs R S Drew Mr & Mrs Reg Drury Jamie Dundas Mrs Dickie Dutton Mr J M Dyson Eleri Ebenezer Malcolm & Yvonne Edwards Lee MacCormick Edwards PhD Mr Julian G Ellis Michael & Wendy Evans Roger Facer CB Steven F G Fachada Mr & Mrs E Farquharson Clare M Ferguson Mr & Mrs Graham Ferguson Mr & Mrs M J Fitzgerald Mr & Mrs Brian Fitzpatrick Mr & Mrs Andrew Fleming Gillian & Leslie Fletcher J A Floyd Charitable Settlement Mrs A Frears James & Diana Freeland Dr H J Freeman Francois Freyeisen & Shunicho Kubo Mr William Friedrich Mr Simon Frisby

f

2007

Mrs Joyce Fuller Bamber & Christina Gascoigne Mr & Mrs A Gavin Mr & Mrs Robert Gayner Jacqueline & Jonathan Gestetner Mr & Mrs Timothy Gibbons Mr & Mrs Brett Gill Dr & Mrs F J Gilmurray Anonymous The Reverend Simon Godfrey TD Dr & Mrs Goodison Colin & Letts Goodwin Chris & Sally Gordon John Gordon Mr P A Gore-Randall Sir Alexander & Lady Graham Peter Granger Anonymous Mr Robert B Gray Mr & Mrs Quintin Greatrex The Hon Mrs Jane Green Mr Anthony Green Hugh & Sarah Green Mark & Susie Greenwood Mr & Mrs David Greggains John & Ann Grieves Mr & Mrs Tom Grillo Pamela Gross Denis & Sally Gross Mr & Mrs Edmund Grower Mrs Gerard Guerrini Nerissa Guest The Hon F B Guinness Anonymous Mr & Mrs Paul Gunn Richard & Judy Haes Allyson Hall Mr & Mrs Philippe & Jane Hallauer Tim & Jenny Hamilton Richard & Janet Hanna Mrs Valerie Hardwick Mr & Mrs G T Harrap Mr & Mrs David Harris Angela & David Harvey Mr & Mrs Julian Harvey Dr Fred Haslam Mr & Mrs Brian Haughton Mrs Linda Haysey Anonymous

Jamie & Victoria Heath N G Hebditch Martin & Alicia Herbert Mr & Mrs Alan Herring Dr & Mrs M Hession Dr & Mrs G R Hext Mr Adam Hiddleston Mr William Hillary Mrs Patricia Hingston Mrs Shirley A Hinton Marianne Hinton Mr & Mrs Peter Hobbs Mr & Mrs I F Hodgson Mr R E Hofer Mr & Mrs Guy Holborn Mr & Mrs P R J Holland Mr Robin Holmes Peter & Marianne Hooley Mr Christopher Hopkinson Mr David Hopkinson CBE Stephen Hopwood & Nicky Road Elaine & Nigel Horder Barbara Hosking Mr & Mrs David Hossack Mr & Mrs W N J Howard Dr & Mrs Donald Howard Mr & Mrs William Hughes Robert Hugill & David Hughes Ms Siu Fun Hui Mrs Sue Humphrey The Hutchings Family Mrs Madeleine Hyde Mrs E Hyde Stuart & Annabelle Ingram Mr & Mrs Timothy Ingram Michael & Valerie Jackaman Mrs Allan James Mr & Mrs Charles Jamieson Mr & Mrs I Jamieson Mr Derek Johns Michael & Jane Johnson Nicholas Jonas OBE DL Anonymous Avril Jones Russell Jones FCIM Douglas Jones Prof Heather Joshi OBE Gordon & Jenny Jowett Professor Michael Joy OBE

The Turn of the Screw 2002 Megan Kelly (Flora), William Sheldon (Miles), Clarissa Meek (Mrs Grose) and Natasha Marsh (Governess)

Lord & Lady Judd Mrs Jorie Jurgens Jonathan & Clarinda Kane Walia Kani Mr & Mrs Christopher Kinder Mr & Mrs Oliver Kinsey Mr & Mrs Martin Knight Mr & Mrs Nadim Korban Drs A & Z Kurtz Count & Countess Labia Mr & Mrs Gerald Lambert Toby Landau & Nudrat Majeed Anonymous Rear Admiral & Mrs John Lang Mrs B Langevad Patricia Latham Mrs Charles Lea John Learmonth Natalie Lee Mrs Jane Leefe James & Hilary Leek John & Jill Leek Jan Leigh & Jan Rynkiewicz Mr & Mrs Leprince Jungbluth Mr & Mrs Stuart Lewis Mr & Mrs Eric Leyns Mr & Mrs Adrian Lightfoot The Hon Mrs Lisser Brigadier Desmond Longfield Mr Peter Lord Mrs Simon Loup Mr & Mrs Alan Lovell Mr Joseph Lulham Bruce & Maggie Macfarlane Mr & Mrs Peter Macfarlane Derek Mackay Mr James Mackintosh Mr Alastair MacPherson Sir Nevil Macready BT CBE Mr & Mrs T Maier David & Mary Male George W Mallinckrodt KBE Tom & Sarah Manners Bruce & Sarah Mauleverer Mrs A P Mayne Christopher & Clare McCann Rosalind McCarthy Anonymous Mr & Mrs James McGill

Madeline McGill Anonymous Mr & Mrs Christopher McLaren The Hon Michael & Mrs McLaren Mrs Caroline McNeil Mr & Mrs Nigel Melville William Middleton-Smith Dr & Mrs Patrick Mill John Millbank P Miller & H Kingsley Richard & Patricia Millett Mr & Mrs Hallam Mills Mr Patrick Mitford Slade Diana & Edward Mocatta Mr & Mrs P W Mommersteeg Vivienne Alexandra Monk Mr Richard Moore Dr Chris Morley Sara Morton Mrs John Nangle Sir Paul & Lady Neave Jeremy & Elizabeth Nicholson Mrs Jacqueline Nimmo Sir Edwin & Lady Nixon Hon Michael & Mrs Nolan Mr & Mrs Mark Norris John & Dianne Norton Francis & Amanda Norton Lt Col & Mrs Richard Norton Mr & Mrs D Novakovic The Hon M J & Mrs O’Brien Dr & Mrs Robin Odgers Mr Preben Oeye & Mr John Derrick Anthony & Lorraine Ogden Dr & Mrs Guy O’Keeffe John A Paine Mr C A Palmer Tomkinson Mrs Blake Parker Clive & Deborah Parritt Iain Paterson Mr & Mrs Derek Patrick Mr & Mrs Donald Payne Michael Pearl John & Jacqui Pearson Ann & Nigel Pearson Mr & Mrs Alexander Pease Mr & Mrs Anthony Peck Claudia Pendred Mr Charles Petre

Mr R B Petre Mr & Mrs Tom Pigott Mr & Mrs Christopher Pilkington Mr Anthony Pinsent Richard Plummer Mr & Mrs Michael Pragnell Judith Prickett & Raymond Sutton Edward Priday Jennifer Priestley Mrs D E Priestley David & Judith Pritchard Peter & Sally Procopis Mr & Mrs Stephen Proctor Penny Proudlock Mr Robin Purchas QC Gill & Clive Purkiss Mrs Rosalind Quaife Mrs Chris Quayle Mr & Mrs Gerald Raingold Sir Peter & Lady Ramsbotham Mr & Mrs John Rees The Hon.Philip Remnant Mrs Sarah Rickett Mrs Caroline Rimell Jill Ritblat Sir Miles & Lady Rivett-Carnac Miles & Vivian Roberts Mr & Mrs James Roberts Mrs D E Roberts Anonymous Mr David Robins Mr Michael Rogerson TD Mr & Mrs Andrew Rose Mr John Ross Tom & Kate Rossiter Anonymous Mr Alan Roxburgh Joan & Lewis Rudd Ken & Lesley Rushton Prof D & Mrs S Russell-Jones Richard & Susie Saville Mr Richard Saville Mr John Schofield Mr & Mrs Alistair Scott Mr & Mrs Colin Scott-Malden Prof & Mrs Jacques R Seguin James & Karin Sehmer Count Michel de Selys Mr Richard Sharp

Anything Goes 2002 Kim Criswell (Reno Sweeney) in Blow Gabriel Blow

Mrs Simon Shaw Mr & Mrs Mark Silver Professor David & Mrs Gillian Silverman Mr & Mrs Peter Simor Mark & Deirdre Simpson MIchael Sissons Ian Skeet Sir Jock Slater Mrs Ann Smart Russell & Julia Smart Mr & Mrs Robin Smeeton Barry & Gill Smith Mr & Mrs Stephen Smyth Pippa & Ian Southward Mr & Mrs J P Spencer Mr Paul Spencer Mr J G Stanford Anonymous Christopher & Tineke Stewart Henry Stewart Heather Stewart Roger & Mary Stiles Ian & Jenny Streat Toby & Fiona Stubbs Major John Sturgis MC Mrs Suzi Swete Mr David Swift Mr & Mrs Richard Sykes Anonymous Mr & Mrs John Taylor Mrs Patricia Taylor Mrs Fleur Taylor Mrs Lynne Taylor-Gooby Mrs Margaret Tesolin Mr & Mrs P M Thomas Mr Anthony John Thompson Mr & Mrs R Tickner Sarah Tillie Mr & Mrs G W Tindley Mrs Anna Tognetti Baron Wencelas de Traux de Wardin Veronique & Alexander Trotter Hon Mrs Tufnell Lady Tumim CBE Dr & Mrs James A Turtle Mr & Mrs J Vale L C Varnavides Mano Vayis

Elizabeth & Anthony Vice Mr & Mrs Hugo Vickers David von Simson Sir Stephen Waley-Cohen Sir Timothy & Lady Walker Mr Anthony Walker Mrs Jane Wallace George & Pat Wallace Mr & Mrs Guy Waller Janet & Roger Wallhouse Dr Sarah Wallis Richard & Kristina Walton Mr Richard Walton Mr & Mrs Tim Watkins Ian & Victoria Watson Katherine Watts Colin & Suzy Webster Niels Weise Roger Westcott Mrs Joy M Weston Kay & Graham Westwell Robert & Katharine Whitaker Harvey & Diana White Mr Tony White Sue Whitley Mrs Sarah Wilkinson Christopher & Emma Will Mrs Penelope Williams Professor Roger Williams CBE Anonymous Simon & Lucinda Williams Peter Wilmot-Sitwell Christopher Wilson Esq Mr & Mrs Craig Wilson Abu Khamis Mr W S Witts R Wodehouse David & Vivienne Woolf David & Vicky Wormsley Richard Worthington Anonymous Mrs Paul Zisman Zsalya

f

15

Nevill Holt

f

2007

At Nevill Holt's second opera festival in 2004, the Nevill Holt Rising Stars performed Cosi which, in the following autumn, went on to tour with Pimlico Opera. In 2005 David Ross built a small theatre in his stable courtyard which presented The Elixir of Love (Rising Stars) and Don Giovanni (from Grange Park). There are photographs of the 2006 Barber of Seville at the back of this Programme.

The cost of staging opera to a high standard cannot be met by box office revenues alone. The people below, to whom we are most grateful, have helped bridge the gap. To join them, use the form on page 135

The Captain's Table provide annual support Miss Saffron Aldridge Mr Philip A Bland James & Victoria Browning Mrs Sylvia Bryars Mr & Mrs Johnny Gallagher Andrew Haigh

Keith Hann Arthur & Shan Hazlerigg Mr & Mrs David Laing Jane & Chris Lucas Mrs Nicholas Lyons Mr Christopher Morris

Barry & Nikki Rivers Mr & Mrs Alex Robinson Adrian Spooner Heneage Stevenson f

The Clipper Class provide annual support

16

Mr & Mrs J D Abell Mr Chris Brown Anthony Bunker Peter Crisp & Jeremy Crouch Kate & Philip Douglas Tina Fotherby

Mr & Mrs Richard Foulkes Dr & Mrs R Godwin-Austen Mr & Mrs Michael Heaton Mrs Biddy Hodgkinson Mr & Mrs A C Keene Mr & Mrs James Lowther

Ian & Caroline McAlpine George Nissen CBE Mr & Mrs James Saunders Watson Mr & Mrs Hugh Sinclair Mr John Swallow Mr Richard & the Hon Mrs Wheeler-Bennett

The Stowaways provide annual support Mrs Robin Abbott Mr W H Baker & Miss S G Mahaffy David Barker QC Stanley Bates Brian & Catherine Beardsall Mr & Mrs Charles Bennion Mrs M J Bowen Mr Richard Bowker CBE Mr J David Bromage Mr & Mrs Robin Buchanan Michael Butterfield Denis & Ronda Cassidy Michael Cazenove

Mrs Margaret Charnock Mr & Mrs N Cheatle Mrs Carolyn Conlan Dr & Mrs E Craven Mr James Dean Anthony Forbes Jinx Grafftey-Smith Mr & Mrs Victor Green Anonymous Mr Richard Hill TD DL Mr David W Hobdey Mr David Hughes Tim Hutton

Mr Paul Hyde-Thomson CBE Mrs Wilma Jasienski J Denys Johnson Anonymous Mr Per Jonsson Philip & Emer Kirwan Robert Lancaster Tom & Grete Lawson Caroline Lawson-Dick Jeremy & Jane Lea Anonymous Mrs Timothy Milward Mr & Mrs P W Mommersteeg

Cosi fan tutte 2004 – the first production from the Nevill Holt Rising Stars Karina Lucas (Dorabella), Andrea Palk (Despina) and Lee Bisset (Fiordiligi)

John & Dianne Norton John Older Mrs Sarah Panes Sir John Parsons Ian & Susie Pasley-Tyler Admiral Sir James Perowne KBE Mr David Phillips MA Anonymous Charles & Mary Richardson Robert & Monica Rust Mr & Mrs B Spoor David & Liz Staveley Brian Stokes

Anonymous David & Janet Thomas Mrs Alison J Thorman Mr Roger Twidale Peter Verstage Mr Robert Wakeford Dexter Mr & Mrs J R Whitehead J R Whysall Mr & Mrs E G Wignall Mr & Mrs Matthew Williams Mr Bill Wood

f

The Elixir of Love 2005 The villagers chew the fat and play dominoes

The Elixir of Love 2005 Freddie Tong (Dulcamara) suprise the villagers with ice–cream cornets and his cure–all potion

The Cunard Set who helped establish the festival at Nevill Holt in its early days Mr & Mrs Robin Bowie Patrick & Julia Carter Anonymous Dr & Mrs Mark Cecil Mr Peter Fenwick OBE Hamish & Sophie Forsyth Colin & Sarah Forsyth Mr Martin George The Hardingham Trust Mr William Guinness Ron Haylock

Richard & Victoria Heyman Mr & Mrs Michael Learoyd Anonymous Mrs Sam Lloyd Sir Bruce & Lady MacPhail Sir Richard & Lady Morris Mr & Mrs Robin

Murray-Philipson Mr & Mrs E H D Peppiatt Jim & Anne Peschek Mr & Mrs Roger Sharpley

Mark & Lesley Shaw Mr & Mrs Raymond

I Skilling Sir James & Lady Spooner Mr Maurice Thompson Mike Thrower & Gill Lungley Fred Vinton The Hon Mrs Louise Ward R W B Williams Colin Williams f

The Elixir of Love 2005 Nicholas Sharratt (Nemorino) helps Freddie Tong (Dulcamara) with some car maintenance

17

The gardens at

Nevill Holt

18

19

A "goalpost" arrives to hold up the old building ‌

‌ so that we can knock down one side

Martin Smith who built the theatre and had the idea of the goalpost

The steel of the balcony arrives from Littlehampton

The new staircase to the Grand Tier

Flint and brick traditional finish

Excavations for the th

20

The cesspit into which 18thc staff had thro

The 18thc china and glass which was

Building the new theatre at The Grange

vations for the theatre

The roof of the scenery dock

The scenery dock (Smirke wing) under construction

21

hc staff had thrown broken china and glass

glass which was found in the cesspit

A brickie, Michael Byrne

The running horse creating the elaborate finish of the Smirke wing

The digger which excavated the theatre and found the china

The master plasterer

The

Appeal

f 2001–2

These are the contributors to the Appeal whose generosity built the new theatre and created an Endowment Fund

Donald Kahn & family Ronnie Frost & family f Lydia & Miles d’Arcy-Irvine f The Carphone Warehouse The Clore Duffield Foundation f Lord Harris of Peckham f John & Anya Sainsbury Simon & Virginia Robertson f Anonymous f James Cave f David & Amanda Leathers f Sir David & Lady Davies EFG Private Bank f William Garrett f Corus f Mark Andrews f Mr & Dr J Beechey f David & Elizabeth Challen f Mr & Mrs William Charnley Mr & Mrs Peter Dicks f Simon Freakley f David Gilgrist & Bobbie du Bois f Philip Gwyn Mrs Ian Jay f James & Béatrice Lupton f Donald & Jill Mackenzie f Nigel & Anna McNair Scott P F Charitable Trust f The Hon & Mrs Richard Sharp f Mrs Timothy Syder Richard & Cynthia Thompson f Anne Veeder f The Band Trust 22

Mr & Mrs Gerald Acher Mr & Mrs David Anderson Mr & Mrs R Atkinson–Willes Anonymous Tom & Gay Bartlam Rupert T Bentley Bernard Cayser Trust Kevin & Corinne Bespolka William & Judith Bollinger Douglas Guest Bollinger James Philip Bollinger

La Bohème 2003 l to r John Hudson (Rodolfo), Anne-Sophie Duprels (Mimi), Mark Stone (Marcello), Andrew Foster–Williams (Colline), Frank Church (Shaunard)

Sarah & Tony Bolton Mr & Mrs Paul Brewer Rory & Elizabeth Brooks Mr & Mrs Tony Bugg The Bulldog Trust Sir Euan Calthorpe Bt Christopher & Katie Cardona Nigel & Elisabeth Carrington Sir Peter & Lady Cazalet Mr & Mrs Bernard Cazenove The Chase–Gardener family

Pam Clarke Alastair & Tiana Collett Oliver & Cynthia Colman Michael Cuthbert Peter & Annette Dart Mr & Mrs Geoffrey de Jager Sandra & Damon de Laszlo Mr & Mrs Lionel de Rothschild Anonymous Alun & Bridget Evans Iain R Evans

Iolanthe 2003 Richard Suart (Lord Chancellor)

Iolanthe 2003 Th

Mr & Mrs James fforde Mr & Mrs T Floyd Hamish & Sophie Forsyth The Misses Ismay, Ottilie & Cecilia Forsyth Peter & Judith Foy Mr Mark N Franks Reita Gadkari Janet & John Gaymer Jacqueline & Michael Gee Trust Enrique Biel Gleeson Lady Shauna Gosling Mr & Mrs George Goulding Anonymous Sir Ronald Grierson Nigel & Diana Grimwood William Gronow Davis Barbara & Michael Gwinnell Mr & Mrs Charles Haddon–Cave QC Hayden Trust Mr & Mrs R A Henley Malcolm Herring Mr & Mrs John Hewett John & Catherine Hickman Dr Jonathan Holliday & Dr Gwen Lewis George & Janette Hollingbery The Holmes family Hugh & Tamara Hudleston Nicholas & Jeremy Hunter Mr & Mrs David Hunter Mr & Mrs M J Isaac Hannah Jacobs Harriet Jervis Mr & Mrs J Jervoise Neil & Elizabeth Johnson Andrew & Caroline Joy Mr & Mrs Colin Keogh

Iolanthe 2003 The Fairies who will seduce the House of Lords

Dr R Hubert Laeng–Danner Rufford Foundation T Landon Barbara Yu Larsson Mr & Mrs Malcolm Le May Peter Leaver & Thomas Sharpe Mr & Mrs Adam Lee Jeremy Gardner Lewis Susie Lintott & Louisa Church David & Linda Lloyd Jones Joe & Minnie MacHale Charles & Ann–Marie Mackay Mr & Mrs Michael Mackenzie Tessa & John Manser J P Marland Charitable Trust Wendy & Michael Max Anonymous Mr & Mrs Peter May Harvey McGregor QC Thomas Monk Martin & Caroline Moore Elizabeth Morison Dr & Mrs Julian Muir The Nawrocki family The O’Hea family Sue & Peter Paice Alexia Paterson Mark & Rachel Pearson Nigel Perfect & Peter Tilley The Lord & Lady Phillimore Sir David & Lady Plastow Jan & Michael Potter Bruce & Lizzie Powell Mark & Veronica Powell Benjamin Pritchett–Brown Mr & Mrs Gary Ralfe Mr & Mrs Christopher Reeves

David & Alex Rhodes Ros & Ken Rokison Mrs Faanya Rose Mrs Antony Rowe Mr & Mrs John Salkeld Mr & Mrs Anthony Salz Christopher & Anne Saul Mr & Mrs Richard Scopes Mr & Mrs Roderick Selkirk Mrs Christopher Sheridan Lord & Lady Simon of Highbury Edward M Siskind Paul & Rita Skinner Mr & Mrs Martin St Quinton Nicholas Stanley Donald & Rachael Stearns The Steel Charitable Trust The Stevenson Charitable Trust John & Lesley Stuttard Mr & Mrs R H Sutton Anonymous Mr & Mrs Bernard Taylor Gordon & Sue Thorburn The Titchmarsh family Mr & Mrs Anthony Townsend Wendy & John Trueman Adair Turner & Orna Ni–Chionna The Hon Lucy & Michael Vaughan Lady Jane Wallop John & Carol Wates Miss Clare Williams Hamish & Elisabeth Williams Mark & Jane Williams The Hon Geoffrey & Mrs Wilson Mr & Mrs C H R Wunderly Caroline Wyld

Le Roi Malgré Lui 2003 Act 1 A Castle near Crakow

23

PATRON The Rt Hon Lord Ashburton KG

MUSIC CONSULTANT Anthony Legge

PROJECTION PROGRAMMER Stephen Parkinson

BOARD William Garrett (Chairman) The Rt Hon Lord Ashburton KG D Iain Burnside D Simon Freakley D Wasfi Kani OBE D The Hon Mary-Ann Sheehy D

RÉPÉTITEURS Jeremy Cooke D (Gambler / Montecchi) Magnus Gilljam (Flute) Krystian Belliere (Falstaff)

SOUND CONSULTANT Tom Lishman

ENDOWMENT FUND BOARD Mark Andrews (Chairman) D Hamish Forsyth D William Garrett Wasfi Kani OBE D Mark Lacey D Marie Veeder D ADVISORY COUNCIL Sir David Davies (Chairman) D Gerry Acher CBE D Miles d'Arcy Irvine D Dame Vivien Duffield CBE Jacob Grierson D Donald Kahn D James Lupton D Viscount Norwich David Ross Victoria Sharp The Hon Jeremy Soames D

24

CHIEF EXECUTIVE Wasfi Kani OBE D EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR Michael Moody D WINCHESTER OFFICE Rachel Pearson D Membership Helen Sennett Company Manager Jan Tuffield Box Office / Press Alison Duncan Administration Caroline Sheahan Administration Elaine Labram Finance

ORCHESTRAS English Chamber Orchestra (Flute) Orchestra of St John's (Gambler / Falstaff ) PRODUCTION MGT Alison Ritchie Bo Barton Adrian Peacock TECHNICAL STAGE MANAGER Declan Costello DEPUTIES Frank Crossley Simon Plumridge STAGE TECHNICIANS Sylva Parizkova James Fahy Prentiss Clarke-Jones Sarah McPhail Ishwor Raj Giri SETS Bowerwood (Flute) Set-Up Scenery (Gambler / Falstaff ) Visual Scene (Montecchi) WATERIST Mario Borza (Flute)

LIGHTING PROGRAMMER Heidi Riley (Falstaff ) LIGHTING DESIGN ASSOCIATE Peter Harrison (Gambler / Flute) VIDEO & SOUND TECHNICIAN Duncan Russell

COSTUME SUPERVISOR Yvonne Milnes (Gambler / Falstaff ) Sarah Bowern (Flute) Caroline Hughes (Montecchi) DEPUTY Harriet Balsom WIGS Campbell Young (Gambler / Falstaff ) Darren Ware (Flute)

CHIEF ELECTRICIAN Dan Last

WARDROBE MISTRESS Alyson Fielden D Amanda Brothwell

DEPUTY Peter Mous Tom Chiplen

ASSISTANTS Jennifer Robertson Karen Havercan

LIGHTING Whitelight

COSTUME CUTTERS Susan Casey Amanda Brothwell

STAGE MANAGERS Marius Ronning (Gambler) Diane Norburn (Flute) TBA (Falstaff) Iain Mackenzie-Humphreys (Montecchi) DEPUTY STAGE MANAGERS Iain Mackenzie-Humphreys (Gambler) Charlotte Hayne (Flute) Sarah Tryfan (Falstaff) ASM Jacqueline Carden (Gambler) Chrissie Chandler (Flute) Bella Lagnado (Falstaff) Jen Raith (Montecchi)

COSTUME MAKERS Judith Ward Elsa Threadgold Jane Gonin Classic Cuts (Men's Taylor) Michelle Tomas (student placement) COSTUME HIRE Angels COSTUME ASSISTANT Marianne Brün WIG MISTRESS Helen Keelan COSMETICS Mac

Richard Jones (observer Gambler)

Cenerentola 2004 Robert Poulton (Magnifico) berates the waiters

Wonderful Town 2004 Mary King (Ruth) and Graham Bickley (Bob Baker)

ORCHESTRA MANAGER at Nevill Holt

Mark Lacey PRODUCTION MGT at Nevill Holt

Bo Barton Nigel Vincent HEAD OF LIGHTING at Nevill Holt

Nick Mumford CHIEF ELECTRICIAN at Nevill Holt

Mim Spencer SITE MANAGER at Nevill Holt

Fi Smith-Bingham D THERMOI at Nevill Holt

Gillian Horrocks Clare Pearce-Smith Eric & Flick Craven Geraldine Henson Chris & Helen Roberts Richard Mansfield Valerie Mansfield Frances Fray Colin & Sarah Forsyth Judy Bennion Tor & Richard Heyman

THE RESTAURANT Anthony Lane & Heidi Coles Food Kaye Thomson Creative Catering Hampshire Champagne Laurent–Perrier D Water God D Wine John Armit Wines D Décor Alexander Creswell D Festival Programme EARLE & LUDLOW Phil Ellis D (Studio Manager)

SITE SUPERVISOR Jane Laws

FRONT OF HOUSE Jill Hardy

HOUSEKEEPER Karen Wheeler Assisted by Jenny Jefferies Rachael Prendergast Alice Pryor Kim Pullinger J Pullinger Emma Stevens Laura Stevens Sam Jefferies

USHERS Matthew Barrett Ben Cross Digby Don Harry Dudgeon Sam Jefferies

TENT KEEPER Peter Paice Derek Lintott (assistant) SUPERVISOR OF LONG MARQUEE Lizzie Holmes

THE GRANGE & GROUNDS Richard Loader D John & Victoria Salkeld D Tim Jefferies James Jenner Steve Shepherd David Manston Ben Cross Joshua Jefferies

Photographs Alastair Muir Solicitor FARRER & co Alistair Collett D Accountant WILKINSON LATHAM Sophie Holborn Planning Consultant Nathaniel Lichfield Iain Rhind D Insurance Broker Richard Walton

THERMOI Penny Akroyd Jean Amos Nikki Barker Judith Becher D Sue Bristow Sue Brown Lorna Clive D Virginia Collett Henrietta Cooke Louise Cox Pru & Douglas de Lavison Gill Dockray Andrea Harris Lizzie Holmes Inge Hunter Charmian Jones Penelope Kellie Sue Kent Angela Larard Susie Lintott Sue Paice D Lucy Pease Caroline Perry Carolyn Ranald Jo Seligman Katharine Sellon Ann Smart Di Threlfall The Hon Gina Tufnell Don & Barbara Woods Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and sometimes this has not proved possible. We

D associated with

would be pleased to hear

Grange Park since its inception in 1998

from copyright holders not contacted

Grange Park Opera, The Coach House, 12 St Thomas Street, Winchester SO23 9HF tel. 01962 86 86 00 www.grangeparkopera.co.uk Grange Park Opera is registered charity no 1068046. Its Directors are the Charity Trustees. Lord Ashburton and his family own the site they placed The Grange in the guardianship of English Heritage in 1975 and a lease with Grange Park which expires in 2018

The Enchantress 2004 Janis Kelly (Kuma) with some admirers

25

Violets & shovels Where do I begin? At the top – the chandeliers.

Swarovski made a gift of a bulging treasure chest and six illuminated individuals did the deed. They are fêted on the next page. Then Geoff and Fiona Squire not only made them go up and down but changed the life of the crew. How? By electrifying all the flying bars. This took a substantial gift and there are several formerly–sweaty men/women backstage who would like to thank them.

