Grange Park Opera 2010 Programme

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GRANGE PARK OPERA 2010

GRANGE PARK OPERA 2010

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SPONSORED BY A SYNDICATE LED BY THE BOLTINI TRUST

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2009 CROSSWORD WINNER: S William Middleton-Smith Other correct solutions: Douglas Arrell, John Green, John Henly, Pamela Grosvenor, Dere (There is no 2010 crossword)

A snowball fight at the Ladies Pond, Highgate , London 1935 Photo: Hulton Archive/G etty Images

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ek Mackay, William Mather, C J Sehmer, Mrs Bim Wilson

P A T R O N 'S F O R E W O R D to be March is a moody month and not the easiest of times sun and writing a Summery foreword full of confidence about warmth and gentle winds in June.

Some of you will remember the wintry scene in Martha

mocked Fiennes' Onegin, filmed at The Grange which had been in's up both inside and out. Her brother Ralph played Pushk ed tormented hero striding gloomily along the snow-cover paper and terraces. The "snow" was in fact shredded and minced until this that was the last time I saw the house in deep snow h to winter when something over a foot of real snow – enoug ted and remain unsullied and frozen - kept it completely isola silent for several days.

Wasfi, as ever, spurs me into action in aid of the 13th

and before GPO season, which is only just over two months away sad news I write about the future I must touch on the recent 2008 he of Philip Langridge's death. We were honou red when in also took the title role in Offenbach's Bluebeard. Philip was this of tion closely involved with Wasfi & Michael at the incep . festival and helped create some of the festival's magic Wasfi tells you more about this year's magic on the and our following pages inclu ding our first evening of Jazz and first opera by Richard Strau ss. I look at the cast lists rs. marvel at how we seem to be attacting wonderful singe kable remar I know that the Grange Park team has done a al and essential job in enthu sing you to support the festiv ahead and as I write at the end of March, sales are actually much of ce of last year at the same moment, which in the absen commercial sponsorship is vital.

Sally and I look forward to seein g you and, though I've may also not yet spoken to my four–footed companion Ellie, she be aroun d.

ASHBU RTON 29 March 3

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sals. Our singer s the ear ly days of rehear th wi oc hav d ate cre olc anic ash ki, La Roche (Capriccio) Tosca wa s stuck in Helsin were all over the place. n where he had be en ino (Oranges) in Ca pe tow ald uff Tro d an t, fur nk Fra in o his hotel room to na ged to get a pia no int ma He s. ad TV are mp ma king more Go Co guest s thought so. don’t know if the other I y. vel cti du pro e tim use the unimagina ble cha nge. in which the world saw rs yea 40 n spa s era op ) wa s tor n apart This sea son’s Butterfly (1900 and 1904 d an ca Tos of e tim the s wr itten at a Puccini’s Europe at in the 194 0s . Oranges wa o cci pri Ca ote wr ss au by the time Richa rd Str revolutions of Russia. er Prokof iev had fle d the aft 0s 192 the in int po midway t Richa rd Wa gner's it wa s only this yea r tha o, ag e tim g lon a ms Strauss at the Though all that see 1919, would have me t rn bo g, an lfg Wo d. die at gra ndson, Wolfgang, conduct at the fes tival – when Strauss agree d to 3 193 in . uth yre lism Ba cia e So atr l family the showc ase for Nationa ler had made Bayreuth a the ver y point when Hit ably we receive led recherché and inevit cal be ld cou s era op l better Two of the sea son’s zgerald ha s made me fee Fit ll Nia h. ug eno list pu po complaints that we aren’t develop and the day the e Park must take risk s to ang Gr w, vie his in t, tha He’s not saying that by telling me not taking enough risk s. are we day the is ing s he doesn’t like. criticism stops com is right that we do thing it me ls tel he t bu , do he likes everything we ede for Puccini ticket s front. There wa s a sta mp ket tic the on ws ne od the firs t fes tival for Overa ll it’s go der. La st yea r had be en ain rem the for sm sia hu 20 08 which and a he althy ent 2010 sales have exceeded us. vio pre the n tha s ket which we sold fewer tic ck on track.

I hope me ans we are ba of uncer tainty. were swimming in a sea we al, tiv fes r’s yea t las on & Virginia Imme diately after on Grange Pa rk? HMS Sim ion ess rec the of ct pa big lifebelt.

What would be the im ya Sa insbury threw us a An & n Joh S HM d an at Robertson sent us a lifebo are sponsors for the we ather this storm and us ng lpi he are cer en Sp r Russian opera .

Ica p and Michael and have supporte d ou ys bo w ne are om zpr and that ha s six th time (Tosca). Ga in support of Capriccio ate dic syn a led e hav n Anthony & Sa rah Bolto ll. gone ver y we page 7 breaking sented in a technicolor on pre is ise pra ve usi eff d Our litany of thank s an gif ts and corporate gif ts. ual donors, large personal ann een tw be it spl the down team in Alresford who ges 114 –1 15 to the home pa on ute trib lor ico hn variet y of tasks.

There is also a tec husia sm at a bewildering ent d an s nes ive ent inv h throw themselves wit to Re for m Club (thank you ily hoste d pa rtie s at the fam rk Pa ge is), an Gr Lew d the an d, On dry lan (thank you Dr s Holliday n), at Apotheca rie s’ Ha ll rty of the sea son Edwa rd & Ma ndy We sto Spencer) and the final pa ine rra Lo you k an (th at La nsdowne Road ie Forsy th). ank you Ha mish & Soph (th lk Wa ne ow nsd La wa s at

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To go with the wild times we live in, we changed the look of this Festival Programme. The work of a Russian, Alexander Deineka (1899-1969), appears on many pages, and the work of two English gents, close friends, both born in 1903 and both war artists: Edward Bawden and Eric Ravilious. Ravilious received a commission as a Captain in the Royal Marines and was killed in September 1942 at the age of 39 while accompanying an RAF air sea rescue mission off Iceland. The following month was the première of Capriccio in a much–bombed Munich.

Staying in the 1940s, I want to slip in an odd discovery made by my sister. In early March 1947 our mother left Bombay on HMS Franconia heading to Southampton.

The Cunard passenger list includes a Mrs Thyra Lumley and her daughters Helene, 3, and Joanna, 11 months.

Perhaps Thyra and my mother chatted in the queue for mushy peas. Joanna’s husband conducts Capriccio.

Having slid from bombed Munich to Bomb–bay, I can work in another link between the subcontinent and the

opera in the form of Indian novelist and poet Vikram Seth.

He is best known for his triumphant novel A Suitable Boy but there is an earlier novel The Golden Gate which is unusual because it is in rhyming sonnets. We are honoured that Vikram has produced the 30 lines of spoken English rhyming text in Capriccio.

Last March we served another short prison sentence: Carmen the musical in HMP Wandsworth. There are pictures on page 31. Many of our audience at The Grange also come to prison (if you don’t, please do) and will remember Kevin Wood appeared in the chorus of two operas at Grange Park last year. Kevin had been in prison more than 40 times and did brilliantly well with us for about five months but alas succumbed to heroin and the previous pattern of his life. It made me want to know more about addiction in particular and the problem in general and how it might be dealt with. This is an area which our sister company Pimlico Opera will become more involved.

Rachel Pearson's garden

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Tea & coffee in the Long Marquee . . . fancy canapés . . . a bigger shop with goodies from India . . . movies on the website . . . restaurant bookings on the website (a radical upheaval overseen

by Anthony Lane who has run the restaurant since the beginning).

For 8 festivals the metal staircases that take you to the Grand Tier boxes have existed in a naked grey undercoat. Now they are a deep red with the lowest area wallpapered. On the goldfish side there is a lively monkey wallpaper designed by Sally Ashburton, based on a mural painted by her father John Spencer Churchill, nephew of Sir Winston.

COMING IN

2011

There a huge treat in store: the great baritone Bryn Terfel returns to charm and delight you all. The operas on offer are Tristan & Isolde, Rigoletto and a revival of Rusalka. When we first staged Rusalka in 2008, it was hugely praised by the press – an alchemical magic of the elements produced something exceptional. It will be sponsored by Ian Rosenblatt.

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Over the years I have used all the words I know to praise and thank the two people who have allowed the festival to flourish. This year my thanks looks like this . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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STOP PRESS Relais & Châteaux have joined the relief effort and our gang of corporate supporters.

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S A WAS FI KA NI OB E ave & Am an da Ha dd on –C Sp on so red by Ch arl es

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On the following pages are the people who have supported the festival this year.

About 1,100 people are listed and together they donated £1.1m which is the difference between the cost of the festival and ticket sales. Opera is an expensive business – we do not receive a penny of public subsidy – and our artistic ambitions are growing.

These are the various ways we were supported * 3 corporate donors sponsored a production * we received 5 other large gifts * a syndicate of 11 individuals clubbed together to support a production * 44 individuals sponsored a singer - or another type of artist – and one even supported the german language coach * there were 12 smaller corporate gifts * there were 14 advertisers * there were 10 contributions to the scholarship fund for younger people * 3 people collectively gave £22,500 so that we could have more orchestral rehearsal time * and a donor decided to sponsor the last 50 bars of Capriccio – which are particularly beautiful (he paid by the bar – not the champagne bar)

These 102 gifts totalled £650,000 which is astonishing.

Then there are our Annual donors who have strange names like The Glass Ceiling Society, The School of Hippocrates and so on. There are 1,014 of them and their donations came to £430,000. To join them, use the form on page 26.

We have listed 259 Founders who kicked off the enterprise in 1998 and 177 people who in 2002 paid for the new theatre and established the Endowment Fund.

Quite a family.

The Grange Park family is celebrated at a number of autumn parties and events. The 2011 events diary includes Juan Diego Florez in a Rosenblatt Recital at the Festival Hall, a February quiz, and March in prison.

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RAF Cadets learn the art of formation flying, on bicycles June 1942 Original Publication: Picture Post Photo: Kurt Hutton/Getty Images

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A milkman reading a notice 6th September 1939 Photo: Fox photos/Getty Images

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Mike Hall John & Carol Wates Martyn & Amand a Hedley The Holme s Family Raymo nd & Elizabeth Henley Charlotte & Tim Syder Ian & Clare Maurice & Dr Shirley Radclif fe

RHL Foundation Christopher Swan The Golden Bottle Trust Johnny, Marie & Anne Veeder Baring Asset Management

Cameron & Heike Munro * Timothy & Christi na Benn Anthony Boswood * Drs Jonath an Holliday & Gwen Lewis John & Jennifer Beech ey * Mr & Mrs Robert Enslow The family of Oleg Prokof iev John & Louise Dear * Tom & Sarah Floyd Bill Kenda ll * Clare Taylor & Roger Gifford * The Dyers Compa ny Sally Phillip s * Tessa & John Manse r Nigel & Anna McNair Scott * David Laing Foundation

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Mrs Christopher Reeves Wendy & Michael Max August Equity The Richard Strauss Society Gamlen Charitable Trust George & Caroline Goulding Ann Hammond Bayfield Charitable Trust Thompson Educational Trust Oliver & Cynthia Colman

ADVERTISER S Chewton Glen Eurom oney Stanl ake Park Vineyard Gavin Parkh ouse Zolfo Cooper The Golds miths Compa ny Phillips Solicitors Welsh Natio nal Opera Moda Rosa John Armit Wines Pickett Fine Leath er Caven ove Capital Manag ement

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Workmen cleaning the two horses pulling the chariot on Wellington Arch, Hyde Park Corner, London 17 January 1939 Photo: Harry Todd/Fox Photos/Getty Images

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 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 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 Stephen Gosztony & Sue Butcher Nigel & Diana Grimwood

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William Gronow Davis Mr & Mrs Charles

Haddon–Cave QC Hayden Trust Mr & Mrs Raymond Henley Malcolm Herring Mr & Mrs John Hewett 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 Dr R Hubert Laeng–Danner Rufford Foundation Mrs 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 & Annmarie 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 Mr & Mrs Richard Morse Dr & Mrs Julian Muir The Nawrocki family The O’Hea family Sue & Peter Paice

Alexia Paterson William & Francheska Pattisson 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 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 CharitableTrust 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 John & Lou Verrill - recent addition Lady Jane Wallop John & Carol Wates Miss Clare Williams Hamish & Elisabeth Williams Mark & Jane Williams The Hon Geoffrey & Mrs Wilson The Wolf Family- recent addition Mr & Mrs C H R Wunderly Caroline Wyld

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

Mr & Mrs Robin Bowie Patrick & Julia Carter 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 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 and two anonymous donors

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g Society lin The Glass Cei 0 201 Mr & Mrs Frédéric Barnaud

Mr Richard Leonard

Christina Benn

Mr & Mrs Henry Lumley

Mrs Michael Beresford-West

Ruth Markland

Mike & Alison Biden

William & Felicity Mather

Mrs Jennifer Blackwell

Clare & Ian Maurice

Mrs Jenny Bland

Gordon & Dena McCallum

Mr & Mrs Simon Borrows

David McLellan

P & A Braunwalder

Mr & Mrs Roger Morris

Lady Brown CJE

Heike & Cameron Munro

Tom Busher

Pierre & Beatrice Natural

David & Simone Caukill

Lord Neill of Bladen QC

The Hon Sir Christopher Clarke

Charles Outhwaite

Ian Clarkson & Richard Morris

Stephen & Isobel Parkinson

Patricia Baines Trust

The Countess of Portsmouth

John & Louise Dear

Mr David Russell & Dr Angela Gallop

Kate Donaghy

Mr & Mrs David Salisbury

Noreen Doyle

George & Veronique Seligman

T V Drastik

Lord & Lady Sharman

Martin & Eugenia Ephson

Stella Shawzin

Iain R Evans & Gill Chruscikowski

Lord & Lady Simon of Highbury

Niall & Ingrid FitzGerald

Brigitte & Martin Skan

Francois Freyeisen & Shunicho Kubo

Mrs Marveen Smith

Jacqueline & Michael Gee Trust

Peter & Sue Sonksen

Jill Goulston

Fiona Squire & Geoff Squire OBE

Mr & Mrs Robin Herbert

Donald & Rachael Stearns

Liz Hewitt

The Tansy Trust

David & Wendy Hunter

Mr David Taylor

Caspar & Cathy Ingrams

Andrew Unwin

Rowan Jarvis

Mr & Mrs Kevan Watts

Anthony Johnson

Michael Whalley & Karen Goldie-Morrison

The Kilfinan Trust

Mr & Mrs John Whiter

Mrs T Landon

Mr & Mrs C H R Wunderly and eight anonymous donors

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A couple on their way to the opera, Covent Garden Market, London 1939 Photo: Fox Photos/Getty Images

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out me dicine to his pupils uar y 194 0 Teacher Mr Jones doles to Heyshott, Sussex 25 Jan e evacuted from London wer e wif his and he om with wh ett y Ima ges Photo: Gerry Cranham/G

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The School of Hippocrates 2010 Jane & Stephen Ainger The Allenby Family Maj Gen & Mrs J Balfour Mrs Isla Baring OAM Roger Birtles Anthony Boswood Nan Brenninkmeyer Consuelo & Anthony Brooke Mr & Mrs Roy D Brown Anthony Bunker Mr & Mrs Peter Clarke Mrs Carolyn Conlan Dr Neville Conway Tineke Dales Mr Etienne d'Arenberg Mrs Arthur Davies Patrick Despard Miss Helen Dorey FSA Mr Michael Eaton Andrew & Liann Eden Stuart Errington CBE DL Mr & Mrs Simon Fisher Mr & Mrs Harry Fitzalan Howard Mr & Mrs Mark Fleming Michael & Anne Forrest Mr & Mrs John Foster Mr & Mrs Geoffrey Fuller Mr & Mrs David Gamble Lindsey Gardener Mr & Mrs Wyatt Gates David & Margaret Gawler Richard & Sally Godwin-Austen John S. Gordon Mrs M. Granziol Marcus & Susan Grubb

Wendell & Andrea Harris Michael & Genevieve Higgin Mr & Mrs H C Hintzen Christopher & Jo Holdsworth Hunt Lucy Holmes & Alex Wood Mr & Mrs S Holmes Robin & Judy Hutson Mr Charles & Lady Iona Ind Judith & Peter Iredale Ian & Noelle Irvine Harriet Jackson Morag & Peter James Mr John Jarvis QC Martin Jay CBE DL Margi & Mike Jennings Hilary Jones Keith & Lucy Jones Mr Ralph Kanter Dr Ingo Klocker William & Mary Knowles Liz & Roger Kramers Diana & Terence Kyle Mr & Mrs Andrew E Law Mr Gerald Levin Mr & Mrs James Lonsdale Mr & Mrs Alistair Mackintosh Mr & Mrs David Maitland Charles & Sue Marriott Mr & Mrs Peter Morgan Ian & Jane Morrison Colin Murray Mr & Mrs Jeffrey Nedas Piotr & Elizabeth Nahajski Guy & Sarah Norrie Princess Paul Odescalchi

Mr & the Hon Mrs J Ogilvie

Thompson Mr Robert Linn Ottley James & Nicky Palmer Sir Desmond & Lady Pitcher Mrs Sally Posgate Dominic & Katherine Powell Hugh & Caroline Priestley Mr & Mrs David Pritchard Dr Shirley Radcliffe Dr Marian & Dr Martin Read Nigel & Elizabeth Reavley Mr & Mrs Michael Rice David & Hilary Riddle Nigel & Viv Robson Barry & Anne Rourke Rob & Felicity Shepherd Nigel Silby Mr & Mrs Andrew Soundy Alastair Storey Sir Nigel & Lady Teare Mr & Mrs Hugh Tidbury Mr & Mrs Denis Tinsley Mr & Mrs Hady Wakefield Chris & Miranda Ward Johanna Waterous & Roger Parry Kevin & Sonia Watson Mr & Mrs Edward Weston Nigel Williams Penny & Nicholas Wilson Mr & Mrs Richard J Woolnough Mr David Wootton Mr & Mrs Peter Wrangham Zsalya

and three anonymous donors

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The School2010 of Archimedes Abu Khamis Mr Robin Aisher OBE Colin & Julie Aldridge Ms Pam Alexander & Dr Roger Booker Lady Allan The Lady Armstrong John Arney Roger & Lisa Backhouse Richard & Jean Baldwin Paul & Janet Batchelor Stanley Bates Anne Beckwith-Smith Mr Peter Bell Mrs Julian Benson Mr & Mrs Mark Benson Adrian Berrill-Cox Mr & Mrs Peter Bevan Anthony Bird Mr David Blackburn Halld贸ra Blair Mr & Mrs Simon Boadle Ms Longina Boczon Bruno & Christiane Boesch Mrs Margaret Bolam John & Lillie Boumphrey Mr & Mrs Graham Bourne Mr & Mrs Neville Bowen Julian Bower The Hon Robert Boyle Dr & Mrs Douglas Bridgewater Robin & Jill Broadley Dorothy & John Brook Mr Antony Brooking Stuart & Maggie Brooks Mr & Mrs Charles H Brown Mr Christopher Brown Hugh & Sue Brown Mr & Mrs Nicholas Browne Mr David Bruce Mr & Mrs Thomas Buckley Nick & Helen Buckworth Mr & Mrs D M Bullough Mr & Mrs Nicholas Burnell Lt Col & Mrs Michael Burridge Clive Butler Richard Butler Adams Mark & Rosemary Carawan Russ & Linda Carr Max & Karina Casini Mr Julian Chadwick Mr & Mrs Jason Chaffer Mr Shane Chichester Tim & Maria Church Julia Chute Mrs Ann Clarke

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Michael & Angela Clayton Sir Anthony & Lady Cleaver Mrs Susie Clegg Mr & Mrs Richard Collin Andrew & Donna Cooper Liz & Mike Cooper-Mitchell Matthew & Bianca Cosans Johnny & Liz Cowper-Coles Alan & Heather Craft Mr Carl Cullingford John & Susan Curtis Douglas & Pru de Lavison Count & Countess M de Selys Mr & Mrs John de Trafford Krystyna Deuss Mr & Mrs Ian Doherty Dr Barbara Domayne-Hayman Christine Douse Mr James Eadie QC Mr & Mrs K Eckett Yvonne & Malcolm Edwards Mr & Mrs S Elliott Janet & Peter Ellis Martin & Maureen Farr The Fischer Fund Mr & Mrs James Fisher Sian Fisher Mr & Mrs Robin Fox Anthony & Anne Fry Mark & Vicky Garthwaite Susie Gaunt David & Anne Giles Ian & Edwina Gilroy Mr & Mrs Bruce Ginsberg Cassandra Goad Mr Kenneth Grange Mr & Mrs Richard Grant The Hon Mrs Jane Green Mr Robin & The Hon Mrs Greenwood Alistair & Sally Gregory-Smith David A Grenier Ian & Patricia Grice Kingsley Griffiths RIBA Mr & Mrs Alistair Groom Mrs Gerard Guerrini Nerissa Guest Max & Catherine Hadfield Andrew Haigh Mr Eben Hamilton QC John & Janet Hammond John & Christine Harbor Patrick Harbour Mr & Mrs Richard Hardman Timothy C Harris CBE Mr & Mrs J E Heath

Maggie Heath N G Hebditch Paul & Kay Henderson Basil Henley & Caro Barton Michael & Sarah Hewett Peter & Valerie Hewett Mr & Mrs Patrick Higham Mr & Mrs William Hillary Mr & Mrs Christopher Hills Mr H R Holland Roger & Kate Holmes Charles Holroyd Mr & Mrs Peter Hooley David & Mal Hope-Mason Ms Gabrielle Howatson Iain & Claudia Hughes Mr & Mrs R Hughes Howard & Anne Hyman Mr Charles Irby Mr & Mrs Michael Jodrell Sally & Scot Johnston Owen & Jane Jonathan Alan & Judi Jones Mr & Mrs Edward Jones Mr & Mrs Pierre Jungels Vincent & Amanda Keaveny Mrs Judith Kelley Tamsin & Tim Kelly Tim & Ginny Kempster Andrew Kennedy & Lindsay Cornish Mrs Dinah Kennedy Mr & Mrs J Kiernan Kevin Kissane Stephen & Miriam Kramer Zarrina Kurtz Mr & Mrs Bill Lawes Belinda Leathes Professor Natalie Lee Hilary & James Leek Mrs Brian Levy Sonya Leydecker Mrs Roger Liddiard Anthony & Fiona Littlejohn Brigadier Desmond Longfield Mr Dieter Losse Mr Robin Mackenzie John & Vanessa MacMahon Ian & Jane Macnabb J J Macnamara Mrs Victoria Macpherson Mr & Mrs Strone Macpherson Sir Nevil Macready BT CBE David & Mary Male Tim Martin Sarah B Mason

Brian & Penelope Matthews Wendy & Michael Max Mr & Mrs Douglas McGregor Peter & Robin McKinley Dickinson Michael McLaren QC & Caroline McLaren Kathryn & Sarah McLeland Mr John McVittie Julia Medcalf William Middleton-Smith Antony & Alison Milford Richard & Patricia Millett D B & J B Mitchell Mr Patrick Mitford-Slade Vivienne Alexandra Monk David & Angela Moss Edward & Susannah Moss Lady Muir Wood Brian & Claudine Muirhead S Neben Christopher & Annie Newell Michael & Guillemette Nicholson Pamela & Bruce Noble North Street Trust Mr & Mrs Peter Nutting Barry & Sue O'Brien Eugene O'Keeffe Dr Cecily O'Neill Nick & Lavinia Owen Charles & Victoria Parker Sir Michael & Lady Parker Liz Peace CBE & Nigel Peace Mr & Mrs Timothy Peat Ron & Lyn Peet Mr & Mrs Peter Peirse-Duncombe Mr & Mrs Erik Penser RIchard & Gail Pertwee Mr & Mrs Robin Petherick Jonathan & Gillian Pickering Mr & Mrs Charles Pike Matthew Pintus David & Christina Pitman Mr & Mrs Anthony Pitt-Rivers Mr & Mrs Alex Popplewell David & Jill Potter Jan & Michael Potter Jane Poulter Julien Prevett Mike & Jill Pullan Mr Anthony Pullinger Douglas Rae Mr & Mrs Neil Record Hilary Reid Evans The Hon Philip Remnant Mike & Jessamy Reynolds Mr & Mrs James Roberts

Alex & Caroline Roe Emma Rose & Quentin Williams Peter Rosenthal David Rosier Julian & Catherine Roskill Mr & Mrs E J M Ross Mr & Mrs James Roundell Mr George Sandars Peter & Carolyn Scoble Rupert Sebag-Montefiore Elizabeth & Jonathan Selzer Tita & John Shakeshaft Tony Shead David & Jeni Sieff Mr Jeremy Sillem Dr Anthony Smoker Joe & Lucy Smouha Mr & Mrs C D Spooner Brian Stevens Lisa Stone Mr John Strachan Liliane Sutton Mr & Mrs Tom Sweet-Escott Caroline & Phillip Sykes Jeremy & Marika Taylor Mr & Mrs Henry Thompson Mr & Mrs Max Thum Mrs Joan M Tice DL Mr & Mrs Brian Trafford Mr & Mrs John Tremlett Joanna Trollope Sir Thomas & Lady Troubridge Mr & Mrs James Turner Sir Michael & Lady Turner Mrs Mary Vernon X N C Villers Olof & Suzie Winkler von Stiernhielm Mrs Peter Wake DL Admirer of Charles Wallach Mrs Anjali Walton Ken Watters & Robin Wilkinson Colin & Suzy Webster Mr Niels Weise Christian Wells Mr & Mrs Graham J West Ian & Jane White Isobel Williams Pen Williams Mr & Mrs Patrick J d'A Willis Mr & Mrs Richard Worthington Dr Ian Wylie & Prof S Griffiths OBE Richard Youell and twelve anonymous donors

