OTHER NEWS FROM THE GRANGE PARK BULLETIN BOARD
• JUAN CARLOS VALLS DROPPED OUT – rather irritatingly with less than 7 days before rehearsals were due to start. • Around the same time, JOHNNY HORNBY DROPPED IN. His advertising firm CHI Partners couldn’t have been nicer about renewing their sponsorship despite difficult times.
It is hard to follow on from Bryn Terfel and Mara Galeazzi but this year's off–piste offerings are two legends: Wagner's Dutchman (with the orchestra of Welsh National Opera) and Ray Davies. For 2010, I am leaving the options open. My deepest curtsey is to John and Sally Ashburton for their support and promotion of sanity in the midst of their own hectic lives. We are utterly indebted to them.
• Ian Rosenblatt and Emma Kane have made a huge contribution by housing the Venezuelan Ernesto Morillo. Might one of you follow their noble example in 2010? This is the same Rosenblatt who mounts a London recital series with remarkable voices and buckets of bel canto – so if that is your tipple, these concerts are for you.
Lord Ashburton's foreword didn’t deal with the weather so I will. Today is the dullest of dull days but warm. A blue tit is feasting on the explosion of greenfly on my roses. Do greenfly actually do damage or just look ugly – to me but I assume not to blue tits or greenflies of the opposite sex?
• Last year Richard Loader moved the fences in the Lime Avenue. The result is far more elegant. He seems to have adopted the Avenue and this year he donated hundreds of pounds of grass seed to further increase the elegance.
Finally I am being told that 2010 could be even harder for us. If you bought tickets this year, thank you. If you are a guest, please buy tickets next year. If you are a greenfly, please holiday elsewhere else next year.
• Around thirty individuals have contributed to the staircase project. However, I have still half a dozen steps for sale.
Wasfi Kani OBE
Sponsored by an anonymous donor – and open to offers for 2010
AUTUMN DATES FOR YOUR DIARY
In late September the Rising Stars come to Grange Park with Rigoletto prior to the tour. The website will have all the tour dates. The London performance is at Cadogan Hall, near Sloane Square on 20 October. Pop back there on November 10 for Toby Purser's energetic Orion orchestra with student members from all the London music colleges. This concert is a taster for our 2010 season. Susan Gritton (who is Countess Madeleine in Capriccio at Grange Park 2010) sings Strauss' Four Last Songs, Alwyn Mellor (who is Isolde at Grange Park 2011) will sing the Leibestod and the second half is a Brahms symphony. As well as Capriccio, our first Strauss opera, we present in 2010 at Grange Park Tosca and Love for Three Oranges – a crazy story about a prince who is looking for happiness in the form of an orange. Who can help me with Orange mobile sponsorship? Or Cointreau or Cadbury's chocolate orange. At Nevill Holt there is Madama Butterfly.
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