2007 is our most diverse festival programme to date – five operas, the London Symphony Orchestra and a movie. Our delicious new major sponsors are Tulchan (The Gambler), Bentley Reid (the Birthday Bash) and LetsSubscribe.com. If your household needs a steady supply of organic vegetables, locally produced cheese, or hand–made chocolates … visit LetsSubscribe.com

26

Icap need a paragraph of their own for their continued generosity. Michael and Lorraine Spencer are angels.

Sir Christopher 'Archangel' Ondaatje sponsors his eighth production. His trust in us in those early days was the foundation of what you see today.

In the same year, David Ross and Carphone Warehouse hallowed our halls. Not only did Carphone contribute to the new theatre at The Grange but David then made us another theatre in his stable courtyard at Nevill Holt.

That earns them the rank of Cherubim & Seraphim.

Maria Stuarda 2005 Janis Kelly (Elizabeth 1)

Looking back This Festival Programme has pictures of every opera we have staged over our 10 years. Michael Moody and I agree that the best moment was the destruction of a 25m wall of the first theatre (page 20 second picture). In our hearts we are hooligans and it was by the skin of our teeth that we ended up at the Grange and not in prison.

Ebay a singer It's a bit like admitting that you take drugs – but I am an Ebay user. (I've cleaned it out of pink lustre pre–1840 English china.) It's this dirty habit that has inspired me to auction singers. Seven singers were 'adopted' this year. On the next page you can indulge your fantasies – bid for a singer and if you win you visit them in their dressing room after the show. The hottest item must be Bryn Terfel.

Nevill Holt & the Rising Stars Ptolemy Christie's inventive and hilarious production of Barber of Seville, travelled from Nevill Holt (July) to The Grange (September) and then a national tour. It was brilliant – there are pictures on page 124. The festival at Nevill Holt sold more tickets than ever before and each year the place and the operas are more splendid. I am particularly pleased with the lively, thrilling acoustic of the courtyard theatre. We do need more sponsors up there. Some of you surely know of companies with a branch (or interest) in the Midlands upon whom we can cast a modest sponsorship spell.

Wonderful Town 2005 Sophie Daneman (Eileen) whooping it up with the NY cops

With this year's Rising Stars, Tol is reviving the 2001 Montecchi e Capuleti which Dominic Cooke directed in the old theatre. Dominic has gone on to greater things: two Olivier Awards (2007) and the Artistic Directorship of the Royal Court in Sloane Square. I hope he doesn't forget that his first opera was with us and he will direct another show at The Grange.

Entente & Détente The first is an understanding and the second a slackening of tension. Rather than a policy of KGB–style secrecy, we are linking with other excellent companies so you, our supporters, are offered a longer menu. This year we have teamed up with the Early Opera Company (Chandos recording of Semele plus a concert performance here), and with Boy Blue (who won an Olivier Award for Pied Piper and appear at that Birthday Bash). Next year we hope to be doing more of this.

News from the Winchester factory. Rachel, Jan, Helen, Alison, newcomer Caroline, newcomer Elaine, are frantic at their looms or spinning jennies. We are all missing Carol Butler whose 7 seasons of financial industry saw us through the building years and much more.

Vital family member and orchestra manager Mark Lacey has decided that his job had become almost as onerous as running the NHS and so decided to hand the baton – or the life–support machine – to two ready– made orchestras: the Orchestra of St Johns and English Don Giovanni 2005 Henry Waddington (Leporello) and Natasha Marsh (Elvira)

Chamber Orchestra. I hope they enjoy themselves and come back again and again. Mark Lacey has not escaped and is now a trustee of the Endowment Fund.

News from inside. Les Misérables in HMP Wandsworth directed by Michael Moody went down a storm. Many Grange regulars made generous contributions towards it.

Next March we think it will be Sweeney Todd in Brixton Prison. And in the autumn we will announce a three year prison initiative called Porridge. It will require a huge effort on the fundraising front and Michael Portillo, now the patron of Pimlico Opera's work in prison, has said he will host a party to get the porridge cooking.

Particularly when I have just finished prison, I think that, had it not been for Sally and John Ashburton, I would be selling bunches of violets (or something worse) on a street corner. And Michael would be digging the road.

They are the perfect patrons, the heavenly host. It all started on 7 August 1997 when I appeared there for dinner (bearing a Middlemarch–ish letter of introduction from James Lupton), I laid out my stall, we went swimming and then had ten festivals.

I hope you are proud of your ten festivals and are bracing yourself for the helter–skelter of the coming years.

Without you, there would be nothing.

Wasfi Kani OBE

Les Misérables 2007 Pimlico Opera in HMP Wandsworth The final attack on the barricades when Marius is wounded James Rochester (Enjolras), Sean McKoy (Marius), Blake Fischer (Jean Valjean) Marlon "Snoop" Mullings (Grantaire), Kelvin Henry (Combeferre)

27

The new theatre chandeliers are by Sharon Marston. Born in Hereford, her first range was launched in 1997 around the standard incandescent bulb. In 2004 she was commissioned for the V & A's exhibition Brilliant.

Through the exploration of fibre optics, Sharon has developed the work using techniques from an array of craft disciplines. Recent work includes four 10m high chandeliers for the new Hilton Hotel in Warsaw, the Carton House development in Maynooth, Ireland and a one–off piece for The Suite, Amsterdam’s most expensive hotel. Currently projects include glass chandeliers for a palace in Saudi Arabia.

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Major personal donors 2007

The Geoff and

Fiona Squire

Swarovski

Foundation

Roger Birtles

Richard

William

and

and

Sir Peter

Jane

and

Victoria Sharp

Judith Bollinger

and

)

Lady Cazalet

Paul Chase-Gardener

Elisabeth Morison

Artists on EBAY 2008 We are looking for sponsors for key artists in the 2008 season. All opening bids are ÂŁ3,000 For latest prices and bidding wasfi@grangeparkopera.co.uk. For more singers, see website If you win, your singer will not be delivered by Royal Mail but your support will be acknowledged

(a) on the title page of the opera

(b) with the singer's biography

(c) with a visit to their dressing room after a performance

A A A

Witch ANNE MARIE OWENS (Jezibaba Rusalka) Welshman BRYN TERFEL (July 6, 2008 only) Foreign Princess JANIS KELLY (Rusalka)

Another A

Princess YVETTE BONNER (Fleurette Barbe Bleu)

Serial Killer and philanderer PHILIP LANGRIDGE (Barbe Bleu)

Girl of the GoldenWest CYNTHIA MAKRIS (Minnie Fanciulla)

THE

A

A

A

A A A

Sprite who lives at the bottom CLIVE BAYLEY (Rusalka)

of the pond

Prince who lives in a palace JEFFREY LLOYD ROBERTS (Rusalka)

Nymph who leaves the pond for the palace ANNE SOPHIE DUPRELS (she is Rusalka)

Young Conductor RORY McDONALD (Fanciulla)

Fat Man TBA (title role Falstaff, Nevill Holt Rising Stars)

Recent work Mrs Grose Turn of the Screw (Glyndebourne) Very hectic career including recent appearance in title role Gianni Schicchi (ROH) Many appearances at Grange Park include Alice Ford Falstaff 2007 BIDDING CLOSED Sold to Alun & Bridget Evans Current work Das Rheingold, Tempest (ROH), Witch Hansel & Gretel, Basilio Nozze di Figaro (Metropolitan Opera New York)

Recent roles Turandot, Lady Macbeth, Abigaille, Elektra, Salome

Appearances at Glyndebourne, ROH, major European houses

Regular appearances with Grange Park include title role Gambler 2007 Gerrardo Gianni Schicchi (ROH 2007)

Recent work Violetta Traviata (New York City Opera), Thais (Grange Park), appearances at La Fenice, La Scala, San Francisco Jette Parker Young Artist at ROH Owen Wyngrave (Linbury ROH)

Figaro (Grange Park), Kullervo Sherri ff OLAFUR SIGURDARSON (Jack Rance Fanciulla)

(Saarbrucken), and many appearances at Holland Park

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The Magic Flute is the eighth production to have been generously supported by

64

The Christopher Ondaatje Foundation

opera in two acts Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 – 1791) to a libretto by Emmanuel Schikaneder English version by Amanda Holden First performance Theater auf der Wieden, Vienna, September 30, 1791 First performance in England, Haymarket Theatre, London, 1811 Performances at The Grange June 1, 2, 8, 15, 21, 23, 27, 29, 2007 Performances at Nevill Holt July 12, 13, 15, 2007

Magic Flute The

Richard Balcombe Conductor

Stephen Medcalf Director

TAMINO

Adrian Dwyer

the queen of the night

Victoria Joyce

paminA her daughter three ladies

Francis O'Connor Designer papageno

Jon Driscoll projection Designer

Chris Davey Lighting Designer

Hazel Gould assistant director

monostatos sarastro speaker & SOLDIER

Elizabeth Atherton Rebecca von Lipinski Flora McIntosh Margaret Rapacioli David Stout

supported by an anonymous donor

Richard Coxon Jeremy White Christopher Adams

SOLDIER

Peter Kent

Priest

Joe Roche

papagena ENGLISH CHAMBER ORCHESTRA Leader Stephanie Gonley

supported by David & Amanda Leathers

three boys

Teuta Koco Karin Thyselius Hannah Jones Zoe Taylor

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Darkness to light by Stephen Medcalf As in the story of Orpheus & Eurydice, director Stephen Medcalf sees The Magic Flute as a voyage to the underworld and back, a progress from darkness to light, from chaos to harmony. The opera celebrates the power of love – as represented by music – to transform the ugly world we live in into a paradise

All three central characters have journeys of self– discovery. Only by knowing themselves are they able to make successful relationships which in turn dictate the health of the whole community. The mutual hostility and mistrust between the sexes that exists between Sarastro and The Queen of the Night is healed by the sublime union of Tamino and Pamina and on a more earthy level, by that of Papageno and Papagena.

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TAMINO Tamino starts his journey lost in an alien world and in the coils of a serpent. His life is given new direction by the Queen of the Night who begs him to rescue her daughter, Pamina from the evil Sarastro. Though terrified, he pretends to be brave and grasps this moral imperative with joy.

When he meets the Speaker, the representative of Sarastro’s Brotherhood, he is thrown into confusion because everything suggests that Sarastro may not be the embodiment of evil. Did Sarastro abduct Pamina to satisfy his own base desires – or for some higher purpose? Could the beautiful broken–hearted Queen of the Night have an ulterior motive?

From this moment there are no moral certainties and Tamino discovers painfully that life offers few simple answers. In the trials of Act 2 Tamino learns self– discipline and finds a courage that he lacked at the start.

He sets out with pride to rescue Pamina, but by the end of the opera he realizes with humility that it is Pamina who has saved him.

PAMINA At the start of the opera Pamina has all the answers.

Though she has been abducted and assaulted, her spirit is uncrushed. She knows about the ability of love

to transform the world and expects to be united with Tamino. Pamina has the courage that Tamino lacks but soon embraces despair.

Pamina’s trial in Act 2 is a test of her patience and her trust in Tamino. The central episode (in which Tamino refuses to break his vow of silence to the brotherhood and talk to Pamina) has an exact parallel in the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, when Orfeo must resist the temptation to turn and look on Eurydice and so break his oath to the Gods.

Seemingly cruel and arbitrary, if taken metaphorically, these tests emphasise the vital importance of trust in a relationship. Affirmation in a relationship comes at its own time and to demand love to fulfil our needs is different from an open expression of feelings. Some things are better unsaid and left to intuition. Pamina can’t wait for Tamino to express his love for her and doesn’t trust her intuition. She is about to commit suicide when the Three Boys bring her to her senses: ‘No human power can ever part two hearts aflame with love.’ She finds a self–confidence and leads Tamino through the trials of Fire and Water.

PAPAGENO From the beginning of the opera Papageno thinks himself incomplete without a partner. His low self–esteem is disguised in joking, bragging and lying. He takes credit for killing the snake, he finds Sarastro's House more by luck than judgement and he deludes himself that Pamina should be his wife. In Act 2 he fails the trials of self– discipline but does learn something about love. Until confronted by a toothless old hag, Papageno is inclined to judge his potential partners all too superficially.

Finally the clown finds something in life so serious that he is prepared to die for it.

opposite: Masonic Reception in France, 2nd half 18th century (gouache on paper) Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, France, Archives Charmet / Bridgeman Art Library

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The

Synopsis Magic Flute

ACT 1 Night Tamino, as if in a nightmare, struggles to escape from a venomous snake and is rescued by Three Mysterious Ladies and falls unconscious. The ladies vie for the privilege of administering to his needs but abandon the argument to report back to the Queen of the Night.

Tamino wakes up to the sight of a strange bird–like gamekeeper Papageno, who is happily going about his everyday business. Papageno claims credit for killing the snake but the Three Ladies catch him at it and punish him.

They show Tamino a portrait of Pamina, the daughter of the Queen of the Night and it is love at first sight.

They explain that Pamina has been abducted by the evil Sarastro and the Queen herself urges Tamino to rescue Pamina and, if he succeeds, she will be his forever.

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Tamino and Papageno set out for the place where Pamina is held captive, equipped with a magic flute and silver bells. These will protect them from danger.

Sarastro’s Great House

A freemason forged through the tools of his lodge, 1754 English School Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, Archives Charmet Bridgeman Art Library

Pamina fights off the attentions of Sarastro’s servant, Monostatos. Papageno has become separated from his companion and arrives first. He tells Pamina about the heroic – but absent – Tamino and she immediately proclaims that this must be her life companion. Papageno, in contrast, is still in search of his ideal partner.

Tamino is led by Three Boys to the portico of Sarastro’s great house. He is told that the evil person who has abducted Pamina is, in fact, the leader of a Brotherhood which strives for Wisdom and Truth. The contradiction throws Tamino into confusion.

Papageno and Pamina narrowly avoid being re–captured

by Monostatos but they cannot escape Sarastro. He explains the reason for kidnapping Pamina; it was to protect her from her mother's machinations. He will not force her to do anything but nor will he free her. Monostatos has caught Tamino and brings him to Sarastro expecting a reward. Sarastro reprimands him for his treatment of Pamina. He orders Tamino and Papageno

to be taken to the temple of trials. Before they can join the Brotherhood they must be purified.

difficult test. With the help of the flute they survive the ordeal and are welcomed into the Brotherhood.

DINNER INTERVAL ACT 2 Sarastro calls an assembly of the Priests to tell them that he plans to bring Tamino into the Brotherhood and unite him with Pamina. He wins their reluctant approval.

Papageno

The First Trials Tamino and Papageno begin a Trial of Silence. The Three Ladies tempt them with conversation. In the park meanwhile, Pamina is asleep guarded zealously by Monostatos. The Queen of the Night tries to cajole her into murdering Sarastro. She is torn between her family ties and her growing respect for the Brotherhood. Driven by uncontrollable desire Monostatos demands that Pamina accept his advances or die. Sarastro intervenes and dismisses Monostatos. Monostatos decides to join forces with the Queen of the Night.

The Second Trials Papageno’s curiosity is aroused by an old hag claiming to be his girlfriend. Before he can discover her name, she disappears. The Three Boys tempt Tamino and Papageno with food. Papageno cannot resist. Pamina is drawn to Tamino by the sound of his flute. He refuses to speak to her and she begins to lose faith in him. Tamino seems to be succeeding in the trials but Papageno is doing less well and the Priests tell him he will never be able to join the Brotherhood. Everything will be fine for Papageno if he can only find a wife.

Confused and rejected Pamina is in utter despair. The Three Boys reassure her that when two people truly love one another nothing can separate them.

The Trials by Fire and Water Two soldiers stand guard over the elements. Only by taking the path through Fire and Water can Tamino be purified for initiation. Pamina calls out his name. She is permitted to guide Tamino through this last and most

Papageno is still looking for the woman who will be his wife. Having glimpsed her and lost her he is suicidal.

Once again the Three Boys come to the rescue. They remind Papageno of the power of music. He plays his bells and Papagena appears. They make plans.

The Triumph of Light Abandoned by her daughter, the Queen of the Night and her allies make a last desperate attempt to infiltrate the Brotherhood but Sarastro destroys them.

The marriage of Tamino and Pamina unites the community healing all divisions.

Apron of a Master of the Saint-Julien Lodge in Brioude (19th century) MusĂŠe Crozatier, Le Puy-en-Velay, France, Giraudon Bridgeman Art Library

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Zauberflöte in its intellectual context Die

by Peter Branscombe Peter Branscombe is Emeritus Professor of Austrian Studies at the University of St Andrews.

Schubert Studies, a volume edited with Eva Badura-Skoda, was published in 1982 (CUP); his monograph on Die Zauberflöte (also CUP) came out in 1991. He has continued to work on Mozart and more recently on the Viennese 19th century satirical dramatist Johann Nestroy with particular attention to Nestroy’s adaptation of Offenbach’s Orphée aux enfers.

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The eighteenth century was a time of immense intellectual excitement throughout almost the whole of Europe: philosophy, history, and music along with all the other arts, reflected the ethos of a period that saw the questioning of long–accepted values, and ultimately the overthrow of not a few of them. One can here do no more than just mention a few of the outstanding contributors to a change in outlook that was long overdue. England, viewed as the traditional home of liberty, can claim to have led the way in what came to be called the Age of Reason, with the vital contributions, in very different spheres, of Locke, Newton, Berkeley and Johnson; Scotland played a major role in the movement, through David Hume, Adam Smith and many others; in France the outstanding figures included Voltaire, Diderot and the Encyclopédistes; and Germany, as well as the immense achievements in literature of Goethe and Schiller, produced in Kant, Moses Mendelssohn, Lessing, Hamann and Herder a disparate group of profoundly influential thinkers; and Gottsched was an important literary theorist and champion of good taste. At the time, it would have been impossible to view the scene from an international perspective, but intelligent contemporaries would have sensed, even if they could not explain it, that something out of the ordinary, with potentially far–reaching consequences, was in train.

Austria was slow to admit the new spirit, largely owing to the benign but reactionary rule of Empress Maria Theresia, under whom the values of the ancien régime, though far less insensitively maintained than in France, continued to make themselves felt. Censorship, firm opposition to any loosening of the hold of the Roman Catholic Church, and the maintenance of the old agrarian–based economy, were all tolerated by the population at large, bound by their feudal duties to the country’s large and powerful aristocracy. Isolated voices such as that of Joseph von Sonnenfels, who was imbued with the spirit of Gottsched and other reformers from beyond Austria’s borders, made

themselves heard, but to little obvious effect. In the arts, particularly music with its direct appeal to ears and minds, stirrings from the wider world could more easily make themselves felt, above all from Italy, not least owing to the Habsburgs’ dominion over extensive tracts of that divided country.

Freemasonry, the most controversial yet significant intellectual movement of the century, was introduced to Vienna in the early 1740s, but the suspicious attitude towards it of Maria Theresia, in spite of (or perhaps even because of) the fact that her husband had been a member of the Order from 1731, delayed the spread of Masonry in Vienna until 1770, when the first long–lived lodge, Zur Hoffnung (Hope) was inaugurated. By 1783 there were six established St John lodges in Vienna, not to mention others that followed the observances of the Rosicrucians and Asiatic Brethren. These various lodges between them catered for a socially broad–based, and in their practices, widely differing membership. The most influential of them, Zur wahren Eintracht (True Concord), was formed in 1781, and it published its own periodical in the field of the physical sciences as well as its better known, and in its day very influential, Journal für Freymaurer, in the first issue of which was published Ignaz von Born’s long essay ‘Ueber die Mysterien der Aegyptier’, an important source for elements in the libretto of The Magic Flute.

Although the link with the Italian language and music dominated Mozart’s life and music from near the beginning until the very end, he expressed over and over again his wish to compose works in his native tongue.

However, opportunities were limited, as commissions came most readily for stage works in Italian. However, from an early age Mozart set song texts in German, and, naturally, German was to be the language of his Masonic pieces after his admission to the Order. Mozart had lived in Vienna for well over three years by the time that he was enrolled in the small lodge Beneficence on 14 December 1784, the name of ‘Kapellmeister Mozart’ having been

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Masonic Initiation ceremony of a male Freemason early 19th century French School Musee du Grand Orient de France, Paris, Archives Charmet / Bridgeman Art Library

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circulated for approval by the other Viennese lodges nine days earlier. He was welcomed to membership by the Master, his old Mannheim acquaintance Otto, Baron von Gemmingen–Hornberg. Mozart’s official lodge was one of the smallest, so he frequently attended the meetings of other lodges. On Christmas Eve his signature appeared for the first time as a ‘visiting brother’ in the attendance record of the True Concord, and it was here that he was advanced to the degree of Fellow Craft on 7 January 1785.

We do not know when he attained the degree of Master, but it was certainly before his father attended with him a Master Lodge on 22 April, during the latter’s visit to his son and daughter–in–law. Leopold had immediately joined the craft, and was permitted to advance rapidly through the grades.

Mozart was most warmly welcomed by the Viennese Masons for his musical skills and wrote a series of fine works for performance at lodge occasions. It has even been argued that the song O heiliges Band (O sacred bond, K148, which probably dates from 1773), was already Masonic in intention. The pieces that he composed for Masonic occasions range from simple keyboard accompanied songs to works requiring a much larger ensemble – so many of Mozart’s brethren were musicians that there can have been little difficulty in assembling an ensemble of sufficiently talented performers. There is a simple tunefulness in some of his Masonic compositions, others are more complex and challenging. The purely instrumental Maurerische Trauermusik (Music of Mourning, K477 of 1785), with its rich yet austere mood and scoring, looks ahead to the world of Sarastro and his priests in Die Zauberflöte. More typical of normal lodge activity are text settings, whether instrumentally or keyboard–accompanied, which can be sung by amateur singers; there is often choral repetition of the last line of a solo song, as in Sarastro’s first aria.

Symbolism in Masonic music was widespread. Though scholars may interpret its details in widely differing ways, there is no doubt that the use of seconds, thirds (including preference for key signatures with three flats), tied notes, and ‘knocking’ rhythms, all point to Masonic practices – and occur elsewhere in Mozart’s music, including of course in Die Zauberflöte.

We cannot know precisely what his Masonic ties meant to Mozart, though we can form a good idea of his commitment to the craft’s spiritual ideals from the veiled, highly positive remarks that on 4 April 1787 (in what, poignantly, was to prove his very last extant letter to his father) he wrote, having just learnt that the latter was seriously ill. ‘I certainly don’t need to tell you how keenly I await comforting news from you yourself; and I hope for it with confidence – though I have made it my habit always to imagine the worst in everything – as Death (to be precise) is the true purpose of our life, I have in the past few years made myself so closely acquainted with this true best friend of mankind, that his image has nothing terrifying for me any more, but much that is comforting and consoling! and I thank my god for granting me happiness by providing me with the opportunity (you understand me) to regard it as the key to our true blessedness. – I never lie down to sleep without reflecting, that perhaps (Young as I am) I shall not live to see another day.’ Leopold died a few weeks later.

When one examines Mozart’s two completed German– language operas, a principal difference between them can be seen in their moral stance, specifically their attiitude towards punishment. In Die Entführung aus dem Serail (1781) the palace overseer, Osmin, threatens the would–be rescuers of the Pasha’s European women with a brutal death; the potentate himself threatens the heroine with tortures of all kinds if she continues to oppose his desire. Operatic convention finally wins over plausibility, and the happy ending cannot help seeming somewhat contrived. By the time of Die Zauberflöte, written a decade later, the spirit of the Enlightenment, though still muted, had made a firmer impact in Austria. This is reflected, in very general terms, in Die Zauberflöte, by the way in which the temptation to resort to vengeance and violence is overcome, not without a struggle, and the virtues of wisdom and tolerance finally triumph.

By the time that Emanuel Schikaneder and Mozart came to collaborate on Die Zauberflöte, the intellectual climate in Austria had changed considerably. In the decade following the death of Empress Maria Theresia, her son

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Masonic Initiation ceremony of a female Freemason early 19th century French School Musee du Grand Orient de France, Paris, Archives Charmet / Bridgeman Art Library

Joseph, for many years her co–regent, introduced a whole series of reforms, generally in line with the principles of the Enlightenment, that in numerous ways modified the archaic practices of the old regime. Torture had been abolished in 1776, while the reign of the old empress still had a few years to run and the death sentence was after 1781 kept only for high treason. That is not to say that humanitarian values were suddenly the order of the day: what we would regard as cruel and public punishments were still handed out. Milder ones included the shaving of prostitutes’ hair, with miscreants sentenced to such punishments as sweeping the streets, or propelling Danube

barges. By the time of the writing of Die Zauberflöte, Joseph II was dead, his place taken by his brother, Leopold II, who was swift to overturn most of the more eccentric innovations of his brother that had not already been extensively modified or even abandoned during Joseph’s declining years. Leopold’s successor, Franz II, would soon modify further the reforms of his short–lived predecessor, banning Freemasonry in Austria from 1793, a prohibition that officially lasted well into the twentieth century. A further sign that there was something retrospective about the values promulgated in Die Zauberflöte is associated with the name and achievements of Ignaz von Born, whose

life, writings and status as a leading Freemason have encouraged the perhaps misleading assumption that he was the model for the beneficent high priest, Sarastro – misleading because Born had actually renounced his high office in, even membership of, the Viennese Masonic community; and also because the symbolic, even mythic qualities of the opera make it less likely that its authors intended possible identification with persons and events of recent history.

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Die Zauberflöte is one of the most popular and one of the most mysterious of operas. Commentators have put forward many different theories about and interpretations of it. While none of these is entirely convincing, almost none lacks some measure of plausibility. If we start from the basic facts, Mozart wrote the music in the summer and early autumn of 1791. He had become a Freemason when the craft in Vienna was enjoying its greatest popularity.

Within little more than two years that situation was to change radically, when Emperor Joseph II decreed that its lodges must submit to hitherto unheard–of restrictions: the six established lodges were to be reduced to two, each of which was to number no more than 180 members; and attendance–records of the regular meetings were to be kept and submitted quarterly to the authorities. Of necessity, a large proportion of Masons were henceforth to be excluded; and many decided to retire from the order rather than be exposed to official scrutiny. Mozart was one of those who declined to withdraw: the surviving records of lodge meetings indicate that he continued to attend, and take an active part in, Masonic activities; and as the outstanding musical brother, he frequently took a leading role in performances at other lodges.

the work into three acts. A Jacobinical interpretation in 1792 associated the Queen of Night with the regime of Louis XVI, having Pamina as the daughter of Despotism, Tamino as the People, Sarastro representing the Wisdom of a Better Legislation, and his Priests as the National Assembly. There was a Masonic interpretation that saw the Queen as Maria Theresia, enemy of the Freemasons, Tamino as the enlightened ruler Joseph II, Pamina representing the Austrian people, and Sarastro as Ignaz von Born. To write a history of productions of Die Zauberflöte since the Second World War would be an arduous task, for it would be bound to come up with a host of contradictory intepretations of an opera which, for all its more apparent than actual contradictions, conveys some simple messages: first impressions can be deceptive; things that are worth striving for are never easy to obtain; even evil has its place in the scheme of things, in order to bring out the best in those who have to face it; things of the spirit have a vital function in human life.

As for the essence of the Enlightenment, that is conveyed memorably and succintly in the words sung by The Three Boys at the opening of the finale to the second act – by a delicious irony, in the words of one eminent authority, ‘it is one of the many incongruous charms of the opera that it is those supernatural beings that announce an end to the belief in supernatural beings’.

Put into bald English, these words inevitably seem banal, but in their context, with the sotto voce accompaniment of clarinets, bassoons and horns (and no double basses to weigh down the texture when the strings come in with the Spirits’ voices), the effect is magical – The Three Boys:

No opera has had more numerous, or more widely differing, interpretations put upon it by posterity.

This process began almost at once, and included inane re– writings of the libretto – such as one from Passau in 1795 that had Tamino as ‘a wandering knight … fighting a serpent with his broken sword–blade’; or a particularly crass adaptation for Weimar by the man who was to become Goethe’s brother–in–law, with much of the symbolism mishandled, and a clumsy refashioning of

Soon the sun, on its golden course,

shall blaze resplendent to announce the dawn; soon superstition shall disappear

and the wise man be victorious!