Boys from Dr Barnardo's homes exercising on the beach at Dymchurch, Photo by Harry Todd/Fox Photos/G etty Images

Kent 29th August 1934

The Captain's Table 2010 are the highest level of annual supporter at Nevill Holt David & Juliana Abell

Michael & Morley Heaton

Mr Philip Bland

David Laing Foundation

Anthony Bunker

Mr & Mrs Sam Lloyd

Peter Crisp & Jeremy Crouch

Chris & Jane Lucas

The Everard Foundation

June Lumbard

Martin George

Clare & Ian Maurice

Mr Timothy Gidley Wright

John Salmon

Richard & Sally Godwin-Austen

Jeremy Singer

Keith, Maral & Charles Hann

Sir James & Lady Spooner

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The School 2010of Plato Rick Abbott Dr Stewart Abbott Philippa Abell Mrs Tikki Adorian Mrs B E Ainsley Rula Al-Adasani Rosemary Alexander Jeremy & Anne Amos Mrs David Anderson Mr P Arnold & Mr P E Baldwin Katherine Ashton Young & Brian D Young Dr Richard Ashton M J Askham The Hon Mrs Nicholas Assheton Christopher Aston Robert & Janice Atkin Mark & Priscilla Austen Mr & Mrs Nicholas Backhouse Margaret Bailey Neha & Robert Bailhache Mr & Mrs Christopher Ballard Mr & Mrs George Band Caroline J Barber Graham & Michelle Barber Val & Christopher Bateman Richard & Rosamund Bernays Roger W Binns The Hon Mrs Diana Birtwistle Mr & Mrs Carey Blake Mr & Mrs Desmond Bloom-Davis Elisabeth & Bob Boas Mr & Mrs Anthony Bodie Lisa Bolgar Smith Alverne Bolitho David & Margaret Bonsall Mr Richard Bower Mr & Mrs B.D. Bramley David & Tessa Brewer Mr & Mrs D Briggs Charles & Patricia Brims Mr & Mrs John Britton Robin & Penny Broadhurst Adam & Sarah Broke Mr George Brown & Dr Alison Calver Mr & Mrs D Browne Mr Robin Buchanan Mr & Mrs Geoffrey Burnand Mr & Mrs Martin Burton Mr Peter Byrne Mr & Mrs Murray Bywater Dr Bella Caiger Mr Donald Campbell Mr A J Carruthers Mr & Mrs Nicholas Carter Lord & Lady Carter of Coles Andrew & Jacquie Cartwright Denis & Ronda Cassidy Graham Cawsey & Virginia Korda

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Dr J D H Chadwick Carol & Alistair Gavin Julian & Josephine Chisholm Robert & Ginna Gayner Mr & Mrs Andrew Christie Mrs Thryza Gaynor Lady Clark Ms Jillian Ede Gendron Mr & Mrs Trevor Clarke Peter Gerrard Diana Clarkson Jacqueline & Jonathan Gestetner Mr & Mrs Henry Clay Michael & Diane Gibbons Mr & Mrs Adam Cleal Mr & Mrs Brett Gill Mrs Laurence Colchester Michael Godbee Michael Colton Dr & Mrs Goodison Mr John Colwell Colin & Letts Goodwin Mr & Mrs Tim Cooper Lady Graham Henrietta Corbett Peter Granger Robert & Amanda Corry Christopher & Amanda Graves Mr & Mrs Keith Craig Robert B Gray Prof Peter Croft Mr & Mrs A M Green Stephen & Julia Crompton Mr & Mrs J C Green Tom Cross Brown Mick & Denise Green Mr & Mrs Christopher Crouch Hugh & Sarah Green Peta & David Crowther David Greggains & Mr & Mrs A D Cummins

Barbara Greggains MBE Professor James Stevens Curl Mrs Grenfell-Bailey Lady Curtis John & Ann Grieves Michelle & Michael de Costa Mr & Mrs Richard Griffith-Jones Elizabeth & René Dalucas Mr & Mrs Tom Grillo Mr Clifford R Dammers Pamela Gross Mr Antoni Daszewski Carol & Edmund Grower Dr & Mrs Christopher Davenport-Jones The Hon F B Guinness Mr & Mrs Jonathan Dawson Paul & Miranda Gunn B Dean Richard & Judy Haes Mr & Mrs Michael Del Mar Mrs David Hagan Lord Denman Allyson Hall Adrian Dewey David & Susan Hall Matthew & Kate Dobbs Mr & Mrs Philippe & Jane Hallauer Mrs R Dodson Nigel & Jane Halsey Professor T A & Mrs B Downes Richard & Janet Hanna Ms Philippa Drew CB Mrs Valerie Hardwick Mr & Mrs Reg Drury Mr & Mrs I N M Hardy Dr Matthew & Mrs Christian Dryden Benjamin Hargreaves Nick & Lesley Dumbreck Mr & Mrs Giles Harrap Mrs Cathy Dumelow Robert Hart Jamie Dundas Mr & Mrs Julian Harvey Mrs Dickie Dutton Dr Fred Haslam Mr J M Dyson Helen & Kevin Hayes Mairi Eastwood Mrs Linda Haysey Walton & Jane Eddlestone Jamie & Victoria Heath Sir Malcolm & Lady Edge Alan & Ann Herring Mr & Mrs Neil Edmonstone The Lady Heseltine Michael & Wendy Evans Mrs Trevan Hingston Roger Facer Dr A E Hinton & Dr N G Bellenger Steven F G Fachada Frank Hitchman Barry Fearn Esq TD Mr & Mrs Peter Hobbs Mr & Mrs Graham Ferguson Mr & Mrs Mark Hodgkinson Andrew & Lucinda Fleming Mr & Mrs I F Hodgson J A Floyd Charitable Settlement Daniel & Diana Hodson Andrea Frears Mr R E Hofer James & Diana Freeland Mr & Mrs Hansgeorg Hofmann Bamber & Christina Gascoigne Sir Trevor Holdsworth CVO

Mr Robin Holmes David & Prue Hopkinson Suzanna Hopwood Barbara Hosking Mr & Mrs Billy Howard Mr & Mrs Richard Howorth Mrs William Hughes Robert Hugill & David Hughes Siu Fun Hui Mr & Mrs Nick Humble David & Sue Humphrey Mrs Juliet Huntley Mrs E Hyde Mrs Madeleine F Hyde Peter & Katharine Ingram Tim & Christine Ingram Ramsay Ismail & David Crellin Mrs Rachel James Mr & Mrs Charles Jamieson Shirley Jeffrey Mr Derek Johns Caroline & Max Jonas Mr & Mrs Nicholas Jonas Douglas Jones Mr Per Jonsson Prof Heather Joshi OBE Professor Michael Joy OBE Lord & Lady Judd Mr & Mrs M Leprince Jungbluth Mrs Jelena Karafotias S Hölder & C Katzka Capt & Mrs David Kennedy Michael & Julia Kerby Mr Mark Kerr Mr & Mrs Oliver Kinsey Mr & Mrs Martin Knight Mr & Mrs N Korban Count & Countess Labia Mr & Mrs Gerald Lambert Rear Admiral & Mrs John Lang David & Madi Laurence Mrs Alastair Laurie-Walker Richard Law Sir Christopher & Lady Lawrence-Jones Andrew & Jane Lax John Learmonth Jan Leigh & Jan Rynkiewicz Gareth R Lewis Eric & Pauline Leyns Mr & Mrs Adrian Lightfoot Anne Longden Peter W Lord Mrs Simon Loup Sarah Louveaux Alan & Virginia Lovell Mr Joseph Lulham Bruce & Maggie Macfarlane Derek Mackay

Mr J Mackintosh Mr & Mrs Thomas Maier Bill & Sue Main Philip & Valerie Marsden Christopher & Clare McCann Mr & Mrs S McGairl Madeline McGill Ian & Debrah McIsaac Mr & Mrs Ian McNeil Mr Paul Megson Nigel & Maria Melville Mr & Mrs Cliff Middleton Dr & Mrs P J Mill Dr John Millbank Peter Miller & Hilary Kingsley Mr & Mrs Hallam Mills Edward & Diana Mocatta Peter & Patricia Mommersteeg Mr & Mrs David Moore-Gwyn Mr & Mrs J Moreton Chris Morley Mr J A Morton Sara Morton Douglas Munro-Faure Sir Charles & Lady Nicholson Jeremy & Liz Nicholson Mr Keith J Nightingale George Nissen CBE Lady (Bridget) Nixon Hon Michael & Mrs Nolan Mr & Mrs Francis Norton John & Dianne Norton Lt Col & Mrs Richard Norton The Hon Mr & Mrs Michael O'Brien Mr Preben Øye & Mr John Derrick Anthony & Lorraine Ogden Janet & Michael Orr N Ozanne John A Paine Mrs Christine Palmer C A Palmer Tomkinson Mrs Blake Parker Mrs Roderick Parker Deborah & Clive Parritt Mr & Mrs Derek Patrick Mr & Mrs Paul Pattinson Mr & Mrs Donald Payne Mr Michael Pearl Donald Pearse

John & Jacqui Pearson Mrs Lucy Pease Mrs C E Peddie Claudia Pendred Mr & Mrs Nicholas Perry Charles Petre R B Petre Tom & Juliet Pigott Mr & Mrs J Pinna-Griffith Mr & Mrs N C Pitman Mr & Mrs John Platt Michael Portillo Mr Sean Poston Mr & Mrs Peter Power Graham & Virginia Prain Judith Prickett & Raymond Sutton Edward Priday Mrs D E Priestley David & Judith Pritchard Mr & Mrs Stephen Proctor Penny Proudlock Robin Purchas Gill & Clive Purkiss Lady Rebecca Purves Mrs Rosalind Quaife Mrs Chris Quayle Aviva & Gerald Raingold Sir Peter & Lady Ramsbotham Roger Ramsden & Alison Kellett John Rank Mala & Mike Rappolt Mr Brian Ratner Graham & Jane Reddish Lt Col & Mrs Ralph Reynolds Mrs Caroline Rimell Lady Ritblat Lady Rivett-Carnac Christopher & Zofia Road Mrs Denise Roberts Miles & Vivian Roberts Mr & Mrs J C Robertson James & Catharine Robertson Mr Michael Rogerson TD Mr Lionel Rosenblatt Margaret Rowe & John Schlesinger Mr Alan Roxburgh Joan & Lewis Rudd Mrs Donald Rushton Prof & Mrs D L Russell-Jones

Alicia Salter Ian & Wendy Sampson Edwina Sassoon Mr John Schofield Mr & Mrs Alistair Scott Mr & Mrs Colin Scott-Malden Gordon & Sally Scutt James & Karin Sehmer Mr Richard Sharp Mr & Mrs Peter Simor Mark & Deirdre Simpson Anthony Skyrme MA(Cantab) Sir Jock Slater Richard & Amanda Slowe Mrs Michael Smart Mr & Mrs R A Smart Mr & Mrs Robin Smeeton Mr & Mrs Peter J Smith Dr S L Smith Mr & Mrs Stephen Smyth Ian & Pippa Southward Mr & Mrs Jeremy Spencer Mr J G Stanford Peter William Stansfield Mr A J Stapleton Nigel & Johanna Stapleton Mr & Mrs C O Stenderup Christopher & Tineke Stewart Heather Stewart The Hon Mr & Mrs Henry Stewart Mr Geoffrey Stranks Ian & Jenny Streat Toby & Fiona Stubbs Major John Sturgis MC Dr & Mrs Richard Summerfield Mr & Mrs Richard Sykes Mr & Mrs N Tarsh Mrs Fleur Taylor John & Sarah Taylor Mrs Patricia Taylor Mrs M Tesolin Mr & Mrs P M Thomas Mr Anthony John Thompson Mrs A J Thorman Mr & Mrs Dominik Thumfart Mr & Mrs R Tickner Mr & Mrs G W Tindley Prof & Mrs G M Tonge Dr Michael Toseland

Dr & Mrs James Turtle John Uzielli Mr & Mrs J Vale L C Varnavides Mr & Mrs Hugo Vickers Nick Viner & Victoria Boyarsky Baron Clemens von Bechtolsheim Edward & Katherine Wake Edward Wakefield Mr Tony Walker Rosy & David Walker Sir Timothy & Lady Walker Mrs Denise Wallace Mrs Ian Wallace George & Pat Wallace Janet & Roger Wallhouse Dr Sarah Wallis John & Mavis Ward Mr & Mrs Tim Watkins Katherine Watts Richard & Susan Westcott Roger Westcott Susan Weston Smith Mrs Joy M Weston Mr & Mrs G Westwell Donald & Audrey White Harvey & Diana White Tony & Fiona White Sue Whitley Mr & Mrs I J Whitting Mr & Mrs Howard Wilkinson Mrs Sarah Wilkinson Prof Roger Williams CBE & Mrs Williams Mr & Mrs Wilmot-Sitwell Mr & Mrs Craig Wilson Michael & Alyson Wilson Mr W S Witts Mrs Angela Wood, M Phil Alastair & Ginny Woodrow David & Vivienne Woolf Nick & Sue Woollacott David & Vicky Wormsley Mr Ronnie & Mrs Ann Yearsley and twenty–two anonymous donors

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Founding Donors The The Founding 1998 – 9 1988Donors –1999 •

Mr Mark Andrews Mr Felix Appelbe BSc FRSA Mr Peter Arengo-Jones OBE Mr David Buchler Mr William F Charnley Professor Ian Craft Lydia & Miles d’Arcy-Irvine Sir David & Lady Davies

Mr Peter Foy Mr Simon Freakley Mr William Gronow Davis Mr Michael Hoare Mr & Mrs Donald Kahn Mr T Landon James & Béatrice Lupton Mr & Mrs Charles Mackay

Mr Harvey McGregor QC Greg & Gail Melgaard Mr & Mrs Hugh Peppiatt Mrs Lucinda Stevens Mr & Mrs Anthony Townsend Mr & Mrs Max Ulfane Mrs Marie Veeder Mr & Mrs Graham John West

Systems Union Group Ltd – Ashe Park Mineral Water – Baring Asset Management – British Steel Distribution – BT Alex Brown – Hays plc – Wilde Sapte – Barclays Private Banking – Catering & Allied – Coutts & Co – Biddle – Denton Hall – Houston & Church – Knight Frank – Leopold de Rothschild Trust – Well Marine Reinsurance Brokers

Mr & Mrs James Airy John & Jackie Alexander Mr & Mrs R Atkinson-Willes Miss Anne Beckwith-Smith Mr & Dr J Beechey Sheila Lady Bernard Mr Robert Bickerdike Mrs M R Bonsall Mrs Cherida Cannon Mr Patrick Carter Mr & Mrs Bernard Cazenove Mrs Justin Clark Mr & Mrs M Cooper-Mitchell Mr & Mrs R G Cottam Mr David Crowe Mr Nicholas de Zoete Ms K Deuss Gillian Devas

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

Mr Anthony Doggart Robyn Durie Mr & Mrs W L Eddlestone Stuart & Anne Fowler Archie & Henrietta Fraser Gen Sir David Fraser GCB OBE Mr & Mrs Wyatt Gates Lt Col David R Gilbert His Honour Judge Martin Graham QC Mr Robert B Gray Mr & Mrs J C Green Mr John Hammond Mr & Mrs Peter Hobbs Mr & Mrs G Hollingbery Mr Charles Irby Mr & Mrs Malcolm Isaac Mr Barry Jackson

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 HaddonCave 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

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Mrs Julian Jeffs Mrs Lynette G Joly JP Mrs Z L Kelton Mr John Learmonth Mr Gerald Levin Mr & Mrs Mark Lomas Mr & Mrs David Maitland Anonymous Gordon & Julia Medcalf Lord Montagu of Beaulieu Mrs Jonathan Moore Mr Barry O’Brien Mr Laurence O’Mara Mrs Deidre Pegg Miss Mahtab Pouria Mrs C H Powell Mrs Joan L Prior Mrs Thomas Redfern

Mr 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 John A Rickards Dr Janet Ritterman Mrs Martin St Quinton Mr Anthony Salz Anne Lady Scott Mr & Mrs Philip Snuggs Mr David F M Stileman Mr & Mrs Ian Streat Mr R H Sutton Mr Peter Tilley The Hon Mrs W Tufnell K Sandberg & T Watkins Mr & Mrs T Wightman Andrew & Emma Wilson Olivia Winterton Dr Nicholas Wright Mr Tim Wright Mrs Paul Zisman

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 PhelpsBrown The Countess of Portsmouth Mr & Mrs David Potter Bruce & Lizzie Powell Mark & Veronica Powell Mr & Mrs Richard Priestley Mrs Barbara Rait Sir Peter & Lady Ramsbotham Mr Myrddin Rees MS FRCS Mr David Reid Scott 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

materi age the saving of wa ste Bins in Cheltenham encour Ima ge Photo: Fox Photos/Ge tty

als 1941

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PLEASE SU PPORT TH E

2011

FESTIVAL

C AT EG O R I E S O F A N N UA L S U P P O R T 2 01 1 GR ANGE PARK OPER A | OPER A

AT

N E V I L L H O LT

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 will be invited to events and parties in London associated with the development of productions, the festival and prison. At The Grange, Glass Ceiling supporters will be invited to two post–performance parties.

THE SCHOOL OF HIPPOCRATES The proposed donation (£600 for one year) will be acknowledged in the programme. Members will be invited to events and parties associated with the development of productions, the festival and prison. At The Grange, members will be invited to a post–performance party.

THE SCHOOL OF ARCHIMEDES The proposed donation (£325 for one year) will be acknowledged in the programme. Members will be invited to events and one party associated with the development of productions, the festival and prison.

THE SCHOOL OF PLATO The proposed donation (£175 for one year) will be acknowledged in the programme.

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 will be invited for a glass of champagne after a performance to meet the cast and conductor and to events and parties associated with the development of productions, the festival and prison.

THE CLIPPER CLASS The proposed donation (£175 for one year) will be acknowledged in the programme.

THE STOWAWAYS The proposed donation (£75 for one year) will be acknowledged in the programme.

I would like to join 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 November so that you can book promptly. The full calendar can be viewed on the website from September. Donors to any of the above categories DO NOT need to join the Mailing List.

Please send to Grange Park Opera, 24 Broad Street, Alresford, SO24 9AQ keeping a copy for yourself I enclose a personal cheque payable to Grange Park Opera for £ Customs & Excise have asked us to point out that donations of lesser and greater amounts are acceptable and that tickets are not guaranteed

name

____________________________ Programme credit_____________________________ Please give your title, forename and surname - or if you wish your gift to be anonymous If you leave this blank we will use the name given on the left

___________________________ _______________________________ _______________________________ postcode __________________________ year of birth_________________________ email ____________________________ address

This is our principle way of communicating

special request

GIFT AID

signature__________________________________ date_ ___________________________________ tel day___________________________________

___________________________________ mobile _ _________________________________ tel eve

DATA PROTECTION All data supplied to Grange Park Opera by our customers will be handled by us in accordance with the customer’s instructions and under the terms of the Data Protection Act (1998) q Tick here if you DO NOT wish to receive information about our other events and developments q Tick here if you DO NOT wish to receive information from other arts organisations

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.

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The clipper class 2010 supporters of Nevill Holt

Anonymous Anonymous Mr & Mrs C R Bennion Gilbert Bland Mr Richard Bower Kate & Philip Douglas Denis Dunstone Richard & Celia Foulkes Mr Noel Henson Michael & Antje Learoyd Felicity Lyons Ian & Caroline McAlpine Lady Morris Sue & Gerry Sharp Mrs Sarah Sharpley Hugh & Angela Sinclair Mrs Joan M Tice DL The Hon Mrs Wheeler-Bennett igner Angela Davies 9 Director Daniel Slater Des Rigolet to Nevill Holt 200 o ran Cep anne Cassar Counte ss James Edwards Duke, Joh

The Stowaways 2010 supporters of Nevill Holt Mrs Robin Abbott David Barker QC Miss A E Barlow Brian Beardsall Mrs Margaret Bowen Mr Michael Butterfield Denis & Ronda Cassidy Michael Cazenove Mr & Mrs Richard Cazenove Mrs Mark Charnock Dr & Mrs E R Craven Mr Dirk Fitzhugh Peter Gerrard J & D Goldie-Scot

Mr & Mrs Victor Green Mrs J Harris Mrs Madeleine Heggs Mr Hugh Henderson Dr & Mrs D Hinton Mr Paul Hyde-Thomson CBE Victoria Joel & Steven Bobasch Mr Denys Johnson Keith & Lucy Jones Bob Lancaster Mrs Caroline Lawson-Dick Mr W H Baker & Miss S G Mahaffy Peter & Patricia Mommersteeg Guy & Sarah Norrie

Sir John & the Hon Lady Parsons Ian Pasley-Tyler Admiral Sir James & Lady Perowne Susanne & Dennis Purser Barry & Nikki Rivers Ian & Murie Ronald Barry & Anne Rourke Robert & Monica Rust David & Liz Staveley Mr John Swallow Pru Tatham David & Janet Thomas Heather & Andrew Wallis Julia Wight

and four anonymous donors

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ENGLISH CHAMBER ORCHESTRA Violin Stephanie Gonley Marieke Blankestijn Pauline Lowbury John Mills Clare Hoffman Natalia Bonner Ruth Ehrlich Maxim Kosinov Susan Briscoe Julian Tear Robert Yeomans Sophie Langdon Matthew Elston Cathy Schofield Christopher Bevan Kate Robinson Clara Biss Simon Kodurand Imogen Richards Julia Burkert Viola Jonathan Barritt Stephen Wright Lydia Lowndes-Northcot Julia O Riodan Nancy Johnson Pamela Ferriman Cello Caroline Dale Lionel Handy Dietrich Bethge Richard Birchall Tim Lowe Alexandra McKensie Bass Stephen Williams Paul Sherman Lucy Shaw Flute Kate Hill Robert Manasse Nicolas Bricht Nicola Smedley Oboe Philip Harmer Ruth Contractor Adrian Rowlands Jessica Mogridge Clarinet Anthony Pike Douglas Mitchell Julian Farrell Neyire Ashworth Shaun Thompson Alan Andrews Bassoon Paul Boyes Lizbeth Elliott Claire Webster Horn Richard Berry Richard Bayliss Richard Dilley Max Garrard Trumpet Andrew Crowley Neil Brough Simon Munday Trombone Colin Sheen Ian Moffatt Andrew Waddicor Tuba Jim Anderson Timpani Henry Baldwin Percussion Tim Barry Dave Tosh Harp Angela Moore

GRANGE PARK OPERA

PATRON

The Rt Hon Lord Ashburton KG

BOARD William Garrett (Chairman) The Hon Mark Baring Iain Burnside Hamish Forsyth Simon Freakley Wasfi Kani OBE The Hon Mary-Ann Sheehy

ENDOW MENT FUND BOARD

AT NEVILL HOLT Violin Megan Pound Joanna West Peter Hembrough Mary Martin Nikki Hutchings Fiona Chesterman Lou Bevan Joanna Lee Alice Butcher Louisa Stonehill Viola Jason Glover Dan Manente Mike Briggs Cello Brian Mullan Natalie Rozario Claire Constable Bass Kate Saxby Liz Bradley Flute Tim Taylorson Oboe John Crossman Clarinet Mark Lacey Bassoon Louise Watson Horn Jonathan Hassan Trumpet Fraser Tannock Trombone Andrew Cole Percussion Mark Taylor

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

CH IEF EXECUTIVE Wasfi Kani OBE EXECUTIVE D IRECTOR Michael Moody DONORS/ SPONSORS Rachel Pearson MARKETING /BOX OFFICE MANAGER Jan Tuffield FINANCE MANAGER Annabel Ross COMPANY MANAGE MENT Helen Sennett Bernard Davies (London) CASTING /CONTRACTS Scott Cooper AD M IN ISTRATION /BOX OFFICE Caroline Sheahan Claire Routh GROUNDS Richard Loader John & Victoria Salkeld David Manston Sweet peas FESTIVAL PREPARATION Sue Paice PICN ICS /LONG MARQUEE Lizzie Holmes TENT KEEPERS Peter Paice Derek Lintott TRA INS Steve Penn Gordon King RESTAURANT Anthony Lane FOOD Kaye Thompson Creative Catering, Hampshire CHA MPAGNE Laurent-Perrier W INE John Armit Wines RESTAURANT DECOR Alexander Creswell FRONT OF HOUSE Jill Hardy USHERS Fred Baring Ben Cross Archie Isles Geoff Jones Alex Newman

THER MOI Penny Akroyd Jean Amos Paul Bamber Jane Barber Caryl Baron Sue Batchelor Sue Bristow Sue Brown Lorna Clive Virginia Collett Henrietta Cooke Louise Cox Pru and Douglas de Lavison Gill Dockray Andrea Harris Caroline Holley Inge Hunter Jane Hutchence Peter and Moira Jackson Jane Jarman Charmian Jones Penelope Kellie Angela Larard Susie Lintott Sue Neame Sue Paice Liz Pakenham Lucy Pease Caroline Perry Hugh and Jane Powlett Carolyn Ranald Clare Read Elisabeth Ribeiro Jo Seligman Katharine Sellon Ann Smart Di Threlfall The Hon Gina Tufnell Clare Whitfield Barbara Woods MUS IC CONSULTANT Anthony Legge REPETITEURS Jeremy Cooke Tosca / Butterfly Sergey Rybin Oranges Susanna Stranders Capriccio

FESTIVAL SOUND DES IGN Alex Caplen COSTU ME H IRE Angels the Costumiers Cosprops L IGHTING H IRE White Light

PRODUCTION MANAGER Alison Ritchie COSTU ME SUPERVISORS Yvonne Milnes Tosca / Oranges Caroline Hughes Capriccio /Butterfly DEPUTY COSTU ME SUPERVISORS Antony Drewett Tosca / Oranges TECHN ICAL STAGE MANAGER Declan Costello DEPUTIES Sylva Parizkova Nigel White Paul Gregory STAGE TECHN IC IANS James Pitkin Anthony Bobb-Semple Niall Mulcahy John Sherrard Ricky Copp L IGHTING PROGRA M MER Warren Letton CH IEF ELECTR IC IAN Dan Last DEPUTIES Peter Mous Jim Bristow PRODUCTION ELECTR IC IAN Wesley Hiscock STAGE MANAGERS Judith Cound Tosca Marius Ronning Capriccio DEPUTY STAGE MANAGERS Samantha Kerrison Tosca Sarah Tryfan Capriccio Iain Mackenzie-Humphreys Oranges Suzie Erith Butterfly AS Ms James Woods Tosca Laura Page Capriccio Lisa Gardiner Tosca student ASM Lucy Wills Oranges student ASM Gwen Taylor Butterfly student ASM COSTU ME MAKERS Keith Watson Anne Nichols Robert Allsop COSTU ME ASS ISTANTS Jessica Tiller Cutter Chloe Simcox Costume props / milliner Stevie McTear Amanda Brothwell work experience Matthew Docherty Hannah Mason Katrina Fawyer-Reynolds W IGS M ISTRESS / MAKE-UP Betty Marini Assisted by Katie Bartlett WARDROBE M ISTRESS Alyson Fielden ∞ Assisted by Rebecca Hopkins W IGS Darren Ware Capriccio / Butterfly Campbell Young Oranges / Tosca SETS All Scene All Props Tosca Set-Up Scenery Oranges Capriccio set built by Adrian Snell Production Services Capriccio set painted by Adam Cutts PROPS SUPERVIS ION Marcus Hall Props

English Heritage have a guardianship deed on The Grange.