O blessed peace, descend, return to men’s hearts,

then shall earth be a heavenly kingdom and mortals be like the gods …

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Meeting of a Viennese Masonic Lodge – probably Zur gekronten Hoffnung (Crowned Hope) Anonymous Historisches Museum der Stadt Wien / The Bridgeman Art Library Any doubts as to the authenticity of the picture were largely removed by H.C. Robbins Landon in his monograph Mozart and the Masons (Thames & Hudson, 1982); Landon identifies most of those present in the assembly – most importantly, Mozart in the lower right-hand corner – and plausibly dates the scene to the early months of 1790

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The Gambler has been most generously supported by Tulchan Communications in their first year of sponsorship

opera in four acts (six scenes) Sergei Prokofiev (1891 – 1953) after Dostoevsky's novel Igrok English version by David Pountney First performance Brussels, 29 April, 1929 First performance in UK, Edinburgh Festival, 1962

The Gambler Performances at The Grange May 31, June 3, 5, 9, 14, 16 2007

André de Ridder

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THE GENERAL (retired) Andrew Shore

Conductor

supported by Malcolm Herring

PAULINE his step–daughter Katherine Rohrer

David Fielding

alexei tutor Jeffrey Lloyd–Roberts

Director & designer

supported by the John Wates Charitable Trust

supported by Dixon Wilson

babulenka the General's rich aunt Carol Rowlands

Chris Davey

the marquis grieux Hubert Francis

Lighting Designer

mr astley a rich Englishman Roderick Earle

Dan O'Neill

blanche a young woman Doreen Curran

– looking for a rich husband

MOVEMENT ORCHESTRA OF ST JOHN'S Leader Andrew Court

PRINCE NILSKY James Scarlett

In the Casino

POTAPICH Babulenka's steward Alex Poulton

A GAUDY LADY

THE DIRECTOR

A TALL ENGLISHMAN

James Cleverton

Matthew Waldren

Carol Rowlands

1st CROUPIER

A RASH GAMBLER

A SUSPICIOUS LADY

Stuart Kale

Joe Roche

Margaret Rapacioli

2nd CROUPIER

A PALE LADY

A HYPOCHONDRIAC

Jonas Gudmundsson

Emma Brennan

Glen Tweedie

A FAT ENGLISHMAN

A RESPECTABLE LADY

AN UNLUCKY GAMBLER

David Wolosko

Doreen Curran

Andrew Conley

A HUNCHBACK GAMBLER

GAMBLERS

Ian Wilson–Pope

James Scarlett Peter Kent Jean Claude Ohms Alex Poulton

A LADY COMME CI COMME ÇA

Richard Jones

Hubert Francis AN OLD GAMBLER

Flora McIntosh

BELLHOP

Synopsis The Gambler The General has fallen on hard times and keenly anticipates the demise of his rich aunt known as Babulenka. He has engaged as tutor to his children, Alexei, who has fallen in love with Pauline, the General's ward. Rattling around the Casino are colourful characters, gambling debts and Blanche, a gold–digger.

There is an excellent website http://www.sprkfv.net/indexin.html created by the Prokofiev Estate and the Serge Prokofiev Archive in London.

ACT 1 Roulettenberg, a fictitious spa in Central Europe, 1865 In the Garden of the Grand Hotel outside the casino, Alexei meets Pauline and tells her he followed her instructions to pawn her jewelry and gamble with the proceeds – but lost. The General arrives with the young opportunist Blanche, the coldly shrewd Marquis and an Englishman, Mr. Astley. Questioned about his losses, Alexei claims the money was saved from his salary. The General has just received a telegram from “Babushke,” Pauline’s Grandmother in Moscow, and must send a reply.

They are all waiting for the old lady to die so they can use her money to pay off debts – and enjoy the casino.

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Pauline is annoyed that she cannot repay her debts to the insidious Marquis. Alexei presses his infatuation on her; she senses cold greed beyond his hysteria. They are joined by the General who has just borrowed money from the Marquis. Pauline capriciously dares Alexei – if he really loves her – to do something outrageous – like flirt with the Baroness. He does.

ACT 2 In the lobby of the Grand Hotel The General reprimands Alexei for his behaviour though he shows no sign of contrition. The General fires him.

Afraid any scandal might jeopardize his hopes of winning Blanche, the General tries unsuccessfully to enlist the Marquis’ help. Alexei reflects that this trouble is Pauline’s fault. Astley tells Alexei that some time ago Blanche had tried to borrow money from the Baron. Since the Baron and Baroness are important people, the General wants to avoid further offending them. Astley goes on to explain that the General cannot propose to Blanche until he gets his inheritance from Babulenka. Alexei is cynical and assumes that Pauline, with her inheritance, will fall prey to the rapacious Marquis.

Astley takes his leave as the Marquis appears, bent on controlling Alexei’s behavior at the behest of the General.

The Marquis wonders how best to get around Alexei. He produces a note from Pauline telling Alexei to stop acting like a schoolboy. Alexei accuses the Marquis of making Pauline write the note.

The Marquis, Blanche and the General turn to the chief topic of interest, Grandma’s imminent demise. No sooner has the General predicted her death that very night than Grandma’s voice is heard: she has arrived at the hotel in rude health. She greets Pauline with affection and sees through the others' affectations. She announces she is over her illness and wants to recuperate at the spa, where she is looking forward to gambling.

ACT 3 In an anteroom of the casino The General is beside himself: Grandma has been at the tables losing large amounts. His hopes of success with Blanche are evaporating. The Marquis announces that Grandma’s losses are up to 40,000 and the General decides to call the police: surely they will see that she is senile and perhaps even send her to an asylum.

No such luck. Blanche makes a brief appearance, disillusioned with the General.

The General and the Marquis try to enlist Alexei's help in curtailing Grandma's gambling frenzy which threatens to ruin them all. Prince Nilsky, who has been showing interest in Blanche, mentions that the old lady’s losses have increased. The General rushes off and Blanche and Nilsky leave together. Alexei ponders his love for Pauline.

She appears, but his words are constrained. Grandma is brought in looking tired. Having spent all the money she has with her, she now wants to return to Moscow. She has asked Astley to lend her the train fare. She invites Pauline to accompany her but Pauline explains she cannot leave just yet. The General realises that he has lost Blanche to Nilsky.

DINNER INTERVAL ACT 4 In his hotel room, Alexei finds Pauline waiting to show him a letter from the Marquis. Pressured by loans he has made to the General, the Marquis is trying to get Pauline to pay her debts to him. Flattered that Pauline has turned to him for help, Alexei runs from the room like a madman.

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The Gaming Room at the Casino by Jean Beraud (1849-1935) MusĂŠe Carnavalet, Paris / Giraudon / Bridgeman Art Library

In the Casino Alexei's success is discussed by everyone and he finally quits at 200,000.

He returns to his room haunted by the voices of the croupiers. Pauline is there and he gives her the 50,000 she needs to repay the Marquis. She refuses, asking whether he really loves her. There is a moment of tenderness: they will go away together. Pauline becomes harsh and demands the money, saying her love is just a commodity.

Alexei hands it to her but she throws it in his face. Alexei is alone, dementedly recalling how he won twenty times in a row.

Courtesy of Opera News

" " " " " " " payout 11-1

3 6 9 12 15 18

2 5 8 11 14 17 Casinos avoid blue décor as it makes people look wan and unhealthy – making them feel unlucky

1842: In France, to increase house odds, Francois and Louis Blanc add a “0” to the roulette wheel. The legend that Francois Blanc struck a deal with the devil in return for the secrets of roulette comes from the fact that adding all of the numbers from one to thirty-six adds to a total of 666

odd

Early 1800s: Roulette arrives in the US – two zeros are added to increase house odds

2nd

payout 2–1

red

1655: Blaise Pascal is said to have invented the first roulette wheel because of his love for perpetual-motion devices

1st 12

80

payout 35-1

1–18

0

payout 2-1

Les jeux son faits

1 4 7 10 13 16

" "

Nine gamblers could not feed a single rooster – Yu

payout 1–1

Rien ne va plus

" " " " " "

You cannot beat a roulette table unless you steal money from it – Albert Einstein

18 21 24 27 30 33 36

17 20 23 26 29 32 35

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19–36

even

3rd 12

In the 1998 film Run, Lola, Run, Lola uses all her money to buy a 100–mark chip, bets on 20 and wins. She lets her winnings ride on 20 and wins again, making her total winnings 129,600 marks (29,600 more than her smuggler boyfriend owed his boss)

black

2nd 12

16 19 22 25 28 30 34

In 2004, Ashley Revell of London sold all of his possessions, clothing included, took US$135,300 to the Plaza Hotel in Las Vegas and put it on “Red”.

The ball landed on “Red 7” and Revell walked away with his net–worth doubled to $270,600

" " "

s

oster – Yugoslavian proverb

In the film Casablanca, Rick’s Café Americain has a trick roulette wheel. The croupier can cause it to land on 22. Rick (Humphrey Bogart) urges a Bulgarian refugee with whom he sympathetises to put his last three chips on 22 and motions to the croupier to let him win. The man’s number comes up, Rick tells him to let it ride on 22 again and again lets him win Rick has given the man 3885 ((3*36*36)-3) francs

Dostoyevshchina –

or how Prokofiev turned Russian opera upside down

by David Nice David Nice is a writer, broadcaster and lecturer on music. The first volume of his Prokofiev biography, From Russia to the West 1891–1935, was published in 2003 by Yale University Press, and he is currently working on the second.

All translations from Prokofiev’s correspondence and diaries have been made by the author.

Alexander Pushkin, the founding father of a truly Russian literature, accounts for nearly all the great Russian operas of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: following his untimely death in 1837, the line runs more or less / continuously from Glinka’s Ruslan and Lyudmila (1842) to Rimsky–Korsakov’s satirical swansong The Golden Cockerel (1908). The nation’s two other giants, Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, have not been so lucky – no doubt because their major works are a good deal less concise and easy to adapt for the stage than Pushkin’s.

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Tolstoy would probably have been flabbergasted to have his novel Resurrection made into an opera by the man who completed Puccini’s Turandot, Franco Alfano, though he might have admired the selective truthfulness of Prokofiev’s Soviet–era War and Peace – and an Anna Karenina by Benjamin Britten is one of opera’s great might–have beens. The tumbling, deliberately incoherent prose of Dostoyevsky’s lengthier masterpieces has eluded the great composers, although in 1975 the dying Shostakovich, who always claimed to have been too afraid of Dostoyevsky as an operatic subject, set as four quirky songs the aphorisms of the buffoonish Captain Lebyadkin in The Possessed. There are, however, two pieces of stunning music–theatre based on shorter works and fully alive to his sense of the absurd or the terrible in the human predicament: Janacek’s last opera based on the author’s Siberian prison memoirs From the House of the Dead, and before that Prokofiev’s The Gambler.

Prokofiev had a characteristically measured fascination with Dostoyevsky’s novels from adolescence. In 1909 the 18–year old composer claimed to have ‘devoured’ The Possessed over two evenings, and developed a crick in the neck for his pains. The work, he told his correspondent, was ‘a more palatable thing than a lot of others by Dostoyevsky, whom I don’t always like very much’. Yet just over five years later, on 5 October 1913, when he tells us in his diary how he asked his composer friend Nikolay Myaskovsky ‘dear friend (golubchik), give me a good subject for an opera’, back came the unhesitating

reply (‘sic’, as Prokofiev adds in Latin) ‘The Idiot, by Dostoyevsky’. That was enough to set the Dostoyevskyan ball rolling, though in fact it was Myaskovsky who took up The Idiot and failed to get very far with it owing to the stresses of his duties as an officer serving at the Russian front.

In the meantime, Myaskovsky’s young friend, with three operas already to his credit if we include the precocious fantasies of his childhood, read through Dostoyevsky’s 1863 novella The Gambler and decided that here was his ideal theme. Like Dostoyevsky and his fictional alter ego Alexey, he had experienced for himself the delights and perils of the roulette wheel; but unlike them, he had not become addicted. That summer, staying with his mother in the French spa resort of Royat and bored by the elderly company, he had hit the casino and gambled on a form of roulette called ‘petits chevaux’. Having twice experienced the roller–coaster pattern of winning and losing, Prokofiev tells us in his diary, he ‘ceased to go to this unprofitable establishment’. He preferred more lucid games like chess, at which he excelled, and even beat the future world champion Jose Capablanca in a simultaneous tournament as part of the 1914 St Petersburg Chess Tournament. In 1933 he was even to propose to the Parisian Revue de Bridge a form of combination bridge for twelve players at three tables to rule out the element of ‘chance in cards, which I deplore’.

Even so, as Prokofiev hinted in his diary entry for 6 November 1913, there was something murky about Dostoyevsky’s ‘splendid story, with its horrifying, absurd atmosphere’ which attracted his more irrational side.

He would turn to the occult, a fascination for which he never accounted in his elegant prose, in his next two operas, The Love for Three Oranges (lightly) and The Fiery Angel (in devastating earnest, making, as Dostoyevsky wrote of Pushkin’s Queen of Spades, ‘the fantastic…so close to reality that you are almost forced to believe it’). He had already depicted a heroine close to the perversity of Dostoyevsky’s Polina, though far less convincingly

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Scene from the Life of the Russian Tsar: Playing Chess, 1865 by Viatcheslav Grigorievitch Schwarz (1838-68) State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg / The Bridgeman Art Library

drawn, in the one–act opera he had left three–quarters unorchestrated in 1912, Maddalena, and he would do so even more hair–raisingly with the obsessive Renata and her visions of a fiery angel, whether from heaven or from hell is never made clear.

The fact that the redoubtable impresario of the Ballets Russes, Serge Diaghilev, wanted nothing to do with The Gambler when Prokofiev met him in London during the summer of 1914 made no difference to his feverish activity. That October he was encouraged by the art of scenic construction he had learned in the ballet Diaghilev had commissioned, Ala and Lolly, to be recast in concert form when rejected as the Scythian Suite. He also felt ready to take further the ‘new operatic style’ of

his narrative for voice and orchestra, The Ugly Duckling.

This was in fact little more than a resumption of the text–faithful principles begun by Mussorgsky in the inn scene of Boris Godunov and the unfinished experiment boldly based on Gogol’s Marriage – artistic musical articulation of the intonations to be heard in human speech. Janacek had already made remarkable headway with it in his first masterpiece, Jenufa; but oddly, Russians seemed to have little notion of what their Slavophile Czech brother was up to, and in an operatic landscape heavily depending either on past triumphs or the Wagnermania still sweeping the country, Prokofiev was right to claim that The Gambler ‘will be a turning–point in the art of opera and a proof against Wagner’s pomposity (the principle of “non–music”)’.

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Unfortunately the ‘turning–point’ was itself to be overturned by an even more far–reaching event, the Russian revolution of 1917, but not before The Gambler was well into production. A stalwart friend in high places, the St. Petersburg–born Englishman Albert Coates, was poised to shake the complacency of the Russian capital’s opulent Mariinsky Theatre as its new music director.

Coates ‘had no fear of new music’, as Prokofiev noted in his short autobiography, ‘and said, “Write your Gambler, we’ll stage it” ‘. Busy with what Myaskovsky called his ‘Dostoyevshchina’ or ‘Dostoyevsky business’ throughout the autumn and winter of 1915–16, Prokofiev proudly announced to a friend that by February ‘Babulenka’ – the caustic and capricious old woman on whose millions her straitened younger relative, The General, is waiting so desperately – ‘has arrived safely in Roulettenburg, has penetrated the entourage not without a certain liveliness and has disappeared into the depths of the hotel, and at the present moment she’s already losing at roulette, keeping the General waiting avec angoisse on stage to babble and shout incoherently’. Curiously Prokofiev skipped the central climax of the novel, Babulenka’s desperate sessions at the gaming–tables, storing up his attempt to depict the whirrings of the roulette–wheel for the last act with Alexey’s brilliant run of luck in the casino and then his disastrous encounter with Pauline.

Prokofiev hoped that the right man to stage this great denouement would be the experimental doyen of the theatre Vsevolod Meyerhold, but after a promising meeting in October 1916, Meyerhold had to hand over the reins at the Mariinsky to a colleague owing to pressure of work. The scenery was held up by the procrastinations of the distinguished artist Alexander Golovin, and although orchestral rehearsals went ahead in early 1917, The Gambler was only one casualty of that year’s many upheavals. The following May, Prokofiev took the last Trans–Siberian express from Moscow to Vladivostok, stopping in Japan and Honolulu on route for what he thought would be a short tour of the USA. He was not to return to the new Russia until 1927. In the meantime, it soon became clear that America was not the right place to receive the radical experiment

of The Gambler, which is why Prokofiev turned to the simpler fantastics of The Love for Three Oranges, prompted

by Meyerhold’s suggestion back in Russia.

Throughout the 1920s, there was talk of resuscitating the Dostoyevsky opera in tandem with the great theatre director, but those plans came to nothing. Surprisingly, it was Brussels which rescued The Gambler in 1929, and the intendant of the Théâtre de la Monnaie, Paul Spaak, clearly intended to treat a prestigious world premiere with all seriousness. ‘Although Brussels won’t do it as in Leningrad’, Prokofiev wrote to a musical colleague, ‘nevertheless this is an advanced and cultured theatre’.

Returning the compliment, he revised the score from top to bottom, and much of the most striking music we hear in Grange Park’s production is the result of this second version, especially the lachrymose theme which sets up the manic sobbing of the broken General – in the interim, Prokofiev had learned to shed bizarre tragicomic tears with the hypochondriacal Prince of Three Oranges and the dissembling joker of his ballet for Diaghilev Chout – and the infernal machinery of the roulette scene, overhauled with a few additional minor characters in the gallery of grotesques.

In 2001 that maverick conductor Gennady Rozhdestvensky pioneered the first performance at Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre of the first version of The Gambler, revealing how outlandishly the young Prokofiev deals with the fraught sexual masochism of Alexey’s final encounters with Polina in the last act, and how the novella’s central theme of obsession is underlined with a final spin of the roulette wheel evaporating into the ether. We are lucky that we now have the options of two Gamblers, each of them a fascinating musical reflection of Dostoyevsky’s looking–glass exploration into what Prokofiev called the eternal dynamics of the Russian soul.

There are still a good many Alexeys wandering about dazed and confused, and as the murdered journalist Anna Politkovskaya’s recently published diary insists, that curiously Russian obsession with a quick fix on the wheel of fortune may have a lot to do with the state the country finds itself in today.

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Family from Nijni, Novgorod, c.1875 Juan Raoult / The Stapleton Collection / Bridgeman Art Library

In 1854 Dostoyevsky was released from his four–year Siberian prison sentence and in the following year his rank of nobleman was restored. By 1863 when he made his first visit to Europe and began to gamble, he had won recognition in literary circles. He had also, however, experienced the mockery of his first marriage and taken on the financial burden of his late brother's family.

In 1862 he fell in love with Polina Suslova, a student half his age. She, like his first wife, did not return his feelings.

On his way to see her in Paris in 1863, he stopped off in Baden–Baden and Wiesbaden to gamble. When he arrived, she told him he was too late: she loved another.

Dostoyevsky persisted in his love for her and Polina gave him money to gamble.

In ever–increasing debt, he was trapped into accepting extortionate terms for an advance from a publisher: if a new novel of a certain length were not delivered by November 1, 1866, he would have the right to publish all Dostoyevsky's works for the next nine years without paying any royalty. Since Crime & Punishment was being completed and published in 1866, this seemed impossible, but Dostoyevsky dictated the whole of The Gambler between October 4 – 29 and the terrible penalty was avoided.

The young stenographer who had taken the dictation, became his second wife, Anna. He continued to gamble and Anna noticed that, for all the misery this caused, his inspiration came most fluently after his gambling crises.

"Part of the $10 million I spent on gambling, part on booze and part on women.

The rest I spent foolishly." George Raft

by Michael Fontes On a roulette wheel the numbers run from 1 to 36 and a bet on a number pays out at 35 to 1. The law of large numbers tells us that if the wheel is free–spinning a bet on a single number will, over a long series, pay out once every 36 spins. That one win would exactly compensate you for the 35 times you lost. Put like this, a single number bet at roulette doesn’t look like financial disaster provided you are prepared to repeat it often enough. You are putting money in a bank at 0% interest: your reward is the excitement of watching the wheel spin.

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Unfortunately for the gambler, not all the slots on a roulette wheel carry numbers. European roulette wheels – and the wheel used in the opera – contain an extra slot marked 0, which means that a single–number punter wins on average only once every 37 spins, giving a house edge of 2.7%. When you won, for a £1 stake, you would pocket £35. You could set this against the £36 you lost on the 36 unsuccessful spins. So you lose £1 every 37 spins – on average 2.7p a spin. American wheels have 00 as well as 0. Betting $1 each time, you lose on average 5.3 cents a spin.

The house, knowing that the odds are stacked in its favour, can be confident of more than paying its establishment costs. Mathematicians have established the odds associated with all possible forms of roulette bets – red or black, low or high, corner bets, and so on – and the payback on these bets is calculated, naturally, always to give the house an edge. The attraction for the punter lies in the possibility of winning large sums immediately, of the lucky spin occurring early in the series, and in the relatively high–probability, low–odds bets, on black or red for instance, doubling your money.

Of course it is the enticing potentiality of growing rich beyond the dreams of avarice which draws the gambler back to the tables. The gambler succumbs to the law of large numbers in the form of the heady excitement of the 45 seconds when everything seems to hang upon that clattering silver ball. This is why, provided they have calculated the odds right, casino owners are such wealthy men.

But the wheel has to be free–spinning. Joseph Jagger, a British engineer and distant ancestor of Mick, sometimes thought to be the Man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo, discovered that wheels can have a measurable bias. In 1873, studying the behaviour of roulette wheels at the Beaux–Arts Casino at Monte Carlo, he found that one of the six wheels was not free–spinning: nine of the numbers (7, 8, 9, 17, 18, 19, 22, 28 and 29) came up more frequently than the others. Jagger quickly started winning large sums and other punters copied his bets. In three days in early July 1875 he won about 1.2m francs (about £2m today).

The casino moved the wheel to another table, but he recognized it from a scratch and followed it to the other table. The casino rearranged the frets, the metal dividers between the slots, and only then did he start to lose.

In July 1891 Charles Wells, a bogus inventor, went to Monte Carlo having raised £4,000 by persuading gullible people to invest in a ‘musical jump–rope’. Over eleven hours Wells ‘broke the bank’ twelve times, winning a million francs (=£1.8m). In one run of 30 successive spins he won 23 times. Wells went back to Monte Carlo in November of that year. During this second visit he made another million francs in three days, including winning on the number 5 for five consecutive spins. The Casino hired private detectives but neither they nor anyone else has ever discovered Wells’s system. He claimed he just had a lucky streak. His lucky streak ran out when he went back to England; at the Old Bailey he received eight years for the fraud about the ‘musical jump–rope’.

Casino owners give publicity to people like Jagger and Wells, popularizing the expression ‘to break the bank’, faire sauter la banque, and putting a black pall over the table where large sums have been won. Obviously the more people think they can beat the system the more the casinos stand to win.

Some groups of physicists say they have developed sound methods of winning at roulette by analysing the behaviour of the wheel. A roulette wheel consists of a moving inner–wheel and a stationary outer–wheel.

To determine the next number, the inner wheel is set

spinning, and the ball is rolled along the rim of the outer wheel. The ball rattles around a good deal before dropping into a slot, and many casinos allow bets during this interval, until the cry of ‘rien ne va plus’.

The winning number is determined by the speed of the ball, the speed of the wheel, the starting position of each and the constructional peculiarities of the wheel itself. All you really need to do to become a rich man is measure these quantities with sufficient accuracy, and then calculate the physics on one of those computers small enough to fit into the heel of a shoe. If you believe that, you’ll believe anything.

Insurance is almost the opposite of gambling: in the one you pay a stake to win a substantial receipt, in the other you pay a premium to avoid a substantial payment. Just as mathematicians help casinos calculate the odds of winning, so actuaries help insurance companies calculate the odds against disasters.

Insurance companies, faced with the problem of ‘moral hazard’ (the tendency to be less careful to avoid an accident if insured against it), protect themselves by devices like no–claim bonuses.

Punters need to protect themselves against the moral hazard of becoming addicted to their own adrenalin.

Studies of behaviour in the face of risk suggest very different attitudes. Many are risk–averse: they wouldn’t take bets even at favourable odds and they would insure even at unfair premiums. The economic theory of diminishing marginal utility suggests that for most of us this makes good sense. The more we have of something the less we value an extra unit of it. The £1,000 we might win is worth less to us than the £1,000 we might lose. The wealthier a person the less noticeable this effect: to a very wealthy person the extra £1,000 is likely to mean very much the same whether he wins or loses.

Habitual gamblers enjoy risk, they need action, and this attitude is often evident even in what we might, at a pinch, call their ‘everyday’ lives.

Obligation pour la Roulette de Monte Carlo by Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) Private Collection, Boltin Picture Library / Bridgeman Art Library

John Aspinall, the casino owner and gambler, kept two zoos and was famous for his enlightened views about animal welfare. He shared his bed for eighteen months with a tigress, and liked to go into the big cats’ cages for a romp, as well as enjoying embraces with gorillas and boa–constrictors.

In January 1963, Sean Connery won $27,000 playing roulette at the Casino de la Vallée in Saint–Vincent, Italy.

He won on the number 17 three times in a row at odds of 50,000–1. He may have picked up bad habits from his alter–ego, James Bond, who enjoyed a flutter at baccarat, bridge and roulette, no doubt to combat the boredom of battling with the agents of SMERSH. In Casino Royale he outlines his famous roulette system.

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Betting houses naturally make the odds they offer, their ‘market’ odds, less favourable than ‘fair’ odds, but close enough to make the bet attractive. Punters’ ignorance of the ‘fair’ odds plays into their hands. Many people think consecutive numbers are less probable in the National Lottery than a spread of numbers – although 10,000 people each week choose 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, probably out of laziness. Thoughtful lottery punters, knowing all combinations are equally likely, try to avoid choices which other people will make: if you win with a unique combination of numbers you will not have to share your booty, and you thereby increase your chance (the odds) of a big win. So avoid numbers under 32, because many people choose their birthdays, choose numbers on the edge of the game card, and don’t be afraid of sequences.

Southampton University reckon that 26, 34, 44, 46, 47, 49 would be an unpopular choice: don’t choose it now – their work will have made it a favourite. The draw of November 14, 1995 illustrated the importance of the principle: the winning combination was 7, 17, 23, 32, 38, 42, 48, all in central columns of the ticket. 133 winners shared the £16m jackpot, each winning £120,000.

Of course many people miscalculate odds in everyday life. I wouldn’t lightly go into a cage with a gorilla. The chest–beat of a mature silverback mountain gorilla can be heard through three miles of the densest jungle and anyway I find their appearance intimidating, but informed people will tell you that in their private lives and domestic associations gorillas are most affectionate and peaceable

creatures, unlike chimpanzees and human beings. So going into a cage with a gorilla can’t compare with truly dangerous ways of spending the time, like running a Christian mission to insurgents in Iraq, or climbing the north face of the Eiger in a snowstorm.

Sudhir Venkatesh’s work with Chicago crack–cocaine dealers in the 90s suggested that, during a four–year ‘apprenticeship’, for an untaxed ‘salary’ of about $3.30 an hour they were running a 1 in 4 chance of being killed. In the most dangerous conventional job in the US, timber– cutting, the chance is only 1 in 200, and on death row in a Texas jail only 1 in 20. You have to be very risk–loving to deal crack–cocaine.

Many gamblers try covertly to manipulate their chances of winning. Hustlers, in games of skill, like poker or bridge or pool, hide their gifts until the odds lengthen.

Arnold Rothstein, Mr Big, The Fixer, liked to conceal the real talent of his racehorses, and was not above nobbling opposing jockeys. On 4 July 1921, Rothstein had 40 trackmen discreetly placing bets on his horse Sidereal, which he kept under wraps until the last moment. When it won he pocketed $850,000 (=$10 million today). On the other hand some players of games requiring skill are too vain to hustle. The famous poker player Stu ‘the Kid’ Ungar, who had genius–level IQ and an eidetic memory, won and spent over $30m in his short life, and would have won more had he resisted the temptation to show off: he could follow the movement of every card in six–pack blackjack, and won bets for doing so. Many casinos closed their doors to him.

Psychologists divide problem gambling into two types: action gambling, where the thrill of risk–taking becomes the ‘substance of choice’, and escape gambling, where the gambler seeks refuge from some crisis. The action gambler often requires an opponent and an arena: part of the rush comes from dominating others and being identified as the winner. The escape gambler avoids human contact and prefers the solitary misery of slot–machines in quiet corners, like my friend and yours who re–mortgaged his house and blew the whole sum on fruit machines in the pub in the course of two months. The rise of Internet gambling has given the escape gamblers, often teenagers, a dangerously easy way of aggravating their problems.

Wild Bill Hickok's "Dead Man's Hand" There are various claims as to the identity of the fifth card: Nine of diamonds, Queen of Clubs or King of Spades.

There is also a theory that Bill discarded one card, the draw was interrupted by the shooting, and he never got the fifth card he was due

Most of the big action gamblers have been men. The gun– slingers and gamblers whom Hollywood made famous, like Doc Holliday and Wild Bill Hickok, dominated the West and helped make it Wild. Hickok was shot in the back of the head while playing poker For some reason he couldn’t get his usual corner seat – and the hand he held has since been known as Dead Man’s Hand.

Kerry Packer is remembered for establishing World Series Cricket: he told the hesitating Australian Cricket Board ‘Come, gentlemen, there is a little bit of the whore in all of us; name your price.’ This was language they understood, so they did and he paid it. In May 1995 Packer won $26 million at the Las Vegas MGM Grand playing blackjack for $200,000 a hand, six hands simultaneously. He was quickly barred from all Las Vegas casinos, to the mortification of the staff – Packer liked to outdo everyone else even in tipping: several waitresses and croupiers found themselves able to pay off their mortgages after a Packer visit. Packer had less luck in London where, in September 1999, he lost £11m at Crockford’s casino. A Texas oil millionaire was riled by Packer’s reluctance to play poker with him. ‘But I’m worth sixty million dollars,’ said the Texan. Packer took out a coin. ‘I’ll flip ya for it,’ he said.

Before you jump to the conclusion that women are more sensible than men about gambling, you should remember that about 70% of escape gamblers are women.Only about 10% of action gamblers are women. The best known in history being Poker Alice who over 60 years as a professional poker player may have won over $225,000.

Needless to say, many problem gamblers have other addictions: Stu Ungar killed himself with drugs. Freud made a study of Dostoevsky’s gambling habits, and found plenty to say about his psyche. The great Russian novelist suffered a gambler’s typically stormy and character– forming youth: he lost his mother as a teenager, and rumour has it that his tyrannical drunken father was murdered by his own serfs – drowned in the vodka they poured down his throat. Dostoevsky suffered a mock execution for his political activities: he was made to stand in public in his underclothes for hours in temperatures of – 20° C watching three of his ‘accomplices’ tied to stakes as the soldiers loaded their guns. At the very last

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moment the sentences were commuted to imprisonment in Siberia, where Dostoevsky worked in shackles for four years. The experience gave him material for his novel The House of the Dead – the source for Janacek’s opera.

Freud linked Dostoevsky’s roulette gambling to the vicarious murder of a hated father and consequent self– loathing. Dostoevsky was abasing and punishing himself, and also, perhaps, Freud thought, trying to win back his lost mother. Certainly the roulette tables of Baden–Baden (Roulettenberg in the opera) delivered severe punishment: Dostoevsky lost around 43,000 roubles (=£500,000).

The depression which led to his biggest gambling flurry probably stemmed from the deaths, in quick succession, of his wife and his brother.

So try not to gamble if depressed, or very young, or on the Internet, or a woman except in games requiring skill and/or dissimulation. Make sure it’s all very public and that you are extremely rich, before you start at least; and if you must play cards for money remember that there are just a few people in the world like Stu Ungar, so choose your opponents with care, and insist on a corner seat.

Meeting Monsieur Proko fiev by Stephen Mudge The lead up to meeting the composer's son in Paris had some improbable moments. Diffident and suspicious of journalists, Sviatoslav Prokofiev thought he had nothing interesting to say. The suggestion of "anecdotes" was treated with the disdain it probably deserved, and another naive question about favourite composers similarly dismissed with a verbal shrug.

Monsieur Prokofiev’s favourite composer was of course Prokofiev. His diffidence is no doubt based on the time of his parents’ separation in Russia and his mother’s tragic imprisonment by the Soviet authorities. Sviatoslav and his son Serge have worked tirelessly to promote the composer’s music (www.sprkfv.net).

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Stephen Mudge : So you returned to live in Paris in the 1990’s ?

Sviatoslav Prokofiev : I was born in Paris and left when I was 12, when much later I came to see my mother here I took my son Serge with me. When we got back to Moscow he came to see my wife and I and said "it’s finished, I am moving to Paris, I cannot live in Moscow any more", he left, and since then – it was in 1990 – he hasn’t been back to Russia. He is so much the opposite of my father who always had this nostalgia for his country.

Anyway we had the idea to move here to be near him.

SM So you made the opposite move to your father. He left Paris to go back to Russia. Paris was the cultural centre of the world when you were a little boy in the twenties. SP Sadly not any more – it’s almost provincial. I am not even sure where the cultural centre of the world is now. In any case my father lived in Paris from when he returned from America in 1923 until '36. He was nearly a Parisian, and he had many contacts with musicians, but the French are very ungrateful and rarely play Prokofiev. With my son we have edited his diaries.

SM Was it homesickness that led your father to return to Russia ?

SP There were several reasons. He writes in his diaries about homesickness – all his friends were in Russia.

Here he had many acquaintances, but no friends. He didn’t mix with White Russians, who considered him red.

When you read his diaries you realise he was not at all red. Perhaps that is why he did not take his diaries back to Russia. He deposited them in a safe in America where they stayed until his death.

SM He must have had many musician friends in France, there was Stravinsky for example ? SP They were not great friends, at first they were friends but they grew apart, my father didn’t like Stravinsky’s neoclassical period. I remember Stravinsky coming to see us. My mother was busy preparing and all day I heard this word "Stravinsky". So I asked "what is Stravinsky?". When the composer arrived my father told him the story. Even though I was in bed

he came to see me in my bedroom and said "You wanted to know what Stravinsky is, well it’s me!"

SM Back to Russia, was your father happy? SP You know he did not keep a diary after his return to Russia, and he didn’t much like talking about these things. He came back in ‘36. In ‘37 the terror began, and he was only allowed to leave the country one last time for some concerts in America in ‘38. After there was the war and nobody was allowed out. Then he was ill with high blood pressure, which gave him terrible headaches. Even if he had been able to travel I am not sure he would have, but although we were quite old he never said if he regretted his move. There was also family complications as my parents had separated.

SM Your mother remained faithful to her husband’s music, which is surprising, as many wives might have done the opposite. SP I think these are different things. Music was something separate, so much was written in front of her, even with her, as she was a singer. She sang his songs, and at the beginning they did concerts together.

SM The Gambler is a youthful work. SP Well yes, but it was his third opera. His childhood opera is very amusing – naive and sweet – then came Maddalena, influenced by Italian opera with great loves, a heroine and two heroes who fight in a duel and kill each other. I don’t know if that had happened in an opera before – in any event the heroine is happy because she had had enough of those heroes!

SM Your father was a great chess player I believe? SP From childhood he played with a man much older than him and later in St Petersburg he went to the international competitions. He even managed a draw against a celebrated grand master.

SM Did he like going to the casino? SP Some people, well journalists (much laughter), have said that he was a gambler and that he lost a lot of money and that is the reason he went back to Russia. It’s idiotic, he played Bridge, he didn’t play for the money. It’s a game which makes you think. He went to Monte Carlo, but to go to the theatre.

SM When your father was back in Russia, did your relationship with him change ? SP My wife said it was strange to see

Advertisement for Imperial Airways (litho) Edward Bawden (1903-89) Cecil Higgins Art Gallery, Bedford / Bridgeman Art Library

us together – that we behaved like polite dinner guests, each thinking of something interesting to say.

SM And when you were little, was he always a little like that ?

SP In the morning we went to school and did not see him.

He worked mainly in the morning – never in the evening or at night like they show composers in the cinema – but in the evening we had supper together. We asked questions. Of course we played, we had electric trains.

Sometimes he would come and give advice – showing us how to put the rails under the bed and to see the trains go in one way and come out another.

SM In the summer he rented a house on the Côte d’Azur. Did you miss that when you were back in Russia ? SP Instead of going to the Côte d’A zur we went to Crimea. It’s much better, there are so many people on the Côte d’A zur, and there are beaches in Crimea where you can’t even see the end of the fine sand.

SM Your father was interested in the planets and the stars and nature SP His father was an agricultural engineer, and when he had his dacha, he had a gardener who he was able to tell what to plant, where to plant it, and when.

In his childhood he even bought a telescope. When we went to the country, there was one suitcase with his belongings, another with ours and then the telescope.

Once we took a house a little further from the sea than usual and we went on long walks – that’s what he liked – and he showed me the stars and their constellations.

SM And you don’t miss Russia too much ? SP I go back nearly every year. I find Moscow much changed. The countryside has not changed much, it was and remains very poor. Not like the French countryside with its rich farmers. The roads are terrible especially when the snow melts. What is surprising in Moscow is the quantity of publicity panels in foreign languages. The majority of people don’t understand – but it looks chic !

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I Capuleti e I Montecchi from the Nevill Holt Rising Stars has been supported by

Morgan Stanley in their third year of sponsorship

opera in four parts (two acts) Vincenzo Bellini (1801 – 1835) to a libretto by Felice Romani Sung in Italian with surtitles by Jonathan Burton by arrangement with the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden Orchestra arrangement by Richard Balcombe First performance Venice, March 11, 1830 First performance in England, King's Theatre, London, 1833

I Capuleti e I Montecchi

Performances at Nevill Holt July 6, 8, 14, 2007 before touring around England supported by the Arts Council

Sergio la Stella

capellio leader of the Capuleti

Owen Gilhooly

Conductor

lorenzo a relative of Capellio

Andrew Conley

tebaldo a follower of Capellio

Jonas Gudmundsson

romeo leader of the Montecchi

Hannah Pedley

Dominic Cooke Director

Ptolemy Christie

giulietta daughter of Capellio

Sinead Campbell

Montecchi & Capuleti

Peter Kent James Scarlett Glenn Tweedie Joe Roche Alex Poulton Peter Willcock David Woloszko Matthew Waldren Ian Wilson–Pope

supported by Kroll

revival director

Robert Innes Hopkins Designer

Dan O'Neill movement

Louie Whitemore REVIVAL Designer

Jon Clark Lighting Designer

THE ORCHESTRA OF NEVILL HOLT Leader Joanna West

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Synopsis I Capuleti

e I

Montecchi

The Capuleti and the Montecchi have long been at war and the latest clash has brought about the death of the son of Capellio, the Capuleti leader. The boy was killed by Romeo, the leader of the Montecchi, who is in love with Capellio’s daughter, Giulietta. Capellio plans to marry her to Tebaldo, one of his followers.

ACT 1 Capellio’s house Capellio’s supporters gather at dawn. Romeo, head of the Montecchi, has killed Capellio’s son and the Capuleti swear vengeance on the Montecchi. Tebaldo, who is in love with Giulietta, Capellio’s daughter, joins the oath.

Capellio, rejecting the counsel of Lorenzo to end the feud, announces that Tebaldo will marry his daughter that very day. Lorenzo says the girl is ill; Tebaldo says he would rather suffer a thousand days of grief than cause his beloved to suffer. Capellio reassures him that Giulietta will marry him.

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Romeo enters unrecognised as the envoy of the Montecchi and offers terms for peace, to be sealed by the marriage of Giulietta to Romeo. The Capuleti reject the offer and call for war. Romeo replies that the Montecchi will fight but that the Capuleti will bear the guilt for the bloodshed.

A room in Giulietta’s apartment Giulietta contrasts the joyful preparations for her wedding and her own misery. She longs to be with Romeo.

Lorenzo brings the news that Romeo has arrived by a secret route. Romeo urges Giulietta to escape with him to a better place. But stronger than her love for Romeo is her duty to her father. Romeo pleads but she resists, even when he threatens to stay with her and face a fight to the death with her father. Romeo leaves.

A courtyard in Capellio’s house The celebrations for the wedding of Tebaldo and Giulietta are beginning. Lorenzo and Romeo enter and Romeo reveals that his supporters are preparing to storm the palazzo to prevent the wedding. Lorenzo is torn between his affection for the lovers and his loyalty to Capellio, but the noise of battle is heard and Romeo rushes off to join the fight.

Giulietta is reflecting on the bloodshed and her love for Romeo. Romeo returns and once more begs her to flee with him. Before he can take her away, Capellio, Tebaldo and the Capuleti are upon him. They still think he is merely an envoy for the Montecchi but he declares he is Tebaldo’s rival; all pray for help or express their fury. The

Montecchi burst in to rescue Romeo, whose true identity is revealed. Everyone is outraged.

DINNER INTERVAL ACT 2 A courtyard in Capellio’s house Giulietta is alone, unsure of whether she should be mourning for her family or her lover. Lorenzo comes to tell her that Romeo has been brought to safety by his men but that she will soon be taken to Tebaldo’s castle unless she follows Lorenzo’s plan: she must take a potion which will make her appear dead; when she awakes Romeo will be with her. Giulietta fears she may never wake up but finally she takes the sleeping draught.

Capellio arrives with his attendants and orders Giulietta to prepare herself for her wedding to Tebaldo. She explains she is near death and begs his forgiveness. He is unmoved and she leaves. Capellio sends for Tebaldo and orders a close watch to be kept on Lorenzo.

In the grounds Romeo is convinced that even Lorenzo has deserted him.

Tebaldo enters and the rivals hurl insults at each other and prepare to fight. They hear the funeral dirge for Giulietta, who is supposed dead. Both men are appalled and long for their own deaths.

The tombs of the Capuleti Romeo and the Montecchi come to Giulietta’s tomb.

Romeo is convinced that Giulietta is dead and begs her to let him join her in death. No sooner has he taken poison than Giulietta revives. She is ready to elope with him. Lorenzo, however, has been prevented from telling Romeo of the plan. Romeo reveals that he is dying. She wishes to die with him but he tells her she must live on and visit his tomb. He dies in her arms and she falls dead from grief. The Montecchi enter, followed by Capellio, Lorenzo and the Capuleti. They see the two dead lovers. Capellio asks who killed them.

They all reply You, ruthless man

Views of

fairVerona

by Gerald Larner

Though there are a dozen operas based on Romeo and Juliet, the three masterpieces are a dramatic symphony, a fantasy overture and a ballet.

With all due respect to Bellini, composer of the most successful of the dozens of operas about Romeo & Juliet, it has to be said that the three indisputable masterpieces inspired by the unhappy story of the young lady and gentleman of Verona are a dramatic symphony, a fantasy overture and a ballet. Perhaps it is no more than a matter of luck: if any one of Berlioz, Tchaikovsky or Prokofiev had written an opera on Romeo & Juliet rather than the works they did write, or if Verdi had taken an interest in the subject before he felt he was too old to do it justice, there might now be an opera equal in stature to Shakespeare’s tragedy.

‘What a subject for an opera!’ exclaimed Berlioz in his Memoirs: ‘How it lends itself to music! To begin with, the dazzling ball at the Capulets, where, amid a whirling cloud of beauties, the young Montague first sets eyes on ‘sweet Juliet’ whose constant love will bring her to the grave; then the furious pitched battles in the streets of Verona, with the fiery Tybalt presiding like the personification of Revenge; the glorious night scene on Juliet’s balcony, the lovers’ voices ‘like softening music to attending ears’ uttering an ecstasy as radiant as the watchful moon shining its benediction upon them; the dashing Mercutio and his sharp–tongued fantastical humour; the cackling nurse; the stately hermit, even in his cell caught up in the tragic conflict of love and hate . . . and then the catastrophe, extremes of joy and despair drained to the dregs in the same intensity . . . and, at the last, the solemn oath sworn by the warring houses, too late, on the bodies of their children.’

Berlioz had seen Harriet Smithson as Juliet at the Odéon in Paris in 1827 and had conceived as profound a passion for the play as for the actress. Now in Florence four years later, he had been urged to go and hear Bellini’s I Capuleti e I Montecchi at the Pergola and was looking forward to ‘a real Romeo at last – after all the lamentable attempts that had been made, a Romeo worthy of Shakespeare’s genius’. He hurried to the theatre. ‘What a disappointment!’ he recalled, ‘The Opera contained no ball at the Capulets, no Mercutio, no garrulous nurse, no sublime soliloquy for Juliet as she takes the hermit’s phial, no duet in the cell between the banished Romeo and the disconsolate Friar, no Shakespeare, nothing, a wasted opportunity.

We now know, of course, that Romani’s libretti for Nicola

Vaccai’s Giulietta e Romeo and Bellini’s I Capuleti e I Montecchi are based not on Shakespeare but on Foppa’s libretto for Niccolo Zingarelli’s Giulietta e Romeo, which is indirectly derived from the same 15th century source as Shakespeare’s tragedy. But if Berlioz' criticism of Bellini’s opera is ill founded, it is a no less vivid indication of the opportunity Shakespeare’s play seemed to offer the opera composer.

Significantly, when he was presented with the opportunity himself – with ample free time guaranteed by a gift of 20,000 francs from Paganini in 1838 – Berlioz did something different. Though he must have been influenced by the recent failure of Benvenuto Cellini at the Paris Opera, in choosing to write a Romeo & Juliet for the concert hall rather than the opera house he had fundamentally sound artistic reasons.

Based not on Shakespeare’s original text but on Garrick’s acting edition (it alludes to Garrick’s interpolated last farewell for the lovers in the Capulet tomb, although it ends with the reconciliation which Garrick, like most opera librettists, left out), Berlioz’ ‘dramatic symphony’ is an inspired but curiously inconsistent work. It is scored for orchestra, three vocal soloists (two of whom act as narrators), semi–chorus (which also does some narration) and double chorus (representing the feuding families); there are no solo parts for Romeo, Juliet or any of Shakespeare’s characters apart from Friar Lawrence.

Mercutio’s ‘Queen Mab’ is an orchestral scherzo as brilliant as any by Mendelssohn – to whom Berlioz mentioned the idea in Rome in 1831, immediately wishing he had not when it occurred to him that Mendelssohn might do it first – and the love scene is a slow movement of the highest lyrical quality with not a word to be heard after the atmospheric offstage farewells of the departing Capulets.So, after berating Bellini, together with Zingarelli and Vaccai, for ‘writing Romeo’s part for a woman’, which he considered as absurd as making Moses or Othello ‘a piping treble’, Berlioz scored his Romeo for cellos and his Juliet for woodwind.

Shakespeare was aware that music in Romeo & Juliet would be superfluous. In this most lyrical of plays – one full of musical metaphor, moreover – there are few cues for songs and instrumental music: as the First Musician says after the apparent death of Juliet, ‘Faith, we may put up

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our pipes and be gone . . . it’s not time to play now’.

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Of course, there has long been an urge in the theatre to add more music, particularly at this emotionally ambiguous point in the fourth act. Thomas Arne wrote a dirge for Juliet, Ah, hapless maid, for the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, in 1750, and William Boyce was only the first of several composers to set the immortal lines ‘Rise, rise, heartbreaking sighs’ interpolated by Garrick for the same purpose in his rival production at Drury Lane. Literally hundreds of composers have supplied incidental music for the play, from Edward German to Richard Strauss, from Engelbert Humperdinck to Darius Milhaud, but not one example has achieved any kind of independent life in the concert hall or become standard in the theatre – not even the entrance written by Laurence Olivier for himself as Romeo at the Geary Theatre, San Francisco, in 1940.

Romeo & Juliet opera scores have proved to be not much more memorable than the incidental music. Some have enjoyed brief periods of favour – Napoleon I, whose taste in music was not of the best, was apparently taken by two of Zingarelli’s Romeo arias – but, apart from I Capuleti e I Montecchi, of the more than 20 operas written between Johann Gottfried Schwanenberger’s opera seria (1776) and Boris Blacher’s radio opera (1943) only Charles Gounod’s Romeo et Juliette (1867) and Riccardo Zandonai’s Giulietta e Romeo (1922) have retained any kind of place in the repertory. Neither Gounod’s sanctimonious tendency nor Zandonai’s crude verisimo is ideally appropriate to the subject but, of the two, Gounod is much the more interesting composer in this context. He recalled that as a student he heard Berlioz rehearsing Romeo et Juliette and hid himself ‘in a corner of the hall and listened intoxicated to this strange, violent, impassioned music which opened before one such new and exotic horizons’. So, though it might be regrettable that Gounod’s librettist interpolated a wedding service, complete with responses, the composer’s setting of Mercutio’s ‘Queen Mab’ (the first in an operatic context) resounds to his and, surely, Berlioz’ credit. Similarly, if the ballet in the fourth act, introduced for the Paris Opera in 1888, is irrelevant, the garden scene is exquisitely lyrical.

Berlioz was also an influence on Tchaikovsky’s fantasy overture, the most popular of all Romeo

& Juliet orchestral works. Berlioz conducted his dramatic symphony on both his trips to Russia – in St Petersburg in 1847, when he made a deep impression on the influential Vladimir Stasov, and in Moscow in 1868, when Tchaikovsky fell under his spell. It was out of this background that in 1869 Mily Balakirev, probably at Stasov’s suggestion, insisted that Tchaikovsky too should write an orchestral piece based on Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet. Though the work gave Tchaikovsky much trouble, achieving its present, perfectly integrated form after two more or less dramatic revisions, the garden–scene element (the second subject in structural terms) was there from the start: a shy but ardent declaration of love on the english horns answered by tender whispers on muted violins and developed with mounting intensity on woodwind against passionate sighs on a solo horn.

It is not surprising that this most beautiful of Tchaikovsky’s melodic inspirations was taken up by the pop world – first perhaps in ‘Love within my heart is born’ in 1952.

Romeo & Juliet were no strangers to this world, of course.

Stephen Foster had asked ‘Wilt thou be gone love?’ a hundred years earlier. John Prindle Scott in 1919 had celebrated Romeo in Georgia (‘When de moon an shinin’ in de dusky southern skies’) and Cole Porter in 1936 had written Goodbye, Little Dream, Goodbye: ‘Was it Romeo & Juliet who said when about to die ‘Love is not all peaches and cream’?’ Not long ago Dire Straits hit the top ten with Mark Knopfler’s Romeo & Juliet: ‘a lovestruck Romeo sings a streetsuss serenade’.

The Dire Straits song includes a brief parody of Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story. Like Frederick Delius’ opera A Village Romeo & Juliet, which sets the same story in a Swiss village, West Side Story suggests that the composer of a Romeo & Juliet opera or musical is more likely to make a success of it the further he takes it from Verona and the less he has of Shakespeare’s poetry in it.

With ballet, which can draw on Shakespeare’s situations and characters without competing with his musical language, there should be no such problem.

In fact, there have been few Romeo & Juliet ballets and only one major success. The most intriguing of the failures is the Romeo & Juliet Constant Lambert wrote for the Diaghilev Company in 1926. With

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Mrs Gilbert’s Funeral, Bloomingdale Reformed Dutch Church, New York City by G.P. & Son (1876-1914) Collection of the New-York Historical Society / Bridgeman Art Library

designs by Joan Miro and Max Ernst, choreography largely by Nijinska and with Karsavina and Lifar in the title roles, how could it have failed? Perhaps the answer is in the scenario, which concerns an actor and an actress who are themselves thwarted lovers, rehearsing Shakespeare’s play, escaping from rehearsal and eloping in an aeroplane.

So the last of the Romeo & Juliet masterpieces is Prokofiev’s four–act ballet. Written in 1935, given its first performance in Brno in 1938 and first performed

in the USSR (after much argument and distress) in 1940, it has proved to be the most sustained as well as one of the most inspired of all efforts to match Shakespeare’s genius in orchestral music.

Opera–lovers, frustrated by the thought of what Verdi might have done with the story if he had not decided against it, can console themselves with the reflection that Beethoven and Saint–Saëns were both faced by the Romeo & Juliet temptation and that both were wise enough to resist it.

Bellini,Verdi and (sometimes) Shakespeare by Hugh Macdonald It is considered normal for an opera composer to turn their hand to converting Shakespeare to their own cause. It is not a task for the feint–hearted. Both operas at Grange Park, however, exploit the bard's characters but not his plays.

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It is generally agreed that converting Shakespeare’s plays into respectable operas is no easy task, and that of the many hundreds of attempts made in the last four centuries only a handful can be said to succeed, or even to approach the elevation of the original. Verdi’s Falstaff stands at the head of those with claims to have achieved the impossible, with his Otello equally if not more highly acclaimed in this narrow field.

Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi, meanwhile, is notorious for having earned one of Berlioz’s most virulent pages of prose for travestying his adored Romeo and Juliet to the point of being unrecognisable. What Berlioz didn’t know is that Bellini was not working from Shakespeare in the first place, but from earlier Italian sources that Shakespeare himself had freely adapted and from more recent Italian plays and librettos.

If Bellini had cared about what Berlioz thought (which he didn’t) and if he’d lived past the age of 33 (which he didn’t), he might have riposted with similar complaints that the Damnation de Faust makes unacceptably free play with Goethe’s original. The fact is that in both cases we should judge the work itself, not the sources from which it is derived, and on the terms which its purpose and its period imposed, not those of Shakespeare’s stage nor those of our own day.

Of the two dozen or more operas that have squeezed Romeo and Juliet into operatic costume, all jettison one or other of the tragedy’s features which Shakespeare thought worth including – the reconciliation at the end, the secondary characters Mercutio, Benvolio, the Nurse and others, even the feuding families themselves. Bellini’s librettist, Felice Romani, who had probably never read the Shakespeare version, fashioned a story in which the cast, apart from the lovers, consists of a mere three characters: Capellio (Juliet’s father), Tebaldo (Juliet’s fiancé, not her kinsman, a combination of Shakespeare’s Tybalt and Paris), and Lorenzo (a doctor, not a friar).

He was more concerned with the tragedy than with amorous passion, for honour, rivalry and family feuds are as important as love. We never learn how the lovers

first meet and they have no “balcony duet”. The action is tightly compressed, so that the calamity is quickly upon us.

The opera was a huge success in Bellini’s lifetime and for much of the century, since it perfectly illustrates the composer’s remarkable gift for expressive melody and dramatic recitative. His total of ten operas was slender for an Italian composer of his time, even allowing for his early death, yet he could work fast when he had to, as was often the case in the hectic circumstances of Italian operatic life. Like La Sonnambula, which was composed in a little over a month, I Capuleti e i Montecchi was put together in short order in January 1830 in time for its première at Venice’s La Fenice Theatre on 11 March. Almost as much “put together” as composed, since the commission came late in the season, and he used a great deal of material from earlier operas, especially Zaira, which had flopped disastrously in Parma the year before. Part of Bellini’s purpose was in any case to satisfy himself, at least, that this music was not worthless. Being an ambitious Sicilian, Bellini had much to prove in the sophisticated world of Milan and Venice. His goal was to fill the hiatus left in Italy by the departure of Rossini to Paris, and to beat his rivals Pacini and Donizetti at their own game.

Shocking to non-Italian sensibility and at odds with Shakespeare’s idea of teenagers in love is the casting of Romeo as a mezzo-soprano, a convention which Bellini accepted without so much as a sneeze, for it gave him the benefit of two high voices in musical contrast with the men, and often in dramatic opposition to them too. He had two notable singers for the leading roles: Giuletta was sung by the remarkable Rosalbina Caradori-Allan, who after singing many Bellini and Rossini roles in Italy, moved to England, where she sang in the first London performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and the world première of Mendelssohn’s Elijah in Birmingham.

Star billing went to Giuditta Grisi, singing Romeo, a role later favoured by Maria Malibran, Giuditta Pasta and Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient. Bellini’s characterisation of the two roles builds superbly on a long tradition of

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Grave of Elsbeth Passarge, Cimitero Protestante Porta San Paolo, Rome / The Bridgeman Art Library

drawing both heroic and pathetic strains from the female voice, something which many Italians at that time still thought inappropriate in a tenor or a bass.

We are introduced to Romeo disguised as an envoy from the Montecchi offering to secure peace if the Capuleti will give him Giuletta’s hand in marriage.

Strong dramatic moments are triggered when Romeo learns that Tebaldo is already betrothed to her and when they discover who he really is. The crux of the opera hinges not only on the dilemma of Romeo and Giuletta’s love across the faultline of their families’ feud; there is an equal conflict in the heart of Giuletta herself. For she is not so in thrall to passion that she can deny her duty to father and family, and the lovers’ main duet in

Act I is based on her refusal to flee the city with Romeo and on her profound desire to obey her father. Only when confronted by the reality of marriage to Tebaldo, announced by offstage sounds of celebration, does she have recourse to Lorenzo’s offer of a potion that will simulate death and thus save her from an unwanted marriage. Suspicious of Lorenzo’s loyalty, Capellio sets a watch on him, and thus prevents him getting the news of Giuletta’s imagined death to Romeo. The tragedy inevitably follows, for Romeo, finding Giuletta apparently dead, takes poison. She wakes in time to see him dying beside her, and she too falls dead before the horrified gaze of Capellio, Lorenzo and the court.

Bellini’s strongest suit is his gift of melody, of which he

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was rightly proud. Especially at a slow tempo the cantilena is supreme, with harmony and orchestration subservient to it. There are fine melodies also for clarinet, horn and cello solos, while the rest of the orchestra accompanies in a conventional way, or breaks out in bursts of energy when the tempo quickens. Most extended scenes conclude with a rousing cabaletta, when desperation or fury or ecstasy rise to the surface. One of Bellini’s finest achievements is the first act finale, when Romeo and Giuletta are found together by Capellio and Tebaldo.

They recognise him, and he tells Tebaldo “Io son a te rivale” – I am your rival. There follows a superb “frozen moment” when at a very slow tempo the five principal characters express their respective feelings of despair or horror while the orchestra is silent. Inevitably the tempo soon quickens, and the act ends with the lovers singing in glorious unison over sputtering expostulations from the three men’s voices.

Giuletta can do nothing in Act II but yield to desperate measures and despairing feelings, expressed in melodies of surpassing pathos, such as only Verdi could rival. If Bellini had enjoyed the long lifespan granted to Verdi, the two composers might well have had to compete for the highest trophies of Italian opera in the middle years of the century. As it was, Verdi’s first opera was played four years after Bellini’s death, and his first unmistakable masterpieces appeared three years after Donizetti’s death. So for the rest of the nineteenth century Verdi stood supreme among Italian composers, a position of unchallenged eminence which he had earned by hard work and by the force of his personality, building step by step on his own experience and insisting on the kind of authority in the opera house which Italian managements had never been accustomed to put up with.