It is owned by Lord Ashburton FESTIVAL PROGRA M ME EARLE & LUDLOW Phil Ellis SOL IC ITOR Bircham Dyson Bell LLP Alistair Collett ACCOUNTANT WILKINSON LATHAM Sophie Holborn PLANN ING CONSULTANT Nathaniel Lichfield Iain Rhind

AT NEVILL HOLT PRODUCTION MANAGER Alison Ritchie ORCHESTRA MANAGER Mark Lacey TECHN ICAL STAGE MANAGER Declan Costello HEAD OF STAGE Nigel Vincent CH IEF ELECTR IC IAN Wesley Hiscock DEPUTY Richard Fagan WARDROBE M ISTRESS Helen Dyer-Greaves ASS ISTANT LX / STAGE Adam Bee S ITE MANAGER Fi Smith Bingham FOOD David Kearney THER MOI 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

Edward Bawden (1903-1989) Mural of Scarborough (1931) Commissioned by Scarborough hotelier Tom Laughton (brother of Charles Laughton) it hung in his Pavilion hotel until it closed.

It was moved to the children's entrance of Scarborough Library but for decades lay forgotten among stacks of boxes in a storeroom. It was put on display in 2009 29

ENGLISH CHAMBER ORCHESTRA CO has performed in more countries than any other orchestra in the world, recorded over 1,200 works and collaborated with the world’s greatest musicians.

American radio network CPRN selected ECO as one of the world’s greatest ‘living’ orchestras.

E

ECO first performed at Grange Park Opera in 2007 and has since become resident orchestra. Other regular activities include a London concert series and an annual music cruise hosted by international guest artists. In 2010 the ECO makes its first tour to Moscow as well as return visits to many European countries.

It aims to celebrate and build upon its traditions maintaining the highest musical standards and nurturing new talent.

Since its earliest days the orchestra has commissioned new works, including Huw Watkins’ Three Welsh Songs, David Heath’s Oboe Concerto Sahara and Pratirupa by John Tavener, premiered as part of the composer’s 60th birthday celebrations.

The orchestra has recorded many successful film soundtracks including Pride & Prejudice and Atonement.

An illustrious history features major musical figures: Benjamin Britten was the orchestra’s first Patron and a long relationship with Daniel Barenboim led to a complete cycle of Mozart piano concertos as live performances and recordings. The cycle was also recorded with Murray Perahia and Mitsuko Uchida . The orchestra regularly works with Pinchas Zukerman, Vladimir Ashkenazy and Sir Colin Davis. The young British conductor and cellist Paul Watkins has just been appointed Music Director and Principal Conductor of the ECO, after two years as its Associate Conductor.

The ECO's outreach programme Close Encounters takes music into communities and schools around the UK and overseas.

General Management: Pauline Gilbertson, Charlotte Templeman

www.englishchamberorchestra.co.uk

Become a Facebook fan of ECO and keep track of the Orchestra’s movements

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D Philip in the title role of offenbach's bluebeard at grange park 2008

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Philip La C

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C C

D

C

C

C D

D

D

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Philip helped start grange park opera early 1998 - PL talks to wasfi in the ruined orangery - now the theatre

C

angridge 1939 - 2010 35

Sponsored by

s r e n t r a P & I H C upport

year of s h t if f ir e h t in

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Text by Giacosa and Illica First performance Milan, 17 February 1904 Performances at Nevill Holt on July 8, 10, 11, 13 Sung in Italian with surtitles by David Edwards

Toby Purser Conductor

John Doyle director

Mark Bailey designer

Wayne Dowdeswell LIGHTING DESIGN

A geisha C IO-C IO-SAN Hye-Youn Lee

Supported by a Grange Park Scholarship

Her servant SUZUK I Helen Sherman Lieutenant B F PINKERTON Jesus Leon

Supported by Ian & Clare Maurice and Dr Shirley Radcliffe

American Consul SHARPLESS Andrew Ashwin

Supported by David Laing Foundation

A marriage broker GORO Tobias Merz Butterfly's uncle THE BONZE Derek Welton

Nikki Woollaston

KATE PINKERTON Amy Sedgwick

MOVEMENT

Prince YA MADOR I Damian Carter

Matteo Dalle Fratte LANGUAGE COACH

The Imperial CO M M ISS IONER Richard Immergluck The Official REG ISTRAR James Gilbert Cio-Cio-San's MOTHER Cressida van Gordon Her AUNT Lilly Papaioannou YAKUS IDE Stephen Jeffrey The COUS IN Emma Johnston

THE ORCHESTRA OF NEVILL HOLT 61

Pinkerton, an American naval officer stationed in Japan, has arranged a marriage to a Japanese geisha girl, Cio-Cio-San, known as Butterfly. He goes through a wedding ceremony with her, in spite of warnings by Sharpless, the American Consul.

A hillside overlooking Nagasaki harbour Goro, a marriage broker has arranged for Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton, to ‘marry’ Cio-Cio-San. Pinkerton inspects the house which is part of the marriage contract and meets Butterfly’s maid Suzuki and the other servants.

Sharpless, the American Consul, arrives and they drink a toast to America. Sharpless is fearful for Butterfly and tries to dissuade Pinkerton from marrying her. Pinkerton wants to possess her even though he knows this may destroy her and toasts the ‘real’ American wife he will have one day.

Butterfly and her friends arrive. She tells Sharpless the story of how her family fell on hard times and the women became geishas. Her mother will come to the wedding but her father is dead. Butterfly shows Pinkerton her possessions – except for the most sacred one: a dagger which belonged to her father. It was a gift from the Mikado ordering him to commit suicide.

Butterfly tells Pinkerton that for his sake she has become a Christian, but she has not told her family. The couple are married. Her uncle, the Bonze, berates Butterfly for turning her back on her religion. The family also insults her and Pinkerton orders everyone to leave.

Pinkerton comforts his bride and, as night falls, he leads her into the house.

2 Three years later Pinkerton has been recalled to America. Butterfly and the faithful Suzuki are still living in the house. They have little money but Butterfly refuses to believe that Pinkerton has deserted her and tells Suzuki he will one day return.

Sharpless and Goro arrive to tell Butterfly that Pinkerton’s ship is due to arrive in Nagasaki that very day. Butterfly is ecstatic and Sharpless cannot bring himself to tell

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her the remainder of the message. In the passing years, Goro has been trying to marry her off to various suitors – including the wealthy Yamadori. She has refused all proposals, believing Pinkerton would return.

Sharpless tries again to deliver the rest of Pinkerton’s letter to Butterfly and to persuade her to accept Yamadori. She brings in her child - Pinkerton’s child - of whose existence neither Sharpless nor Pinkerton had any knowledge. Sharpless leaves, promising to tell Pinkerton about his child.

Goro has spread rumours that Butterfly has a fatherless child. She is angry and hears the harbour cannon signalling the arrival of a ship. She tells Suzuki to decorate the house to celebrate Pinkerton’s arrival and puts on her wedding dress to wait for her husband.

Dawn the following day Suzuki persuades Butterfly to sleep after their all-night vigil. Sharpless arrives with Pinkerton and his American wife. Sharpless wants Suzuki to help break the news to Butterfly that Pinkerton is married; together they must secure the child’s future. Pinkerton cannot pluck up the courage to face Butterfly. The men leave it to Suzuki to tell her the truth.

Kate Pinkerton asks whether she may take the child away so that he can be properly cared for. Butterfly, maintaining her dignity, replies that if Pinkerton returns to the house in half an hour she will give him the answer.

She refuses Pinkerton’s money. When the visitors have left, she dismisses Suzuki and prepares herself for a ceremonial suicide.

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From The Deer Cry Pavilion, a story of Westerners in Japan 1868–1905 by Pat Barr

Westerner needed no more than a little money and an introduction to a Japanese go–between who took him along to a certain tea–house where numbers of pretty girls tripped gaily about. And eventually (there was no hurry) he chose the one who most appealed to him and said he would marry her. The marriage – a perfectly legal union, signed and sealed in the nearby police office – was arranged by the go–between, a quite indispensable person who could usually suggest a house to rent also. Here, the foreigner could install the girl and live with her just as long as he wanted – during a five–year tour of duty perhaps, or for a couple of years, or until he got bored or a baby was due, whatever was the most convenient. And when he went away the marriage just dissolved itself; the girl returned to her family or the tea–house, or, in some cases, she then married a man of her own race and lived happily ever after. Temporary liasons such as these were common in all the treaty ports . . .

As early as 1860 when Bishop George Smith of Hong Kong visited Yokohama, he expressed his outrage at the number of foreign bachelors in the port who had native ‘wives’. In those early days, local Japanese customs officials often acted as go–betweens and the Bishop was almost as scandalised by this implied approval of authority as he was by the practice itself. As more foreign bachelors – junior clerks, shopkeepers, commercial agents, young engineers and military men – came to the treaty ports, so the procedure became more organised.

The owners of some bars and tea–houses, a few strategically placed flower–sellers, bath–house keepers and even laundry–men took over the role of procurers and certain houses were rented again and again for those brief partnerships. The women, who were invariably the daughters of working–class families, stayed inside the home, as most Japanese women did anyway; they were not accepted in the wider social life of the foreign community but mixed almost exclusively with their own relatives (who usually accepted the situation) and with other couples on the same footing. Nevertheless, the practice was tacitly allowed as a convenient solution in a society where there were not enough unmarried Western women to go round and where pressures of convention

and finance often prevented a young man from making a ‘respectable’ marriage until he had attained a sufficiently high economic and social status.

Long before Madama Butterfly was created, Nagasaki was the most notorious for this particular business, its girls were supposed to be the prettiest and the easiest to live with; arrangements were cheap and made with a minimum of fuss. Nagasaki had always been an easy– come–easy–go sort of place. It was one of the first three ports in the country opened for foreign trade and was soon famed for the rowdiness of its gay quarter and its amiable desire to keep visiting sailors happy. Very soon, however, Yokohama and Kobe between them lured away much of its export trade and Nagasaki could not be bothered to keep abreast in the commercial rat race.

A disdainful journalist who visited it early in the 1880s wrote ‘The principal productions of Nagasaki are tobacco, jinrikishas, desponding commission agents, unripe plums, ships’ chandlers, bow–legged Custom House officials, bankrupts, water melons, intoxicated sailors, tortoise– shell bracelets, mosquitoes, grog–shops and stagnation.

The prevalent epidemics are dysentry and insolvency’.

Four years later an equally unimpressed reporter wrote ‘Nagasaki has rather the look of never having been thoroughly vitalised . . . and money here is as scarce as angels’ visits’.

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When Japan eventually opened its doors in the 1850s, Westerners misunderstood the motivation for Japanese civility. Jean–Pierre Lehmann has written many books on Japan including The Image of Japan from Feudal Isolation to World Power (1850–1905)

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he first encounter between Japan and the West was in the mid–16th century. Seafaring Iberian traders and missionaries arrived on Japanese shores. A few decades later came the Dutch, whose fleet included an English pilot, Will Adams, who came to be known as Anjinsama (honourable Mr Pilot), the hero of Shogun. Spaniards and Portuguese traded goods (including arms) and converted Japanese souls. The Dutch concentrated on achieving material rather than spiritual gain and so when Christianity was banned in the early 17th century, the Dutch were allowed to stay and the Iberians expelled (or tortured and executed).

The conditions under which the Dutch were tolerated were restrictive. There were to be only about eleven of them, they were to live on a small island in the bay of Nagasaki and, somewhat akin to the English club, they were to be exclusively male. Unlike an English club, however, the pragmatic Japanese attitude to sex led the Nagasaki municipal authorities to ‘provide’ local women, partly to meet the Dutch needs, but also to authorities obtain information on Dutch mores.

Japanese and Western attitudes to sex and women were very different. From the Japanese perspective, for a professional woman to have sex with a foreigner was not reprehensible. Indeed, the profession of geisha (courtesan) was respected. (Butterfly is a geisha in the opera but the lesser social rank of tea house girl in the play).

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Sex was one thing but children were another. Occupying an island some distance from mainland Asia, Japan tended towards isolation – a tendency that became the official policy of sakoku (closed country) from 1637 to 1854 – and the Japanese self–perception was one of ‘uniqueness’ and ‘homogeneity’.

The Japanese had a strict view on ‘racial purity’. Indeed, as recently as the mid 1980s, the then prime minister Yashuro Nakasone got into hot water in the Western press for making public comments about the superiority of the homogeneous Japanese race. Consequently, the offspring of mixed marriages, known in Japanese as ainoko, suffered discrimination.

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After two centuries of very limited outside contact, pressure to open its doors began to mount. In 1854 the American Commodore Perry, with a fleet of four steam ships (‘black ships’ as the Japanese called them), obtained a treaty of friendship and commerce. In Japanese governing circles, however, there was by no means a consensus. There were two opposing factions.

The first were those in favour of joi (expel the barbarians to prevent foreign pollution of Japan’s sacred soil) and the second favoured kaikoku (open country).

The kaikoku faction won. It acknowledged the military, economic and technological superiority of the West, and thought pragmatically. If Japan resisted the West would resort to force.

The proverbial civility of the many Butterflies led Westerners to misunderstand the motivation of kaikoku.

The true motivation in opening the country was certainly not ‘open the country and, by the way, have you met my sister?’ Japanese civility in fact masked a grim determination to infiltrate Western cultures, to discover and absorb their secrets and ‘catch up’.

Japan opened and signed more treaties with the West.

By the mid–1860s, Western merchants, missionaries, officials, sailors, tourists, writers came to Japan. In the early decades they lived exclusively in a number of treaty ports, such as Yokohama, Kobe, Hakodate and Nagasaki, the last being the setting for Madama Butterfly.

One of the more famous Western residents of Nagasaki was Thomas Glover (1838–1911). An Aberdonian by birth, he had gone to the East as a trader and initially pioneered the commercial efforts of the great Scottish trading house, Jardine Matheson. Having arrived at a time when the drama of Japanese politics was unfolding, Glover became involved in political intrigue and provided material aid and advice to the kaikoku faction. He is said to have introduced whisky – a beverage for which the Japanese have demonstrated great fondness. As with practically everything else, having observed the technology through imports, by the early 20th century the Japanese began producing their own brew and

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Glover’s house overlooking Nagasaki bay survived the atomic bomb and can be visited. In the grounds there is a statue erected to Madama Butterfly.

The old decentralized, feudal regime was replaced by a new state unified under the inviolate rule of the emperor and administered by what soon became a meritocratic civil service. Under state guidance, the political revolution was followed by an industrial revolution. At the same time, a formidable military machine was being put together.

As all this was happening, the West failed to take Japan seriously. There came to be an increasingly yawning gap between the image Japan conveyed to the West – Madama Butterfly, tea houses, parasols – and the reality of the growing Japanese challenge to

the West. First to fall victim to the illusion were the Russians. Challenged to war by Japan in 1904, Russia experienced a humiliating defeat a year later. The British, Americans and French failed in the inter–war period to comprehend the force and extent of Japan’s commercial and geopolitical ambitions.

In 1945 Japan was defeated. Now the country was not only ‘opened’ again, but indeed occupied for seven years. Many Pinkertons returned and were met by many Butterflies. The romance began again. On the Japanese side, efforts were energetically channelled into discovering the secrets of American technology and business acumen. The leitmotif reappeared. For several decades Japan’s growing industrial strength was neither recognized nor respected in the West. Then, and quickly, Western industries fell under the discreet Japanese juggernaut – steel, electronics, machine tools, cars – and there was the drama of the America/Japan showdown; the ‘black ships’ returned to the harbour.

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When John Luther Long’s play appeared, there was ’savage’ reaction from the US Navy and the author claimed the story was his fantasy. Some 30 years later, the author’s sister revealed that she had witnessed the events and given the story to her brother. Arthur Groos, Professor of German Literature at Cornell University and co-editor of the Cambridge Opera Journal, sets about identifying the real Pinkerton. t is well known that Puccini’s Madama Butterfly (1904) is based on John Luther Long’s story and play. It is not so well known that Long’s story is based on an incident witnessed by his sister, Sarah Jane (Jennie) Correll, who was working as a missionary in Japan from 1892 to 1897.

Revealing herself in 1931 to be the source of the story, she gave a series of talks in Japan and China and published a written version. She asserts that Madame Butterfly is ‘true to the life . . . The secret of the heroine on whom the drama was based was known only to two persons, of whom I am one; and it is now for the first time revealed’ and goes on to tell the tale of a little tea-house girl, Chô-san, Miss Butterfly which happened around 1892–3.

On leave in Philadelphia in August 1897 she told her brother, John Luther Long, a lawyer with literary ambitions, the story of Chô-san.

‘A few days afterwards he showed me what he had composed, and asked my opinion of it. I was to mark the margin of the manuscript where I found anything not true to the life.’

Long’s Madame Butterfly appeared four months later, in

January 1898. Some readers found the story too ‘close to life’ and were outraged at the indiscretion. So the preface to a 1903 Christmas edition of Madame Butterfly does some explaining and covering up. ’And where has Butterfly gone? I do not know. I lost sight of her, as you did, that dark night she fled with Trouble and Suzuki from the little, empty, happy house . . . And is she a fancy, or does she live? Both. And where is Pinkerton? At least not in the US Navy - if the savage letters I receive from his fellows are true’.

He is careful to conceal his real-life source. ‘No-one ever [knows] what process of the mind produces such things’. . . . Which suggests the event actually took place and there was a real Pinkerton.

Arthur Groos begins with the opening of Long’s story: a conversation between two officers named Pinkerton and Sayre on a ship steaming towards Nagasaki. Pinkerton has just been ’banished’ from a prestigious Mediterranean assignment to the Asiatic station; Sayre, an experienced naval surgeon with several tours of duty ‘out here’, jokingly suggests he try a ‘temporary marriage’ - an experiment he denies having made himself but admits has been tried by his brother ‘Jack’.

Arthur Groos tracked down a naval surgeon John S Sayre who served on the Asiatic station with several lengthy stays in Nagasaki coinciding with Jennie Correll’s time. One of the ‘savage letters’ that John Luther Long received can probably be attributed to John Sayre.

There was no officer in the US Navy named Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton but ‘savage’ reaction suggests the name is not far off. Groos looked for officers at the Naval Academy with names involving Benjamin and Franklin in the period 1873 and 1888. He found six who saw duty on the Asiatic station in the early 1890s.

The real Pinkerton would fulfil four criteria: •

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Jennie Correll’s describes Pinkerton as a ’young man’, suggesting that our suspect was an ensign

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Long’s Pinkerton ‘repines continually’ about his ‘banishment’ to the Asiatic station from the Mediterranean, whence he ‘had just come’.

We are looking for someone who was in Nagasaki between 1892 and 1894 for a long enough period to have contracted a ’Japanese marriage’. Officers entered into such arrangements – financially impossible for enlisted men – primarily to avoid disease.

Our suspect served on the same vessel as Sayre He was no longer in the Navy in 1903

Through examination of the navy’s lists of officers, their assignments, tables of ships’ positions, ports of call and dates and the deck logs of individual vessels, Groos eliminated four of the six officers on the basis of age. Of the two remaining junior officers one is an Ensign Benjamin F. Hutchison who did serve in the Mediterranean before being transferred to the Pacific.

However, he never served with Sayre.

Sayre and Franklin remained in Nagasaki for six and a half weeks. It seems to have been a pleasant stay. The ship’s log reports that enlisted man are as many as five or six days late from shore leave – some still inebriated.

Although the 4th of July was a ‘gala day’ for the squadron, Ensign Franklin probably did not enjoy the festivities. In addition to serving two watches, he reported the following day to the ship’s doctor, who treated him for gonorrhoea. The Marion departed on 2 August, returning to Nagasaki in early December. Ensign Franklin, the officer of the watch, recorded the transfer of Dr John S. Sayre to his ship. The two remained together on their second voyage until 10 August 1893, when Franklin, again officer of the watch, recorded the doctor’s transfer at Yokohama. Sayre and Franklin neither served together nor docked in Nagasaki again.

Assuming Franklin married Butterfly in 1892 or 1893, there is a gap of ‘3 years’ before he marries his American wife. We have found our man.

This leaves only Ensign William B. Franklin (1868 – 1942), who resigned his commission in 1896 to marry the daughter of the mayor of New York City, founded a Wall Street brokerage firm and the American Malt Company, and advanced through the Naval Reserve to the rank of Rear Admiral. He matches all the criteria • • •

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He was a ‘young man’ (aged 24) in 1892.

He was ‘not in the United States Navy’ in 1903 He was a cadet on the cruise of the ‘new Navy’s’ White Squadron through the Mediterranean, followed by the posting to the Far East on the antiquated Lancaster and Marion, the last of the US Navy’s old wooden warships He made visits to Nagasaki in 1892-4 He was a shipmate of Sayre for eight months.

Franklin entered Nagasaki harbour for the first time the fine day of Thursday, 21 April 1892. After three weeks, he was transferred to the Marion. In June the Marion rendezvoused with the broken-down Palos, whose medical officer was Sayre, and towed the smaller gunboat to dry-dock in Japan, reaching Nagasaki on the 19 June.