Bellini’s music scarcely advanced at all in style in the course of his short career, while Verdi’s operas show unmistakable growth and expansion right to the very end. The twenty-seven operas that precede Falstaff in Verdi’s catalogue trace a development from a style that Bellini would have recognised as familiar to the highly sophisticated and subtle language that the octogenarian composer bestowed on Boito’s brilliant libretto. Shakespeare is here of the greatest relevance,

since both Verdi and his librettist, Arrigo Boito, held Shakespeare in highest respect. For Verdi’s generation a passion for Shakespeare was the shibboleth of an artist’s romantic credentials. His Macbeth of 1847 was a start, perhaps too free for purists, and his projected King Lear never materialised. But Otello (1887) and Falstaff (1893) had the benefit of Boito’s clever dramaturgy which allowed Shakespeare’s spirit, and sometimes his lines, to be woven into the fabric of the opera. Falstaff also catches the humour that has made the bulky Sir John immortal.

Comedy in serious opera is much harder to bring off than tragedy. Rabelais, Cervantes and Shakespeare were profoundly comic writers, but Falstaff is the only successful opera to be built on their unforgettable characters.

The opera moves at a swift pace, for Verdi had mastered the art of theatrical timing. There’s no room for frozen moments here. Sir John is questionably supported by two layabouts Pistol and Bardolph who represent the classic knockabout comic duo, like Laurel and Hardy. Dr Caius is ludicrous and therefore funny. Mistress Quickly can readily make us smile, but the remaining characters are foils to Falstaff’s comeuppance, and Ford is given a role that rises to great tragic heights in Act II when Falstaff (unaware who Ford is) tells him that he has an assignation with his wife. While Falstaff retires to dress for the rendezvous, Ford yields to a passionate outburst of jealousy only deflated by Falstaff’s reappearance in his foppish finery, and the two link arms and exit together.

If Verdi had composed a Romeo e Giuletta he could not have written finer love music for those lovers than the exquisite exchanges he gave to the young lovers Fenton and Nanetta in Falstaff. The final scene in Windsor forest is a masterly evocation of a summer night when spooks and elves are said to appear, enough to scare the nervous Falstaff, and all the characters come together to celebrate not only their final humiliation of poor old Sir John but also the spirit of comedy itself. When Falstaff launches into the final fugue, “Tutto nel mondo è burla” – all the world’s a joke – everyone’s fallabilities are miraculously forgiven. Verdi said farewell to a momentous career in opera with a smile on his lips.

FoR SouRCeS oF FaLStaFF see page 106

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The Genius of Shakespeare (presented with ‘Great Thoughts’ Christmas Number) pub. 1888 by W. Hobbs & Sons Private Collection / The Bridgeman Art Library

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Falstaff is the fourth production to have been generously supported by

ICAP plc

Opera in three acts Giuseppe Verdi (1813 – 1901) to a text by Arrigo Boito Sung in Italian with surtitles by Kenneth Chalmers by arrangement with the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden Première Teatro alla Scala, Milan, February 9, 1893 First performance in England, Covent Garden 1894 Performances at The Grange June 22, 24, 26, 28, 30 July 2, 4, 2007

Falstaff 103

Stephen Barlow

sir john falstaff

Conductor

bardolph a friend of Falstaff's

Daniel Slater

pistol another friend of Falstaff's

Director

Angela Davies Designer

Nicola Tongue

DR cauis ford a wealthy man alice his wife

Robert Poulton Frank Egerton David Alexandre Borloz Stewart Kale William Dazeley

supported by Diane Sheridan

Janis Kelly

supported by Charles & Amanda Haddon–Cave

Movement

nanNetta their daughter

Claire Ormshaw

Chris Davey

who is in love with fenton

Andrea Giovannini

Lighting Designer

meg a friend of Alice Ford's

Victoria Simmonds

Daniele Guerra Italian COACH the orchestra of st john's Leader Andrew Court

quickly

supported by the John Wates Charitable Trust

Anne–Marie Owens

Synopsis Falstaff Falstaff remembers the good old days and decides to test his powers of seduction on two women: Alice and Meg. They lead him a merry dance which culminates in his humiliation.

The characters and story are derived from The Merry Wives of Windsor and from several passages in Henry IV

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ACT 1 The Garter Inn Dr Caius bursts in on Sir John Falstaff, who has just finished supper. Sir John stands accused of beating Caius’ servants; he pleads guilty to the charge. Then the doctor accuses Falstaff’s henchmen, Bardolph and Pistol, of robbing him; Falstaff presides over a mock trial and pronounces them innocent. Caius duly dispatched, Falstaff rounds on his henchmen: stealing is fine, but it mustn’t be clumsy. What’s more, he continues, unable to pay the supper bill, they cost him too much money. But he has a job for them. He is in love with two married women, Alice and Meg, and has written romantic missives to both. He wants Bardolph and Pistol to carry the letters to the ladies, but the henchmen refuse. Falstaff sends a young boy, Robin, in their stead then mocks them for their pretence to honour (“L’onore!”) before chasing them from the inn.

Windsor Place Alice and Meg have extraordinary news to share with Nannetta and Mistress Quickly: they have both received love letters. In fact, it turns out, they have received the same love letter from the same man. Far from amused with the situation, they decide to take revenge for Falstaff’s presumption. The women withdraw as Ford, Fenton, Dr Caius, Bardolph and Pistol appear. Falstaff’s henchmen announce they’ve left Sir John’s employ and reveal the plot to woo Alice. Ford expresses his fear of being cuckolded. The men depart, leaving Fenton free for a spot of flirtation and kissing with his beloved Nannetta. But their canoodling is cut short, as she is called back to help plan the women’s revenge. They agree to send Quickly to Falstaff, baiting him with the prospect of a secret tryst with Alice. Spying Fenton, the women once more depart, leaving the young lovers alone again. But all too soon the men return to set up their own trap for Falstaff: his henchmen shall announce Ford at the Garter Inn under a false name. Two intrigues have been set in motion, but will they collide?

ACT 2 The Garter Inn Bardolph and Pistol fake contrition, begging Falstaff’s forgiveness. Mistress Quickly arrives, wishing to speak

to Sir John alone. On behalf of Alice, she chides Falstaff for his seductive powers and informs him that Ford is out every afternoon from two until three. No sooner does she depart than another arrives: a certain Mr Brook (Ford in disguise). He has a financial proposal: Sir John will be handsomely rewarded if he can win Alice for Brook. Falstaff promises instant success, explaining that he himself expects to be in that lady’s arms in a matter of minutes. Left alone while Falstaff changes his clothes, Ford pours out the jealousy that is eating away at his soul (“È sogno?”). Falstaff returns, dressed to kill, and the two depart together.

Ford’s Apartment Quickly announces to Alice and Meg the success of her mission. Falstaff is due any minute, so the women excitedly prepare to put their plan into action. Only Nannetta is not part of the general merriment: Ford wants her to marry Caius. Falstaff arrives and sets about wooing Alice. On cue, Meg enters and Sir John, hidden behind the screen, hears her warn Alice that a furious Ford is on his way. But when Quickly follows her with the same news, Alice is confused: is this part of the joke?

Ford runs in, prepared to search high and low. He rifles through the laundry basket but is disappointed to find only soiled clothes. As he hurries to look elsewhere, the women swiftly hide Falstaff in the basket. Meanwhile, Nannetta and Fenton sneak behind the screen. The men return, still engaged on their fruitless search. Hearing a kiss behind the screen, Ford thinks he has found his target. While the women pretend to be working on the washing, and Falstaff protests that he is suffocating, the men prepare to attack. The screen is removed and Ford discovers, to his double-dismay, not Falstaff but his daughter with Fenton. The young lovers race out and the hunt for Sir John resumes. Alice tells the servants to tip the basket into the Thames.

DINNER INTERVAL ACT 3 The Garter Inn A distressed Falstaff is washed-up at the door of his pub. But a glass of wine revives his spirits. Quickly

105 WHY ALL THESE BULLS?

enters, protests Alice’s innocence and proffers a letter from her mistress. As he starts to read, Alice, Ford (now up to speed with his wife’s plan), Meg, Nannetta and Caius spy on him. The missive invites Falstaff to meet her at Herne’s Oak, at midnight, disguised as the Black Huntsman (whose spirit haunts the spot where he was hanged). While Quickly relates the frightening story to Falstaff, Alice explains it to the others. They plan the rest of the masquerade, which will include a large party in demonic and devilish costumes. As all depart, Quickly overhears Ford reassuring Caius that he shall marry Nannetta

Herne's Oak Fenton serenades Nannetta in the darkness. She arrives, accompanied by Alice, Meg and Quickly, who dress Fenton as a monk. Falstaff appears, precisely as midnight chimes. But his wooing of Alice is interrupted by a

cry from Meg: the goblins are coming! Alice flees and Falstaff hides. Nannetta and a group of disguised girls advance on the “Black Huntsman”. All the masked men now enter, tailed by townspeople in fantastic costumes, and proceed to pounce on Falstaff. He’s accused of being corrupt, impure, devilish, then they torture him.

Ignoring his cries of pain, they force him to repent and call on God to punish and purify him. Just as matters threaten to get increasingly out of hand, Bardolph’s disguise slips. All take this opportunity to unmask and Falstaff discovers the extent of the trick played upon him. Ford, flushed with success, proposes they crown the masquerade with a wedding. Yet now it is his turn to be duped by others’ disguises: Nannetta marries Fenton, Caius weds Bardolph. In the end Ford and Caius prove as foolish as Falstaff. All decide to dine with Sir John, as he leads them in a concluding chorus celebrating the fact that man is born a fool (“Tutto nel mondo è burla).

A

Magnificent Theatrical Presence

by René Weis

René Weis teaches Shakespeare at UCL and is the author of Shakespeare Revealed: a biography (John Murray, 2007). His book The Yellow Cross (Penguin, 2001) has been translated into many languages. He is currently editing Romeo & Juliet for the Arden Shakespeare. This article first appeared in the programme of the Royal Opera House in 1999 FALSTAFF No, my good lord, banish Peto, banish Bardolph, banish Poins but for sweet Jack Falstaff, kind Jack Falstaff, true Jack Falstaff, valiant Jack Falstaff, and therefore more valiant being as he is old Jack Falstaff, banish not him thy Harry’s company; banish plump Jack, and banish all the world.

HAL I do, I will.

(Henry IV Part 1, Act II scene 4)

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Falsta ff is Shakespeare’s most memorable comic creation. He appears in three plays: Henry IV Part 1, its sequel Henry IV Part 2, and The Merry Wives of Windsor.

This latter provided the immediate source for Verdi’s Falstaff, but the Falstaff of Merry Wives is a much reduced figure compared to the towering presence of the same character in the two Henry IV plays.

Ever since Falstaff first stepped on to the English stage in the second scene of Henry IV Part 1 he has been one of the best–loved reprobates in the English theatre. In the 18th century Samuel Johnson spoke for many when he apostrophized Falstaff as an ‘unimitated, unimitable Falstaff, how shall I describe thee? Thou compound of sense and vice; of sense which may be admired but not esteemed, of vice which may be despised, but hardly detested’. A century and a half later A.C. Bradley, one of the seminal writers on Shakespeare in the early years of the 20th century, noted that ‘our sympathetic delight in Falstaff is his humorous superiority to everything serious, and the freedom of soul enjoyed in it’. More recently Orson Welles, who famously played Falstaff in Chimes at Midnight, called the character ‘the greatest conception of a good man, the most completely good man, in all drama’.

All three of them take Falstaff at his own sentimental valuation as a fundamentally benign ‘Lord of Misrule’ whose role it is to deflate official pomposity and to act as chorus to the dramatic action. They see him as a larger– than–life figure who cheerfully shadows the Prince of Wales, and who is cruelly repaid in the end when Hal, as Henry V, rejects Falstaff after the coronation on the steps of Westminster Abbey and banishes him from the royal presence. The future England of Henry V, we are often told, will be the poorer for the absence of Falstaff, whose

only sin was to have loved the Prince of Wales not wisely but too well, thus allowing himself to be hoodwinked by the younger man’s Machiavellian side.

It is a measure of Falstaff’s seductiveness that he has bounced so many audiences into indulging his misdemeanours. He is after all a thief, a coward, a liar, a cheat, a gross abuser of the corpse of the noble Hotspur, a manipulator of widows, an extortionist who betrays the king’s trust by abusing his levying powers, and a fleecer of foolish old friends. He moreover takes off for the coronation of Henry V with the ominous claim that ‘the laws of England are at my commandment’. What stands between a sound commonwealth and the chaos that is Falstaff is the embracing of Henry V of the Lord Chief Justice as his surrogate father, and his dismissing of Falstaff with: I know thee not, old man, fall to thy prayers.

How ill white hairs becomes a fool and jester!

I have long dreamt of such a kind of man, So surfeit–swelled, so old, and so profane, But being awaked I do despise my dream.

Make less thy body hence, and more thy grace Leave gormandizing, know the grave doth gape For thee thrice wider than for other men.

(Henry IV Part 2, Act V scene 5) This is the royal voice of Henry speaking, not that of the brawler Hal who was once committed to prison by the same Lord Chief Justice.

And yet, whatever the moral and political case against Falstaff may be, we love him for his energy, his bulk, his sardonic observations, his resourcefulness and his rhetorical pyrotechnics. He is quite simply a magnificent theatrical presence. At his entry in Henry IV Part 2 he tells us ‘I am not only witty in myself, but the cause that wit is in other men’, and he proudly walks before his page ‘like a sow that hath overwhelmed all her litter but one’. In the Henry IV plays Falstaff favours an ironically homiletic style, and peppers it with literary allusiveness. His biblical learning and sophistry were probably inspired by the Morality play tradition, with Falstaff corresponding to the old Vice figure.

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Cave painting of a male and female deer c.13000 BC Font de Gaume, France / The Bridgeman Art Library

The same scene which first introduced Falstaff to London audiences in the spring or summer of 1596 concludes with Hal telling us in a soliloquy that he is using Falstaff and his cronies in Eastcheap to set in relief his own greater glory. He will, he promises us, indulge their riotous behaviour for a limited period, and in this he will imitate the sun: his loutish companions may temporarily hide his royal luminosity the way ‘the base contagious clouds’ sometimes shroud the sun in foul mists, but in the end he will dramatically emerge as a reformed character to the general consternation of all.

Shakespeare is keen to let his audience know early on in Henry IV Part 1 that the royal nature of the Prince of Wales will not be contaminated by Falstaff. He wants us

to enjoy the comedy and farce generated from Falstaff’s intimacy with the future king. Both the Henry IV plays contain low–life tavern scenes set in Eastcheap. These rank among the most powerful passages of English dramatic prose, but the very presence of such unbridled anarchy close to Westminster sounds a warning bell; and the implications of it are spelt out when in Henry IV Part 1 Falstaff assumes the role of king and father in a mock interrogation of Hal. Civil strife is a major issue in the Henry IV plays, and this is powerfully echoed in the father–son relationships in the plays. The fact, moreover, that England is at war with itself is relentlessly seen in the Henry IV plays as a consequence of Bolingbroke’s deposing the rightful, albeit ineffectual king, Richard II. This act of usurpation resonates throughout the four

plays of the second tetralogy which starts with Richard II, evolves through the Henry IV plays, and ends with Henry V. Even on the night before Agincourt Henry V prays to the God of battle that his army should not be made to pay the penalty for his father’s sin. Falstaff’s questioning and parodying of established power are partly the product of a world in which rightful authority has been abused.

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In Henry IV Part 1 Falstaff is close to the epicentre of political power in the land. There are no fewer than eight scenes during which he and the Prince of Wales interact on the stage in a parody of a father and Prodigal Son relationship. Whereas Hal is young, Falstaff claims to be ‘some fifty, or by’r Lady, inclining threescore’, although he seems to be over 70 in Henry IV Part 2. It is sometimes said that the Falstaff of the sequel is a severely diminished figure, and that this is signalled by the fact that he is unwell at the opening of the play. His ‘water’ has been taken to the doctor’s for analysing, and in the same scene Falstaff is roundly defeated in a tense encounter with the Lord Chief Justice. His vistas in Henry IV Part 2 have contracted, certainly, since Falstaff and the Prince of Wales meet in only two scenes, the second of which marks the famous rejection in Act V. In this play he is the kingpin of only the tavern and brothel.

But rather than taking away from him, the separation of the Prince and Falstaff liberates Falstaff as a dramatic character. Whereas earlier his energy focussed on parasitic gravitations around Hal and royal power, in Henry IV Part 2 he comes into his own as a Gargantuan comic figure who lords it over a carnivalesque world of down–and–outs. His role in Henry IV Part 2 is longer than those of the Prince of Wales and Henry IV added together. Indeed, such is his dominance in Henry IV Part 2 that the play was listed under the title of ‘Sir John Falstaffe’ in the Chamber Accounts for the 1612–13 festive season. Henry IV Part 1, on the other hand, was referred to in the period as ‘The Hotspur’.

In Henry IV Part 2 we are no longer given Falstaff in a perpetual present. Rather, his background and past life

are now explored by Shallow and by Falstaff himself in a series of unforgettable vignettes. We learn that 55 years earlier Falstaff and Shallow had been students at Clement’s Inn in London so that the period of Falstaff’s youth is dated back to the 1350s or 1360s, the time of the long rule of Edward III. When Shakespeare’s Falstaff was a young man sowing his wild oats to the ‘chimes at midnight’, Henry IV, the titular king of the plays, was not yet born.

The diachronic construction of Falstaff in Henry IV Part 2 helps to distance the character from the realities of English history, and this is a matter of some urgency, because Shakespeare’s Falstaff was originally not called Falstaff at all, but Sir John Oldcastle. As late as 1610–11 Nathaniel Field, for example, alluded to Falstaff’s lines on honour in Henry IV Part 1 by attributing them to ‘the fat knight Oldcastle’.

Sir John Oldcastle (1378–1417) had been a companion of Henry V before becoming a Lollard (a militant Protestant) and taking up arms against the king. He was eventually burnt to death in chains at St Giles’s Field at the age of 39.

He was Hal’s senior by nine years only, and he enjoyed a reputation for courage rather than for carousing and corpulence. By lampooning a personage from real life in the two Henry IV plays Shakespeare, unusually perhaps, ran the gauntlet of official disapproval, the more so since Oldcastle had been prominently written up in Foxe’s influential Acts and Monuments (popularly known as Foxe’s Book of Martyrs) as ‘The Trouble and Persecution of the most valiant and worthy Martyr of Christ, Sir John Oldcastle, Knight, Lord Cobham’. From both Foxe and Holinshed Shakespeare would have known of a close lineal connection between Oldcastle and the powerful Brooke–Cobhams of his own day.

What he could hardly have anticipated was that in the summer of 1596, after completion of Henry IV Part 1 and while he was writing the sequel, a direct descendent of the Brooke–Cobhams would become Lord Chamberlain, and would thus be invested with the ultimate authority to censor plays. The situation could not have been more

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Barney, the Moiled Bull by Lindy Guinness 2006 From the Clandeboye Collection The Irish Moiled is the rarest of the surviving indigeneous breeds of Irish Cattle. It is a hornless breed, red in colour and characteristically marked by a white line or 'finching' on the back and underparts, but they can vary from white with red ears to nearly all red. The face is often roan or flecked. The name Moile (or Mael) means polled and the breed was popular in Ireland in the 1800's.

'Barney was an enchanting bull' writes Lindy Guinness ' he died from eating fresh acorns - I felt a great loss as he was a perfect model'

fraught: by the autumn and winter of 1596 the two latest plays by the foremost dramatist of the age featured the ancestor of the queen’s chief censor, Sir William Brooke, as a drunken rogue. No degree of fictional distancing of the character from his real–life counterpart could disguise the slight to the Cobham family so long as the illustrious name of Oldcastle remained attached to the part that we now know as Falstaff. The consequent change to the nomenclature of Shakespeare’s plays has become the most celebrated act of Elizabethan censorship.

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At the end of Henry IV Part 2 the Epilogue pledges that the audience will be treated to more of Falstaff in the future: If you be not too much cloyed with fat meat, our humble author will continue the story with Sir John in it, and make you merry with fair Katharine of France where, for anything I know, Falstaff shall die of a sweat, unless already ‘a be killed with your hard opinions; for Oldcastle died martyr, and this is not the man.

The apology for the offence caused to the Oldcastle family and the promise of good behaviour in the future could hardly be more explicit.

But the Falstaff of Henry V that we were promised did not materialize. Instead, Falstaff’s only appearance in that play is in the report of his death by the former Mistress Quickly. The king, we learn from Mistress Quickly (now Mrs Pistol), ‘has killed his heart’. Why Shakespeare decided not to introduce Falstaff to Henry V is a matter for debate. Perhaps he thought that Falstaff’s powerful comic presence would detract from the martial tone of Henry V, or even steal the limelight from King Henry V; or perhaps he felt that he had already delivered on his promise of more Falstaff by writing Merry Wives.

This play is now generally (but not universally) accepted to have been performed at the Garter Feast on St George’s Day, 23 April 1597, a month before the formal installation of the Knights of the Garter at Windsor. It would therefore have received its premiere in little over

four months after Henry IV Part 2. That the two plays may be closely connected is suggested by the presence of words, phrases, and characters (Shallow, Falstaff) uniquely shared between them. Tantalizingly, Merry Wives also echoes the Cobham–Brooke business, since the needlessly jealous and ridiculous Ford’s assumed name in disguise is ‘Brooke’; and this alias is used by Verdi whose Ford appears in Act II as ‘Fontana’, which means ‘brook’ or ‘fountain’.

The Falstaff of Merry Wives is a domesticated and shrunken figure. From being the robust mischief–maker of the early years of the 15th century, where he consorted and crossed swords with the peers of the realm, he has been transported to the contemporary middle–class world of Elizabethan Windsor. Here he dedicates himself to the ineffectual pursuit of two local married women. The play is an innocent romp, and Falstaff is made to pay for his sins by various humiliations which include a ducking in the Thames, beating and pinching. He has no memory of his earlier identity in the Henry IV plays, and Merry Wives ends happily because he, the self–styled monarch of wit, is easily outmanoeuvred by a pair of resourceful housewives.

Merry Wives sits apart from the other Shakespearian comedies by virtue of its contemporary English location and the use, in Falstaff, of a central character from a generically different cycle of plays. It is possible that a comedy with Falstaff in it was specifically commissioned for the Garter ceremony of 1597, because it included the elevation of George Carey to the office of Lord Chamberlain. After the brief and troubled Cobham interregnum Carey succeeded his father in this office, and perhaps the voluntary use of Falstaff rather than Oldcastle was a gesture of submission on the company’s part. After a disastrous run–in with their former patron a few months earlier the Lord Chamberlain’s Men would probably have been eager to start with a clean slate, and Merry Wives was the first of the three Falstaff plays in which the character was launched as Falstaff from the start.

The Lincolnshire Ox, c.1790 by George Stubbs (1724-1806) Walker Art Gallery, National Museums Liverpool / The Bridgeman Art Library

A confession from Libby Purves I have a confession I thought for a long time that I hated Verdi’s Falstaff. Alone at the Royal Opera House once – despite the glory of Bryn Terfel (appearing at The Grange for one night only in 2008) – I actually left at the interval in a sort of huff. The problem was that I am a lifelong impassioned devotee of Verdi opera, and can (to general unhappiness of those in the room) sing great lumps of Traviata and Forza del Destino, not least the baritone parts. I will cross broken glass barefoot to catch a rare performance of I Due Foscari.

The problem simply was that I like my Verdi tragic. Bring on a dying Desdemona, an abandoned Violetta or dying aria performed in a sack and I am happy, suspending disbelief instantaneously. Give me any number of banished noblemen, wicked kings or princesses buried under altars and I am swept away on a tide of emotion. I have never thought much of people who talk of opera entirely in terms of its musical brilliance: to me the music serves the story, however ridiculous. And as the plots often are a touch ridiculous, it is somehow easier to believe in them when they are tragic. Don’t know why, just is. Grange Park Opera regulars may faint dead away at this, but I even lose patience with Cosi fan Tutte and Barbiere. Bring on the stabbings and despair and heartbroken heroic sopranos and I am comfortable again.

So a comic opera from my idolized Giuseppe Verdi was always going to be a problem. For the pen that wrote Va Pensiero to be setting lines like “Everything in the world is

jest” was disturbing to my immature sentimentality. All that hiding in hampers and dashing around with brooms and coloratura giggling felt a bit sacreligious. It felt all wrong to have a masked ball with nobody being stabbed.

The only way I could enjoy Falstaff was to close my eyes and listen, as if to a concert. Most unsatisfactory.

But a few years ago there came a great change of heart: a cathartic conversion. I saw Falstaff done, not in a grandly gloomy opera house but in a small garden production, in summer, amid picnics and a holiday atmosphere. And I loved it. It is – well, you know that, or you wouldn’t be here – a wonderful piece. Verdi can handle frivolity as well as he handles everything else; and all the better for being a master of the emotional line of a drama, a respecter of narrative, a composer who never wastes a note. I was wrong. All the rest of you were right.

I apologize to the fat knight and his cohorts. But I still say Falstaff works best with a summer garden outside, and a picnic in the interval.

It’s that sort of opera.

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Our first movie night Tuesday 3 July is supported by

Kroll

Les

Parapluies

de Cherbourg

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music by

michel legrand

starring Catherine Deneuve & Nino Castelnuovo

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This performance of Semele in concert is supported by

The Carphone Warehouse

It is given by the Early Opera Company on period instruments and comes out of a Chandos recording which will be released later this year

opera in three acts George Frideric Handel (1685 – 1759) to a libretto by William Congreve Sung in English First performance in England in oratorio form, Covent Garden, London, February 10,1744 Performance at The Grange July 1, 2007

Semele Christian Curnyn Conductor

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Jupiter King of the Gods Juno his wife Iris her messenger

Ed Lyon Hilary Summers Gail Pearson

Cadmus king of Thebes

Brindley Sherratt

Semele his daughter

Rosemary Joshua

supported by The Golden Bottle

THE early opera company Leader Catherine Martin

Ino his other daughter

Hilary Summers

Athamas a Prince of Boeotia

Stephen Wallace

Synopsis Semele

ACT 1 If anyone has anything to declare, say it now …

All of Thebes has come to the temple of Juno for the betrothal of their princess Semele to Athamas, an eligible prince from somewhere far off. With the ceremony in full swing, Semele lets on that her pre–marital affair with Jupiter, King of the Gods, has left her somewhat dissatified with what Athamas can offer. Oblivious, Athamas sings a happy song. Since Jupiter doesn't turn up, Semele cuts her losses and continues. Luckily for the plot, Semele's disfunctional younger sister Ino now decides to scream at her sister and cry. All the Royals want to know what's wrong with her: Cadmus is furious, Semele concerned, and Athamas bemused.

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There is a clap of thunder. The Chorus panics in a very fast chorus. The marital flame is extinguished – seems to relight – then goes out again. They all panic, sing even faster, and run away. Semele makes a run for it.

Left alone, Ino tells Athamas she loves him. Clearly a product of inter–marriage, Athamas misunderstands, and thanks her for helping him to get Semele back. Ino is angry – Athamas finally gets the message – and they sing a duet. Cadmus runs in to report that Semele has been taken up to heaven by Jupiter. Athamas is distraught; Ino delighted. The Chorus are back, relieved at such celestial favour, and in the mood for a party. On cue, the heavens open, and Semele, between bouts of heavenly love–making, sings of her endless pleasure. She's clearly not thinking of coming back....

ACT 2 Till death us do part …

Jupiter's wife Juno is not best pleased with her husband and sends Ino to spy on him. Ino's description of the fantastic new palace that Jupiter has built for Semele sends Juno into a frenzy. She has a plan....

Semele has insomnia, and sings a lovely song. She explains to Jupiter that she is bored and misses him, and is quickly copied by the celestial chorus who are hanging around doing nothing as usual. When Jupiter asks how he could cheer her up, Semele hints that immortality might be fun.

This sends Jupiter into a panic. Cue a big choral number.

To keep Semele amused, Jupiter decides to bring Ino up to heaven and sings an aria of heavenly beauty.

Ino has had one hell of a trip, but is delighted to have arrived in Heaven and to get away from Thebes.

DINNER INTERVAL check position ACT 3 It ain't half hot ma'am …

Juno and Ino head down to the Cave of Sleep to see Somnus. They need his help and his reward will be the nymph Pasithea. Somnus gets up and gives her his rod...

Juno needs help from Somnus in two ways: 1. She needs Somnus's dream minister Morpheus to give Jupiter such erotic dreams that when he wakes up he is unable to refuse anything Semele asks for.

2. She then needs Somnus's rod to put Semele's guards to sleep. Juno can then get to Ino, put her to sleep, stick her in a celestial cupboard, take on her form herself, and get to Semele disguised as Ino. Semele's insomnia is getting out of hand. Juno appears in Ino's form, and says she hardly recognises Semele, who is now even more gorgeous than ever, and must have started to become immortal. Juno/Ino happens to have a mirror; would Semele like to have a look?