Cadet William B Franklin c1888 Records of US Naval Academy

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Puccini with his son Antonio Puccini had a motor boat called Cio–Cio–San Royal Opera House archives

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bout the close of the 15th century, the military custom of permitting any samurai to perform hara kiri, instead of subjecting him to the shame of execution, appears to have been generally established. Afterwards it became the recognised duty of a samurai to kill himself at the word of command. All samurai were subject to this disciplinary law, even lords of provinces; and in samurai families, children of both sexes were trained how to perform suicide whenever personal honour or the will of a liege lord might require it. Women, I should observe, did not perform hara kiri, but jigai – that is to say, piercing the throat with a dagger so as to sever the arteries by a single thrust–and–cut movement. The important fact to remember is that honour and loyalty required the samurai man or woman to be ready at any moment to perform self–destruction by the sword. . . .it was certainly also common enough for a bereaved wife to perform suicide, not through despair, but through the wish to follow her husband into the other world, and there to wait upon him as in life. Instances of female suicide, representing the old ideal of duty to a dead husband, have occurred in recent times. Such suicides are usually performed according to the feudal rules – the woman robing herself in white for the occasion. At the time of the later war of China there occurred in Tokyo one remarkable suicide of this kind; the victim being the wife of Lieutenant Asada, who had fallen in battle. She was only 21. On hearing of her husband’s death, she at once began to make preparations for her own – writing letters of farewell to her relatives, putting her affairs in order, and carefully cleaning the house, according to old–time rule. Thereafter she donned her death– robe; laid mattings down opposite to the alcove in the guest–room; placed her husband’s portrait in the alcove, and set offerings before it. When everything had been arranged, she seated herself before the portrait, took up her dagger, and with the single skilful thrust divided the arteries of her throat. from Japan, An Attempt at Interpretation

by Lafcadio Hearn, 1904

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nsored by o p s ly s u o r e n E S is ge G N A R O FOR 3 E V O L E TH

M O R P Z GA G N I D A R T & G N I T E K R A M THE R ID ICULES Tobias Merz Tom Lowe James Scarlett Alexandros Tsilogiannis Francisco Javier Borda Derek Welton Damian Carter Richard immergluck

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FA I RY TA LE I N A PRO LOG U E A N D FO U R AC T S Text by the composer after the comedy by Carlo Gozzi First performance Chicago, 30 December 1921 (in French) Performances at Grange Park on June 16, 19, 24, 26, July 1, 4 Sung in French with surtitles by Wasfi Kani

S ERGEI P R O KO F I EV

1891 1953

THE LOVE FOR 3 ORANGES Leo Hussain

THE K ING OF CLUBS Clive Bayley

Supported by george & janette hollingbery

His son THE PR INCE Jeffrey Lloyd–Roberts

Conductor

Supported by Malcolm Herring Supported by Andrew & Caroline Joy

David Fielding

His niece PR INCESS CLAR ICE Anne–Marie Owens

Supported by dixon wilson

The Prime Minister LEANDRE Henry Waddington

director designer

The Holmes Family

Supported by Ed & Lulu Siskind

Wolfgang Goebbel

TRoUFFALD INo Wynne Evans

LIGHTING DESIGN

Supported by Jeremy & Rosemary Farr

PANTALON Quentin Hayes

Supported by Sally Phillips

Andrew George MOVEMENT

TCHEL IO Vuyani Mlinde who supports the King Supported by David & Amanda Leathers

Thomas Gray VIDEO DESIGN

FATA MORGANA Rebecca Cooper who supports the PM

Beatrice Lupton LANGUAGE COACH

her servant S MERALD INE Karina Lucas

Cathal Garvey

THE COOK Francisco Javier Borda who protects the oranges Supported by RHL Foundation

Supported by Christopher Swan

ASSISTANT CONDUCTOR

PR INCESS L INETTE Lilly Papaioannou Supported by

Vali Mahlouji

Dr Jonathan Holliday & Dr Gwen Lewis

associate DESIGNER

PR INCESS N ICOLETTE Belinda Williams

Supported by The family of Oleg Prokofiev

The future queen PR INCESS N INETTE Rosie Bell

ENGLISH CHAMBER ORCHESTRA

Supported by Johnny & Marie Veeder

FARFARELLO a devil Derek Welton

Supported by Mr & Mrs Robert Enslow

MASTER OF CERE MON IES Alexandros Tsilogiannis

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❤

The Love for THE PROLOGUE Theatre–goers dispute the relative merits of comedy, tragedy, lyric drama . . . They demand their favourite for this evening. But they are going to see something quite different: the story of a prince with severe hypochondria.

Act 1 Scene 1 Doctors tell the King his son cannot be cured. If his son cannot succeed him, power will pass to his odious niece, Clarice. The boy may be cured if he can be made to laugh and the most likely way of doing it would be tournaments, spectacular festivities and so on.

Trouffaldino will arrange everything.

The King sends for his Prime Minister Léandre. He has his own reasons for keeping the Prince an invalid and poo–poos the scheme. Léandre and Pantalon abuse one another.

Scene 2 Tchelio protects the King and pits his wits against Fata Morgana who supports Léandre. Tchelio loses.

3 Oranges does the trick. The Prince starts to laugh. Everyone except for Léandre and Clarice – is jubilant.

Fata Morgana curses the Prince and pronounces his fate: he will fall in love with 3 oranges and will pursue them to the ends of the earth. The Prince announces his immediate departure accompanied by Trouffaldino. The devil Farfarello blows them on their way.

D INNER INTERVAL Act 3 Scene 1 Tchelio tries to stop Farfarello from blowing the Prince.

Normally Farfarello would be at the mercy of Tchelio but Fata Morgana has neutralised his powers.

Tchelio advises the Prince and Trouffaldino that, if they find the oranges, they must be cut open near water. He explains that the oranges are in Créonte's kitchen and he gives Trouffaldino a magic ribbon which might appeal to the frightening cook who guards the oranges.

Scene 3 Léandre and Clarice have an understanding. She will marry him if he will get rid of the Prince and so clear the way for her accession. She is not satisfied with his progress so far but Léandre is confident that his method - to fill the Prince full of tragic prose and boring verse will be lethal. As Clarice demands further action, Léandre finds Sméraldine the servant eavesdropping. They want to kill her but she claims to hold vital information: Tchelio is protecting the Prince and may yet make him laugh. However, if her mistress Fata Morgana is in the vicinity, the Prince can‘t laugh.

Act 2 Scene 1 Trouffaldino’s antics aren’t making a difference. The Prince is much the same. In the end, Trouffaldino persuades him to get dressed and attend the festivities that have been planned for his benefit.

Scene 2 The festivities commence. The Prince does not laugh.

The dreadful Fata Morgana arrives in disguise and Trouffaldino tries to chuck her out and the commotion

A woman applies slices of fruit and vegetable s to her face as a moisturising beauty aid 9th March 1939 Photo: Fox Photos/G etty Images

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Scene 2 The Prince and Trouffaldino are terrified by the cook but she is enthralled by the ribbon. They creep off with the oranges.

Scene 3 The oranges grow. The Prince takes a nap and Trouffaldino, overcome by thirst, cuts open an orange.

Princess Linette pops out and is close to death – she needs water immediately. She dies. The same happens with the second orange. Trouffaldino runs away.

When the Prince wakes up there are two dead girls.

He cuts open the third and Princess Ninette appears.

She is everything that he has ever dreamed of. She likes the Prince but first she needs water. It’s looking bad but some passers–by save the day and her life.

The Prince want to take his prospective bride to his father’s place. First, she says, she needs a decent dress.

He goes to the shops.

Fata Morgana appears with Sméraldine who sticks a magic pin into Ninette’s head which turns her into a rat.

Sméraldine takes her place.

The King and the Prince arrive. The Prince’s dream girl isn’t quite what he remembered but his father insists that, as royalty, he must stick by his promise. The Prince is forced to take her back to the palace.

Act 4 Scene 1 Tchelio and Fata Morgana are at it again.

Scene 2 Léandre makes last-minute adjustments for the wedding.

There seems to be a rat sitting on the throne. Tchelio’s magic returns and all of a sudden the Princess Ninette stands before them. The Prince is ecstatic. Sméraldine, Léandre and Clarice are accused of treason and sentenced.

Fata Morgana helps spirit away the guilty.

The court is freed of the powers of darkness and there is nothing to do but sing the National Anthem.

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Laughter proves the best cure Fiona Maddox, music critic of The Observer, cuts open a sharp, fruity work written for Chicago on the eve of the Roaring Twenties when hedonism was in the air . . . and Chanel no5.

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ll I tried to do was write an amusing opera’ protested Sergei Prokofiev, as critics and psychoanalysts, philosophers and cultural commentators tried to attribute deep meaning to his Love for Three Oranges, a work featuring three enormous citrus fruit, a melancholic prince who refuses to laugh and a crowd of ‘Ridiculous People’ commenting and chortling like a disobedient Greek chorus collectively flicking ink pellets to spice up the action.

Could this brittle, glittering, artful comedy, they speculated, be a parody of the political nightmare of Revolutionary Russia, crushed by dissent, devastated by famine, and which the 30–year old composer had recently escaped? The last Tsars had been murdered.

Lenin and the Bolsheviks were in power. Prokofiev had chosen to leave and make a fortune as a pianist– composer in the New World. ‘You’re running away from great events and the great events won’t forgive you for it.

When you return, you will not be understood,’ warned an elderly friend at the time. ‘But I took no heed of his advice,’ Prokofiev later admitted, after his life had taken several twists and swerves back towards his homeland.

Others advocated that this was a jibe at high art: surely the anti–realist composer was poking fun at elaborate grand opera, with its emotional opulence, wallowing melodies and musical excess? The score, bubbling with quirky, lop–sided melodies and oscillating key changes, volatile pantomimes and dances and processions, has no spare avoirdupois. For Prokofiev, the goal was to toss aside flabby conventions and create a lean new style. Perhaps, too, it was a perceptive scene setter for a decade, stirring into life after the Great War, which would be nicknamed the ’Roaring Twenties’ or the Jazz Age with the newly invented Chanel No 5, ‘un parfum de femme, à odeur de femme’ as Coco put it, spiking the air with heady and hedonistic fun?

Whichever the case, Prokofiev (1891 – 1953) signed a contract in January 1919 with the Chicago Opera for a new work to be premiered that same autumn. The Ukrainian–born composer chose the subject for his second mature opera when he was still at work on The

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Gambler, seen at Covent Garden this season and which David Fielding directed for The Grange two years ago.

In many respects, this reworking of Dostoevsky is a counterpart of Three Oranges, as dark and manic as this sly fairy–tale is light, acidic and intoxicating.

The story, for which Prokofiev, helped by his friend, the singer, Vera Janacopoulos, wrote his own libretto, comes from Gozzi’s 1761 zany commedia dell’arte play L’amore delle tre melarance. Prokofiev had read a Russian version of the Italian drama in a literary journal, which shared the ironic name, Love for Three Oranges. His obsession with fairy stories, especially those which brushed with the bizarre, had stayed with him since childhood. One of his earliest compositions was The Giant, written at the age of nine, and full of the kind of mock–heroic marches and absurdist waltzes which would be a hallmark of his adult style. Later Peter and the Wolf, Cinderella and others of his works would return to that world of make–believe.

Despite his resistance to grand opera, Prokofiev always felt haunted by the shadow of Wagner. As a teenager, having scarcely heard a note of the music, he named Wagner as a favourite composer, largely on account of the monsters, giants and Rhinemaidens which feature in The Ring. So although he detested Richard Strauss as overblown and decadent, he praised Wagner, preferring Teutonic mythology to Freudian sexuality.

The plot is complex. To recap [see Synopsis], a Prince, son of the King of Clubs, is suffering a terrible depression which can only be cured by laughter. Doctors advise the King that if the Prince cannot find a way of, as it were, contracting those fifteen facial muscles, together with those of the diaphragm, abdomen, back and legs which roughly speaking provoke laughter, his case is hopeless.

Good and evil, in the figures of the magician Tchelio and Fata Morgana, the archetypal sorceress, battle it out.

Eventually, one orange is found to contain the beautiful Princess Ninetta who, despite disobligingly turning into a rat for a while, ends up marrying the Prince. All are wreathed in smiles. Laughter indeed proves the best cure.

Already celebrated for his ability to forge old and new,

Sally Clarke's sweet and sour, in works such as the Classical Symphony, Prokofiev found Gozzi’s allegory a perfect vehicle for combining farcical entertainment with harsh, moral truth. The Venetian playwright was enjoying something of a revival at this period: hard though it is to think of two composers less alike than Prokofiev and Puccini, the latter would soon turn to Gozzi for the basis of his final opera Turandot, a text which Busoni had already set, if in a somewhat lighter vein, a few years earlier.

After many postponements and financial upsets (Prokofiev expected to be properly paid) The Love for Three Oranges was premiered, in the heart of Chicago’s Broadway in December 1921. Two years earlier he had produced a popular orchestral suite of music for the opera, including its most famous element, the ironic March. Surprisingly, however, because of revolutions, war and attendant artistic mayhem, Oranges was his first opera to reach the stage.

The venue was the huge, extravagantly gilded Auditorium Theatre which would one day host the likes of Jimi Hendrix and Grateful Dead. The performance, as here tonight, was sung in French, at the time considered more acceptable for opera audiences than either Russian or English. For that year only the Chicago Opera was run by a woman, the famous Scottish soprano, Mary Garden (who had created the role of Debussy’s Melisande).

Her main achievement was to stage Oranges before the company went bust a year later. Since the scenery alone cost $80,000, it’s conceivable the production accelerated this collapse.

It seems to have been directed mainly by the composer himself, after he had attended rehearsals and privately written off the man hired to direct, a Mr Coini, as being ‘thick as a tree’. Thanks to a vivid description of Prokofiev by a French music critic for Le Gaulois, who witnessed him in Paris earlier that year, we have a sharp sense of how humiliated Coini must have felt: ‘M. Prokofiev is a very young musician – slender, svelte – who carries himself like a student..,’ the critic wrote. ‘As soon as the musicians are seated, M. Prokofiev sweeps on,

Vin d’Orange from Recipes from a Restaurant, Shop & Bakery The prettiest of apéritif drinks.

Serve it over ice with a twist of orange peel, and in small doses – as it is quite alcoholic.

2 small Seville oranges 1/2 lemon 200g sugar 1/2 vanilla pod split lengthwise 1/4 cinnamon stick broken 1 litre good rose wine 200ml eau-de-vie 50ml rum Preheat the oven to 180˚C/350˚F/gas mark 4. Lay a large scrupulously clean jar on a baking sheet and sterilize in the oven for 10 minutes. Boil the lid in a small pan of water for 5 minutes to sterilize.

Wash the skins of the fruit well and slice roughly.

Place in the jar with the remaining ingredients except the rum and stir well with a clean stainless–steel spoon. Cover with the lid and refrigerate for 6 weeks, shaking the vessel gently from time to time to dissolve the sugar.

After 6 weeks, add the rum and pour through a coffee filter into another sterilized bottle. Place a cork into the bottle and serve from the refrigerator. It will last at least a year but I suspect that as it is so delicious it will be gone before spring is out.

-0Now in its 26th year, Sally Clarke’s restaurant in Kensington Church Street uses the best seasonal products. Sally writes the menus daily ensuring that textures, flavours and colours are assembled in a balanced way. Her wholesale bread business produces up to 2,000 hand–shaped loaves a night and sells to London restaurants and shops including Fortnum & Mason and Harvey Nichols.

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like some elemental force. He moulds them, he explains his ideas and his aesthetic, and they work with joy for the musicians recognise he is a real master.’

première, since it had taken place in their city, New York raged with splenetic jealousy since they had not had the wit to commission the work themselves.

Prokofiev, a perfectionist and a stickler, took affairs into his own hands. Since the designer, Boris Anisfield, was a fellow Russian émigré, who had worked with Meyerhold.

Diaghilev and Fokine in St Petersburg, Prokofiev had an ally in the company. There were, too, plenty of Russian– Jews in the orchestra, whom he whipped into shape with sixteen rehearsals.

‘I had to look facts in the face,’ Prokofiev said. ‘The American season, which had begun so brilliantly, had in the end brought me nothing. In my pocket was a thousand dollars; in my head, noise from all the running around and a desire to go away somewhere quiet and work.’ He returned to Europe, finding refuge in a quiet village near Oberammergau, outside Munich. As ever, in going to America when he did, Prokofiev had been ahead of the game. Soon many more Europeans, and composers especially – Schoenberg, Bartok, Stravinksy, Rachmaninov among them – would leave for the New World, to escape war and oppression.

‘At first [Coini’s] lack of imagination upset me,’ Prokofiev said. ‘But then I started explaining the roles to the singers myself, offstage, and showing the chorus what to do – right in plain view, onstage. Coini finally got mad and demanded, ’Speaking honestly, which is us is the master on stage – you or I?’ I replied, ’You – so as to carry out my wishes’.

The first night reception was mixed. Citizens of Chicago, possibly more interested in baseball (the White Sox, so recently world champions, had hit bad times), were bemused by this expensive ($250,000) and avant garde new work. The Chicago Tribune called it ‘too much for this generation’, though with hindsight the critic might have added ‘ just yet’. In New York, where Oranges had one performance the following year, in February 1922, the press was outright nasty.

‘There are a few, but only a very few, passages that bear recognisable kinship with what has hitherto been recognised as music,’ noted a pompous, but squealing report in the New York Times. ‘What, in fine, is the underlying purpose of this work? Is it satire? Is it burlesque? Whose withers are wrung?’

Prokofiev, who had also been giving concerts as a pianist to help his income, and who met similarly dismal reviews for his Third Piano Concerto (1921), convinced himself that he was the victim of old battles between New York and Chicago. The New York critics, he commented, are ‘a pack of dogs let out from behind the gate to bite my trouser in shreds’, preferring his appearances as pianist rather than composer. While Chicagoans tried to support the

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But by 1935, Prokofiev had returned to his tragic homeland, struggling to find artistic freedom within the torments and confines of Soviet life. Most of the concertos, symphonies, chamber works, film score and, above all, the ballet score Romeo & Juliet were yet to come. He died in Moscow nearly two decades later, on the same day as Stalin. Prokofiev would surely have managed a wry smile at the irony.

After a run of performances in Cologne, Berlin and Leningrad in the 1920s, The Love for Three Oranges was returned to the back of the operatic store cupboard.

British audiences had to wait until the Edinburgh Festival, in 1962, for a UK premiere. Glyndebourne staged it in 1988 (available on DVD), with fantastical designs by Maurice Sendak and anyone lucky enough to have seen Richard Jones’s wild scratch’n’sniff production for Opera North (1988) will agree that opera has never smelled quite the same since.

As Arthur Miller said in another context, ‘A man is not an orange.’ Quite true. But in Prokofiev’s quixotic comedy, three fruity, thirsty princesses decidedly are. At the Grange, with Leo Hussain and David Fielding wielding the juicer in this Love for Three Oranges, we may guess that every ounce of pip, pith and zest will be squeezed into one glorious, eccentric citrus elixir.

Women in a textile factory 1927 Alexander Deineka (1899–1969)

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An opera begins long before the curtain goes up Opera aspires to the sublime and easily succumbs to the ridiculous. Michael Fontes has some amusing accounts of first nights – incontinent horses, disaster prone sets and acid tongues.

O

pera is high-risk entertainment. Of course, any musical performance can be hazardous in ways which are sometimes surprising: Ashkenazy once gave a recital in a Canadian provincial city where two strings on the grand piano snapped and the soft pedal fell off. The mayor briefed the press afterwards with the words: ‘I’m sure none of us knew quite how bad our piano really was until Mr Ashkenazy played on it’.

But opera is particularly dangerous: aspiring to the sublime, it easily succumbs to the ridiculous.

The level of fantasy is high, so when things go wrong, they do so with a crash, sometimes literally.

Tristan at the Met in March 2008 had a string of misfortunes: Ben Heppner was taken ill and Gary Lehman sang the role, never having even walked through the part. His Isolde was struck down with a stomach bug in the middle of the second act, and then in Act III the platform on which he was lying, mortally wounded, slipped down the stage in the middle of the alte weise.

Tristan crashed head-first into the prompter’s box just as the Shepherd asked Kurwenal what ailed the master.

Everything stopped. Lehman staggered to his feet to the sort of sympathetic applause which greets an injured soccer player. After a while a man in a dinner jacket appeared to say that Tristan had had a glass of water, and would shortly be OK to resume. Into a world in which Tristan is dying of love for Isolde, a love which only death can resolve, steps a little man to say that all can be put right by a glass of water.

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It was at the Met too that Birgit Nilsson once consumed three Tristans in one evening. Ramon Vinay, Karl Liebl, and Albert da Costa all said they were too unwell to sing opposite her. In the end they each sang one act. Asked what was the chief requirement for singing Isolde, Nilsson replied: ‘Comfortable shoes.’

First nights are particularly hazardous, as any virgin bride will tell you. The audience, often there for the occasion rather than the music, doesn’t know what to expect and can be slow to be reverential if the least weakness becomes apparent, particularly in Italy. Rossini said ‘One can’t judge Wagner’s Lohengrin after a first hearing, and I certainly don’t intend to hear it a second time’. Some operatic opening nights have been such disasters that one wonders how there could have been a second time.

Samuel Barber’s Antony & Cleopatra inaugurated the new Metropolitan Opera House on Sept. 16, 1966, and quickly entered theatrical legend as one of the great operatic disasters. The Met’s novel state-of-the-art stage machinery was unreliable. Lighting cues were haphazard. The audience could hear cries of desperation from the backstage crew - ‘Look out for the sphinx!’ ‘This bloody pyramid’s stuck!’ At one point Cleopatra, Leontyne Price, already suffocated by her elaborate costume, became completely trapped inside her monument. The orchestra had been threatening to strike for several months: the general manager, Rudolf Bing, announced a last-minute wage settlement just before the third-act curtain. The critics were scathing and Barber, naturally depressive and reclusive, was thrown into almost terminal despair.

The memory of that Antony & Cleopatra lingered. At the Juilliard performance of the revised version in 1975, a fan asked Leontyne Price what she felt about taking on the role again. ‘Honey,’ she said, ’when I heard the first notes, I broke into a cold sweat.’

The disastrous reception of Carmen in March 1875 may have contributed to Bizet’s death three months later. The public was cold and the critics mostly critical. The problem seems to have been largely with the verismo subject; people objected to such things as women smoking onstage:

...

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and ends long after it has come down -

‘If it were possible to imagine His Satanic Majesty writing an opera, Carmen would be the sort of work he might be expected to turn out. After hearing it, we seem to have been assisting at some unholy rites, weirdly fascinating, but painful. […] The heroine is an abandoned woman, destitute not only of any vestige of morality, but devoid of the ordinary feelings of humanity - soulless, heartless, and fiendish. Indeed, so repulsive was the subject of the opera, that some of the best artists of Paris declined to be involved in the cast.’

London Music Trade Review, 1875 The work fell short on both sides of the Wagnerian debate: some critics complained that Bizet had failed sufficiently to adopt Wagnerian principles, others said he had made the orchestra too important relative to the voices.Even if the music proceeds without a hitch, the production can cause problems. In Perth Opera’s production of Richard Strauss’s Salome in 1978, an old difficulty recurred. Salome is required to kiss the lips of the head of John the Baptist when it is presented to her on the silver platter. This scene often excites powerful feelings in the audience. After the first American performance a doctor wrote to the New York Times to say this was one of the most horrible, disgusting, revolting and unmentionable exhibitions of degeneracy I have ever heard, read or imagined. Beecham had problems at the first British performance in 1910: the Lord Chamberlain insisted that the platter should be covered with a cloth, and that there should be no suggestion of any object underneath. In Perth in 1978 they were allowed the head but it had to be covered with a cloth until the supreme moment. On the first night, all went well until Salome tore off the cloth for the kiss, only to reveal . . . a pile of ham sandwiches. Salome collapsed in giggles and the curtain had to come down immediately.

Objects under cloths need careful supervision. The people of Paterson, New Jersey, have happy memories of a performance of Gianni Schicchi where the singers had called in a friend to play the body of the dead Buoso Donati, Povero Buoso. The friend was told that all he needed to do was stay still under a sheet until the body was moved to an adjacent room. However, at the moment where the will is read, the relatives become furious, and throw various objects round the room, and onto the bed and the ‘body’ of Buoso. On the first night a metal bowl landed in the

Maria Callas

worst imaginable spot and the ‘body’ suddenly cried out in pain and leapt into a sitting position. For subsequent performances the ‘body’ wore an abdominal protector.

At first sight Tosca is an easy opera to produce, as long as the stage crew haven’t fallen out with Tosca and substituted a trampoline for the soft mattress for her leap from the battlements, as is said to have happened at City Center, New York, in 1960, leaving her bouncing long into the night.

It has only three principals, Tosca, Cavaradossi and Scarpia, a first act chorus, a second act choir, off stage – that’s an advantage, and a third-act execution squad. But it’s when your guard is lowered that trouble can start. In 1961 at the San Francisco Opera, the firing squad consisted of enthusiastic local college boys, completely unfamiliar with the story. They couldn’t attend the dress rehearsal because of illness, so the first night was their baptism. The producer had made their role clear enough: ‘OK boys. When you’re cued, slow-march on, wait till the officer lowers his sword, then shoot. Then exit with the principals.’ Things went well at first - they slow-marched on in good order, but trouble started when they found on the stage not one person but two, a man and a woman, both looking extremely alarmed.

Tosca and Cavaradossi gesticulated furiously, and the leader of the boys came to an important decision: the opera was called Tosca, so they shot the soprano. Cavaradossi, to their surprise, fell dead to the ground, and Tosca threw herself over the battlements. Exit with the principals, they’d been told. One principal was dead on the ground; they clearly couldn’t follow him, so the whole squad leapt over the battlements after Tosca. The theatre in our time has known few such moments.

The actual première of Tosca in January 1900 was relatively, though not completely, trouble-free. The opera being set in Rome, Rome was chosen for the première. Some of the singers had received anonymous letters before the performance; anarchists were active, threatening violence.

There was talk of bombs. The threats were taken seriously because a bomb had actually been thrown backstage six years earlier during a performance of Verdi’s Otello in Pisa.

Queen Margherita was due to attend the Tosca, and the royal family was unpopular. Much unrest had been caused by the military defeat in Ethiopia, a worsening economy,

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and the government’s imposition of martial law. The anarchists disliked King Umberto’s extravagant lifestyle and had already tried to assassinate him, and were to succeed in doing so seven months later. The conductor had been instructed to play the National Anthem immediately should a bomb be thrown. The atmosphere was understandably tense and the first act was stopped by shouting. The disruption, it turned out, was caused only by a group of revellers whose late arrival had irritated everyone else. The opera ran its course undisturbed after this.

The première of Butterfly in Milan on February 17, 1904, on the other hand, was a complete disaster, and would remain a bitter experience for Puccini. Ricordi described it in the March edition of Musice e Musicisti: ‘Growls, shouts, groans, laughter, giggling, the usual single cries of bis, designed to excite the public still more; that sums up the reception which the public of La Scala accorded the new work by Maestro Giacomo Puccini . . . The spectacle given in the auditorium seemed as well organized as that on the stage since it began precisely with the beginning of the opera.’

While the poor reception of Butterfly was caused by Puccini’s enemies and had been organised before the performance, the reception of Rossini’s Barber at its premiere at the Argentina Theatre, at Rome, in February 1816, was a spontaneous reaction to events on stage. A string on Almaviva’s guitar snapped, Basilio tripped and fell when he made his first entrance, and then a cat got onto the stage in the complicated Act I finale. Chased first

by Figaro, then by Bartolo, and finally by Basilio, it sought refuge, to the audience’s delight, under Rosina’s skirts.

Rossini was better at seeing the funny side of all this than most composers would have been.

Capriccio received its première at the Nationaltheater Munich on October 28, 1942. The warmth and tenderness of the music belie the circumstances in which the opera was written. Indeed nothing about it suggests the turbulent times. Strauss’s daughter-in-law, Alice, was Jewish. She lost 26 of her relatives to the death camps.

The opera was well received, and the run continued until allied bombing destroyed the Munich Staatstheater on

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October 3, 1943. On hearing the news, Strauss sat down immediately to compose Metamorphosen as a lament for the loss of the theatre.

The Love for Three Oranges was written for Chicago and Ben Hecht, the famous Hollywood screenwriter, leaves us a vivid idea of the dress rehearsal. He writes as though he hasn’t listened to much music after Brahms: ‘Music like this has never come from the orchestra pit of the Auditorium.

Strange combinations of sounds that seem to come from street pianos, New Year’s eve horns, harmonicas and oldfashioned musical beer steins that play when you lift them up.

Mr. Prokofieff waves his shirt-sleeved arms and the sounds increase. There is nothing difficult about this music - that is, unless you are unfortunate enough to be a music critic. But to the untutored ear there is a charming capriciousness about the sounds from the orchestra. Cadenzas pirouette in the treble.

Largos toboggan in the bass. It sounds like the picture of a crazy Christmas tree drawn by a happy child. Which is a most peculiar way for music to sound.’

The Chicago critics were harsh, and sound strangely oldfashioned: ‘it left many of our best people dazed and wondering’.

They had been expecting the approachable, lyrical Prokofiev of the Classical Symphony and were puzzled by what struck them as a modernistic and dissonant work, and this cemented their view of Prokofiev as a Bolshevik barbarian. ’Russian jazz with Bolshevik trimmings’, they called it. ’The work is intended, one learns, to poke fun. As far as I am able to discern it pokes fun chiefly at those who paid money for it.’

The New York critics don’t seem to have liked the music much better. The review in The Musical Courier, 23 February 1922, was damningly non-committal: ‘While perhaps the music did not add anything in particular to the evening, it certainly did not distract from it.’

Prokofiev kept faith with the work, however, as can be seen in a letter he wrote in 1932 to the director of the Paris Opéra who was trying to wriggle out of a promise to put it on. ‘[…] By criticising some of my characters and certain allusions, you refuse to acknowledge the true novelty and merit of the subject. Indeed there are no new subjects: Carlo Gozzi himself declared that he had counted all the situations possible

The Opera Box 1927 Sir Oswald Birley (1880 - 1952)

on a stage and that there are only 67; he swore that any other situation would have to enter one of these categories. Therefore there are no new subjects, only new ways to treat them. Well, my novelty resides in the cinematographic tempo in which everything takes place on the stage; every minute something is happening, and that is precisely what brought success to Love for Three Oranges.’

I don’t know how many of Gozzi’s 67 possible situations are employed in La Traviata, but nothing could have prevented disaster at the premiere on March 6, 1853, at the Teatro La Fenice, Venice, granted that the Violetta was Fanny SalviniDonatelli. Verdi had asked for a slim voluptuous soprano, but Salvini-Donatelli was 38, obviously in robust good health, and of a comfortable, substantial girth. The idea that this enormous woman was suffering from consumption was an imaginative leap too far for a Venetian audience. A funny idea can easily take hold of an audience, particularly in Italy. While the first mention of her illness caused titters, the doctor’s announcement that she had only a few hours to live provoked unrestrained mirth. The fact that, at the moment of death, in falling back on the sofa she raised a

dust storm which gave the doctor a coughing fit, shook the house to its foundations. Verdi was distraught and refused to countenance Salvini-Donatelli, by all accounts a fine coloratura singer, for further performances of the role.

Of course some gaffes become eternal endearing parts of the operatic experience, eagerly anticipated and deeply enjoyed by the regular public. Covent Garden had a horse for Boris Godunov which, after munching the scenery, always peed copiously at the same moment in Dmitri’s aria; and a candelabrum which Tosca held over Scarpia’s body, with candles which didn’t go out as, or in the order in which, Tosca blew them.

But only the performers could relish one wonderfully ironic first-night disaster. All seemed fine for William Tell in Hamburg: there was no talk of sore throats, the soloists and chorus were all present and ready, the orchestra was playing the overture divinely, the horses were showing exemplary continence. There was only one problem: the stage manager couldn’t get the curtain up.

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MELODR AMM A IN THREE AC TS Text by Giacosa and Illica after the play by Victorien Sardou First performance Rome, 14 January 1900 Performances at Grange Park on June 3, 5, 11, 13, 18, 23, 27, 30 July 3, 5 Sung in Italian with surtitles by Peter Kreiss

G IAC OM O PU CC IN I

1858 1924

T O SC A A famous opera singer FLOR IA TOSCA Claire Rutter

Supported by Neil & Elizabeth Johnson

A painter MAR IO CAVARADOSS I Peter Auty

Supported by Francis & Nathalie Phillimore

Gianluca Marciano Conductor

Chief of Police SCARPIA Robert Poulton

Supported by William & Kathy Charnley

A SACR ISTAN Henry Waddington

Supported by samantha & nabil chartouni

Lindsay Posner director

Supported by Peter & Annette Dart

A political prisoner ANGELOTTI Timothy Dawkins

Supported by Caroline de Jager

A police agent SPOLETTA Stuart Kale

Peter McKintosh designer

Peter Mumford LIGHTING DESIGN

Supported by Martyn & Amanda Hedley

SC IARRONE Philip Spendley

Supported by John & Jennifer Beechey

A jailer Nicholas Dwyer

Supported by John & Louise Dear

A shepherd boy Christopher Gleed

Nikki Woollaston MOVEMENT

Toby Purser

Supported by Tessa & John Manser

His little brother William Edwards The firing squad Supported by Sir Stuart Rose

ASSISTANT Conductor

ENG LISH CHAMBER ORCHE S TR A

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E

Tosca

ACT 1 The church of Sant’Andrea della Valle Angelotti has escaped from the Castel Sant’Angelo where he has been a political prisoner. He hopes to hide in the Attavanti chapel and his sister, the Marchesa Attavanti, has left the key at the foot of the Madonna and some clothes as a disguise inside the chapel.

The Sacristan arrives and realises that the painter Mario Cavaradossi is not yet back at work and his food is untouched. The Angelus sounds as Cavaradossi arrives.

He admits that the portrait he is painting of Mary Magdalen is inspired both by his lover, the singer Floria Tosca, and the Marchesa Attavanti.

Angelotti comes out of the chapel. Cavaradossi is of a like political persuasion and promises to help him when it gets dark. He gives Angelotti his food.

Tosca thinks Cavaradossi has been talking to a secret lover and begs him to take her to his villa. She looks at the portrait and is incensed that it bears a likeness to the Marchesa Attavanti.

Once Tosca has gone Angelotti comes out from hiding.

There is a cannon shot announcing that Angelotti’s escape has been discovered. Cavaradossi suggests he hide in a disused well in the garden of his villa.

The Sacristan returns with the news - later to be proved false - that the enemy has been defeated at Marengo. To celebrate the victory a Te Deum will be sung and, at the Palazzo Farnese, Floria Tosca will perform.

Scarpia, the brutal Chief of Police, and his agent Spoletta, have tracked Angelotti to the church. They find the food basket and a fan with the Attavanti coat of arms. Scarpia suspects that Cavaradossi has assisted Angelotti to escape.

Tosca returns and Scarpia inflames her jealousy by showing her the fan – suggesting that Cavaradossi is having an affair with Marchesa Attavanti. When Tosca leaves, Scarpia sends Spoletta after her, assuming she

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will lead him to Cavaradossi and, he hopes, Angelotti.

To the accompaniment of the celebratory Te Deum, Scarpia anticipates the execution of Cavaradossi and his possession of Tosca.

FIRST INTERVAL ACT 2 Scarpia’s apartment at the Palazzo Farnese Scarpia sends Tosca a note demanding she visit him.

Spoletta returns. He was unable to find Angelotti but has arrested Cavaradossi. Scarpia questions Cavaradossi but extracts no information. As Tosca arrives, he is taken off to be tortured. Tosca cannot bear his cries of pain and tells Scarpia where Angelotti is hiding. Scarpia stops the torture and the wounded Cavaradossi is brought in.

Tosca assures him that she has given nothing away.

When Scarpia orders Spoletta to go to the well in the garden, Cavaradossi curses Tosca. Sciarrone, a police officer, rushes in with the news that the enemy has triumphed at Marengo after all. Cavaradossi exults and is dragged struggling from the room.

Tosca is left alone with Scarpia. She pleads for mercy and finally promises to give herself to Scarpia in exchange for Cavaradossi’s freedom. Scarpia seems to instruct Spoletta to arrange a mock execution, after which the lovers will be free. He writes out a safe conduct pass for them. Tosca finds a knife and stabs him.

SECOND INTERVAL ACT 3 The Castel Sant’Angelo It is just before dawn; church bells are ringing and a shepherd boy is passing with his flock. Cavaradossi is handed over to the gaoler to whom he offers his ring as a bribe so that he can write a final farewell to Tosca. He is overwhelmed by memories of an evening spent with her.

Tosca arrives with the safe conduct pass and tells him that she has killed Scarpia. She explains the plan: the firing squad will use blanks, he must fall to the ground as

Rom e 1935 Ale xan der Deinek a (1899– 1969)

if dead and remain there until she tells him that everyone has departed.

The firing squad and Spoletta arrive. Cavaradossi refuses to be blindfolded. The soldiers take aim – Cavaradossi falls.

Once the soldiers have gone Tosca rushes from her hiding place. But the execution was real and her lover is dead.

Scarpia’s murder has been discovered. Spoletta and Sciarrone must arrest Tosca. Before they get to her she leaps to her death.

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Rome, June 1800 Sardou’s play Tosca is set in 1800. Susan Nicassio, Professor of History at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, considers the Rome inhabited by the singer, the painter and the chief of police.

I

n June 1800, Rome represented a novel challenge for a diva. If Floria Tosca reigned at the Argentina Theatre she would have been among the first women to appear on the Roman stage in centuries, sharing the applause with the still–popular castrati.

For artists, the city was a magnet. Despite years of war and revolution, Rome’s classical and Renaissance glories continued to attract intense little art colonies from all over the world; Jacques–Louis David, radical pageant– master of the revolution and teacher of that exciting young painter, Cavaradossi, had learned his craft there.

And it was a nightmare for a chief of police. Scarpia would have had his hands full dealing with bread riots, bandit incursions, undisciplined and under–employed foreign troops, to say nothing of the usual murderous street brawls, revolutionary Jacobin conspirators under every bed and the odd proto–Italian patriot stirring up trouble.

Only a few years earlier, papal Rome had been a charming little city, the centre of a world religion and one of the first modern tourist cities. It had more than 700 churches, most rich in artistic, architectural and musical splendours, plus the neglected but highly visible remnants of the greatest empire the world had yet seen.

An economic and political basket case, the state was a theocracy ruled by an elderly elected monarch and governed by committees of churchmen aptly described as vaguely benevolent amateurs. Respect for the moral advantages of poverty gave the poor an annoying attitude of superiority and a dogged determination to work as little as possible.

There were a lot more men than woman (a ratio of 100:85), most of them extremely poor and accustomed to a system of public assistance that provided them with a rough if healthy diet, medical care and a rich variety of entertainment – expensive ballet and opera, cheap puppet shows, free street shows and vendors and a never–ending liturgical drama in the churches, squares and streets. These streets were filthy. Tourists bitterly resented having their classical fantasies assaulted by the

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garlic and dirt of human habitation, and it is certainly true that Rome was dirty even by the undemanding standards of the 18th century.

The beauty of Roman women was legendary, and so was their independence: appalled British and French tourists reported that even unmarried girls had the unnerving habit of looking men straight in the eye. And they were quite capable of taking care of themselves: they were famous for wearing stilettos as hair ornaments, and for knowing how to use them. Tosca could have picked up from them the technique that serves her so well at the end of Act 2.

Rome was a city with an astonishingly high level of interpersonal violence, with two to three murders per day in a population of fewer than 150,000. Most of these were the result of young men knifing one another in the streets over some affair of love or cards, while casualties from the rock–throwing duals in the Forum (then called the Cow Field) regularly filled the hospitals and morgues.

Thievery, on the other hand, was frowned upon – except by bandits, who mostly plied their ancient trade outside the city walls.

And even with all of that, Rome was famous as one of the most stable and pleasant cities in Europe.

Then came the French Revolution and Napoleon, and Rome was transformed into a city in chaos in a world out of joint, a city that by June 1800 had endured a dizzying sequence of invasions and occupations in which new governments succeeded old ones. In February 1798, the papal government of Pius VI had been overthrown by a French invasion. The elderly pope was deported almost immediately to be replaced by a puppet ‘Roman Republic’ headed by a self–serving obstetrician/politician/literary amateur (he edited Dante) named Liborio Angelucci.

Some nine months later, King Ferdinand of Naples marched in, threw out the republicans, and took up residence in the Farnese Palace for a few days until he too was forced to retreat – inspiring one of Pasquino’s best quips: ‘veni, vedi, e fuggi’ (he came, he saw, he fled). The restored Republic wheezed along until its

View of the Quiri nal Hill in Rom e, with

French protectors retreated and it expired yet again in September 1977. There would be no Pope in Rome until 3 July 1800, when the newly elected Pius VII arrived from Venice. In his absence, Rome was ruled by an uneasy coalition of Austrians, Prussians and Neapolitans, supported by Nelson’s fleet and reinforced by a contingent of Russians, and Muslim troops sent by the Ottoman sultan.

It was to this city that the Baron Scarpia (had he existed) would have been sent to restore order. It was not an enviable job, but Scarpia is a corrupt and ruthless man whose special talent is for doing jobs that other men are too delicate to accomplish.

Polished and feared, Scarpia’s social position is nevertheless rather more ambiguous than it might at first seem to be. He is a noble and a courtier, but he is also an outsider, not only in Rome but at home in Sicily as well. In Rome, as in many Old Regime states, the ‘blood–tainted’ professions were viewed with horror.

This was true even for surgeons and barbers; it made police, jailers, and executioners virtually untouchable.

Scarpia, of course, does not get his own hands dirty. He does not even deal directly with the sbirri (pejorative

c.180 0 the Villa Colon na in the Backgroun d, 27) 6-18 (175 as Cass cois Fran Louis

slang for policemen) who do that sort of thing. Rather, as was traditional, he deals with them through Spoletta, his bargello (captain). Spoletto, for his part, shows the usual contempt for his men, referring to them as ‘i miei cagnotti’ (my [big, lousy] dogs).

Floria Tosca, a foundling, an unmarried woman and a performer, has an ambiguous social position as well, but she would have had several reasons for believing herself invulnerable. She is a favourite of the Queen of Naples and a valued citizen of the powerful Austrian Empire (her home, the Republic of Venice, had recently been handed over to Austria by Napoleon). And she is a convent– bred, devout young woman who has long enjoyed the protection of the Church. As a popular idol, her arrest or mistreatment might well cause riots. There were any number of successful women acting independently in the arts and in business in Rome and elsewhere in Italy at the time. But the new revolutionary world order was a determinedly masculine one: soon the Napoleonic Code would classify even professional women as legally incompetent, along with children and imbeciles, able to function only under the guardianship of a responsible male. However, that had not yet occurred, and Tosca would have understood her status in a very different way

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from both her modern–minded, condescending lover and her savagely feudal persecutor.

Tosca assumes that she is under the protection of the Queen, of the law, of the Church, of the people who adore her and of the confident man she has chosen as her lover.

All of this was true on the morning of 17 June, when the opera begins. None of this was true 12 hours later when (in the real world) the news of Bonaparte’s victory at the battle of Marengo hit Rome like a bomb and changed everything. Marengo meant that Italy would be ruled not from Naples or Vienna, but from Paris, or from wherever Napoleon pitched his soon–to–be imperial tent. This would have been both bad news and good news for the Baron Scarpia. The bad news is that he is out of a job in Rome. The good news is that he no longer has to give a fig for the law, the Church, the Queen or the people. As for Tosca’s lover, his friends may soon be in the saddle, but they were never going to be Scarpia’s friends in any case, and Cavaradossi himself will soon be safely dead.

The tenor rejoices at the news from Marengo – but then, he is in no condition to think it through.

Even before the news from the front frees him to do his worst, Scarpia’s attitude towards Tosca is a piquant mixture of the traditional Sicilian (where women were kept in almost Islamic seclusion) and the new, ‘enlightened’ libertine philosophy exemplified by the Marquis de Sade (who would die in the madhouse of Charenton in 1814). De Sade was representative of a certain aspect of Enlightenment thinking, and much literature banned as ‘revolutionary’ and frankly pornographic. This chief of police would have enjoyed furnishing his bedside reading table with books confiscated from the libraries of liberals.

From Scarpia’s point of view, raping the lover of a political subversive is simply one of the fringe benefits of his job. Before Marengo, though he has his hopes, he has had to tread carefully with this particular victim. After news of the lost battle, there is no limit. In the Sardou play, the Baron reveals himself as a sexual sadist: “That you should be mine, with rage and grief, that I should feel your outraged soul struggle, feel your revolted body tremble with passion despite yourself, in forced abandon to my loathsome caresses, to feel all of your flesh enslaved to my flesh! What revenge for your contempt, what vengeance for your insults, what a refinement of voluptuousness, that my pleasure should also be your torture!”

(Victorien Sardou: La Tosca, Act 4 scene 3)

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Scarpia is particularly sadistic when he forces Tosca not only to submit to him, but freely to agree to her own abuse. Clearing her conscience of this conflict, and of the murder to which it drives her, may explain some things in the opera that strike modern audiences as peculiar, if not funny: things like her statement ‘He is dead. Now I forgive him’, and the business with the crucifix and candles.

In fact, both of these make perfect sense in the Italian Catholic culture of 1800, or 1900 for that matter. She has not only killed a man, she has almost certainly damned him. So it is essential that she forgive him, wash her hands, and provide at least a symbolic funeral rite for him.

Tosca, love–child from Verona whose triumphs were in the opera houses of Venice, Milan and Naples; Scarpia, the ruthless Sicilian enforcer of the law; and Cavaradossi, the Paris–born scion of a Roman noble family: not one is really of Rome. None is ‘real’ in the historical sense at all, though they are all of more or less convincing historical precedents. But they do fit neatly into the real city and its real social relationships as they existed on that eventful night of mid–June, 1800. In particular, they fit into the complex interwoven patron–client system, a structure of power and dependence as ancient as the city and as tortuous as its streets.

Within this system, Tosca is a very privileged client of everyone from the Queen and the Pope down, with the exception of servants and of theatrical impresarios, to whom she would have been a tyrant. She thinks that she is safe.

Scarpia is a client and dependent of the Queen of Naples, the vengeful, passionate Maria Carolina, sister of Marie Antoinette and patroness of (the real) Lady Emma Hamilton and (the fictional) Floria Tosca. The Baron Scarpia is at least potentially a powerful patron to everyone else in the opera. He expects no serious trouble, certainly not from a woman like Tosca.

Mario Cavaradossi is a ‘new man’ but one with wealth, aristocratic, intellectual and artistic credentials (his father was, according to Sardou, an exiled Roman noble; his mother a grand–niece of the notorious philosophe, Helvetius). His contemptuous attitude towards Scarpia and his affectionately patronising relationship with Tosca both ring true, and both are serious mistakes.

Each of the characters miscalculates his or her social position. And all three pay for it with their lives.

Great sorrow into little souls Julian Budden, author of the three-volume The operas of Verdi (rev 1992), describes some the deft adjustments made by Puccini to Sardou's play.

S

oon after the premiere of Edgar in 1889, Puccini wrote to his publisher Giulio Ricordi that he was keen to start work again: ‘I’m thinking of Tosca.

I do beg you to try and make the necessary arrangements to get Sardou’s permission, before I drop the idea, which would sadden me very much because I see in this Tosca the opera that is just right for me — not too long, not requiring much decorative spectacle and not the kind that calls for the usual excess of music’. If the final phrase may seem somewhat paradoxical (how could an opera plot call for an ‘excess’ of music?) the reason for it lies in the operatic conditions of the time.

For the past 20 years Italian opera had been locked in a vice of grandeur in the Meyerbeerian manner. Four or five acts were the norm, with slow-moving action padded out with vast choral tableaux and a ballet. Yet during that time Italy had produced only two worthy specimens of the genre: Verdi’s Aida (1871) and Ponchielli’s La Gioconda (1876, revised 1880). The rest, as one critic put it, usually drove out of the theatre in the second act everyone who had not fallen asleep during the first.

Puccini’s generation aimed at a swifter, less pretentious type of opera in which words and sentiments were repeated no more often than is the case with a spoken play, while the interest would remain firmly centred on the principal characters rather than their historical surroundings. It was left to Mascagni to inaugurate the new vogue with his one-act Cavalleria rusticana (1890).

For various reasons Puccini’s thoughts temporarily turned to other plots and it was not until five years later, with Manon Lescaut behind him and La bohème almost completed, that he returned to Sardou’s play, on which Luigi Illica had already sketched out a libretto for the composer Franchetti. Giacosa, however, who would be Illica’s partner in this as in La bohème, disapproved of the project from the start. Puccini, he felt, was moving too far in the direction of naturalistic drama; the plot offered too few opportunities for lyrical expansion; it was all action and contrivance. The leading role might offer scope for an exceptional actress of the spoken theatre; it would never do for an operatic artist.

Giacosa’s point of view was understandable. Sardou’s drama, written for Sarah Bernhardt and first given in Paris in 1887, is a typical example of the ‘well-made play’ in the tradition of Scribe’s Adrienne Lecouvreur. The plot is designed with the precision of clockwork; psychology goes for nothing; everything lies in the effective stage moment. There are no ‘arias’, as in Victor Hugo; the dialogue flickers along imparting a wealth of factual detail with scarcely a pause for reflection

What Giacosa underestimated was Puccini’s sureness in picking his way through a labyrinthine plot and reducing it to his own terms — for if he relied on his librettists to make suggestions he never failed to shape the final result himself. As in all operatic adaptations most of the subsidiary characters are eliminated, among them the Queen of Naples, the fat, good-natured but undignified Marchese Attavanti, his wife’s cicisbeo Trivulzio and Cavaradossi’s servant boy Gennarino: while we do not even hear of the prime mover in the hunt for Angelotti — Emma, Lady Hamilton, wife of the British ambassador to the Neapolitan court and mistress of Admiral Lord Nelson. The play’s political overtones were heavily muted, not for reasons of censorship, which no longer applied, but simply because politics meant nothing to Puccini; his concern was, as he would later tell D’Annunzio, with ‘great sorrow in little souls’.

Illica’s original libretto for Franchetti had contained in the last act a hymn to love and art which we are told had won the admiration of the aged Verdi. Puccini, however, threw it out, partly, no doubt, because it would have recalled too closely the final scene of Giordano’s Andrea Chenier (1896), whose libretto, also by Illica, ends on a similar note of uplift, but principally because he took a different view of the denouement. Not for him a belief in a glory beyond the grave. To Puccini, death was the end of everything.

It is in Tosca above all that Puccini shows evidence of having learnt the Wagnerian lesson. More than a decade after his death in 1883 the Master of Bayreuth was still the most talked-of composer in Europe and nowhere more so than in Italy. In 1894 Luigi Torchi published the first Italian translation of Oper und Drama

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in which the basic principles of Wagnerian music drama are set forth. Ever since 1888, when Giuseppe Marcucci had conducted Tristan & Isolde in Bologna, Italians had been able to come to terms with Wagner’s mature style. The older generation of composers were for the most part bewildered by it, though Verdi would eventually be moved to admiration. But to Puccini and his contemporaries it was all intoxicatingly new and exciting. Some of them - Franchetti, Mancinelli, Smareglia, even Cilea - experimented with the technique of the leitmotif; yet their manner of harnessing themes to particular concepts or personalities remains curiously untheatrical, partly because the themes themselves are insufficiently striking. It was left to Puccini in Tosca to exploit the motif in Wagner’s way as an aid to telling the story, and to add to the characters a psychological dimension which is wholly absent from the play.

But the most remarkable transformation that occurs in the opera is that of Tosca herself. It was not the first time that Puccini had changed a leading character almost out of recognition, nor would it be the last.

In Madama Butterfly (1904) he would confer tragic stature on a touching, if somewhat ridiculous ingenue who throughout the play expresses herself in broken English and whose dying words are ‘Too bad those robins didn’t nes’ again!’ In La bohème (1896) he based his heroine less on Murger’s Mimi, who in the novel, as later in Leoncavallo’s opera on the same subject, is drawn realistically as a vulgar, selfish grisette, than on Francine, the one female character to be conceived in terms of pure, sentimental idealism (in the novel it is she, not Mimi, who dies of consumption; Mimi’s death is apparently from malnutrition).