Semele falls in love with herself and reveals an astonishing vocal technique.

Juno/Ino persuade Semele to withold her sexual favours until Jupiter makes her a Goddess. Semele promises that if that happens, she will try to make Ino as beautiful as Semele herself. Jupiter arrives. Juno/Ino leaves with fingers crossed.

Morpheus's dreams have made Jupiter anxious and randy in equal measure. When Semele refuses him sex, he swears to give her anything she asks for. She demands to see him out of mortal guise. A hysterical Jupiter begs her to reconsider, but Semele uses lots of semiquavers to say

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The Rape of Europa by Felix Edouard Vallotton (1865-1925) Kunstmuseum, Bern, Switzerland, Lauros / Giraudon / The Bridgeman Art Library (Jupiter shows himself as a bull)

"No way. I wants the full works". Jupiter realises there is no way out.

the grief–stricken assembly that Hermes has told her that she should marry Athamas. Athamas sings a jaunty, inappropriate song.

Juno has obviously heard the news and sings a silly song.

Semele is beginning to realise her request probably wasn't the most sensible ever. Jupiter appears and burns Semele to a crisp.

As if we have haven't had enough deities for one evening, Apollo appears and says that a new god, Bacchus, has been born out of Semele's ashes; he also happens to be the god of wine.

On earth, the Chorus are horrified. Ino arrives back to tell

The Chorus sing, get drunk, and go home.

Every tomorrow has two handles

by Michael Fontes

Is it an oratorio, is it an opera? How such a beautiful work as Semele could have been neglected for so long remains a mystery. Michael Fontes looks at this mystery, its sources – Ovid, Congreve and a touch of Newburgh Hamilton – as well as a marvellous 1567 translation by Arthur Golding.

Cadmus, the Phoenician, son of Agenor, founded the Greek city of Thebes. Zeus thought the women of the family cute chicks and carried off Cadmus’ sister Europa and also his daughter Semele. The Greek myth of Semele comes down to us in its most complete form in 86 lines in the third book of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, a Latin source, which explains why Handel talks of Jupiter and Juno rather than Zeus and Hera.

Ovid tells the story without elaboration. For relative clarity I shall take examples from Arthur Golding’s translation (1567), the book which Shakespeare certainly used, and which Ezra Pound affectedly described as the ‘most beautiful book in the language’.

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Juno, Jupiter’s wife, heavy with her responsibilities as goddess of hearth and home, and jealous as a fruit bat, took exception to her husband’s repeated infidelity and decided to punish Semele. She disguised herself as Semele’s nurse and hied her to the poor girl’s house:

‘…up she rose And covered in golden cloud to Semelles house she goes.

And ere she sent away the cloud, she takes an olde wyves shape With hoarie haire and riveled skinne, with slow and crooked gate.

As though she had the Palsey had, hir feeble limmes did shake, And eke she foltred in the mouth as often as she spake.

She seemed olde Beldame Beroe of Epidaure to bee, This Ladie Semelles Nourse as right as though it had beene shee.’

The news that Semele was pregnant by Jupiter had set a keen edge on Juno’s malice. Playing on Semele’s vanity, she suggested to the silly girl that Jupiter was not the god he claimed to be but just a blear–eyed churl. Shouldn’t Semele ask her lover to come to her in all his trappings as a god, so she could be convinced of his credentials?

Juno knew that Semele would be consumed to a frazzle by the heat of the god’s presence. Ovid explains that Jupiter, who had vowed to grant Semele any wish, strove to attenuate his thunder, to temper his fire: Wherefore with sorie heart And heavie countnance by and by to Heaven he doth depart,

And makes to follow after him with looke full grim and stoure The flakie clouds all grisly blacke, as when they threat a shoure.

To which he added mixt with winde a fierce and flashing flame, With drie and dreadfull thunderclaps and lightning to the same Of deadly unavoyded dynt. And yet as much as may He goes about his vehement force and fiercenesse to allay.

He doth not arme him with the fire with which he did remove The Giant with the hundreth handes, Typhoeus, from above: It was too cruell and too sore to use against his Love.

To no avail: Semele is burnt up. But Jupiter, anxious to save his unborn child, snatches it still half–formed from Semele’s womb. He sews the foetus into his own thigh for the remaining three months of its gestation, and at its birth Ino and the Nymphs of Nisa nurse the baby.

But yet he tooke away His infant from the mothers wombe unperfect as it lay, And (if a man may credit it) did in his thigh it sowe, Where byding out the mothers tyme it did to ripeness growe.

And when the time of birth was come his Aunt the Ladie Ine Did nourse him for a while by stealth and kept him trym and fine.

The nymphes of Nysa afterwarde did in their bowres him hide, And brought him up with Milke till tyme he might abrode be spyde.

This twice–born baby, Dionysus or Bacchus, became, of course, the god of wine, of revelry and of orgies, which explains the importance of the Semele myth and its enduring popularity.

Handel took as his main source William Congreve’s libretto of 1705 for an opera by John Eccles, the composer in charge of royal music at the court of Queen Anne (and coming to Grange Park in 2008). Congreve knew his Ovid intimately, having translated The Metamorphoses himself, and in the introductory Argument of the libretto he apologizes for altering the detail of Ovid’s story: In Ovid Juno is said to impose on Semele in the Shape of an old Woman, her Nurse. ‘Tis hoped, the Liberty taken in substituting Ino instead of the old Woman will be excus’d: It was done, because Ino is interwoven in the Design by her Love of Athamas; to whom she was married, according to Ovid, and because her Character bears a Proportion with the Dignity of the other Persons represented. This Reason may be allowed in a Thing intirely

fictitious; and more especially being represented under the Title of an Opera, where greater Absurdities are every day excused’.

Certainly, rather later, in the Fourth Book of The Metamorphoses, we find Ino married to Athamas, but it is Congreve who has given Ino a character bearing ‘a Proportion with the Dignity of the other Persons represented’, and Ovid suggests no jealous rivalry between the sisters, rather sympathy in Ino for Semele’s combustive fate: Of Cadmus daughters she alone no sorowes tasted had, Save only that hir sisters haps perchaunce had made hir sad.

In his mock–apologetic argument Congreve explains his inflation of the character of Ino – he wants Ino to compete with Semele for Athamas. This puts a psychological twist on the change in Juno’s disguise from Beldame Beroe, Semele’s nurse, to Ino, her jealous sister, and by using the same singer for Ino and Juno. The theme of rivalry between the sisters for Athamas and the conflict in Semele between the claims of Jupiter and the mortal Athamas, provide Congreve with the material for his First Act. The story of Semele appealed to Congreve because he could doctor it to put on stage the burning political issue of the time. By 1705 all of Queen Anne’s eighteen children were dead. The Act of Settlement of 1701 stipulated that after Anne’s issue, the throne should pass to the Electress Sophia of Hanover, a granddaughter of James I, and her descendents. Louis XIV of France had, however, at William III’s death, suggest that a French army would try to put James Stuart (son of James II) on the throne when Anne died. A strong party in England, and in Scotland, held themselves bound still by oath to the Catholic branch of the Stuart family and supported his claim as superior to that of the Hanoverian family. Semele’s choice between the boring rightful husband (Athamas/Hanover) and the dashing foreigner (Jupiter/Stuart Pretender) mirrored the one the nation would face when Anne died. The parallel would have been immediately clear to any audience of the time, as would Congreve’s conclusion: Semele chooses the dashing foreigner, and look what happened to her.

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Jupiter and Io 1530 by Coreggio c.1489-1534 Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna akg-images / Erich Lessing (Jupiter shows himself as a cloud)

By 1744 when Handel set the libretto he had largely renounced opera and turned to writing oratorios, mostly on biblical subjects.

The oratorio form appealed to him for several reasons: oratorios were less expensive than operas, requiring no staging or costumes; they could be performed in Lent when operas were banned; they could use choirboys, forbidden in the opera–houses; Handel liked long contrapuntal choruses, difficult for an opera chorus to get by heart; oratorios could be mounted in any small hall.

He may also have just become tired of competition with the opera faction. Semele comes in the middle of a rich vein of oratorio form for Handel: Israel in Egypt (1739), Messiah (1742), Samson (1743), Semele (1744), Judas Maccabaeus (1747), Solomon (1749).

120

Congreve called Semele an opera but Handel specified that his version be performed ‘in the manner of an oratorio’.

With the help of Newburgh Hamilton, who was later to receive a legacy under Handel’s will for help with ‘adjusting the words’ of his English compositions, Handel adapted Congreve’s libretto.

They made a few small alterations where the words of a secular opera were deemed too racy for Lenten performance and numerous others, but looking at the two libretti alongside each other, I was surprised to find how little they differed. Newburgh Hamilton is usually credited with and praised for his work turning Milton’s Samson Agonistes into a libretto for Handel’s Samson. For that he had taken supplementary material from other Milton poems and from the psalms. He was probably the one responsible for finding the words of Jupiter’s aria in Alexander Pope's poem Pastorals – Summer Here Bees from Blossoms sip the rosie Dew, But your Alexis knows no Sweets but you.

Oh deign to visit our forsaken Seats, The mossie Fountains, and the Green Retreats!

Where–e’er you walk, cool Gales shall fan the Glade, Trees, where you sit, shall crowd into a Shade, Where–e’er you tread, the blushing Flow’rs shall rise, And all things flourish where you turn your Eyes.

Oh! how I long with you to pass my Days, Invoke the Muses, and resound your Praise;

The success of Arne’s The Judgement of Paris (1740), also a setting of Congreve out of Ovid, may have drawn Handel’s attention to Semele. He collected pictures – he owned two Rembrandts – and had a series of paintings of Jupiter’s conquests: Io, Danäe, Ganymede, Europa, Leda, Semele. By pretending that Semele was an oratorio Handel probably hoped for more performances, but the experiment backfired. People were not deceived.

Charles Jennens, Handel’s friend and the author of the book for Messiah, said that Semele was ‘no oratorio but a baudy opera’. Handel had cut some of the more risqué passages from Congreve’s libretto, but the last chorus, in Congreve a relatively sober song about the power of wine to subdue love, had become a celebration of the delights of alcoholism and debauchery – scarcely Lenten fare.

Handel was too brilliant, too independent and haughty, too indifferent to public opinion, not to excite jealousy and endemic British xenophobia. His enemies organized parties and concerts to coincide with his performances; they bought seats at plays and gave them to their music– loving friends to keep them away; they paid urchins to tear down his bills. Handel had to cope with many problems at a time: he had a serious stroke in 1737 and went bankrupt twice, in 1737 and 1745. He had to flee to Dublin to have Messiah performed.

The oratorio audience wanted more choruses and a less licentious subject; the opera audience wanted something in Italian. The political context of Congreve’s libretto had altered radically. Handel was forced to drop Semele after only four performances. He did not despair of the formula, however; the following year he wrote Hercules, another Greek myth set in English, which, hedging his bets, he called a ‘musical drama’. He was forced to drop it too, after two performances, though he revived it in 1749 and 1752. How such a beautiful work as Semele could have been neglected for so long remains a mystery: it was first produced as an opera in 1925, in Cambridge – ironically, the first modern performance of Hercules was also in 1925, in Münster.

Bach and Handel were born within a month of each other (1685, March – February) and only fifty miles apart (Eisenach – Halle). Bach is the supreme craftsman; his counterpoint is tighter. At every point you are conscious

121

Danae and the Golden Shower c.1750 Andrea Casali (1705-84) Hunterian Art Gallery, University of Glasgow / The Bridgeman Art Library (Jupiter shows himself as a golden shower)

of superlative ingenuity and skill. He takes you to heaven in some miraculously finished superjet. You have no fears at take–off or landing. Handel is the greater wonder. I don’t mean necessarily the greater composer, but the greater wonder. Not because he worked so astonishingly fast – he wrote Messiah in 21 days. Not because he was so prolific – he wrote more than Bach and Beethoven put together. Not because Beethoven said of him: ‘Handel is the greatest composer that ever lived. I would uncover my head and kneel on his grave’. Not for any of these cogent reasons, but because of the simplicity of his means. When you fly with Handel the plane seems just

a few flimsy sticks loosely assembled, and tissue paper. It takes you just as fast and just as true, but the wonder is you go at all.

He surprises and astonishes you. He takes you suddenly to heaven. He amazes you, even though you know it’s coming, like a conjurer who shows you a trick before fooling you with it. Just an ordinary twangling harpsichord, a cello, and a soprano gently singing: ‘Sleep, oh, sleep, why dost thou leave me?’ Nothing more.

Nobody could ask for more.

Biographies CHRISTOPHER ADAMS Speaker Flute &

Butterfly, Magic Flute (Central Festival Opera), Fledermaus, Mikado,

ensemble was a Choral Exhibitioner at

HMS Pinafore, Gondoliers and Pirates of Penzance (Carl Rosa), La

Trinity Cambridge and took a First in

Bohème (London City Opera) and HMS Pinafore and The Mikado

English Literature. He went on to the Royal

(D’Oyly Carte in the UK and America). He has conducted for Bryn

Academy of Music and the Hochschule für

Terfel, Jose Carreras and Alagna and Gheorgiu on BBC TV.

Musik, Köln. Opera includes Collatinus und

ALISTAIR BAMFORD ensemble has extensive

Bastienne, Priest / Badger Cunning Little Vixen, Flanders Deputy

experience as an animateur in schools,

Don Carlos (Kölner Opernhaus) and Valens in Handel’s Theodora in a

hospitals and community environments,

concert performance for Spitalfields Festival. For Glyndebourne he

and is one of the UK’s leading exponents of

covered Micha The Bartered Bride, Second Armed Man Zauberflöte,

music–making with dementia sufferers. He

Doctor Pelleas et Melisande, Servant Miserly Knight and Pinellino

is currently writing a book for professional

Rape

of

Lucretia,

Colas

Bastien

Gianni Schicchi. Last year Christopher sang Antonio Figaro for

musicians working in this area. His opera roles include Ned Keene Peter Grimes, Black Cat L’Enfant et les

Glyndebourne Touring.

Sortileges to Pish-Tush Mikado and Death Savitri. He has sung for ELIZABETH

ATHERTON

Pamina

Flute

many film soundtracks including Lord of the Rings and Star Wars.

studied at Trinity Cambridge and RSAMD.

122

Recent opera includes Countess Figaro,

STEPHEN BARLOW Conductor Falstaff was a

Elvira Giovanni, Pamina Magic Flute and

boy chorister and won the Organ Scholarship

Thibault

Melissa

to Trinity, Cambridge. In 1977 he began

Amadigi and La Stonatrilla in Gassmann’s

a long association with Glyndebourne

L’Opera Seria (Batignano Festival) and

conducting The Rake’s Progress (GTO). He

Helena Dream (English Touring Opera). In concert Elizabeth's

co-founded Opera 80 where he was Music

Don

Carlos

(WNO),

appearances include Verdi Four Sacred Pieces (London Symphony

Director 1988 – 1991. During this period he

Orchestra / Pappano), B Minor Mass (OAE), Mahler and Strauss

made his Royal Opera debut at Covent Garden conducting Turandot

Lieder (BBC SO) and Les Nuits d’Eté (English Chamber Orchestra),

returning for Die Zauberflöte. Productions include Cunning Little

Tippett The Vision of St Augustine (BBC National Orchestra of Wales

Vixen (ENO), Bohème (Grange Park), several operas for Garsington

/ Hickox at 2005 Proms) and Boulez’s Le Soleil des eaux (BBC SO

and Butterfly (Opera North). Foreign engagements include Elektra,

/ Boulez at the Barbican. Elizabeth is currently a WNO Associate

Gounod’s Faust (Seville), Cunning Little Vixen (Berlin), Capriccio

Artist. Plans include Minerva Il Ritorno d’Ulisse and Micaela Carmen

and I Capuletti ed I Montecchi (Sicily), Rigoletto (Tirana), Butterfly,

(WNO), Helena Dream (Opera North), Beethoven Symphony No 9

Giovanni and Il Trovatore (Auckland), Cenerentola and Turandot

(Philharmonia Orchestra / Christoph von Dohnányi).

(Florida Grand Opera), Carmen (Melbourne). He has conducted most of the major UK orchestras. Most recent / current projects include

ANDREW BAIN ensemble Credits include

Rake’s Progress (Reisopera, Netherlands), Faust, Nabucco (Australia),

L’Elisir d’Amore (Grange Park), Eisenstein

Bluebeard’s Castle (Auckland Philharmonia), the première of his own

Fledermaus (Alternative Opera), Peasant

opera King in Canterbury Cathedral.

Leader Eugene Onegin (Opera by Definition), Project),

DAVID–ALEXANDRE BORLOZ Pistol Falstaff

Whistle Down The Wind (UK Tour), Beauty &

was born in Switzerland and studied at

The Beast (Watermill), Reader (Greenwich),

GSMD. For 2006/07 season, he was in the

Macheath Beggars Opera (Cochrane), Les Misérables (UK Tour) and

ensemble of Lausanne Opera appearing

Filch

Beggars

Opera

(Opera

City of Angels (Landor). As producer Andrew's credits include MEN

in Menotti’s Amelia al Ballo, Figaro and

(Pleasance, Edinburgh), Bed (Tristan Bates), Trust Byron (Gate and

Britten’s Little Sweep. Other recent work includes Nicias’ servant Thais (Grange

Edinburgh) and Pains of Youth (BAC).

Park), Gobineau The Medium and Milhaud Le pauvre matelot Flute

(Fribourg). Roles include Antonio Figaro, Morales Carmen, Papageno

Previously at Grange Park Richard has

Zauberflöte, Junius Rape of Lucretia, Lothario Mignon, Ramiro

conducted Wonderful Town (2004) and

L’heure Espagnole and Truffaldino The Little Green Swallow. Plans

South Pacific (2005) and at Neville Holt

include Franck Fledermaus at Lausanne Opera.

RICHARD

BALCOMBE

Conductor

Barber of Seville (2006). He has worked with some of the world’s leading orchestras

EMMA BRENNAN Pale Lady Gambler &

including Gothenburg Symphony, Orchestre

ensemble won the Mario Lanza Opera Prize

National de Lille, Stavanger Symphony, Estonian Symphony,

whilst at Birmingham Conservatoire. She

Stockholm Sinfonietta and Prague Chamber Orchestra.in the UK,

has worked in Italy, Australia & France. Roles

London Philharmonic, Royal Philharmonic, Royal Scottish National,

include Suor Angelica, Elvira, Antonia, Micaela,

Halle, Ulster, and BBC Concert Orchestra. Opera includes Gondoliers

Countess. Concert appearances include St

(ENO), Barber (Castleward Opera), Rigoletto (English Touring Opera),

John’s, Smith Square and Bath Abbey.

ANNA BYCZKIEWICZ ensemble was born

I Montecchi, La Bohème (Grange Park). He has assisted John Cox

in Poland training at the Music Academy

on Rake’s Progress (San Francisco, Australia Opera and Nationale

in Poznan. Her stage appearances include

Reisopera), Die Frau ohne Schatten (Royal Opera House and

Zerlina Giovanni, Musetta Boheme, Carolina

Melbourne Festival), Capriccio, Albert Herring (Opera Australia).

Il Matrimonio Segreto (Polish Young Artist Programme), Mose (Bayreuth Staats Oper).

JON

CLARK

Lighting

Design

Capuleti

e Montecchi studied Theatre Design at Leeds. Theatre credits include How Much is your Iron, Jewish Wife (Young Vic),

NEVILL HOLT RISING STAR e

Pinter's People (Trafalgar Studios), Soldier’s

Montecchi Supported by Kroll attended the

Tale (Old Vic), Gone To Earth (Shared

SINÉAD

CAMPBELL

Giulietta

Capuleti

National Opera Studio. Opera includes

Experience), The Tale That Wags The Dog

Anne Truelove Rake’s Progress (Aldeburgh

(Drum Theatre Plymouth), Mandragora (Tara Arts / Tron Theatre).

Festival), Melia Apollo and Hyacinthus

Lighting design for dance includes: Vaness Haska (Scottish Dance

(Classical Opera Company), Monica The

Theatre), Real (ACE Dance Company), Mountains are Mountains

Medium and Mrs. Hayes Susanna (Wexford Festival), Drusilla The

(Phillipp Gehmacher at Tanz Quartier Vienna), Into the Woods (Zoo

Coronation of Poppea (Opera Theatre Co), Dalinda Ariodante (Early

Nation at Peacock Theatre), Maverick Matador and Destiny’s Carrot

Opera Company), Dafne Apollo ed Dafne (Como, Italy), Inez Die Drei

(Juliet Aster at Dance East), Embryonic Dreams (Pyromania at The

Pintos (Wexford Festival), Oriana Amadigi (Batignano Festival). Future

Pleasance). Opera credits include Elisir d'Amore, Barber of Seville,

engagements include Anne Trulove Rake’s Progress (Garsington).

Cosi (Grange Park at Nevill Holt) and the revival of Jenufa (ENO / Washington). Jon was Associate Lighting Designer for Evita.

DAMIAN

CARTER

ensemble

recently

finished his postgraduate diploma in Vocal

JAMES CLEVERTON Director of Casino

Studies at the Birmingham Conservatoire.

Gambler was born in Kent and studied at

Since then he has worked with British Youth

RSAMD. In 2001 he appeared as Escamillo

Opera, Swansea City Opera and Buxton

(Spier Festival, South Africa) and Pirate King

Festival Opera. This is his first season at

(D’Oyly Carte, Savoy). This year James has

Grange Park.

sung Eugene Onegin (Opera by Definition), Silvio Pagliacci (ETO), Enrico Lucia di

PTOLEMY CHRISTIE Revival Director Capuleti

Lammermoor (Iford Festival) and Captain Corcoran in HMS Pinafore

e

Sondheim's

(Buxton G&S Festival. Future plans include concerts with the English

Assassins in two British prisons using a

Mozart Ensemble, cover Giuseppe Gondoliers (ENO), Schaunard

cast of inmates (Pimlico Opera), Il Barbiere

Boheme (Mid-Wales Opera) and Bunthorne Patience (Buxton).

Montecchi

He

directed

di Siviglia, Cosi (Nevill Holt Rising Stars / Grange Park Opera) and Traviata (Pimlico

NEVILL HOLT RISING STAR ANDREW CONLEY Unlucky Gambler

Opera). He assisted on Jenufa (Opera Zuid

Gambler, Lorenzo Capuleti e Montecchi Born in Papua New Guinea,

/ Hannover Oper), Pelléas et Mélisande (Glyndebourne on Tour),

he grew up in New Zealand. and has a degree in Philosophy and

Die Walküre, Götterdämmerung (Tiroler Festspiele), I Capuleti e

English. He recently graduated from RCM where roles included

Maids show the Countess (Rebecca von Lipinski) the dry–cleaning Le Nozze di Figaro Grange Park Opera 2006 Director Stephen Langridge Designer George Souglides

123

Junius Rape of Lucretia, Guglielmo and

(Nationale Reisoper / Opera North), Tom Rakewell Rake’s Progress

Falke Fledermaus. For New Zealand Opera

(New Israeli Opera), Piquillo Périchole and Edoardo Un giorno di

he sung Guglielmo Cosi, Figaro Barbiere,

regno (Buxton), Bonnet War & Peace, Italian Tenor Rosenkavalier

Mityukha Boris Godunov, and L’Hotelier

(Spoleto), Ralph Rackstraw HMS Pinafore (Carl Rosa / Hallé) and

Manon. Roles for Auckland Opera Factory

Troilus Troilus & Cressida (Endellion). Other engagements include

include Boris Cheryomuski, Pluto Orpheus

Peter Simple Sir John in Love (ENO), Vain Man Little Prince (BBC

in the Underworld, Mr Kofner Consul, Ben,

TV), Flute Dream (Theatre de la Monnaie), Monostatos Zauberflöte

Telephone and Slook La Cambiale di Matrimonio. Recent work

(Florida Grand Opera) and Painter Lulu (ENO).

includes Fiorello Barbiere (Nevill Holt for Grange Park Opera and Pimlico Opera tour) and Dr Malatesta Pasquale (New Zealand Opera).

DOREEN CURRAN Blanche / Venerable Lady

Andrew was a semi finalist in the Kathleen Ferrier Awards 2006.

Gambler Born in Derry Doreen studied in Dublin, RNCM and National Opera Studio.

DOMINIC COOKE Original Director Capuleti

She has worked with National Symphony

e Montecchi was recently appointed Artistic

of Ireland, RTE Concert Orchestra, Royal

Director of The Royal Court Theatre

Liverpool

having previously been Associate Director

Ulster Orchestra. Opera appearances have

of the Royal Shakespeare Company. His

included Glyndebourne on Tour, ENO, Garsington, Opera Theatre

production of The Crucible won two Olivier

Company Dublin, Wexford Festival, Opera Ireland, Savoy Theatre,

Awards 2007 for Best Director and Best

Opera Northern Ireland and Longborough. She recently sang

Revival. His first opera production was Capuleti e Montecchi for the

Philharmonic

Orchestra

and

Dorabella for Holland Park and Suzuki for Lyric Opera Dublin.

old theatre at Grange Park in 2001 and he returned two year later for La Bohème. A recent interview with Dominic can be found at

CHRIS DAVEY Festival Lighting Design has

http://news.independent.co.uk/

designed five seasons for Grange Park.

people/profiles/article1948976.ece

Recent opera credits include Aida (Houston Grand Opera / ENO), Bird of Night (Linbury

124

RICHARD COXON Monostatos Flute Opera

Studio, ROH), Bluebeard (Bregenz), Jephtha

includes Squeak Billy Budd, Mr By-Ends

(ENO / WNO), Magic Flute (WNO), Rake’s

Pilgrim’s Progress and Gastone Traviata

Progress (Aldeburgh Festival), Picture of

(Royal Opera), Painter Lulu, Young Convict

Dorian Gray (Monte Carlo), For RSC his credits include Winter’s Tale,

From the House of the Dead, Nick Handmaid’s

Pericles, Cymbeline, Alice in Wonderland, Night of the Soul, Romeo &

Tale, Brighella Ariadne auf Naxos, Squeak

Juliet, Midsummer Night`s Dream, Everyman (both also in New York),

Billy Budd, Fenton Falstaff (ENO), Italian

Month in the Country, Troilus & Cressida, Comedy of Errors (world

Tenor Rosenkavalier, Worker Vida Breve and Songseller Tabarro

tour) Mysteria, and Easter. For the RNT credits include Seagull, The

(Opera North), Jaquino Fidelio, Nemorino L’elisir d’amore, Ottavio

Pillars of the Community, A Dream Play, Iphiginia at Aulis, War &

Giovanni, Narraboth Salome, Alfredo Traviata, Flavio Norma and

Peace, Baby Doll. Recent designs include Three Thousand Troubled

Sailor Tristan und Isolde (Scottish Opera), Bill Flight (Glyndebourne /

Threads (Edinburgh Festival), One Flew Over the Cuckoo`s Nest

Nationale Reisoper), Nemorino (Opera Zuid), Vanya Kudrjash Katya

(Gielgud Theatre) with Christian Slater.

Kabanova (Florida Grand / Opéra de Montréal), Gastone traviata

Scenes from Barber of Seville Nevill Holt Rising Stars 2006 Director Ptolemy Christie Designers George Souglides / Emma Ryott Serena Kay (Rosina) and Nicholas Sharratt (Almaviva)

James McOran–Campbell (Figaro) and Nicholas Sharratt (Almaviva)

ANGELA DAVIES Designer Falstaff Having

ANDRE DE RIDDER Conductor Gambler

trained at Cardiff College of Art and

Born in Berlin, André studied at the Music

Nottingham Polytechnic Angela won the

Academies of Vienna and London. He

Linbury Prize for Stage Design. Recent

made débuts with London Sinfonietta, BBC

theatre / opera designs include Odyssey,

Scottish, BBC Philharmonic, Royal Liverpool

Magic

Philharmonic, Philharmonia, and Assistant

Carpet

(Lyric

Hammersmith),

Magic Flute (Graz Opera), Bronte (Shared

Conductor at the Hallé (2004–2006). An

Experience), Twelfth Night (Bristol Old Vic), Hamlet, Rosencrantz

advocate of new music, André has conducted works by Donatoni,

& Guildenstern Are Dead (West Yorkshire Playhouse), After Mrs

Kagel, Andriessen, Henze, Saariaho, Holt, Judith Weir and Gerald

Rochester (Shared Experience / Duke Of York's), Midsummer Night’s

Barry’s opera Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (ENO). Plans include

Dream (Bristol Old Vic), The Clearing (Shared Experience), Mother

further collaboration with Hans Werner Henze in a retrospective

Courage, A Doll’s House (Shared Experience / Ambassadors),

of his works with the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie. Last season

Miss Julie (ATC / Gate), The Great Highway (Gate), The House Of

he appeared at BBC Proms with the Britten Sinfonia and he works

Bernarda Alba (Shared Experience / Young Vic), Night Of The Soul

regularly with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra.