Sardou’s Tosca, for all the opportunities that the role affords to a great actress, is essentially a figure of comedy. The daughter of a goatherd she has been brought up by the Benedictine nuns of Verona. One day Cimarosa heard her sing in church; with much difficulty he obtained papal permission to allow her to perform in one of his operas and henceforward to devote herself to the stage. So began her triumphal progress through all the major theatres of the Italian peninsula. All this

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Cavaradossi recounts to Angelotti, adding that Tosca is one of those who can guess things still unrevealed.

Yet if there is one quality which emerges from her first dialogue with Cavaradossi it is her utter stupidity. Her father confessor, it appears, is ready to condone her sinful liaison with a notorious Jacobin provided she succeeds in converting him to the true faith. But when she produced the copy of Rousseau’s La nouvelle Heloise that her lover had given her, the priest had admonished her solemnly ‘Burn this book, my child, or it will burn you!’ And did Tosca burn the book, Cavaradossi wants to know? Evidently not; she had even read it; ‘and it didn’t burn me at all’, she declares happily, ‘not at all!’

In the torture scene, which in the play takes place at Cavaradossi’s villa, she betrays the painter’s complicity in Angelotti’s escape without even meaning to do so. By the final curtain the audience is left in no doubt that, if Tosca possesses a heart of gold and the courage of a lion, she has the brain of a goose.

Puccini’s Tosca is far otherwise. She is presented from the outset as an intelligent woman of the theatre. She has no difficulty in keeping her religion and her love-life in separate mental compartments; she has no need to try to rationalize them as does her counterpart in the play, with ludicrous results. While Sardou’s heroine is in a state either of total trust or total jealousy, Puccini’s soon allows her suspicions to be allayed though not finally removed — she has too much knowledge of the world for that. Consider this exchange.

Tosca: Non sei contento? (Are you not pleased?).

Cavaradossi absentmindedly: Tanto! (So much!)

Tosca: Tornalo a dir! (Say it again!)

Cavaradossi: Tanto! (So much!)

Tosca: Lo dici male... Lo dici male. (You say it badly.)

These are the words of an actress reproaching a colleague for giving a poor performance.

Again, when she tells the painter to make the eyes of his Mary Magdalen black, like her own, not blue like those of the Marchesa Attavanti, her words are marked

Marquesa de la Solana, c.1794 Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes ( 1746 – 1828)

maliziosamente (mischievously). Sardou’s Tosca, by contrast, makes her plea in all seriousness (‘it makes no difference to you, does it?’); her only moments of humour are unconscious. Even when goaded by Scarpia’s insinuations regarding the fan, Puccini’s heroine never loses her poise. Her reaction is one of immense sorrow rather than unbridled fury. Then observe how she takes charge in the final act, after having quashed the painter’s suspicions with a brisk snatch of repartee: Cavaradossi: Scarpia che cede? La prima sua grazia e questa... (Scarpia show mercy? Surely his first concession...) guardando Tosca con intenzione (looking at Tosca meaningfully) Tosca: E l’ultima (And his last) Her overriding concern is that Cavaradossi should fall naturally and without hurting himself: Ma stammi attento — di non farti male! Con scenica scienza, lo saprei la movenza. (but pay attention — take care not to hurt yourself! With my knowledge of the stage, I should know the right movements.)

Once again it is the professional actress speaking with authority. It says much for Puccini’s skill as a dramatic composer that he could build up a character in this way

while at the same time doing full justice to her vulnerable side. And how wise he was not to heed Ricordi’s insistence that he should include at this point an extended love duet ‘which should be the true, luminous centre of the act’! As he pointed out, Tosca is far too worried about Cavaradossi’s ability to simulate death to lose herself for long in a dream of future bliss. As always, Puccini knew far better than those who presumed to advise him.

Search any bookshop in Paris or London for Sardou’s play, and you will be lucky to find an assistant who has even heard his name. Puccini’s opera is alive and well and living in every opera house in the world.

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We who live in prison, and in whose lives there is no event, have to measure time by throbs of pain, and the record of bitter moments - Oscar Wilde Pimlico Opera, the sister company of Grange Park Opera, has worked in prisons for 20 years.

Fortunately our experiences are less colourful than Michael Fontes’ account of gruesome existence in Italian prisons of old.

W

e all know that a policeman’s lot is not a nappy one, but have you considered the lot of a political prisoner? In Act 2 of Tosca, when Mario’s cries interrupt the music, do you sit back and admire the singing, or do you travel to the dungeons of the Castel Sant’Angelo and wonder what disgusting torture is being tried on the tenor?

All the signs are that Italian prisons are no more comfortable than English ones. In 2007, 300 Italian murderers serving life sentences signed a letter asking to be put to death rather than stay there any longer. Their existence had become boring and monotonous, they explained. In the letter, Carmelo Musumeci, a former Mafia chieftain, convicted in 1990 of murder, said he was tired of dying a little bit every day: ‘we want to die just once, and we are asking that our life sentence be changed to a death sentence’. Some penologists, arguing against the reintroduction of the death penalty, say that only criminals of unusually refined, sensitive, and reflective natures would prefer death to imprisonment for life, so we shouldn’t wonder that during his 17 years in prison Musumeci has taken and passed all his school exams, and even earned a degree in law. Capital punishment was abolished in Italy in 1946, so there was no possibility of his request being granted, and that may have made it easier to make; but the issue evokes Josephus’s story of the 1,000 Jewish Sicarii of Masada, who chose to kill themselves, their wives, and their children, rather than face enslavement by the Romans.

The Castel Sant’Angelo, the vast cylindrical building dominating the Tiber and much of the action of the later part of Tosca, was built in the 2nd century AD as a mausoleum for the Emperor Hadrian. It was later fortified and converted into a castle and prison.

Executions took place in the central courtyard and the heads of the victims were displayed on the Ponte Sant’Angelo, the bridge across the Tiber, linking the fortress to the city. This bridge is now decorated more demurely with Bernini’s exquisite marble angels.

The Papacy acquired the castle in the 13th century and Pope Nicholas III connected it to the Vatican by a

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fortified 800-metre-long tunnel known as the Passetto di Borgo. Several popes, fearful for their lives, have escaped to the castle by this route. Liborio Angelucci, the original of Angelotti in the opera, was not ever in the Castel Sant’Angelo, but Sardou does show some respect for detail: there actually is a hiding place in one of the chapels in Sant’Andrea della Valle. The first chapel on the left, the Barberini chapel, conceals in its street wall a shallow chamber separated from the main body of the chapel by an ironwork grill.

The Castel Sant’Angelo may not have been designed as a prison, but it has harboured some famous prisoners.

Benvenuto Cellini was kept there, as was Count Cagliostro, the famous 18th century alchemist, forger, and confidence trickster, who also did time in the Bastille.

Benvenuto Cellini’s entertaining autobiography excites wonder and disbelief even in the most credulous, and has inspired two works of musical theatre: Berlioz’s opera, Benvenuto Cellini, and a Broadway musical, The Firebrand of Florence, by Ira Gershwin and Kurt Weill.

Benvenuto says he had a great deal of freedom in the Castel Sant’Angelo, and was on good terms with many of the guards, several of whom were Florentines.

In 1526, ten years before his incarceration, he had acted as a bombadiere for his patron Clement VII during the sack of Rome by Imperial troops, and this may have made him popular with his jailors. He had fired his guns from the ramparts of the castle itself, and he boasts in detail of his feats: ‘. . . a little before vespers I noticed someone coming along the margin of the trench on muleback. The mule was trotting very quickly, and the man was talking to the soldiers in the trenches. I took the precaution of discharging my gun just before he came immediately opposite; and so, making a good calculation, I hit my mark. One of the fragments struck him in the face; the rest were scattered on the mule, which fell dead. A tremendous uproar rose up from the trench; I opened fire with my other piece, doing them great hurt. The man turned out to be the Prince of Orange. . .’

He was imprisoned under the next Pope, Paul III, on a charge of purloining some of Clement’s jewels. He was, by his own account, no angel: he admits to several murders; he was accused three times of homosexual sodomy with apprentices, and forced to pay fines. One French girl in Paris reproached him with using her ‘after the Italian fashion’, as though she should have expected any other. However the charge on which he was finally imprisoned was probably false, and he defended himself by inviting his accusers to look in the Pope’s coffers: they would find nothing missing.

Benvenuto was even able to continue his trade of goldsmith during his incarceration, and the materials were to come in handy. He was initially constrained from escaping by the fact that he had promised the castellan, Giorgio Ugolini, another Florentine, that he would not make any attempt to get out. Benvenuto listened to the confidences of this castellan, who suffered occasionally from delusions - he thought he had been bodily transformed into strange things, once into an olive jar and another time into a frog. He told Benvenuto that he was convinced he was turning into a bat, and could fly.

He may have been under treatment by his doctor for sleeplessness. 16th century Italian doctors prescribed dangerous things like poppy, mandrake (Cleopatra’s mandragora), henbane, aconite, and nightshade, for insomnia. Witches were said to apply similar potions to give themselves an impression of flight, though they added soot and dreadful things, like boiled children’s fat, besides. ‘Before the witches set off they anointed themselves with a very evil-smelling fluid of a greenish-black colour. They rubbed it on their hands, temples, face, breasts, genitals, and the soles of their feet… Sometimes they got out through cracks in the doors, windows or chimneys and flew through the air to the assembly. At other times they walked’. Ugolini didn’t mention drinking any such brew, or rubbing anything on any part of himself in this way, but his symptoms suggest he was taking something.

Benvenuto, however, who may, during his stay in France, have seen Leonardo’s plans for a flying machine, took the castellan seriously, and unwisely told Ugolini that flying

was entirely possible, and that he could do it himself.

As a result Ugolini decided to keep him in more severe confinement. Feeling that such an abuse of a friendly confidence released him from his promise, Benvenuto, Houdini-like, told the guards to keep a close eye on him; he was going to escape. He gradually dismantled his cell door, using his skill as a goldsmith to preserve its outward appearance. After breaking out of his cell, he let himself down the castle wall by the traditional rope made from knotted sheets, only to fall and break a leg climbing the final perimeter wall. Taking refuge in a nearby house, Benvenuto was visited by ‘all the nobility of Rome’.

He was immediately recaptured, and, after a few weeks in the terrifying Torre di Nona, from which very few prisoners escaped alive, he went back to the Castel Sant’Angelo, but this time to a much less comfortable cell: ‘So I was taken into a gloomy dungeon below the level of a garden, which swam with water, and was full of big spiders and many venomous worms. They flung me a wretched mattress of coarse hemp, gave me no supper, and locked four doors upon me.’

He had to endure fits of religious mania brought on by his confinement, as well as attempts to poison him with ground diamonds, before he was finally released, on Christmas Eve 1539: Cardinal d’Este of Ferrara, catching the Pope on his way to vomit the great quantities of wine he had drunk, managed the importunate moment to perfection, and Benvenuto was released at four in the morning. In his gratitude Benvenuto made a magnificent silver cup for the Cardinal.

Another prisoner in the Castel Sant’Angelo, Count Calgiostro, could claim to be as great a liar as Benvenuto; he made a profession of it. He was a forger, a mountebank, a charlatan and a swindler – all on a grand scale.

He told people he was the orphan son of the Prince and Princess of the Anatolian Christian Kingdom of Trebizond, and that he had been brought up by the Grand Master of the Knights of Malta. He usually added that, for several years, he had lived in the household of the Sheriff of Medina, who had raised him as a Christian.

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He travelled all over Europe, usually one step ahead of the police, preaching his own brand of Egyptian Freemasonry and presenting himself as an alchemist, magician, and healer. He must have been hugely charismatic, to those he wasn’t robbing, for he attracted crowds of devoted followers, many of whom claimed to have been healed by his potions. He often gave his services for nothing, and even distributed alms to the poor at his large public gatherings.

Spence’s Encyclopaedia of the Occult will tell you that Count Cagliostro is ‘one of the greatest occult figures of all time’. The list of famous people influenced by him reveals his wide acquaintance. Catherine the Great of Russia thought little of his attempt to convert her to Freemasonry, and had him chased from the country.

Goethe studied him as the original for Faust. Some think that Mozart and Shikenader based Sarastro on him.

William Blake was attracted by his mix of mysticism and wider forms of nonsense. Benjamin Franklin, when he was in Paris, was recommended him as a physician, and may have attended his Lodge. Suspicions about his possible involvement in the Affair of the Diamond Necklace caused him to be imprisoned in the Bastille; his skill as a forger was famous, and he may have been required for the forging of the Marie Antoinette’s letters.

While being questioned, Cagliostro remarked that he could think of no misdeed to account for his arrest, unless it was the assassination of Pompey the Great (in 48 BC!), for which he asked remission because it had been committed on the orders of the Pharaoh. The inquisitor replied that he would refrain from investigating crimes committed under his predecessors in office.

The Pope commuted Cagliostro’s sentence to perpetual imprisonment in the Castel Sant’Angelo. Here his supernatural powers deserted him. He made one desperate attempt to escape: he asked for a confessor and tried to strangle the brother sent to him. He had hoped to escape disguised in the monk’s habit, but the burly priest defended himself with vigour.

Caglisotro was then taken to the Castle of San Leo near Montefeltro. An official commissioned by Napoleon to visit Italian prisons gave an account of Cagliostro’s quarters there: ‘The galleries, which have been cut out of the solid rock, were divided into cells, and old dried-up cisterns had been converted into dungeons for the worst criminals, and further surrounded by high walls, so that the only possible egress, if escape was attempted, would be by a staircase cut in the rock and guarded night and day by sentinels.’

He was actually a Sicilian street thug called Giuseppe Balsamo, and as a child lived in a hovel in Palermo.

Caliostro’s only communication with mankind was when his jailers raised the trap to let food down to him. Here he languished for three years without air, movement, or intercourse with his fellow creatures. During the last months of his life his condition excited the pity of the governor, who had him removed from this dungeon to a cell on the level with the ground, where the curious, who obtain permission to visit the prison, may read on the walls various inscriptions and sentences traced there by the unhappy alchemist. The last bears the date of the 6th of March 1795.

His wife, Seraphina, finally became wearied by the travelling and the trouble, and betrayed him to the Italian Inquisition. The inquisitors, shocked by his Freemasonry and his claims to supernatural powers, sentenced him to death at his trial in 1791, but not before they had heard a great deal of his characteristic garbage.

Casanova talks in his memoirs of meeting Cagliostro in Aix-en-Provence, and of the Sicilian’s amazing powers as a forger. Casanova couldn’t believe that the forgery of one of his own letters, in French, was a fake, until Cagliostro showed him the real letter, in a language foreign to Cagliostro, and given him only the day before.

Trials brought the best out of him and it was at the Paris trial that he gave this fanciful account of his upbringing: ‘I spent the years of my childhood in the city of Medina in Arabia.

There I was brought up under the name of Acharat, which I preserved during my progress through Africa and Asia. I had my apartments in the palace of the Muphti Salahaym. It is needless to add that the Muphti is the chief of the Mahometan religion, and that his constant residence is at Medina.’

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A square in Rome 1935 Alexander Deineka (1899–1969)

Casanova’s meeting with Cagliostro at Aix was in 1770.

15 years early he had himself been imprisoned in the Piombi prison in the Doge’s Palace in Venice, on a charge of public outrages against the holy religion. Quite a few modern public figures could be reproached with that.

Casanova’s account of his prison is gruesome: ‘Besides the Piombi (the Leads, so called because under the leads of the roof and therefore insufferably hot in summer), and Il Quatro (the Fours), the State Inquisitors also possess certain horrible subterranean cells beneath the ducal palace, where are sent men whom they do not wish to put to death, though they be thought worthy of it.

These subterranean prisons are precisely like tombs, but they call them Pozzi, (Wells) because they always contain two feet of water, which penetrates from the sea by the same grating by which light is given, this grating being only a square foot in size. If the unfortunates condemned to live in these sewers do not wish to take a bath of filthy water, they have to remain all day seated on a trestle, which serves them

both for bed and cupboard. In the morning they are given a pitcher of water, some thin soup, and a ration of army bread which they have to eat immediately, or it becomes the prey of the enormous rats which swim in those dreadful abodes. Usually the wretches condemned to The Pozzi are imprisoned there for life, and there have been prisoners who have attained a great age. A villain who died whilst I was under the Leads had passed 37 years in The Pozzi, and he was 44 when sentenced. Knowing that he deserved death, he may have taken his imprisonment as a favour, for there are men who fear nought save death. His name was Beguelin.’

No wonder prisoners sighed when they crossed the bridge.

Casanova famously escaped from the Piombi, and when he returned to Venice after his pardon, the inquisitors were keen to find out how he had done so.

It’s surprising that the Inquisition had continued to allow its prisoners sheets.

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C A P R I C C I O is generously sponsored by a syndicate led by

The Boltini Trust

and eleven pipers piping David & Amanda Leathers Christopher & Anne Saul Nic Bentley Mr & Mrs W Friedrich David & Elizabeth Challen Jane & Paul Chase-Gardener Paul & Rita Skinner Lady Shauna Gosling Michael Cuthbert

and two pipers who are anonymous

SE RVAN TS s Ga reth M or rira h Floyd Sa & m To by Supported De ry k Ha m on Ph ili p Spen dley Fe lipe O livei ra Ed ward Lee Thom as Co ltm an Ad am Torr an ce M at thew Ki m ble M US IC IA NS ws viol in Ca th y M at he ce llo Nico la Hein rich ce m ba lo David Ha ll

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A CO N VE RSAT I O N PI EC E Text by Clemens Krauss & Richard Strauss based on an idea by Stefan Zweig First performance Munich, 28 October 1942 Performances at Grange Park on June 4, 12, 17, 20, 22, 25 July 2 Sung in German with surtitles by Jonathan Burton English dialogue by Vikram Seth

Capriccio R I C H A RD S TR AU S S

Stephen Barlow

COUNTESS MADELE INE Susan Gritton

Supported by Victoria & Richard Sharp

Conductor

her brother THE COUNT Quirijn de Lang

Supported by stephen gosztony & sue BUTCHER

Supported by Jane Cadbury

Stephen Medcalf

a poet OL IVIER Roderick Williams

Supported by an anonymous donor

DIRECTOR

a composer FLA MAND Andrew Kennedy

Francis O'Connor

Supported by Mr & Mrs Richard Morse

an actress CLA IRON Sara Fulgoni

designer

Peter Mumford

Supported by Geoffrey de Jager

prompter MONS IEUR TAUPE Stuart Kale

Supported by Anthony Boswood

LIGHTING DESIGN

Sarah Fahie choreographer

1864 1949

a theatre director LA ROCHE Matthew Best

Supported by Clare Taylor & Roger Gifford

Gio Compario ITAL IAN TENOR Wynne Evans

Gerhard Gall

Supported by John & Carol Wates

ITAL IAN SOPRANO Sally Johnson

Supported by Timothy & Christina Benn

LANGUAGE COACH Supported by cameron & heike munro

MAJOR DO MO Timothy Dawkins

Supported by Caroline de Jager

A DANCER Bryony Perkins Supported by Raymond & Elizabeth Henley

english chamber orchestra

The closing 50 bars are sponsored by John & Carol Wates

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Capriccio

✷

A group of artists has come together to rehearse an entertainment to be presented to the Countess on her birthday the following day. Strauss’ final opera, completed in 1942, is a work of the most daring contrast to the mounting brutality and the risible hopelessness of so many individuals lives.

Flamand, a composer, and Olivier, a poet, are listening to a rehearsal of Flamand’s latest composition. La Roche, a theatre director, is asleep.

Flamand and Olivier are both in love with the Countess and they engage in friendly banter. Which is more important – words or music? La Roche remarks that music sends him to sleep. He thinks it is a director who breathes life into words and music and without him they are hollow. He likes good tunes, sumptuous decor, thrilling top notes. However the public need to see real people on the stage – not characters from bygone ages in distant lands. He is a practical man and will present any kind of entertainment so long as it is top-quality — even vaudeville.

Olivier accuses him of catering for baser instincts. La Roche points out that Olivier’s base instincts are for an actress Clairon. She is coming round later. Olivier says his feelings for her are over. They all go off to rehearse.

The Count and his sister the Countess couldn’t be more different when it comes to affairs of the heart.

The Count likes brief encounters – his roving eye has recently alighted upon Clairon – but the Countess wants lasting love. But she cannot decide between Olivier and Flamand. .

Clairon arrives and with the Count reads the new scene of Olivier’s play which ends in a passionate sonnet. La Roche leads them into the theatre, but will not allow the author to go with them.

fell in love with her and begs her to make her choice. She tells him to be in the library at 11 o’clock the following morning. The Countess orders refreshments for everyone.

Interval The Count and Countess discuss the progress of their love affairs. He is in ecstasy over Clairon. She confesses that her indecision has been increased by the sonnet.

Who knows, perhaps the situation might bring forth an opera!

La Roche introduces a dancer. Olivier tries to make peace with Clairon but is snubbed. The dance sparks off a further round in the controversy. La Roche declares that it is theatre which holds a mirror to reality – both composer and writer are but servants. But opera, say the Count, Clairon and Olivier, is absurd and boring.

La Roche prophesies the death of Italian bel canto singing in the face of loud orchestras and introduces his Italian singers. The Count will escort Clairon home.

La Roche describes his birthday offering: first an allegory, The Birth of Pallas Athene, and then The Fall of Carthage, which will mainly consist of spectacular effects. There is a quarrel.

La Roche finally gets a chance to speak, appealing for drama of real human beings. Artists like Olivier and Flamand should create masterpieces that speak to the heart and mirror the souls of living people. The Countess commands poet and composer to co-operate.

Olivier has really written the sonnet for the Countess.

Flamand rushes off to set it to music and Olivier declares his love for the Countess. Flamand returns and sings the sonnet. Whose sonnet is it now? The Countess resolves the question: it is hers and its words and music are inseparable.

The Count’s heart sinks. She has commissioned an opera.

Yet it is he who suggests they should write one about the events of that very afternoon, with themselves as the characters. The idea is seized on with amazement and delight by everyone. The company breaks up.

Olivier needs to make some cuts and now it is Flamand’s turn to pour out his heart. He describes the moment he

The servants tidy up and discuss the events of the afternoon. The Major-Domo gives them the evening off.

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Monsieur Taupe, the prompter, has woken up. Like La Roche, he believes the theatre cannot function without him. Now he has been left behind by the others.

Imagine a great city like Munich in total darkness and theatregoers picking their way through the blacked–out streets with the aid of small torches giving off a dim blue light through a narrow slit.

All this for the experience of the Capriccio première. They risked being caught in an air raid yet their desire to be part of a festive occasion and to experience a world of beauty led them to overcome all these material problems.

Outside the blackened city waited, and one's way homeward was fraught with danger’ Producer Rudolf Hartmann

The Countess enters and the Major-Domo has two messages for her: her brother will not be dining and Olivier will visit her in the library at 11 o’clock the following morning to ask how the opera ends. The Countess exclaims that as a result of the sonnet, poet and composer are fated to be inseparable.

She sings the sonnet. Both men love her. But to choose one would be to lose the other, and this would surely damage the exquisite balance of their relationship.

She consults her image in the mirror. She cannot choose so how can the opera end?

The Major-Domo provides the answer —

Dinner is served

Harpers Bazaar June 1938 Hungarian costume designer, Marcel Vertès (1895–1961) moved to the USA in the early 1940s and in 1952 won two Academy Awards (Best Art Direction and Best Costume Design) for his work on the 1952 film Moulin Rouge.

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RICHARD STRAUSS 1864 – 1949 The wunderkind Strauss at 30 was appointed Munich Kapellmeister and conducted the Berlin Philharmonic for a season.

A court composer until his 50s, he was accustomed to ignoring politics and contemptuous of most politicans: they came and went while he went his chosen way.

STEFAN ZWEIG 1881 – 1942 Born into a wealthy Austrian– Jewish family Zweig was the most widely translated writer of the 1920s and 1930s.

‘Among the guests that we welcomed [to the house in Salzburg] were Thomas Mann, H G Wells, Hofmannsthal, James Joyce, Ravel, Alban Berg, Bartok ...’ Strauss chose him as successor to Hofmannsthal.

HUGO V HOFMANNSTHAL 1874 – 1929 Strauss’ librettist for 20 years

‘Has it never struck you that we never decide anything in our lives by merely talking about it?

We are never so alone, never so convinced of the insolubility of a situation, as when we have tried to find a solution by merely talking about it’.

Hofmannsthal 1928 In 1929, having completed the libretto of Arabella he died of a stroke.

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JOSEF GREGOR 1903 – 1987 Described by Strauss as ‘a Viennese professor of theatre studies’ Gregor was quick to occupy the vacuum when Zweig left Austria and perhaps claim more credit than was courteous.

CLEMENS KRAUSS 1893 – 1954 Viennese conductor and impresario. Conducted the 1930 Vienna première of Wozzeck and helped Strauss with the text Capriccio.

STRAUSS AND BAYREUTH In the early 1890s, Richard Wagner’s widow, Cosima, was at the helm of Bayreuth and Strauss was invited to conduct. The brief friendship with Cosima was founded on a simple misunderstanding: she thought he would make the ideal husband for her youngest daughter, Eva. But there were limits to Strauss’ love of Wagner. In 1892 he met soprano Pauline de Anha. Two years later at Bayreuth she was his Elisabeth in Tannhäuser and they married.