(RSC), Nightingale, Chase (Royal Court), Olga (Traverse), The Father, Stairs To The Roof (Chichester) and Gazza Ladra (Garsington). Plans

JON

include a national tour of Mahabharata.

Designer Flute Projection designs for opera

DRISCOLL

include

Zoe

Lighting

/

(Glyndebourne),

Projection Genoveva

WILLIAM DAZELEY Ford Falstaff Supported

(Opera North), Midsummer Night’s Dream

by Diane Sheridan Born in Warwickshire,

(Linbury Studio, ROH). For theatre lighting

William is a graduate of Jesus College,

credits include Whistle In The Dark (Royal

Cambridge. He studied singing at GSMD

Exchange Theatre & Tricycle Theatre),

where he won the prestigious Gold Medal

Fabulation, Bloody Sunday (Tricycle Theatre), Queen’s English,

and the 1989 Kathleen Ferrier Prize. Roles

Mother Goose - 3 Weddings And A Golden Egg (Palace Theatre

include Count Cherubin, Guglielmo Cosi,

Watford), Darwin In Malibu (Hampstead Theatre), Dance Of Death

Anthony Sweeney Todd, Mercutio Romeo et Juliette, Figaro Barbiere

(Lyric Theatre / Theatre Royal Sydney), Eurydice (Whitehall Theatre).

(Royal Opera House), Count Figaro, Figaro Barbiere and title role

Projection credits include Billy Elliot (Victoria Palace), Jerry Springer

Owen Wingrave (Glyndebourne Touring), Figaro Barbiere (Deutsche

- The Opera (Cambridge Theatre, UK Tour), Heroes (Wyndham’s

Staatsoper Berlin), Count Figaro, title role Giovanni (Deutsche Oper

Theatre), Glorious (Birmingham Rep), Some Girls Are Bigger Than

Berlin), Dr Faust (Salzburg Festival and Chatelet) and Scherasmin

Others (Lyric Theatre Hammersmith), Whistling Psyche (Almeida),

Oberon (Chatelet), Count Figaro (Pittsburgh Opera, WNO), Zurga

When Harry Met Sally, (Theatre Royal Haymarket), Our House

Pearl Fishers (San Francisco), Ferryman Curlew River (Edinburgh

(Cambridge Theatre), Midnight’s Children (RSC), Up For Grabs

Festival), Papageno Magic Flute (ENO). Concert appearances

(Wyndham’s), Life After George (Duchess Theatre), God And Stephen

include Christmas Oratorio with Berlin Philharmonic. Plans include

Hawking (UK Tour).

L’Enfance du Christ (Mozarteum, Salzburg), Guglielmo (Bayerische Staatsoper), and Curlew River, Hanjo (Opera de Lyon).

ADRIAN DWYER Tamino Flute Born in Melbourne, Australia, Adrian is a graduate of GSMD and National Opera Studio. He made his US début as Rodolfo in Baz Luhrmann’s Tony award-winning Bohème.

Alex Poulton (policeman), Nicholas Sharratt (Almaviva), Lucasz Jakobczyk (Basilio) and Freddie Tong (Bartolo)

Nicholas Sharratt (Almaviva) and Serena Kay (Rosina)

125

Recent opera engagements have include

and

Ismaele Nabucco (State Opera of South

Helena. Directing/design credits include

designed

Strauss'

Aegyptische

Australia), Leicester Maria Stuarda (Grange

Thais, Enchantress, Rinaldo and Turn of

Park), Macduff Macbeth (Scottish), Jenik

the Screw (Grange Park), Turk in Italy

Bartered Bride (MidWales Opera), Almaviva

(ENO),

in Paisiello’s Il barbiere (Buxton ), Lensky

Daphne, Idomeneo, Aegyptische Helena,

Schweigsame

Frau,

Capriccio,

Onegin (Aldeburgh) and Vakula Cherevichki

Liebe der Danae, Intermezzo, Arabella

(Garsington). Plans include Simon Perez in Delius Koanga (Pegasus)

(Garsington), Mercadante's Elisa e Claudia (Wexford), Otello

and Almaviva Barber of Seville (Scottish).

(Düsseldorf), Racine's Britannicus (Crucible Sheffield), The Intelligence Park (Almeida), The Hypochondriacs, Betrayal (Glasgow

RODERICK EARLE

Mr Astley Gambler

Citizens), Elisabeth II (Time Out Award 1993 – Best Director and

was born in Winchester and sang in the

Designer), Dr Faustus, The Importance Of Being Earnest (Bristol Old

cathedral choir. After Cambridge and

Vic). The New Menoza, Eve of Retirement (Gate), The Park, Back to

the Royal College of Music he studied

Methuselah (RSC). He has designed Damnation de Faust (Dresden),

with Otakar Kraus. For 21 years he was a

Ring (Tokyo), Xerxes, Simon Boccanegra, Mazeppa, Rienzi, Masked

Principal Baritone with the Royal Opera,

Ball (ENO), Clemenza di Tito (Glyndebourne), Wozzeck, Mahagonny

Covent Garden, singing more than 60

(Scottish Opera), Elektra (WNO), Giulio Cesare (Paris), King Lear, The

roles, most recently Zuniga Carmen. He has appeared with all the

Tempest (RSC), My Fair Lady starring Edward Fox (UK tour).

major companies in the UK, as well as in Germany, France, Italy and New Zealand. Roles include: Count, Rangoni, Dutchman, Germont,

HUBERT FRANCIS Marquis Grieux Gambler

Rigoletto, Ford, Tonio, Alfio, Scarpia, Forester and Klinghoffer.

As a member of the ROH Young Artists Programme

Hubert's

credits

included male Chorus Rape of Lucretia,

career spanning nearly 50 years Francis

Spoletta Tosca and Harlekin Der Kaiser von

Egerton has established himself as one

Atlantis. He has worked with conductors

of the foremost character actor/singers.

This

126

2002–4,

FRANCIS EGERTON Bardolph Falstaff In a

is

his

final

appearance

Badea, Benini, Davis, Jourdan, Jurowski,

before

Litton & Pappano.and directors Copley, Jones, Loy, Miller, Pountney,

retirement from the stage. Glyndebourne,

Moshinsky & Tambosi. Recent credits include Yannakos The Greek

Scottish Opera, and Sadler’s Wells gave

Passion (Brno), Tambourmajor Wozzeck (WNO), Trin Fanciulla del

him his earliest opportunities and since 1972 he has appeared in

West (Royal Opera), Basilio Figaro (Grange Park), Spoletta Tosca

every season at the Royal Opera House until his retirement last

(Bergen) and Beethoven’s 9th Symphony (RPO). Plans include Shabby

season. His speciality roles there include Salome, Billy Budd and

Peasant Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk (Canadian Opera), Spoletta Tosca

Samson, Pong Turandot, Tosca and as the Four Tenors Hoffmann.

and Terry Bond Playing Away (Bregenzer Festspiele).

Other roles at ROH include Iopas Les Troyens, Beppe I Pagliacci, Flute Dream, Bardolfo Falstaff, Nick Fanciulla Del West, Master of

JONATHAN GALE Chorus Master studied at

Ceremonies Queen Of Spades, Altoum Turandot and Innkeeper

Cambridge, National Opera Studio, GSMD

Cunning Little Vixen. Other appearances as Bardolfo include Los

and then conducting in St Petersburg.

Angeles (under Giulini), Monte Carlo, Glyndebourne, Köln and

Recent

Châtelet. Other engagements include Monsieur Taupe Capriccio

Butterfly, Boheme, Rigoletto and orchestral

(Glyndebourne), Mr Upfold Albert Herring (San Diego), Goro

/ choral works including Solomon, Les

work

includes

Cosi,

Traviata,

Butterfly, Eumaus Il Ritorno D’Ulisse In Patria (Los Angeles), Blind

Illuminations and Haydn’s Harmoniemesse.

Fledermaus (Strasbourg), Basilio / Curzio (Frankfurt, Châtelet,

He coaches singers at RCM and has worked at the Royal Opera and

Lisbon, San Diego and London), Remendado (Tokyo). Snout Dream

Aix en Provence Festival where he was Assistant to Daniel Harding.

(La Fenice), Missail Boris Godunov (Washington), four tenor roles Les

Jonathan runs Live Action Opera which takes opera into schools.

Contes d’Hoffmann (Winnipeg, San Francisco, Châtelet, Bastille), Mime and Trabuco Forza del Destino (San Francisco), Vogelgesang

NEVILL HOLT RISING STAR OWEN GILHOOLY

Die Meistersinger (Brussels), Scaramuccio Ariadne auf Naxos (Nice),

Capellio Capuleti e Montecchi Born in

Pedrillo Entführung (Palermo), and many more.

Limerick, Owen trained at London’s RCM and National Opera Studio. He was sung

DANIEL FARRIMOND ensemble started his

for ETO, Lyric Opera Dublin, Opera Ireland,

vocal studies at Sheffield University where

Savoy Opera and Scottish Opera and his

he graduated in 2005. He appears this

roles include Fernando Fidelio, Valentin

season with British Youth Opera and Opus

Faust, Marcello Boheme, Figaro Barber and Falke Fledermaus. He

One Music as well as in a variety of concert

made his début at ROH singing Fauré Requiem for the Royal Ballet

work.

and has appeared at the BBC Proms and Wexford Festival. Owen is the Irish Representative for Cardiff SInger of the World 2007.

DAVID FIELDING Director & Designer Gambler Supported by Dixon

ANDREA GIOVANNINI Fenton Falstaff originally trained as an actor

Wilson David studied at Central School. He recently made his

at Scuola di Teatro di Bologna. In 1996 he began to study opera

début at the Metropolitan Opera New York where he directed

and pursued a career in musical theatre, in a long collaboration

with Massimo Romeo Piparo, from Evita

Grimes, Wozzeck (Santa Fe), Paradise Moscow (Opera North). Theatre

and My Fair Lady. He made his operatic

credits include work for Chichester, Crucible Theatre, Sheffield,

debut as Danilo Merry Widow (also Salerno)

Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh, National Actors Theatre New

and

York, Royal Shakespeare Company, Royal Court Theatre and Royal

appeared

Paolino

as

Matrimonio

Almaviva

Barbiere,

Segreto

(Palermo),

National Theatre.

Ferrando Così (Bari, Teatro Piccolo Milano), Scaramuccio Ariadne auf Naxos (Bari).

SUSAN JIWEY ensemble Roles include Donna

Currrent projects include Idreno Semiramide (Roma), Brighella

Elvira (Opéra de Baugé), Berta The Barber

Ariadne auf Naxos (Bolzano), Alfredo (Dijon, Nürnberg), Rodolfo

of Seville Nevill Holt Rising Stars/ Grange

Bohème (Opera Ireland), Conte di Bosco Nero Vedova Scaltra (Nice),

Park), Adina L’Elisir d’amore (Vox Lirika),

Rinuccio Gianni Schicchi (Modena, Piacenza, Ferrara) and his debut

Apparition Macbeth (Holland Park), title

as Ottavio Giovanni with Maestro Claudio Desderi.

role in Handel’s Alcina and Pamina Flute

HAZEL GOULD Assistant Director trained at Manchester University and Central School

HANNAH JONES 2nd boy / ensemble trained

of Speech & Drama. She has worked as an

at TCM, London. For Grange Park she has

assistant director for Grange Park, Opera

appeared

North, The Barbican Centre, Glyndebourne

and South Pacific. Other credits include

and Lincoln Centre, New York. She works

Fledermaus (Carl Rosa), Yeoman of the

as a director on education programmes

Guard (Buxton), Mikado, HMS Pinafore (Carl

Maria

Stuarda,

Giovanni

Rosa, USA, Australia), Butterfly (London

in opera, theatre and orchestras and is a founder member of the theatre company Plain, London, and The Nothing Club, New York.

in

City Opera).

NEVILL HOLT RISING STAR

VICTORIA JOYCE Queen of the Night Flute

JONAS GUDMUNDSSON Tebaldo Capuleti e

Supported by Amanda and David Leathers

Montecchi Born in Reykjavik Jonas went on to

A graduate of the Royal Northern College

study in Berlin and Royal Academy of Music.

of Music, Victoria's recent opera includes

His roles include Lindoro L’Italiana in Algeri

Queen of the Night, Mabel Pirates (ENO),

(Treviso), Duke Rigoletto (Bremerhaven),

Queen of the Night (Macerata Festival,

(Iceland),

State Opera Hamburg), Adina Elisir (Grange

Filipetto School for Fathers (Wolf-Ferrari), Tamino (RAO), Harry

Park), Contessa di Folleville Viaggio à Reims (Pesaro), Fauré Requiem

Fanciulla del West (Holland Park), Bernier Ali Pascha by Lortzing

(Brussels). Other UK engagements include Sophie Werther, and

(Hfm Berlin) and has covered Antonio Bethrothal in a Monastery and

Naiad/Zerbinetta Ariadne auf Naxos (Holland Park, Aldeburgh

Ferrando Cosi (Glyndebourne).

Festival, ETO). For the Royal Opera Linbury Studio she created

Ottavio,

Alfredo

Fledermaus

the soprano roles in Martin Ward’s Wind in the Willows. Future PETER HARRISON Lighting Design Associate Gambler trained at

engagements include Queen of the Night and Konstanze (Dresden).

RADA. His recent lighting designs have included Orestes (Shared Experience), Up from the Waste (Soho Theatre) and Romeo & Juliet

STUART KALE Caius Falstaff began his

(New Wolsey, Ipswich). For Pimlico Opera Peter has lit Les Miserables

career at WNO. His extensive list of roles

at HMP Wandsworth and Chicago at HMP Bronzefield. Other work

includes Hauptmann Wozzeck (Strasbourg,

includes My Uncle Arly (Hoipolloi and Tiebreak Theatre Companies),

Nancy, San Francisco, Canadian Opera

The Comedy of Errors (Cambridge Arts), The Biggleswades

Company, Geneva, Zürich, Montpellier,

(Southwark Playhouse) and The Young Dick Barton (Croydon).

Bordeaux and Bologna, Parma), Zinoviev Lady

Macbeth

(Toulouse,

Marseille),

RICHARD IMMERGLUCK ensemble recently

Idomeneo (Drottningholm), 3 tenor roles Lulu (Châtelet), Bob

completed his BMus at GSMD studying

Boles (EMI / Munich State Opera, ROH / Geneva and Strasbourg),

voice under Robert Dean. Most recent work

Gregor Makropoulos Case and Herod Salome (Strasbourg). Recent

includes Frank Fledermaus and ?Guccio

appearances include Lepreux St Francois d’Assise (Amsterdam),

Gianni Schicchi, chorus The Merry Widow

Aumonier Dialogues des Carmelites (Cagliari), Rev Adams Peter

(Holland Park) and Falstaff (GSMD).

Grimes (La Scala, Milan), Pirelli Sweeney Todd (Opera North), Schoolmaster/Mosquito

Cunning

Little

Vixen

(ROH).

Other

ROBERT INNES HOPKINS Designer Capuleti e

appearances include Herod Salome, Truffaldino Love for Three

Montecchi has designed for opera, theatre,

Oranges, Barclay de Tolly / Karataev War & Peace, Justice Shallow Sir

film and TV. Recent opera productions

John in Love (ENO), Shuisky Boris, Schoolmaster Cunning Little Vixen

include Die Soldaten (Ruhr Triennale),

(Genève), Schoolmaster Cherevichki (Garsington), Aegisthe Elektra

Betrothal in a Monastery (Glyndebourne,

(Karlsruhe, Opera di Roma). Plans include Basilio Figaro, Valzacchi

Cavalleria Rusticana / Pagliacci (Deutsche

Rosenkavalier and Monostatos Flute (ENO).

Oper Berlin), Flying Dutchman (Opernhaus Zurich / WNO), Cunning Little Vixen (Bregenz Festival, San Francisco,

JANIS KELLY Alice Ford Falstaff Supported by Amanda & Charles

Geneva), Rigoletto (WNO), Elixir Of Love (Opera North / WNO), Peter

Haddon–Cave studied at RSAMD in her native Glasgow and RCM.

127

Engagements at ENO include title role Belle

Breasts of Tiresias, Quint Turn of the Screw,

Vivette, Countess Figaro’s Wedding, Yum

Lenski Onegin. Other roles include Andres

Yum Mikado, Rose Street Scene. For Opera

Wozzeck, Laca Jenufa, Rodolfo Bohème,

North she has performed Countess Figaro,

Paolo Francesca da Rimini, Jenik Bartered

Musetta Boheme, Magnolia Showboat, title

Bride, Weill’s Love Life and One Touch of

role Cunning Little Vixen, Violetta Traviata,

Venus (Opera North), Florestan Fidelio, Don

Magda Rondine, Marschallin Rosenkavalier

José Carmen (ETO), Janek Makropulos Case

and Electra Idomeneo. Janis made frequent appearances in David

(WNO), Judas Last Supper (Glyndebourne at QEH), Lindoro Fedelta

Freeman’s productions for Opera Factory singing Ottavia Poppea,

premiata, title role Albert Herring, Sir Morosus Schweigsame Frau

Calisto / Juno La Calisto and Flora Knot Garden as well as recording

and Matteo Arabella (Garsington), Genoveva, Fledermaus, Max Der

Susanna, Zerlina and Despina for Channel 4. Festival performances

Freischütz (Zwingenberg), Lawyer Punch & Judy (Music Theatre

have included Iris Semele (Les Arts Florissants/Aix-en-Provence) and

Wales), Henri Smith Fair Maid of Perth (Buxton), Alwa Lulu (ENO).

Finta Semplice (Buxton). Recent engagements include Zoë (Channel

Future engagements include Rusalka (Grange Park).

4), Fairy Queen, Despina Cosi, Romilda Xerxes, Alcina and Mrs Nixon Nixon in China (ENO), Miss Jessel Turn of the Screw, Kuma

MELANIE

LODGE

ensemble

Enchantress and Elisabetta Maria Stuarda (Grange Park), title role

RWCMD.

Opera

appearances

studied

at

Cunning Little Vixen (Barcelona), Iris (Flanders) and her directorial

London City Opera, Holland Park, Carl Rosa,

debut, Cosi fan tutte at Grange Park Opera. Current projects include

Tower Festival Opera (Anna Bolena), 2nd

Magda (Opera North), Mrs Naidoo Satyagraha (ENO) and a series

Boy Flute, Peep-Bo Mikado (Surrey Opera),

include

of half hour operas (BBC2). She appears as Liu Turandot in the

Isabella L’inganno Felice (Scottish Opera),

Hollywood movie The Life of David Gale.

Alice Comte Ory (New Chamber Opera), Cherubino Figaro, Annio Clemenza, Cecila Lucio Scilla, Barbarina

REBECCA KELLY ensemble studied at the

(London Opera Players), Modestina (Wexford).

Birmingham Conservatoire. Roles include Julius

JAMIE LONSDALE ensemble Born in London

Caesar, Orfeo Orfeo ed Euridice, Edimione

Jamie went to Dartmouth as a Midshipman,

La Calisto (Conservatoire) and Chorus

spending five years at sea with the Royal

Pecheurs des Perles and Daughter of the

Navy. At 24 he became involved in asset

Regiment (Swansea City Opera).

management. He began serious vocal

Octavian

128

Rosenkavalier,

Cornelia

study in 1997. His appearances include PETER KENT ensemble started singing professionally

in

1999.

Recent

work

includes Opera North chorus Peter Grimes

Thais, Elixir of Love, Sgt Johnston South Pacific (Grange Park), Usher Trial by Jury, Gherardo Gianni Schicchi, Gaston Traviata and various roles Tosca.

/ Rigoletto, Parpignol Boheme, 1st Prisoner (Holland

SANDRA MARTINOVIC–LEMALU ensemble

Park), Marco / Francesco Gondoliers (Carl

was born in Bosnia Herzegovina and

Rosa), Remendado Carmen, and Kromov

studied at the Zagreb Music Academy and

Merry Widow. As a chorus member Peter has appeared in Mikado,

the Royal College of Music. Roles include

Fidelio,

Giuseppe

Traviata

Gondoliers, Pirates of Penzance, Iolanthe, Yeoman of the Guard

Cherubino Figaro, Dorabella, 2nd Lady

and Fledermaus (Carl Rosa) and with Raymond Gubbay Peter Aida,

Flute, Nella Gianni Schicchi, Marianna Il Signor Bruschino, Genovieve Suor Angelica,

Carmen, Butterfly (Royal Albert Hall).

Mrs Gobineau Medium. As a recitalist, Sandra made her Wigmore TEUTA

KOÇO

Papagena

Flute

Born

Hall debut in 2005 performing Schumann and Granados.

in Albania, Teuta moved to England and studied at Chetham’s and RNCM.

TOBIAS MERZ ensemble New Zealand born

Roles

Zauberflote

he studied at the Royal Conservatorium,

(Glyndebourne), Franziska Wiener Blut

The Hague. and recently came to live in UK.

(Clonter)

Philosopher’s

His stage repertoire include Cosi (Opera

Stone (Garsington), Eufrosine in Cesti’s Il

Australia), Charpentier Messe de Minuit

Pomo d’Oro (Batignano), Girl in Ullman’s Emperor of Atlantis (Hallé

pour Noel (Royal Melbourne Philharmonic),

include and

Papagena Lubanara

Orchestra), Elvira L’Italiana in Algeri (Mannanan Opera), Despina

Smetana’s

The

two

Widows

and

Die

Cosi (Montepulciano). Future/recent engagements include First

Zauberflote (New Opera Academy, Amsterdam) Mozart Bastien und

Lady in a film version of Magic Flute directed by Kenneth Branagh,

Bastienne (Resident Orchestra Den Haag)

Papagena (Reims, Avignon and Vichy), Despina (Garsington).

ANDREW

MCINTOSH

ensemble

studies

JEFFREY LLOYD-ROBERTS Alexei Gambler Supported by the John

at Trinity and the Royal Academy of

Wates Charitable Trust Born in Wales, Jeffrey studied at Lancaster

Music.

University and RNCM. Recent appearances were title role Peter

Dancairo Carmen (Pegasus Opera at the

Grimes (Opera North) and Gherardo Gianni Schicchi (Royal Opera

Linbury Studio-ROH), Sciarrone Tosca and

House). At Grange Park: Nicias Thais, Yuri Enchantress, Husband

appearances on the BBC2 series The Choir.

Recent

engagements

include

Plans include Silvano Ballo in Maschera (Surrey Opera), title role

the chorus of Flemish Opera he appeared

Porgy & Bess (RPO at Barbican) and performances of Messiah and St.

as Perückenmacher Ariadne auf Naxos and

John Passion with Polyphony.

Wedding Guest King Priam. Other roles include Rugierro La Liberazione di Ruggiero

FLORA MCINTOSH La Dame Comme ci

dall’isola d’Alcina (Musica Antiqua Köln),

comme ça Gambler / 2nd Lady Flute Born

Lorek Fedora (Holland Park), Momus Platée

in 1979 Flora McIntosh began singing

(English Bach Festival in Athens).

with Ann Lampard before entering the RNCM in 1999. Recent work includes plans

DAN O’NEILL

Elijah with Sir Thomas Allen (Southbank

working as a choreographer and filmmaker Dan was a founder

Movement Gambler / Capuleti e Montecchi Before

Sinfonia / Westminster Cathedral), Bach B

member of the Featherstonehaughs and performed with many

minor Mass (Symphony Hall, Birmingham). Roles include Carmen,

other leading dance companies including DV8 Physical Theatre,

Meg Page in Falstaff, Suzanne A Better Place (Martin Butler), Judith

Second Stride, Toronto Dance Theatre and Extemporary. As a

Duke Bluebeard’s Castle, Armida in Handel’s Armida Abbandonata

choreographer Dan’s work includes ATC’s Jeff Koons, Frantic

(Batignano), Drummer The Emperor of Atlantis, Fanny Nelson/Emma

Assembly’s Peepshow, Great Expectations (Bristol Old Vic), Monkey

Hamilton in the world première of Rupert Bawden’s A Sailor’s Tale,

(Young Vic) and Escapade (South Bank Centre). Dan’s work for

Myrtale Thais (Grange Park), various roles L’enfant et les sortileges

screen includes Desert Dreams (BBC), The Linesman (BBC/NPS), The

(tour Greece and Cyprus).

Human Voice (Channel 4), IMZ nominated Showtime (SE Arts) and many other short dance films and documentaries.

STEPHEN MEDCALF Director Flute Among his most notable productions are Figaro (opening of the new Glyndebourne opera house), Mascagni’s Il piccolo Marat and Rimsky-Korsakov’s May Night (Wexford Festival), Händel’s Ezio (Théatre des Champs Elysées), L’Elisir d’Amore (English Touring Opera and revived for West Australia, Victoria State Opera and Opera Queensland, Flying Dutchman for Opera North. Recent work includes Faust and Madama Butterfly (Mid-Wales Opera), Medium (Opera Bergen), Aida, Carmen, Village Romeo and Juliet (Teatro Lirico in Cagliari), Pique Dame (La Scala, Milan), Manon Lescaut and

129

Magic Flute (Teatro Regio di Parma). Future engagements include Entfuhrung aus dem Serail (co-production Teatro Massimo, Palermo, Ancona, Teatro delle Muse and Teatro Lirico di Cagliari) and Albert Herring (Salzburger Landestheater).

FRANCIS O’CONNOR Designer Flute trained at Wimbledon School of Art. Most recent work

includes

Translations

(Princeton

and New York), Shadowlands (Salisbury), Leaves (Druid, Galway and Royal Court), Man of La Mancha (Edinburgh Lyceum) and Don Pasquale (Geneva). Opera credits include La Traviata (ENO), Don Pasquale (Garsington), The Original Chinese Conjuror (Aldeburgh / Almeida), Giovanni, South Pacific and Iolanthe (Grange Park), Manon (Opera North), Der Vogelhändler (Komische, Berlin), Maometto II (Strasbourg), Pirates of Penzance (Savoy), Ariadne auf Naxos (Castleward), May Night (Wexford), La vie parisienne (D’Oyly Carte), Barber of Seville (ETO), and How To Succeed In Business and Cole Porter’s Out of this World (Chichester).

For Galway’s Druid Theatre work includes Beauty Queen of Leenane (also London and Broadway), Lonesome West (also Broadway), and My Beautiful Divorce (also London). Other work includes The Plough and The Stars and The House of Bernada Alba (Abbey, Dublin), Andorra and A Raisin in the Sun (Young Vic), Calico (Duke of York), Lieutenant of Inishmore (RSC and Garrick), Peer Gynt (RNT) and the complete Synge plays (Galway, Dublin, Edinburgh, New York).

JEAN-CLAUDE OHMS Ensemble was born in the Netherlands and studied at the conservatories of Leuven, Ghent and Amsterdam. In

Thais Grange Park Opera 2006 Director and designer David Fielding Vuyani Mlinde (Palemon) and the monks pray before the evening meal

CLAIRE

ORMSHAW

Nannetta

(Edinburgh Festival Theatre), Good Robber

Falstaff

Supported by the John Wates Charitable

Vanishing

Trust Born in Lancashire Claire studied

Lehrbuben Meistersinger (Usher Hall / BBC

Bridegroom

(Glasgow)

and

at RNCM and the Academia Rossiniana

SSO), Momus Platée (English Bach Festival,

in Pesaro. She was awarded the 2005

Athens) and at Holland Park appeard in

Sir John Christie Prize at Glyndebourne

Rigoletto, Queen of Spades, understudied

where she sang Emmie Albert Herring,

La Voix Herodiade (Dorset Opera). Plans

Barbarina Figaro and Papagena Zauberflöte, Clorinda Cenerentola.

include Torquemada L’Heure Espangole (Scottish Opera Orchestra /

Other engagements include Papagena (Opera de Paris Bastille and

RSAMD Opera School) and Giovanetto L’Amore De Tre Rei (Holland

Glyndebourne Festival), Barbarina (ENO), Norina Pasquale (Mananan

Park).

Festival), Dalinda Ariodante (ETO), Amor Orfeo ed Euridice (Opera North), Tina Flight (Adelaide Festival), Lauretta Betrothal in a

NEVILL HOLT RISING STAR

Monastery (Glyndebourne), Despina (Glyndebourne On Tour), Plans

HANNAH

include Blonde Entführung ( Frankfurt Opera).

Montecchi Since leaving RNCM roles include

PEDLEY

Romeo

Capuleti

e

Nancy Albert Herring (New Kent Opera), Falstaff

Mastrilla Perichole, cover of Ino Semele

was born in South Shields and studied at

(Buxton Festival) and Maddalena / Delia

ANNE-MARIE

OWENS

Quickly

GSMD and National Opera Studio. Recent

Viaggio a Reims (Wexford Festival). More

engagements include Herodias Salome

recently she appeared as Smeton Anna Bolena, Orlofsky Fledermaus

(Santa Fe, Opera North), Mrs Grose Turn

(Swansea City Opera), Melanto Penelope (Wexford Festival), The

of the Screw (Glyndebourne on Tour),

Musico Manon Lescaut (Holland Park), Madame Flora Medium, Dinah

Beethoven 9th (RPO), Jezibaba Rusalka,

Trouble in Tahiti (Second Movement) and Duck / Policeman in ROH2

Witch Hänsel und Gretel (Opera Australia), Marcellina Figaro (Grange

Linbury Theatre’s production of Wind in the Willows.