Proud to call Siegfried (Richard’s son 1874 – 1929 pictured above with Cosima) Du, Strauss was wary of Siegfried’s fondness for gossip and his tendency to be overconfiding and over-reticent by turns.

They began to needle each other. On one occasion, Strauss was in Berlin staying at the expensive Hotel Adlon.

Siegfried: ‘Is your business making such good profits, then?’

Strauss: ’Oh yes, and it’s my own business, not my father’s.’

‘Momentous conversation with Siegfried Wagner. Unspoken but nonetheless irrevocable separation from Wahnfried— Bayreuth. Only indirectly my fault.’

Strauss in his diary 11 January 1896 After the appointment as Kapellmeister in Berlin (1898), Strauss told Siegfried ’I’m in fashion at present, I will compose accordingly, make my pile, and retire [from Berlin] in seven years’. I don’t care about anything else.’ That was too cynical and too ingenuous for Bayreuth, and Strauss fell into disgrace.

WINIFRED WAGNER 1897 – 1980 It was a priority for Cosima to find a wife for her son Siegfried aged 40. The chosen one was Winifred Williams, a young girl from Hastings.

She was 17 when they married in 1914 and she dutifully produced heirs, two sons Wieland (d 1966) and Wolfgang (d March 2010).

In 1923 she met Hitler and fell under his spell.

He became a regular at Bayreuth and when Siegfried died in 1930, it seemed Winifred was ready to marry Adolf. But he lacked enthusiasm for the idea. ‘[Uncle Wolf] even took her to the cinema’ Wolfgang Wagner’s autobiography Hitler bailed out Bayreuth in 1933 and re-scheduled the annual Nuremberg Rally from August to September, to fit with the festival.

JOSEPH GOEBBELS 1897 – 1945 ‘Unfortunately we still need him [Strauss] but one day we shall have our own music and then we shall have no further need of this decadent neurotic’ Goebbels in his diary

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Life as a question mark The story of how Capriccio came to be written is also the story of the rise of the Nazis – with some Wagners thrown in for good measure. It begins with an idea from Strauss’ new librettist Stefan Zweig but, by the première eight years later, Zweig was dead. In the intervening time, Strauss juggled loyalty to his friends and the new status quo.

1931

October Hofmannsthal, Strauss’ librettist, had died of a heart attack in 1929. Strauss is pressed to consider the famous Stefan Zweig who writes about their meeting Strauss frankly confessed that he knew a musician of 70 no longer had his former youthful powers of inspiration.

He did not think, he said, that he could write symphonic works like Till Eulenspiegel and Tod und Verklärung because pure music needs a very high degree of creative freshness. But written text still inspired him . . . because he found that musical themes spontaneously developed from situations and words, so in his later years he had turned exclusively to opera. He knew that as an art form opera was played out. Wagner was so gigantic a peak that nobody could rise higher. But he added, with a broad Bavarian grin, ‘I found a solution by going around the mountain instead . . . I’m not thinking of long melodies such as you can find in Mozart. I manage short themes best.

But I can vary and paraphrase such themes, get everything possible out of them. In fact I think I do that better than anyone else today’.

schweigsame Frau was almost finished and Strauss said Zweig was as faultless as Hofmannsthal. ’None of my earlier operas was so easy to compose or gave me such lighthearted pleasure’ In the spring Toscanini withdrew from his engagement to conduct at Bayreuth in protest at the anti-semitism of the new régime. Politics and Parsifal were forced into an incongruous confrontation. Winifred offered the position to Fritz Busch. He hesitated but turned it down (he was in Switzerland en route to exile). Next she approached Strauss. To return to what was for him holy ground was too great a temptation and he accepted without hesitation (and without a fee).

Bayreuth became Hitler’s court theatre. On arriving in the town, visitors were greeted by swastika banners and shops that once sold busts of Richard Wagner, now featured photographs and mementos of Adolf Hitler. On settling into their hotel, visitors found their

Again I was dumbfounded by this frankness.

Zweig The World of Yesterday Zweig offered him an adapation of Ben Jonson’s Epicene or The Silent Woman (Die schweigsame Frau).

1932 1933

October Zweig sends Strauss Act 1 of Die schweigsame Frau and the remaining acts follow shortly after. Strauss sets to work.

January Hitler and the National Socialists, came to full power. Within a matter of weeks German theatres were forbidden to perform anything written or composed by a Jew. Such notables as Fritz and Adolf Busch, Bruno Walter, Otto Klemperer, Carl Ebert, Rudolf Serkin and Aurtur Schnabel leave Germany out of fear or disgust.

Overall, however, few Jews emigrated in 1933; most stayed in the expectation that the Nazis would bankrupt the country and lose power. Strauss nearing 70, felt it too late in life to abandon one’s home and country. Die

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Pioneering filmmaker and photojournalist Hungarian Stefan Lorant was imprisoned by Hitler in 1933 and released after 6 months. He came to England and wrote his best–seller. In 1938, he co-founded with publisher Sir Edward G. Hulton the first great British picture magazine, Picture Post.

rooms well stocked with official propaganda - the text of Hitler’s latest Reichstag speeches and as Ernest Newman discovered ‘a big book from which we learned, in three languages, that far from the Jews being ill-treated in Germany, they were really having the time of their lives in that tolerant country.’

During the interval of Meistersinger Goebbels broadcasts to the world directly from the opera house. The Führer’s photo was the frontispiece of the festival programme.

Strauss had been leading a campaign to reform music copyright law. At Bayreuth Strauss seized the chance to raise the topic with Hitler. Parsifal had been released from copyright in 1913 for ‘prostitution in every provincial opera house, no matter how small’ and Strauss thought it should be reserved for Bayreuth alone. He suggested the new government, which spoke so much of its desire to do things for the arts, should levy a 1% royalty on every performance of Wagner in Germany, and that the money thus raised should go to Bayreuth. Hitler refused, on the grounds that it would create a legal precedent.

The Führer gave a reception in Wahnfried. Strauss’ Jewish daughter–in–law, Alice, wanted to decline the invitation, but Winifred said she would make herself a laughing-stock. So Alice attended and Hitler kissed her hand although he knew perfectly well she was ’non– Aryan’. After the brutality of the fight to attain power, the new government did what it could to project an image of statesmanlike savoir–vivre.

September In token of her gratitude Winifred Wagner sent Strauss some Wagner autograph sketches for Lohengrin.

Dear, honoured Frau Winifred!

Your kind letter was a great joy to me, although there was really no need for further thanks: my modest help for Bayreuth was only a respectful repayment of the great debt of gratitude stored up in my heart for all that the great master gave to the world and to me in particular. It is really I who should thank you for the opportunity, in the evening of my life, to conduct his sublime work once more, in that sacred place: it was a high honour and satisfaction for me. I came back from Bad Wiessee today, to find the wonderful sketch from the master’s hand, fulfilling a long-cherished wish, beyond all expectations. You can scarcely imagine the joy you have given me. I accept it with the most sincere and profound gratitude, and as a sign, too, of the enduring friendship in which I feel myself bound to you in true devotion to the task that is now entrusted to your hands.

With the most sincere respect, your devoted servant, Dr Richard Strauss 23 September 1933 His alacrity to stand in for Toscanini got a bad press abroad. A boycott of his work was considered in Austria.

When Alice wanted to cut out things like that from the newspapers to put in the archives, Strauss told her not to blunt her scissors.

November Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda, formed a State Music Bureau, the Reichsmusikkammer and realising that Strauss’ eminence was valuable, proclaimed Strauss president without consulting him. ‘I accepted . . . because I hoped that I would be able to do some good and prevent worse misfortune’

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Hitler met Ferdinand Porsche in 1933 and charged him with creating the Strength through Joy car (alias Volkswagen). It would carry two adults and three children, go up to 60 miles per hour, get at least 33 miles per gallon, and cost only 1,000 reichsmarks. The first prototype was ready in 1936 and tested the following year. The factory to produce the Volkswagen was begun in 1938. By the time it was complete, Hitler had invaded Czechoslovakia and Poland and the factory was used to build military vehicles.

1934

January Strauss was putting the finishing touches to Die schweigsame Frau and received a letter from Zweig drawing his attention to a forgotten opera first performed in 1786 in the Orangery at Schönbrunn, near Vienna, for the Emperor Joseph II in a double bill with Mozart’s Der Schauspieldirektor. This is the beginning of the opera Capriccio.

Salieri’s Prima la musica e poi le parole has a libretto

by Abbe Giambattista Casti (1724 – 1803) a rival of Lorenzo da Ponte and is about a commission offered to a composer and librettist.

February Zweig arrives at Victoria Station, London, and informs the Salzburg authorities he has given up residence in that city for good. A few days earlier his house in Salzburg had been searched for weapons by the police. ‘I did not like my house any more after that official visit and a certain presentiment told me that such episodes were only the tentative prelude to much farther–reaching measures.’ Zweig would periodically return to Europe to visit his aged mother.

24 May Strauss was having difficulty finding someone in the National Socialist administation prepared to give permission for the première of Die schweigsame Frau.

‘I recently asked Dr Goebbels whether there are any political objections against you, to which the Minister answered no . . . All efforts to relax the stipulation against Jews here are frustrated by the answer: impossible as long as the outside world continues it lying propaganda against Hitler’ Strauss to Zweig June 30 Night of the Long Knives July Strauss returns to Bayreuth to conduct Parsifal. Goebbel calls on him to discuss the première of Die schweigsame Frau ‘. . . we agreed I would submit the score to the Führer

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for a final decision . . . ’ 23 August ‘In itself the little piece (Prima la musica) is unusable but it could easily be adapted along similar lines. The title is quite enchanting and should certainly be taken over for this light comedy but so, too, are many other details’.

Zweig to Strauss By return of post Strauss responds with enthusiasm: ‘Prima la musica, poi le parole is excellent! Of course, I wouldn’t consider any other poet but you! However, in the event of our collaborating again on one or more works, it might be tactically wiser not to breathe a word on the subject to any living soul. If anyone asks me, I’ll say I’m not working on anything and that I don’t have any more librettos. By the time I’ve finished, a few years from now, the world will no doubt be a different place.’

The gravity of the situation began to dawn on Strauss when he was denounced on the radio for working with Zweig. Strauss was forbidden to conduct at the Salzburg Festival but as an audience member was able to meet Zweig to discuss two on–going projects: Friedenstag and Prima la musica. Strauss implored Zweig to write both libretti. Zweig refused but offered to work incognito.

23 October London ‘The scenario for the little one–act comedy has been drafted. I’ll send it to you shortly

before making any attempt to develop it further’.

Zweig to Strauss

1935

June Zweig meets Joseph Gregor (188 - 1960) by Lake Zürich and gives him the manuscript to give to Strauss.

17 June ‘The comedy you sent me is charming, but I know very well that it is entirely your own idea. I won’t accept it under an assumed name. . . Do stop pestering me with our dear friend Gregor. . . The show here [Die schweigsame Frau] will be terrific. Everybody is wildly enthusiastic. And with all this you ask me to forego you?

Never ever.’

Strauss to Zweig

Their last letters in autumn 1935 use pseudonyms. Zweig withdrew more and more and Gregor took his place. But since Strauss was fundamentally opposed to the idea of a Viennese professor of theatre studies writing a light comedy in prose, several years were to pass before there was any further talk of an ‘opera about opera’. Gregor, meanwhile, worked up other sketches into librettos, based either on Zweig’s ideas (Friedenstag – an episode in the 30 years war – and Daphne) or, in the case of Die Liebe der Danae, on an idea by Hofmannsthal.

This letter was intercepted by the Gestapo 22 June Strauss was in Dresden in the final rehearsals of Die schweigsame Frau. It was during a game of skat, that Strauss demanded to see the poster. Zweig’s name was not on it, only the attribution ‘after Ben Jonson’. ‘Do it, if you like, but if you do I shall leave tomorrow morning and you can hold the première without me.’ Zweig’s name was reinstated.

24 June Though Hitler and Goebbels had promised to attend the première of Die schweigsame Frau they didn’t.

There was a 2nd performance.

26 June (around which time Strauss’ intercepted letter arrived on Hitler’s desk), the 3rd performance was cancelled through illness.

6 July A state official calls on Strauss and orders him to resign his presidency of the Reichsmusikkammer on the grounds of ill-health. Strauss wrote an obsequious leter to Hitler, desperate to protect not only himself but his daughter–in–law Alice and the grandchilrden.

8 July The 4th performance of Die schweigsame Frau. The opera is banned. Zweig himself never heard the opera 31 October Strauss was back with Zweig’s draft ‘Apart from a handful of unduly coarse passages, I find the draft excellent. But I’ll not believe it’s by Gregor. After all, it’s more than a year since you yourself first mentioned de Casti’s piece! It is very kind and altruistic of you and shows great sensitivity for my own feelings in the matter that you should assign your rights as author to our dear friend Gregor, but I simply don’t believe you. Gregor hasn’t got it in him to turn it into a workable libretto.’

Strauss to Zweig

1936

Winter Olympics at Garmisch where Strauss lived was opened by Hitler. On YouTube there is diving footage by Leni Riefenstahl from the Summer Olympics.

1938

11 March Annexation of Austria

4 June Sigmund Freud, age 82, leaves Vienna, and makes his way to London where he meets up with Stefan Zweig.

The two had corresponded since 1908.

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1939

March Strauss to Gregor ‘I have now read through First the Words, then the Music. The title is excellent and the subject appealing, if only it were shot through with the talent of a writer like Scribe!’ (Elisir, Ballo in Maschera).

On the whole the scenario disappointed Strauss.

May ‘It’s nothing like what I had in mind.’ What he wanted, he went on, was ‘a witty dramatic paraphrase on the subject of First the words, then the music (Wagner) or First the music, then the words (Verdi) or Only words, no music (Goethe) or Only music, no words (Mozart)’

19 July London Zweig takes Dali to meet Freud. Freud whispers to Zweig, ‘That boy looks like a fanatic — small wonder that they have a civil war in Spain if they look like that.’ The next day he writes to thank Zweig for setting up the meeting. ‘I was inclined to look upon surrealists, who have apparently chosen me for their patron saint, as absolute (let us say 95 per cent, like alcohol) cranks.

The young Spaniard, however, with his fanatical eyes and undeniable technical mastery, has made me reconsider.’

24 July Munich première of one act Friedenstag – a hymn to peace. It was embraced by Nazi Germany and achieved 100 performances in two years. It was intended as half of a double bill with Daphne (1937)

July Gregor sent another draft and Strauss was more encouraging. ‘Your new ‘de Casti’ seems to me wholly admirable and I’m sure it can be turned into the very thing I had in mind — a delightful comedy of intrigue with a more profound idea at its core! Of course, everything now depends on writing some witty dialogue.

Krauss, to whom I forwarded your letter, has presented me with 12 volumes of French plays! What delightful ideas (Scribe, Sardou, etc), and how wittily polished the dialogue! If you could manage to produce something like that! It could be a veritable jewel, if ever I live to see it!’

August Germany begins its offensive against Poland and cancels the Nuremberg Rally of Peace.

September World War 2.

The Vienna première of Friedenstag was attended

by Hitler. Gregor lost no time in writing about his collaboration with Strauss saying he had suggested six projects at their very first meeting and that Strauss had selected three of them Friedenstag, Daphne and Danae.

The name of Zweig was not mentioned.

November Kristallnacht ’The low point in 20th century journalism was the 30s in Germany. You have the Daily Mail actively promoting Hitler, while the other papers, even liberal ones like the Guardian and the News Chronicle were clearly nervous about getting thrown out [of Germany] and kept their heads down. They reported dimplomatic stuff but not what was happening on the streets – people being beaten and shops being bashed in.’

John Simpson, broadcaster

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1939

1940

14 September, London Zweig’s last letter to Freud ‘I hope that you are suffering only from the era, as we all do, and not also from physical pain. We must stand firm now—it would be absurd to die without having first seen the criminals sent to hell.’

14 September Strauss appeals to his friend the conductor, Clemens Krauss for help with Prima la musica: ‘Whether Gregor can manage this, I cannot say. He still hasn’t understood what I really want — not lyricism, poetry or sentimentality but intellectual theatre, food for thought, dry wit! Maybe some logically minded, sobre Frenchman could do it! Hermann Bahr could have done it perhaps or The Silent Man [Stefan Zweig]! Perhaps I can still bring Gregor round. […] Could you not give him a little assistance? But, please, forget the ordinary man of the theatre (though certainly don’t underestimate him).’

23 September, London Sigmund Freud dies. Zweig delivers his funeral oration.

October ‘The piece, as I imagine it, can take place only in France, in a château outside Paris, at the time of Diderot and Rousseau only a few years before the horrors of the French Revolution, in other words, before mass murders, collective guilt and persecution and the collapse of everything known as ‘culture’ under the old regime.’

Strauss to Gregor The libretto then took a strange turn. Strauss, Krauss and Gregor decided each of them would draft the dialogue for the opening scene of the opera and submit it to the others for their reaction. The aim was undoubtedly to jettison Gregor. Strauss’ own first draft was a model of clarity and precision, so it was easy to invite Gregor not to worry any further over the problem child. ‘Please accept my sincerest thanks for all your efforts to date. I now intend to try my luck myself; the first three scenes, which I’ve sketched so far, have even met with Clemens Krauss’ approval. We’ll see whether I’m successful.’

Clemens Krauss now became Strauss’ most important collaborator. Although Krauss wrote to Strauss ‘I remain as firmly convinced as ever that you yourself must write this piece’, it was Krauss who became the piece’s literary obstetrician.

1940

July Strauss began work on the prelude and opening scene December ‘The whole thing is a caprice; ultimately, after all, it shows a certain capriciousness on your part to

take it into your head to write an opera on precisely this subject’ Krauss to Strauss

1941

January Krauss finishes the text

July ‘The whole score will be completed this week and I am at pains to ensure that the final scene is particularly beautifully orchestrated for our dear friend! Hence the harps – as dear old Bruckner used to say of the trombones. [The dear friend was Krauss’ wife Viorica Ursuleac]. Do you really believe that Capriccio can be followed by anything better or even by anything equally good? Isn’t this D flat major the best conclusion to my life’s work in the theatre? After all, we can leave only one Last Will and Testament!’

Strauss had chosen the question mark that ends Capriccio as the conclusion of his opera–writing career.

1942

10 February Strauss and others were summoned to Goebbels’ office in Berlin. Here is an account by Werner Egk ‘Strauss saw the minister first, alone. Through the door we could hear Goebbels screaming. Then we were all ushered in. Goebbels ordered something that Strauss had written in a letter to be read aloud: In accordance with our agreed statute, we ourselves will decide questions concerning the distribution scheme. It is not for Dr Goebbels to interfere.

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Goebbels: Herr Strauss, did you write that Strauss : Yes Goebbels: Be quiet! You have no conception of who you are, or of who I am! You dare refer to Lehar as a street musician? I can have these outrageous statements of yours published in every newspaper in the world. Do you realize what would happen then? Lehar has the masses and you haven’t! Stop your claptrap about the importance of serious music. It will not serve to raise your own standing, Tomorrow’s art is different from yesterday’s! You, Herr Strauss, belong to yesterday!

None of us said a word, then he threw us all out. Strauss was grey, ravaged and exhausted. He hid his face in his hands and murmured: ‘If only I’d listened to my wife and stayed in Garmisch.’ Tears were running down his cheeks. He could see that all his efforts on behalf of the protection of intellectual property were at an end.’

22 February Zweig and his wife, living in Brazil, commit suicide leaving a note to his friends. ‘It seems to me therefore better to put an end, in good time and without humiliation, to a life in which intellectual work has always been an unmixed joy and personal freedom earth’s most precious possession. . . I greet all my friends! May they

live to see the dawn after the long night is over! I, all too impatient, I am going on alone’.

Strauss knew none of this until after the war.

28 October Première of Capriccio in Munich. Krauss conducted. At a time when war was encroaching on everyone’s lives and the country’s domestic policies were growing increasingly tough, here was a work of the most blatant contrast with the mounting brutality and with the risible hopelessness of many individual lives.

Rudolf Hartmann, the producer of the première was asked if this was intentional or a coincidence ‘No, not coincidence - the many preparatory discussions between the two authors [Clemens Krauss and Richard Strauss], were all too frequently overshadowed by the depressing effects of the increasingly serious difficulties to which the theatre was being subjected, but above all by the open indifference shown by those in authority to every aspect of culture, an indifference which became a kind of malicious animosity. . . Let us write it for ourselves and for the few people who still have their wits about them and who have not yet taken leave of their senses!’

1945

30 April Hitler’s suicide.

The American army arrive at Garmish. Strauss had enough English to greet the young lieutenant sent to requisition his house with the words ‘I am Richard Strauss, composer of Rosenkavalier and Salome.’

An ’Off Limits’ sign went up on the lawn. (above) 23 June A postcard signed by Richard Strauss given to a soldier of the 31st Engineer Combat Battalion of the US Army.

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Berlin on the day of the signing of the declaration 1945 Alexander Deineka (1899–1969)

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A personal recollection of Zweig Pianist and broadcaster Iain Burnside talks to Zweig’s niece about the war years when as a girl she shared a house with her uncle and aunt in Bath and crossed the Atlantic twice.

T

his story starts with a young Scottish pianist, wet behind the ears, renting a room in a cramped terraced house in Peckham. I’m doing my postgrad studies at the Royal Academy of Music and have spent all my money moving an upright piano into my tiny bedroom. When I start practising my scales, a tirade of abuse comes over the fence: the long-distance lorry driver next door is trying to get some sleep, and leaves me in no doubt of what will happen if my scales turn into octaves. In despair I do the sensible thing: I ring my old Oxford pal Wasfi, then, as now, the first port of call for any troubleshooting. A day later she rings me back with the phone number of a woman called Eva. ‘You can go there and practise. They’ll be nice to you. I was in youth orchestra with their son.’

Several days later, I’m ringing the doorbell of a beautiful house in a leafy North London cul-de-sac. It’s not Eva who opens the door, but an elderly woman with a Central Casting German accent, only ever referred to as Tante. With great kindness she shows me to the piano, before making me the first of many cups of coffee. One day I peek round the door adjoining the piano room. I see a vast wall of books. Their titles are in many different languages, some of which I can’t even recognise. The author of them all, though, is just one man: Stefan Zweig.

It would be many years before it would strike me as odd that I had never heard his name. Among Zweig’s more spectacular claims to fame was being at one point the world’s most translated writer. Those titles I struggled with embraced not only the full panoply of European, Middle Eastern and Asian languages but even, bizarrely, Esperanto.

Idolised in Europe and the Americas, the hero of long lecture tours, Zweig was for decades a blip on Britain’s literary radar, known only to cognoscenti. Ironically, this giant of European literature, this prolific writer of biographies, novels, stories and plays was perhaps best known here for his ill-fated collaboration with Strauss.

Now, thanks to the enterprising Pushkin Press, Zweig has been rehabilitated to the Anglophone public. Copies of his autobiography The World of Yesterday are flying off the shelves in Waterstones. His name has become familiar too in a quite different way, through the Zweig Music Collection, now a jewel in the crown of the British Library. From his schoolboy years in Vienna Zweig

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collected musical and literary manuscripts, the future biographer fascinated as much by creative process as end result. At a time when no-one else bothered much with such things, the adult Zweig quietly built up a collection of manuscripts, sketches and memorabilia that would become priceless: Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and Chopin.

Little known here though he was, it was to Britain that Zweig came in 1934, fleeing Nazi persecution. When he left his home in Salzburg, he also left behind his first wife Friderike. He settled first near the BBC, in Portland Place, before moving round the corner to Hallam St. By then he had taken on a young secretary, Charlotte Altmann, with whom he gradually fell in love. Later on, in the week war was declared, Lotte would become the second Frau Zweig. The landscape around Bath attracted Zweig, its surrounding hills reminiscent of Salzburg; and so in 1938 he moved again, to Lyncombe Hill, together with Lotte, his books, some of his manuscripts and, in case of invasion, a vast array of tinned food. Other members of Lotte’s family had already come to Britain in 1933, and gradually some of them joined the Zweigs in Bath: a rather younger Tante as housekeeper, and Lotte’s 10 year old niece, Eva. 70 years later, when I ask about her time in Bath, Eva smiles. Her affection for both aunt and uncle is palpable, though of course, she laughs, he was hopeless with children. In this proudly pan-European household French was spoken at table. As war unfolded, the Zweigs moved to America. Eva followed them later, an unaccompanied minor setting off across the Atlantic on her 12th birthday. She smiles too, when I look horrified at the thought of this child travelling on her own, leaving her doctor parents behind in London. It was normal, she tells me; her parents feared for her safety in the event of Hitler crossing the Channel. Later, the Zweigs moved south, to Petropolis, in Brazil. What was certainly not normal was Eva, barely a teenager, learning that her aunt and uncle had taken their own lives.

In the course of his travels Zweig whittled down to a handful the number of manuscripts he carried with him.

Among them was a canon by Beethoven, setting the words Kurz ist das Schmerz, The Pain is Brief. Among them too was a little volume bound in pale brown leather,

small enough to fit into an 18th century pocket, titled Verzeichnüß aller meiner Werke, A Catalogue of all my Works. It is Mozart’s hand-written record of his own creativity, every piece he composed listed with its opening bars and the date it was finished.

According to his wife Konstanze, Mozart never let it out of his sight. And it is this small leather book that the 13 year old Eva hid in her pyjamas, on the Portuguese convoy ship that brought her back across the Atlantic in 1943.