Park Opera). She made her professional debut as Mistress Quickly

130

Falstaff (Glyndebourne Tour) and joined ENO in 1985 where roles

GILLIAN POLLOCK ensemble graduated from

include Anezka The Two Widows, High Priestess La Vestale, Marfa

Napier University, RWCMD and RSAMD and

Khovanshchina, Jezibaba Rusalka, and Judith Weir’s Blond Eckbert

received the Countess of Munster award

(and Channel 4). Her extensive repertoire includes Brangäne Tristan

and a Silver Medal from the Worshipful

und Isolde, Amneris Aida, Azucena Il Trovatore, Venus Tannhäuser,

Company of Musicians. Her opera roles

Herodias Salome and Santuzza Cavalleria Rusticana, Morozova

include Judith Elegies Willy Russell, Le Feu

Opricnick (Cagliari), Madelon Andrea Chenier (Scottish), Ragonde

/ La Princesse L’Enfant et les Sortileges, title

Comte Ory (Garsington). Anne-Marie has also appeared with Royal

role Aida (Windsor & Eton).

Opera House, WNO, Opéra National de Paris, Théâtre Royale de La Monnaie, Opéra de Lausanne, New York City Opera, Santiago

ALEX

Opera, Arizona Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Opera di San Carlo,

ensemble

POULTON

Potap

Komische Oper, Berlin, Bayerische Staatsoper. Plans include Mrs

Conservatoire and Liszt Ferenc Academy,

Grose (Glyndebourne) and Jezibaba Rusalka (Grange Park 2008).

Budapest. Roles include Indian Bartered

DOMINIC PECKHAM ensemble was born in Southampton and

(Grange Park), Zuniga, Dancaïro (European

graduated

Chamber

studied

Gambler

at

and

Birmingham

Bride (Mid-Wales Opera), Officer Barber from

RSAMD.

Roles

include

L’Herault

Scenes from Thais Grange Park Opera 2006 Director and designer David Fielding Anne–Sophie Duprels (Thais) Jeffrey Lloyd Roberts (Nicias)

Cendrillon

Opera),

Thais decides to leave behind her old life

Masetto,

Yamadori,

cover Sharpless, Captain Onegin (Opera by Definition), Don José in

2007 is conducting concert tours with the St. Petersburg Camerata

Royal Scottish Ballet’s contemporary ballet on Carmen, First Priest

and the Orion Symphony Orchestra.

(Longborough), Cascada, Pritis (London City Opera), Basil Count of Luxembourg (Court Opera). He has performed in festivals in

MARGARET RAPACIOLI 3rd Lady Flute &

England, Sweden, Germany, France and Hungary.

Suspect Gambler Gambler

was born in

London and studied singing in Italy and ROBERT POULTON Falstaff Falstaff was

the National Opera Studio. Her opera

born in Brighton and studied at the

roles includes Hebe Pinafore (Carl Rosa),

GSMD and National Opera Studio. He has

Cherubino Figaro, Polly Beggar’s Opera

sung principal roles with all the major UK

and Maddalena /Giovanna Rigoletto (Opera

companies and in Europe. He spent much

Project), title role Djamileh (Opera Minima), covers of Pippo Gazza

of his early career at Glyndebourne winning

Ladra, Cherubino (Opera North) and Mrs Nolan Medium (Second

the John Christie Award. For Grange Park he has appeared as Don Magnifico Cenerentola, title role Onegin,

Movement Opera). Plans include Mother Knife’s Tears by Martinu and Marfa Rothschild’s Violin by Fleischmann for Second Movement.

Bartolo Barber of Seville. Among his many roles are Count Almaviva Figaro’s Wedding, Ned Keene Peter Grimes, Leander Love for Three

JOE ROCHE Rash Gambler Gambler and

Oranges and Animal Tamer/Acrobat Lulu (ENO), Figaro Figaro, Prus

ensemble read psychology at Trinity, Dublin

Makropulos Case, Golaud Pelléas et Mélisande, Marcello Bohéme and

and is with Russell Smythe at the Royal

Germont Traviata (Glyndebourne Touring), Ned Keene and Starek

College of Music. He has sung roles in Lady

Jenufa (Glyndebourne) and Hansel & Gretel (WNO). He recently made

Macbeth of Mtsensk, Silver Tassie (Opera

his Royal Opera debut as Douphol Traviata. Roles abroad include

Ireland), Cosi (Aberdeen Youth Festival),

Harasta, Punch Punch and Judy and Starek (Netherlands Opera),

Fledermaus, Traviata, Rigoletto (Co-Opera),

Giovanni, Prus and Leander (Opera Zuid), Minskman Flight (Vlaamse

Tabarro (Annalivia Opera Festival), Macbeth, Aida, Due Foscari,

Opera / Adelaide Festival) and Ned Keene in Amsterdam, Nantes,

Attila (Lyric Opera) and Trovatore (National Symphony of Ireland).

Bremen, Copenhagen and Cologne. Recent roles include Alfonso Cosi, Chorebus Capture of Troy and Animal Tamer/Acrobat (ENO),

KATHERINE

Germont and Podesta Thieving Magpie (Opera North), Leporello and

was born in the US and educated at

ROHRER

Pauline

Gambler

Bartolo (Garsington), and Vicar Albert Herring, Foreman Jenufa and

Stetson University and the New England

Minskman (Glyndebourne).

Conservatory. She made her San Francisco Opera début as Oberto Alcina. Roles include Dorabella Così fan tutte, Paulina

TOBY PURSER Assistant Conductor Gambler Second prize winner in the 2002 Leeds

Queen of Spades, Lola Cavalleria Rusticana

conducting competition, Toby made his

(San Francisco Opera), Stephano Roméo et Juliette (Lyric Opera

Royal Festival Hall début in 2004. Recent

of Chicago), Vitige/Flavio (New York City Opera), Nadine Tangier

work includes Hänsel und Gretel, Family

Tattoo (Glyndebourne), Teseo Arianna in Creta (Gotham Chamber

Matters (Tête à Tête), world premiere of

Opera New York), Cherubino Figaro (Opera Colorado), Oberto Alcina

The Black Monk by Anthony Bailey (Sirius

(Opéra de Lyon). Future plans include Messaggiera and Proserpina

Ensemble) and works by Sciarrino and Holt for Almeida Opera.

Orfeo (Glimmerglass Opera), a return to Glyndebourne and a début

Recently appointed assistant conductor to l’Ensemble Orchestral de

with the Grand Théâtre de Genève.

Paris, he is principal conductor of the Orion Symphony Orchestra. In

Ashley Holland (Athanael) takes Anne–Sophie Duprels (Thais) through the desert to a nunnery

The death of Thais

131

CAROL ROWLANDS Babulenka Gambler

(Glyndebourne Touring), title role Perichole,

began her career with Scottish Opera

Ines Maria Padilla (Buxton), title role

first as a chorister then principal. Roles

Carmen (Raymond Gubbay / Royal Albert

there

Blitzstein’s

Hall), Isolier Comte Ory (Garsington), Olga

Regina, Waltraute Die Walkure, Second

Eugene Onegin (Holland Park), Lucienne

Lady Magic Flute, Marcellina Figaro, Page

Die Tote Stadt (Netherlands Opera). Plans

included

title

role

Salome. Other roles include Mrs. Grose

include Wellgunde Rheingold (Salzburg

Turn of the Screw, Mrs. Sedley Peter Grimes (Nationale Reisopera,

Easter Festival), Wellgunde Götterdämmerung (Sir Simon Rattle /

Netherlands), Baba the Turk Rake’s Progress (ETO), Mother Jeanne

Aix) and title role L’enfant et le sortilèges (Concertgebouw).

Carmelites (WNO), Berta Barber of Seville (Holland Park), Suzuki Madame Butterfly (LCO/Columbia Artists), Mother/Witch Hansel &

DANIEL SLATER Director Falstaff studied at

Gretel (Eastern Opera), Judy Punch & Judy (Music Theatre Wales),

Bristol and Cambridge. Opera credits include

Goneril Vision of Lear (Hosokawa) at the Linbury, Euryklea Trojan

Betrothal In a Monastery (Glyndebourne),

Trilogy (Rushton) for The Opera Group, Throttlepumpa Fanferlizzy

Fortunio, Giovanni (Grange Park), Manon

Sunnyfeet (Schwertzig) for Broomhill.

Lescaut, Bartered Bride, Massenet’s Manon, L'Elisir d’Amore, (Opera North and New

JAMES SCARLETT Prince Nilsky Gambler

Zealand), Magic Flute (Graz), Cunning Little

and ensemble was born in Bromley, Kent,

Vixen (Bregenz Festival / San Francisco), Magic Flute (ETO), Bartered

studied Fine Art at Canterbury and TCM.

Bride (Opéra National du Rhin, Strasbourg), Don Pasquale (Graz,

Opera roles include Tonio Daughter of the

Garsington), 1001 Nights (Anvil, Basingstoke), Pénélope (Guildhall),

Regiment, Almaviva Barber, Nadir Pêcheurs

Bohème (Scottish Opera and Opera Ireland), Eugene Onegin (French

des Perles, title role Comte Ory, Ramiro

Institute Theatre). Theatre credits include Confusions (Salisbury

Cenerentola,

Playhouse), Life Goes On (Basingstoke), Grab the Dog (RNT Studio),

Curzio

Figaro,

Mercury

Orpheus in the Underworld, Michele Saint of Bleecker Street.

132

The Mark (Soho Theatre Company),

AMY SEDGWICK ensemble studied at GSMD

SERGIO LA STELLA Conductor Capuleti e

where solo appearances included Bianca

Montecchi made his début at Rome Opera

in Thea Musgrave’s The Voice of Ariadne,

with Manon Lescaut followed by Traviata

Veronique Dr Miracle, Suzuki Butterfly and

and Aida in St Petersburg at the invitation

Dulcinee in Massenet’s Don Quixote. Chorus

of Valery Gergiev. Other international

work includes Cosi, Figaro (Garsington) and

engagements include Manon Lescaut, Maria Stuarda (Royal Swedish Opera), Munich

Elixir of Love (Grange Park).

Philharmonic, Württembergische Philharmonie and Reutlingen ANDREW SHORE The General Gambler

Philharmonic Orchestra (with Ruggero Raimondi). Engagements

Supported by Malcolm Herring has worked

in Italy include Genoa, Naples, Teatro dell’Opera in Lecce, Teatro

for all the major British houses including

Vespasiano in Rieti, Teatro dei Servi. His repertoire includes Adriana

Royal Opera House, ENO, Glyndebourne,

Lecouvreur, L’Elisir d’Amore, Don Pasquale, Lucia di Lammermoor,

WNO, Opera North and Scottish Opera.

Zauberflöte, Butterfly, La Rondine, Tosca, Turandot, I due Foscari,

Abroad he has worked for Bayreuth Festival,

Rigoletto, Aida, Trovatore, Cavalleria Rusticana, Pagliacci, Carmen,

Metropolitan Opera, New York, Paris Opera,

Iris, Merry Widow. At Grange Park he conducted Cenerentola and

San Diego Opera, New Israeli Opera, the Opéra Comique in Paris,

Maria Stuarda. Forthcoming engagements include Il Barbiere di

the Liceu in Barcelona, Netherlands Opera, Komische Oper Berlin,

Siviglia (Scottish Opera).

Hamburg, Lyon, Nantes, Montpelier, Copenhagen, Vancouver, Santa Fe, Ottawa and Lyric Opera of Chicago. Most recent roles

DAVID STOUT Papageno Flute Supported by

include Inigo L’heure espagnole (Royal Opera House), George

an anonymous donor was Head Chorister

Wilson Great Gatsby (Lyric Opera of Chicago), Metropolitan Opera

of Westminster Abbey and won a Choral

debut as Dulcamara L’Elisir d’amore, title roles Sir John in Love,

Scholarship to King’s College, Cambridge,

Falstaff, performances of War & Peace, Alberich Ring (ENO), Falstaff

studied Zoology at Durham and recently

and Alfonso Cosi (Santa Fe), Faber Knot Garden (Scottish Opera),

finished the Opera Course at GSMD.

Forthcoming

Recent work and future plans include:

engagements include a return to the Bayreuth Festival to sing

Marullo Rigoletto (Holland Park), Dan Cairo Carmen (WNO), Mick

Alberich Ring, Frank Die Fledermaus (Lyric Opera of Chicago, the

Playing Away and Sciarrone Tosca (Bregenzer Festpiele). His roles

world première of Appomattox by Philip Glass in San Francisco and

include title role Eugene Onegin, Count Figaro, Escamillo Carmen,

Beckmesser

Meistersinger

(Edinburgh

Festival).

Baron Zeta Merry Widow (Dallas Opera).

Ankerström Masked Ball, Capt Corcoran HMS Pinafore, Giuseppe Gondoliers, Giorgio Germont La Traviata, Prince Yeletsky Queen of

VICTORIA SIMMONDS Meg Falstaff studied at GSMD and for ENO has sung Nancy T’ang Nixon in China, Cherubino Figaro, Mercedes Carmen, Zaida Turk in Italy, Pitti-Sing Mikado, Ascanius Trojans, Rosina Barber of Seville, Dorabella Così, Hermia Dream and Zerlina Giovanni. Other opera includes Sesto Clemenza di Tito

Spades, Scarpia Tosca and Belcore The Elixir of Love.

ZOE TAYLOR 3rd Boy Flute & ensemble

and Pifear Si j'étais Roi, Professor South Pacific (Grange Park), HMS

was born in Sydney, Australia and moved

Pinafore (Carl Rosa tour Australia / New Zealand), Peter Grimes

to England to study at RNCM. She has

(Nationale Reisoper), Viennese Gala (UK tour), Simon Boccanegra

appeared as 3rd boy with Pacific Opera

and Merry Widow (Bloomsbury Theatre)

Company in Australia, and as Second Lady REBECCA VON LIPINSKI 1st Lady Flute

for Dartington Festival Opera.

Recent engagements include Karin Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (ENO), Countess KARIN THYSELIUS 1st Boy Flute & ensemble

Figaro (Grange Park), Harrison Birtwistle’s

was born in Stockholm and studied at

The Second Mrs Kong (BBC Symphony

GSMD.

Orchestra), Carmina Burana (Bournemouth

She

has

appeared

in

Brahms

Requiem, Fauré Requiem, Mozart C minor

Symphony Orchestra) and recordings of

Mass (King’s College, Cambridge), Poulenc

Fanny Il Prigoniero d’Edimborgo and Emma d’Antiochia for Opera

Gloria, Vivaldi Gloria, Schubert Masses

Rara. Future plans include, Los Angeles Lola Playing Away (Bregenz

(Netherlands). Roles include Cosette Les

Festival and St Pölten), title role in a new opera Snow White (Nationale

Misérables (Pimlico Opera / Wandsworth Prison), Shepherd Boy

Reisopera) and Sibelius’ Luonnotar (BBC Symphony Orchestra

Tosca, First Boy and Papagena Zauberflöte, Virtù L’Incoronazione di

conducted by Thomas Adés).

Poppea, and Frasquita Carmen. Plans include Ida Fledermaus (Diva MATTHEW WALDREN

Opera) Berta Barber of Seville (Scottish Opera).

Tall Englishman

Gambler & ensemble studied at RCM, NICOLE TONGUE

Choreographer Falstaff

studied at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and

Cambridge

&

GSMD.

Roles

include

Zuniga Carmen (Opera de Baugé, Slough

at the Royal Ballet School. She has created

Philharmonic), Bill Bobstay Pinafore, Goto

work for Birmingham Royal Ballet School,

Mikado (Carl Rosa), Cénobite Thais (Grange

Holland Park, Cochrane Theatre, Macbeth

Park), Sir Rupert Murgatroyd (G&S Opera

and Pericles (Bristol Old Vic Theatre School),

Co), Vengeance Medée (GSMD). He has sung with William Christie

Strictly Dance Fever (BBC), Dona Rosita the

and Les Arts Florissants, and appeared with Raymond Gubbay/

Spinster and Adam Bede (Orange Tree, Richmond) and Revenger’s

Albert Hall, Holland Park.

Tragedy (Southwark Playhouse). Recent work includes Don Pasquale (Garsington, Geneva and Caen), L’Elisir d’Amore (Opera North) and

JEREMY WHITE Sarastro Flute was born

Fledermaus (Alternative Opera).

in Liverpool and educated at Oxford. He appears by kind permission of the Royal

GLENN TWEEDIE Hypochondriac Gambler

Opera House where he has worked each

& ensemble was born in Belfast, studied

season since his début in 1991. Recent

Geography & Social Sciences, and then

seasons have included: Sourin Pikovaya

worked in Government before switching to

Dama, Kecal The Bartered Bride, Snug

music. He studied at RNCM and the Royal

Midsummer Night’s Dream and Ligniere Cyrano de Bergerac (ROH),

College of Music. Opera credits include

Pluto Orfeo and Salome, Varlaam Boris Godunov and title role Il Turco

Torquemada L’Heure Espagnole, Lacouf Les

in Italia (ENO), Tamos in Egypt (London Mozart Players), Fabrizio La

Mamelles des Tiresias, Caius Falstaff, Eduard Un Giorno di Regno,

Gaza Ladra (Philharmonia), Salome (LSO), Where the Wild Things Are

Piquillo Perichole, Don Luigi Maria Padilla, Monostatos Magic Flute

(Berlin Philharmonic), L’Enfance du Christ (BBC Proms), Achilla Giulio

Le Nozze di Figaro Grange Park Opera 2006 Director Stephen Langridge Designer George Souglides

Rebecca von Lipinski (Countess), Frances Bourne (Cherubino), Sophie Daneman (Susanna), Olafur Sigurdarson (Figaro)

133

Cesare (Bordeaux), and Kecal The Bartered Bride, Superintendent

LOUISE WOODGATE ensemble studied at

Budd Albert Herring, Il Re Aïda, Dikoy Kat’a Kabanova, Talbot

Oxford

Giovanna D’Arco and Tiresias Oedipus Rex (Opera North), Bohème

College of Music. She recently appeared in

Brookes

University

and

Trinity

(Bregenz Festival), Enrico Anna Bolena (Chelsea Opera Group), Les

HMP Wandsworth as Eponine Les Misérables.

Noces (WDR). Plans include Benoît, Bonze, Sourin, Betto Gianni

In 2001 co–founded Opera Souffle playing

Schicchi and Kuligin (ROH), Parsons 1984 (La Scala and Valencia).

at the Edinburgh Festival 2002 and abroad.

She recently appeared with the Central Band

from

of The Royal Marines, The Royal Airforce and The Scots Guards.

Worcestershire and studied at TCM. Roles

Opera roles include 2nd Lady Flute, Flora Traviata and Tatiana

include Seneca Poppea, Nettuno Idomeneo,

Onegin (Oxford Touring Opera).

PETER

WILLCOCK

ensemble

is

Aeneas Dido, Grimbal King Arthur, Tancredi Combattimenti, Ceprano Rigoletto, Marzio

STELLA WOODMAN ensemble sang with

Beatrice Cenci, Bobby/Tony The Boyfriend,

Glyndebourne chorus from 1996-99 making

Stone City of Angels, Frederik Little Night

her Glyndebourne Festival début as Alice

Music, Kodaly She Loves Me. Peter specialises in education work and

in Le Comte Ory. She covered Esmeralda

has for four years devised and led workshops for Opera North and

Bartered Bride (GTO) and appeared as

Royal Opera House.

Bridesmaid Le nozze di Figaro. Recent appearances include 1st boy Flute (Diva IAN

WILSON–POPE

Baron/Old

Gambler

Gambler & ensemble returns to Grange

Opera), chorus Cosi and Le nozze di Figaro’ (Garsington) and chorus for various Raymond Gubbay productions.

Park for a fourth season. London born, he

134

studied at TCM. Recent roles include Elviro

SIMON WORRELL ensemble read Medicine

and Ariodate Xerxes, Krusina Bartered

at St Thomas’ and then later trained at

Bride, Ambrogio/Basilio (cover) The Barber

the Guildhall. He has performed title role

of Seville, Father Hansel & Gretel, Yeletsky

in Albert Herring and Male Chorus Rape

Queen of Spades, Talbot (cover) Maria Stuarda, Enrico VIII Anna

of Lucretia and Gaston Traviata (European

Bolena, Banquo Macbeth and Colline Bohéme.

Chamber Opera and Opera Interludes).

Other appearances include Boheme, Acis &

DAVID WOLOSZKO Fat Englishman Gambler & ensemble

Galatea, Barber of Seville and Elixir of Love (Holland Park).

is a graduate of the Sydney

Conservatorium. Roles include Don Basilio

AMANDA HOLDEN Flute translation studied

Barbiere di Siviglia (Opera East), Bartolo

at Oxford and the Guildhall. She has

Figaro

Opera

North),

translated about 60 librettos. Recent work

City

Opera),

includes Bizet The Fair Maid of Perth & Gluck’s

Colline,

Armide (Buxton), Bartered Bride (Mid-Wales),

Alcindoro, Benoit Boheme, Dansker Billy Budd (Opera Australia),

Agrippina (ENO) and a revised libretto for

(Holland

Angelotti

Tosca

Park, (London

Sparafucile/Ceprano

Rigoletto,

Alfonso Cosi, Pooh-bah Mikado (Opera Queensland), Polyphemus

Smyth’s The Wreckers (Duchy Opera). Plans

Acis & Galatea, Gremin Onegin. Lord Dunmow Dinner Engagement,

include Lucia di Lammermoor (ENO) and a libretto for composer Brett

Tobias Mill Cambiale di Matrimonio, Snug Midsummer Nights Dream

Dean (Opera Australia). Amanda’s librettos include Mark-Anthony

, Zeus Le Traveux de Hercules (Conservatorium of Music).

Turnage Silver Tassie (ENO) which won an Olivier Award.

The Elixir of Love Grange Park Opera 2006 Director Martn Constantine Designer Lez Brotherston Associate Designer Emma Barrington–Binns

Colin Lee (Nemorino), Victoria Joyce (Adina), Elena Ferrari (Giannetta)

Bid a s for in (se e p ge ag e2 r

& APPLICATION FOR M G R A N G E

PA R K

ope r a

OPERA

CATEGORIES OF SUPPORT

AT

N E V I L L H O LT

9)

8

NOTE that tickets are for the use of the family of the registered individual and must not be sold on

I would like to support Grange Park Opera

THE glass ceiling SOCIETY The proposed donation (£1,000) will be acknowledged in the programme. Members may wish to support us further with an application for tickets for the season and will be invited to gatherings associated with the development of productions, the festival and prison.

THE SCHOOL OF HIPPOCR ATES The proposed donation (£600 for one year) will be acknowledged in the programme.

Members may wish to support us further with an application for up to 16 tickets for the season and will be invited to gatherings associated with the development of productions, the festival and prison.

THE SCHOOL OF ARCHIMEDES The proposed donation (£325 for one year) will be acknowledged in the programme.

Members may wish to support us further with an application for up to 8 tickets and will be invited to ONE gathering associated with the development of productions and the festival. This suggested increase is the first for six years.

THE SCHOOL OF PLATO The proposed donation (£175 for one year) will be acknowledged in the programme. Members may wish to support us further with an application for 4 tickets for the season. This suggested increase is the first for six years.

I would like to support the Opera at Nevill Holt THE captain’s table The proposed donation (£375 for one year) will be acknowledged in the programme. Members may wish to support us further with an application for up to 12 tickets for the Nevill Holt festival and 4 tickets for the Grange Park festival. You will be invited into the Great Hall for a glass of champagne after a performance to meet the cast and conductor.

THE CLIPPER CLASS The proposed donation (£175 for one year) will be acknowledged in the programme. The Clipper Class may wish to support us further with an application for up to 8 tickets for the Nevill Holt festival and 2 tickets for the Grange Park festival.

THE stowaways The proposed donation (£75 for one year) will be acknowledged in the programme. The Stowaways may wish to support us further with an application for up to 6 tickets for the Nevill Holt festival.

I would like to be on the Mailing List THE SCHOOL OF EUCLID (The Mailing List) £35 is the suggested donation and we will send you a list of available dates for both Nevill Holt and The Grange in February so that you can book promptly. The full calendar can viewed on the website from November.

Donors to any of the above categories DO NOT need to join the Mailing List. This suggested increase is the first for six years.

Name ___________________________________ Acknowledgement__________________________________ Please give your title, forename and surname and indicate how you would like to be acknowledged in the programme (for example Mr Michael Wood CBE)

Address _________________________________ Signature__________________________________________ ________________________________________ Date______________________________________________ ________________________________________ tel day_ ___________________________________________ ________________________________________ fax day____________________________________________ Postcode ________________________________ tel eve ____________________________________________ year of birth _ ____________________________

mobile ____________________________________________

email_________________________________________________________________________________________ special request_________________________________________________________________________________

GIFT AID

declaration for grange park opera (charity no 1068046)

Please reclaim tax on all donations I have made since 6 April 2000 and all donations I make hereafter until further notice. The April 2000 Gift Aid regulations are financially advantageous to charities without costing you any more. All donations are eligible if you pay an amount of income tax or capital gains tax equal to the tax we may reclaim on your donations (currently 28p for every £1 you give). There is no longer a special form. We will

✄

assume that your donations are eligible for Gift Aid unless you strike out this section.

135

Russian Roulette by Diva Around the perimeter of the diagram, read clockwise from the top left–hand corner, is a 32–letter six word phrase, appropriate to the puzzle's title. Hidden amongst the solutions, in the areas highlighted pink, are ten related words also thematically connected. All clues are normal but their solutions must be spun in a clockwise rotation, before entry into the diagram. For example, if the answer is ZERO, the clue entry could be EROZ, ROZE or OZER. One solution includes an abbreviation. The first correct solution opened on 30th August will receive two tickets for the 2008 festival Send solutions to : Grange Park Opera (Crossword), The Coach House, 12 St Thomas Street, Winchester SO23 9HF DOWN

ACROSS 9 10 11

12

1

bleu? (6,4)

3

Starch-free menu initially not right for cooking cordon

2

Floats gay outfit in SW France (10)

4

15

The sort of beastly prank that deals with bedbugs? (7,5)

7

D’Oyly Carte entertains Jack? They’re sure to purchase

Madonna iconographer wants gangsta cowgirl on the

14

Outlaw by forest clearing, quiet region, formerly Indian… (10)

…Red Indian with or without the Blackfoot (5)

Coming out of café dress for shady places (9)

19

Pass the revolver without conclusion (3)

blockbuster (4)

24

Good try at the coconut shy? (4,4)

Secret hiding place, oddly solved by nightfall (6)

26

Adriatic neighbour in long robe that’s all the rage once the

They can be yummy in bed with spanking during the

29

Inspector left with a choice piece of gossip (6)

At the box office Gambler, with large cast, becomes a

18

22

Beat and mash barley with liquor finally contained therein? (6,6)

33

Heating orange can make a good dry red (10)

35

Heterogeneity that makes the solver germane to a member of

34

something! (8)

8

To smile after such horror requires support (6,4)

27

28

Short topic that is not for us (4)

17

Silent movie star tours Ireland as a Little Woman? (7)

31

6

flipside (7)

21

23

Douglas, maybe The Bartered Bride is by Stravinsky …? (8)

Jacky’s maize dough makes our stomachs ruminate (7)

Bloody siege:first month’s intro saw off city of uprising (6,3)

20

Cartridge loading good-for-nothing at the roulette wheel? (6)

5

Exceptional scent from Bloomingdales! (4)

16

Collapse of stout party to mark the farthest extreme (6)

Drier cage for prisoner with military potential (3,5)

Hairy development that could point to coastal India needing support (6)

13

136

Ex-president has veto accepted by Reagan (1,5)

commercials! (10) staff? (6)

25

30

32

Marine _____ digested as in arm killer whale eats? (5)

Newsflash! ‘Japanese express no need for Conceptual Art’ (8)

Daisy (a close relative anyway) always in the m-minority (8)

month’s out (7)

Lit up bonfire effigy on the kerb. Wicked! (6)

Russki eventually cannot conceal his location? (4)

2006 puzzle ELIXIR The puzzle would have been straightforward 1

2

3

9

4

5

6

13

14

17

18

19

22

were it not for Wasfi's error in the bottom line where a white square was black

12

21

8

10

11

16

7

23

15

20

34

25

2006 winner James Sehmer

26

(who corrected that error) 27

28

29

30

Others did too: D J Mackay, John Henly, Pamela Grosvenor Past winners

31

32

33

2005 William Mather of Bristol 2004 Pamela Grosvenor of Fareham 2003 Jane Poulter of Winchester

34

35

2002 Tony Phillips of Chalfont St Giles 2001 John Grimshaw of London SW18 2000 John Henly of Havant 1999 Michael James Apt John