Mozart’s Verzeichnüß now lives in the British Library.

It is stored in their ultra–secure bunker, afforded the same superstar status as the first folio of Shakespeare and the Lindisfarne Gospels. This year, as an honoured member of the extended Grange Park family, Eva will bring a party of her grandchildren to Capriccio. One of those grandchildren, another Lotte, submitted as her undergraduate thesis a meticulous chronology of her great-great-uncle’s music manuscripts.

Stefan Zweig 1881 - 1942

You may have seen Eva’s violinist son David here at Grange Park last year, too, playing a Brahms sextet with colleagues from the LSO. Stefan Zweig’s legacy takes many forms.

Spring, Vienna 1947 (1899 –1 969) Ale xa nd er De ine ka

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Norma Grange Park Opera 2009

FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT RACHEL PEARSON rachel@grangeparkopera.co.uk 116

Biographies PETER

AUTY Cavaradossi Tosca made his professional début at Opera North in 1998/9.

He was a company principal at ROH from 1999 until 2002 where he covered several major roles and had the opportunity of working with many of the world’s leading singers and conductors.

In Europe he has worked with Opera Zuid, Opéra de Massy, and Opéra de Rouen. Forthcoming highlights include appearances with Reisopera, Holland Park, LPO and Carmen for Opera North. Supported by Francis & Nathalie Phillimore MARK BAILEY Designer Butterfly Opera credits include Rise & Fall of the City of Mahagonny (set, LA Opera); Carmen (ROH Linbury); Ariadne auf Naxos (Lausanne / Florence); Il Maestro di Capella, The Telephone and Susanna’s Secret (Buxton) and productions for Opera North and Almeida Opera. Theatre credits include Macbeth and Hamlet (Chicago Shakespeare Theatre); To Kill a Mockingbird, A Glass Menagerie and Pygmalion (Clwyd Theatr, where he is an Associate) and many West End and regional UK theatre productions. Dance credits include L’Arlesienne, Varii Capricci and ENB’s The Snow Queen and Melody on the Move.

STEPHEN BARLOW Conductor Capriccio conducted Rusalka, Bohème, Falstaff and Norma at Grange Park. He was Organ Scholar at Trinity, Cambridge, and founder of the University Bach Choir. He made his début conducting Rake’s Progress for GTO and has since conducted most major orchestras and opera companies in UK and Europe. His international career started in Vancouver and has taken him all over the world, especially Australasia and USA. Recent recordings include Joseph James’ Requiem with Sumy Jo and his own Rainbow Bear with his wife Joanna Lumley as narrator. Recent engagements include his opera King in Canterbury Cathedral, Otello (Birmingham Opera Company), Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream (Lisbon), Bluebeard’s Castle (Auckland), Rake’s Progress (Holland), Faust and Nabucco (Australia) and Sweeney Todd (RFH). Supported by Stephen Gosztony & Sue Butcher CLIVE BAYLEY King Oranges was born in Manchester.

Appearances include Water Sprite Rusalka (Grange Park), Agravain Gawain, Foltz Meistersinger, Castro Fanciulla, Carbon Cyrano

de Bergerac, Thoas Iphigénie en Tauride, Hunding Walküre (ROH); Colline Boheme (ROH, RAH), Sparafucile, Raleigh Gloriana, Referee Playing Away, Ferrando Trovatore, Wurm Luisa Miller, Mozart’s Figaro, Biterolf Tannhäuser, Antinous Il ritorno d’Ulisse (Opera North, Munich, WNO); Doctor Wozzeck (Munich); Ratcliffe Billy Budd, the four villains Hoffmann, Cadmus Semele, Ferrando, Collatinus Rape of Lucretia, Pistol Falstaff, Hunding, Sparafucile, Narbal Trojans, Sarastro (ENO); Palémon Thaïs (ENO/Barbican), Arkel Pelléas (ENO, Opera North, Munich); Louis VII Euryanthe, Calchas Iphigénie en Aulide (Glyndebourne); Rocco Fidelio (GTO); and appearances in Amsterdam, Bregenz, Copenhagen, Frankfurt, Geneva, Lausanne, Lisbon, Munich, San Francisco, Seattle and Strasbourg. Engagements in 2009/10 include Doctor Wozzeck (WNO), Raimondo Lucia (ENO); Claggart Billy Budd (Frankfurt) and Trulove Rake’s Progress (Glyndebourne). Supported by Malcolm Herring ROSIE BELL Ninetta Oranges & ensemble read philosophy and literature at Edinburgh University, before studying voice at TCM. Recent engagements include Michaela Carmen (HMP Wandsworth Pimlico Opera), Countess Figaro (Vignette), Damon Albarn’s Monkey, Journey to the West (Châtelet and ROH), West Side Story (Pimlico Opera) and Cunning Little Vixen, Eliagobalo (Grange Park). She recently appeared in Pirates of Penzance (Carl Rosa). Supported by Johnny & Marie Veeder MATTHEW BEST La Roche Capriccio is an exponent of the great Wagner and Strauss Heldenbariton roles.

He sang the role of Wotan/The Wanderer in Scottish Opera’s production of the Ring, first seen at the Edinburgh Festival. Other recent engagements include Kurwenal Tristan & Isolde (La Monnaie), Don Pizarro Leonore (Proms, Salzburg Festival, Concertgebouw, Amsterdam and the Lincoln Center Festival, New York); Swallow Peter Grimes (ROH); Wotan Siegfried and Die Walküre and Orest Elektra (Stuttgart); Wotan Siegfried (Lyon); The Flying Dutchman (Rouen); Vairochana in the world premiere of Jonathan Harvey’s Wagner Dream (Luxembourg, Amsterdam and Paris); Peneios Daphne (Santa Fe / Frankfurt).

Supported by Clare Taylor & Roger Gifford

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FRANCISCO JAVIER BORDA Cook Oranges studied at GSMD, Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst, Vienna.

Masterclasses with Graham Johnson, Malcolm Martineau, Dalton Baldwin, Paul Farrington, Paul Plishka, Robin Bowman and Della Jones. Participated in Martina Arroyo Foundation Program in New York.

Roles include Tiferne Eliogabalo for Grange Park, Mozart’s Figaro, Leporello/Masetto Giovanni, Sarastro, Osmin Entführung, Basilio Barbiere, Don Inigo Gomez L’Heure Espagnol, Collatinus Rape of Lucretia, Angelotti, Sparafucile, Gremin. Supported by RHL Foundation DAMIAN CARTER ensemble is in his fourth season at Grange Park. Since graduating from the Birmingham Conservatoire in 2005 he has worked with BYO, Carl Rosa, Buxton, Swansea City Opera and The Thursford Christmas Spectacular. Roles include Belcore, Pish-Tush, Ubalde and Aronte Armide, Strephon Iolanthe, Corporal Daughter of the Regiment, Captain Onegin.

ANDREW ASHWIN Sharpless Butterfly studied at Birmingham University and RCM. He was member of the Vlaamse and the Zurich opera studio and made his Frankfurt Opera debut in 2008 as Junius The Rape of Lucretia. In 2008/2009 he joined the Deutsche Oper Berlin, singing Papageno, Moralès Carmen. Recently he sang Owen Wingrave in Vienna, Billy Budd in Bilbao and Candide at Vlaamse Opera where he returned for Cavalli’s Giasone. In recital he has appeared with Justus Frantz singing Winterreise in Germany. Numerous concert appearances in the UK, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and Malaysia. On CD he can be heard singing Handel Anthems (Naxos), on DVD in Ariadne auf Naxos with Christoph von Dohnányi. Among his roles are Forester Vixen, Macheath Beggar’s Opera, Marcello Bohème, Guglielmo, Figaro, Conte and Giovanni. Supported by the David Laing Foundation.

THOMAS

COLTMAN servant Capriccio & ensemble studied piano at RWCMD with Yekaterina Lebedeva and has worked as an accompanist in UK, Poland, Spain and Lithuania.

He is music staff member at the

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European Youth Summer Music Programme and has been MD for a number of opera/theatre projects including L’Elisir d’amore and Carmen. He is a Britten-Pears Young Artist.

REBECCA COOPER Fata Morgana Oranges went to the Arts Educational School and trained at RAM, Britten-Pears School and the Solti Accademia di Bel Canto.

Roles include Alice Ford Falstaff (Nevill Holt and Pimlico Opera), Konstanze Seraglio (Opera de Bauge, Surrey Opera), Fiordiligi, Countess (ECO), Madama Butterfly, (Surrey Opera), Violetta (Riverside Opera, European Chamber Opera) and Fox Vixen (Oundle Festival, Opera East). Other operatic roles include Nerone L’Incoronazione di Poppea (RAM), Vox Lirika, Elvira Giovanni (ECO), Madame Herz The Impresario (Taunton Festival), Gluck’s Armide (cover - Buxton), and Tatyana Onegin (I Maestri). Plans include Gerhilde Walküre (Longborough), and Etain in Boughton’s The Immortal Hour for a Sky Arts Documentary.

TIMOTHY DAWKINS Angelotti Tosca Major-domo Capriccio studied at the Royal College of Music and has sung with Scottish Opera, Opera North, and Glyndebourne Festival Opera where he was awarded the Erich Vietheer Award ‘to a promising young Glyndebourne singer’. For Grange Park he has sung Ashby Fanciulla and Parson/Badger Vixen.

Other roles include Leporello Giovanni (Batignano), Graf Dominik Arabella (Glyndebourne), Tom Ballo in Maschera; Colline; Jake Wallace Fanciulla; Fernando Fidelio; Quinault Adriana Lecouvreur (Holland Park), Le Spectre Hamlet (Chelsea Opera), Superintendent Budd Albert Herring (Aldeburgh), Speaker Zauberflöte (Columbia Artists/ USA tour), Mephistopheles Faust (EGO), Sparafucile (Longborough) and various roles in Purcell’s Fairy Queen at the Linbury, Covent Garden for English Bach Festival.

Recordings include Alexander Goehr’s Arianna.

Supported by Caroline de Jager WAYNE DOWDESWELL Lighting Designer ButterfIy was born in Newport Monmouth and trained at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. He worked at the RSC from 1978 to 2007 for much of that time as Lighting Supervisor at the Swan Theatre, where he designed lighting for many productions as well as those on tour and in the West End. Recent theatre includes: Dr Faustus

and School for Scandal (Greenwich); the 2009 Pitlochry Festival; You Can Do It and Cat & Mouse (Imagineer in Coventry). Opera includes: Lucia di Lammermoor (Scottish Opera and the Mariinsky/Kirov); Grange Park 2000 season; Longborough 2008 and 2009 and The Mikado (D'Oyly Carte). He received Olivier Award nominations for Edward II, Tamburlaine the Great and Medea.

JOHN

DOYLE Director Opera includes Lucia di Lammermoor (Mariinsky / Scottish Opera); Peter Grimes (Met) and Mahagonny (LA Opera).

On Broadway John has directed A Catered Affair, Company and Sweeney Todd, for which he won the Tony Award for Best Director of a Musical. Theatre credits include Three Sisters (Cincinnati); Kiss Me Kate (Stratford, Ontario); Caucasian Chalk Circle (San Francisco); Road Show (New York) and Oklahoma! (Chichester). Recently directed the feature film Main Street. Opera plans include Lucia (Houston).

Butterfly

MATTHEW DUNCAN ensemble was born in Sussex and trained at the RNCM where he sang Frank Fledermaus as well as title role in Billy Budd, Sid Albert Herring.

Recent roles include Junius Rape of Lucretia (Elemental Opera), Count Figaro (Dorset Productions), Schaunard Bohème (Opera Up Close), Guglielmo Così and Falke Fledermaus (European Chamber Opera in Spain), Masetto (Opera Anywhere) and Ivan Fledermaus (Alternative Opera).

NICOLAS DWYER ensemble graduated this year from GSMD. Roles include Guglielmo Così (Situation Opera), 1st Brother in Stephen Crowe's The Singing Bone (Tête à Tête), 1st Witch Dido & Aeneas (GSMD) and Elizabeth Maconchy’s Heloise and Abelard. He took two lead roles in new works at Grimeborn Opera.

Other appearances include Prunier Rondine and Fenton (Opera North), Alfredo and Cavaradossi (ENO), Tamino and Italian Tenor Rosenkavalier (Scottish), Cassio Otello and Nemorino (WNO) and Vakula Cherevichki at ROH. He has also appeared for companies including Castleward and Glyndebourne, and for Almeida Opera (Param Vir’s Broken Strings). Plans include Pedrillo (WNO) and a recording of Ariadne auf Naxos with Mackerras.

Italian tenor Supported by John & Carol Wates Truffaldino Supported by Jeremy & Rosemary Farr SARAH FAHIE Choreographer Capriccio Born in Australia, opera choreography includes Traviata and Boheme (Holland Park), Bartered Bride (Mid Wales) and The Birds by Ed Hughes (Opera Group). In 09/10 Sarah revived Falstaff (Glyndebourne on Tour), was Associate Director and title role of David’s Sawer’s Rumplestiltskin (Birmingham Contemporary Music Group) and choreographed Richard Jones’ production of The Gambler (ROH).

DAVID FIELDING Director/ Designer Oranges studied at Central School. Recent work includes Aegyptische Helena (Met).

At Grange Park directing/design credits include Thais, Enchantress, Rinaldo, Turn of the Screw, Gambler.

Other directorial credits include Turk in Italy (ENO), Schweigsame Frau, Capriccio, Daphne, Idomeneo, Aegyptische Helena, Liebe der Danae, Intermezzo, Arabella (Garsington), Otello (Düsseldorf), Intelligence Park (Almeida), The Hypochondriacs, Betrayal (Glasgow Citizens), Elisabeth II (Time Out Award 1993 – Best Director & Designer), The New Menoza, Eve of Retirement (Gate), The Park, Back to Methuselah (RSC). He has designed Damnation de Faust (Dresden), Ring (Tokyo), Xerxes, Simon Boccanegra, Mazeppa, Rienzi, Masked Ball (ENO), Clemenza di Tito (Glyndebourne), Wozzeck, Mahagonny (Scottish Opera), Elektra (WNO), Giulio Cesare (Paris), King Lear, The Tempest (RSC), My Fair Lady starring Edward Fox (UK tour). Plans include design Andrea Chenier (Bregenz). Supported by DIXON WILSON

WYNNE EVANS Truffaldino

Oranges / Italian Singer Capriccio was born in South Wales. He trained at GSMD and at NOS. He was a Principal Tenor for WNO where roles included the Duke Rigoletto, Tamino, Alfredo, Rodolfo Bohème, Alfred Fledermaus and Brighella Ariadne.

He sang Schoolmaster/Mosquito Vixen for Grange Park.

ANNA FLANNAGAN ensemble studied at Cardiff and at RSAMD. She has played Gretel (Tower Theatre), Young Heidi Follies (Glasgow), Echo Hansel & Gretel, Jenufa, Fille du Regiment and Roberto Devereux (Holland Park) and has sung with Carl Rosa on UK and USA tours.

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MATTEO DALLE FRATTE ensemble studied at the University of Padova and Guildhall.

Matteo has been performing in England and in Italy and also working as Italian Coach at the National Opera Studio.

SARA

FULGONI

Clairon

Capriccio has sung Carmen at Santa Fe, Toulouse, ENO, WNO, Geneva, Valencia and Beijing Music Festival. Other important roles include title role in Tobias Picker’s Therèse Raquin (Dallas), Hänsel (San Francisco), Judith Bluebeard’s Castle (Canadian Opera, WNO and Barcelona), Béatrice Béatrice et Bénédict (WNO, Netherlands), Waltraute Götterdämmerung (De Vlaamse Opera, ENO). Recent highlights include Orlofsky Fledermaus. Kundry Parsifal (WNO), Baba the Turk Rake’s Progress (Rome, Bologna), Sorceress Dido & Aeneas (La Scala), Margret Wozzeck (La Monnaie). At the Royal Opera House she has appeared as Federica Luisa Miller, Maddalena and Sorceress. Supported by Geoffrey de Jager CATHAL GARVEY Chorus Master is from Ireland where he studied before attending the Moscow Conservatory. He acted as Chorus Master on more than 40 productions for Opera Ireland, Opera Theatre Company, Anna Livia Festival, Opera South and Lyric Opera productions. As a conductor, Cathal has appeared with Ireland’s major orchestras. This is his second season with Grange Park.

JAMES GILBERT ensemble studied at Huddersfield University.

Roles include Pirate King (cover) for Carl Rosa, Papageno Magic Flute (Kenya), Ben The Telephone (Chepstow Festival), Splendiano Djamileh (Opera Minima), Angelotti Tosca (St John’s Smith Square). James has worked for Opera Holland, Chisinau National Opera and Buxton G&S Festival and is Music Director for Education workshops with Opera Minima.

WOLFGANG GöBBEL Lighting Designer Oranges has worked throughout the world in theatre, dance and opera with artists from diverse disciplines and backgrounds. He has worked on opera productions with major companies of Paris, Berlin, Tokyo, San Francisco, Houston, New York City, Dallas, London, Genève, Barcelona, Moscau, Athens, Rome, Milano, Torino, Munich, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Hamburg. Plans include Die Soldaten (New York), Ring (Hamburg), Lucia di Lammermoor (Brussels), Karl V (Bregenz), Tote Stadt (San Francisco and London), Rusalka (Brussels and Graz).

Oranges trained at the Laban

CRESSIDA VAN GORDON ensemble was originally a cellist and studied singing at the RNCM where roles included Mrs Peachum Threepenny Opera, Fox Cunning Little Vixen, Countess Figaro and Lady Billows (understudy) Albert Herring (BYO).

Since graduating work has included Hen Cunning Little Vixen (Grange Park Opera), Mother (understudy) Hansel & Gretel (Opera North) and Mother (understudy) in the world premiere of Jonathan Dove’s Swanhunter (Opera North).

Centre. His opera credits include Salome (ROH); Handmaid’s Tale, Walküre and Turn of the Screw (ENO); Giulio Cesare (also Lille and Chicago) and Carmen (Glyndebourne); Rosenkavalier (Scottish Opera and Opera North); Der fliegende Holländer, Daphne (NYCO); Don Giovanni (Met); Trovatore (LA); L’incoronazione di Poppea (Champs-Elysées, Strasbourg, Staatsoper Berlin, La Monnaie and Copenhagen); Les Contes d’Hoffmann (Salzburg); Cavalleria Rusticana/ Pagliacci (Essen and Amsterdam); L’elisir (Amsterdam), La Belle Hélène (Aix-en-Provence); Griselda (Deutsche Oper Berlin); Tannhäuser (La Scala); Agrippina and Orphée aux Enfers (La Monnaie); Ring Cycle (Strasbourg); and I Capuleti e i Montecchi (Grange Park).

SUSAN GRITTON Cou ntess Madeleine Capriccio Winner of the 1994 Ferrier Award, operatic appearances include Liù, Micäela, Marenka (ROH); Konstanze, Fiordiligi, Vitellia, Cleopatra, Rodelinda, Blanche (Bayerische Staatsoper); Theodora (Glyndebourne); Tytania (Fenice); Ellen Orford (Opera Australia) and Countess Almaviva, Pamina, Fiordiligi and Vixen (ENO). Future engagements include Blanche (Bayerische Staatsoper) and Ellen Orford (La Scala). She has appeared in recital in London and New York and concert appearances include Berlin Philharmonic/ Rattle, Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia/Pappano,

ANDREW GEORGE Choreographer

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LSO/Harding, Rotterdam Philharmonic/Bruggen, BBC SO/Haitink, SCO/Mackerras, New York Philharmonic/ Colin Davis and L’Orchestre de la Suisse Romande/Tate.

Supported by Victoria & Richard Sharp.

DERYCK HAMON 5th Servant Capriccio was born in Guernsey and studied at Rose Bruford College and singing at RNCM. He was a member of D’Oyly Carte, first as a chorister, then as principal bass, singing Lieutenant Cholmondeley and Mikado. Other roles include Torquato Tasso (Buxton), Leonora L’oca del Cairo and Candide (Batignano), Dikoy Kátya Kabanová, Bartolo and Basilio Barbiere, Commendatore Giovanni, Alfonso Così, Sarastro, Count and Bartolo Figaro, Angelotti and Sacristan Tosca, Colline, Alcindoro and Benoit Boheme, Il Talpa Tabarro, Betto and Simone Gianni Schicchi, Escamillo, Don Pasquale, Dulcamara.

QUENTIN

HAYES Pantaloon Oranges studied at Dartington and the GSMD. His performances include Papageno, Ford, Life with an Idiot (ENO), Rossini’s Figaro (Glyndebourne, Deutsche Oper am Rhein, Garsington), Enrico Lucia di Lammermoor (Anna Livia Festival), Achilles Penthesilea (Montpellier), Dancaïre Carmen (Glyndebourne and BBC TV), House of the Dead (Frankfurt, WNO) and Vixen (CBTO). He made his ROH debut as Agravain Gawain and has since sung Schaunard, Angelotti, Ping, Novice’s Friend Billy Budd, Hermann Les Contes d’Hoffmann, Kuligin Kátya Kabanová, Francis Boulevard Solitude, Marullo, Melot, Larry Landau Sophie’s Choice, Yamadori, Herald Lohengrin, Count Dominik Arabella, Ned Keene and Second Apprentice Wozzeck. Future plans include Dancaïre for Raymond Gubbay. Supported by Sally Phillips TOBY HUNT ensemble was born in Cardiff and read music at Cardiff University. He has sung with Carl Rosa performing in Mikado, Iolanthe and Pirates of Penzance and a tour of the USA playing the Carpenter and understudying the role of Boatswain HMS Pinafore and 4th Yeoman Yeomen of the Guard (Tower Festival). He also appears annually at the International Festival at Buxton, having sung Mikado, HMS Pinafore and Trial by Jury. Toby has also conducted the musical Little Women (Bloomsbury Theatre) and Voice Over, a project with the LSO and the City Youth Choir at the Barbican, in a premiere of Wide World by Howard Goodall.

LEO HUSSAIN Conductor Oranges is Music Director of Landestheater Salzburg and made his début at La Monnaie last season conducting Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre. He has conducted for ENO, Glyndebourne on Tour, Opera North and Holland Park. He appears regularly at the Salzburg Festival where he has conducted Pelléas & Mélisande with Berliner Philharmonic as assistant to Sir Simon Rattle; Benvenuto Cellini with Vienna Philharmonic as assistant to Valery Gergiev; Otello and Zauberflöte as assistant to Riccardo Muti. He assisted on Rake’s Progress at Opéra de Paris and Götterdämmerung at Aix-en-Provence. Plans include new productions at Mariinsky Theatre, La Monnaie, ENO and Salzburg, debuts at Oper Frankfurt, Volksoper Wien.

Supported by George & Janette Hollingbery RICHARD IMMERGLüCK ensemble studied at GSMD. Last season’s productions at Grange Park included Norma and Eliogabalo and a concert performance of Der fliegende Holländer. Recent work included title roles Barber of Seville (Unexpected Opera) and Nozze di Figaro (Dorset Productions), Sid Albert Herring (Co-Opera-Co) and a recital at Somerset House.

STEPHEN JEFFREY ensemble is from Liverpool where he was a choirboy with the Metropolitan Cathedral Choir. He studied at Birmingham Conservatoire and RCM, where roles included Ottone L'Incoronazione di Poppea and Haraschta Vixen and won several awards, including the English Song Prize and the Opera Prize. Since finishing his studies roles include Fabrizio La Pietra del Paragone (Stanley Hall), Morales Carmen, Schaunard Boheme (Blackheath Halls), Garibaldo Rodelinda and Masetto Don Giovanni (Opera de Baugé). Stephen also appeared in the chorus of Kenneth Branagh’s film of The Magic Flute.

SALLY JOHNSON Italian Singer

Capriccio studied at RNCM and in Italy. Roles include Clotilde Norma (Grange Park), Musetta Boheme (cover/Scottish Opera), Donna Elvira Giovanni, Lisa Queen of Spades (RNCM) Tatiana Onegin (Lakeland Opera), Minerva Il Ritorno d’Ulisse (Creakes Baroque Sinfonia), Ariel/Storm Bringer National Theatre.

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Premiers of Broken Heart of Autumn Beardsley (Spring Festival of New Music, York), Morgenstern Lieder/Il Gran Rifiuto Song Cycles Weeks (Aluna Contemporary Ensemble). DVD Die Fledermaus (Glyndebourne, BBC).

Supported by Timothy & Christina Benn EMMA JOHNSTON ensemble is from Preston. She recently graduated from RNCM. Roles include Sandman and Dew Fairy cover (Opera North), Frasquita Carmen (Clonter), Vixen (Woodhouse Opera and Radio 3's In Tune), Yum Yum Mikado (Phoenix / Opera della Luna), Adele Fledermaus (Phoenix), Esmerelda Bartered Bride (Preston Opera) and Susanna Figaro (West Riding Opera).

STUART KALE Spoletta Tosca Taupe Capriccio covers a huge range of repertoire, from Monteverdi to Messiaen. He began his career at WNO before joining ENO, where he remained for eight years. Since then he has performed at all the major companies such as ROH, Strasbourg, Drottningholm, Châtelet, Canadian Opera, Parma, Nancy, Turin, San Francisco, Köln, Munich, Montpellier, Bordeaux, Geneva, Toulouse, Marseille, La Scala Milan. His most notable roles include Hauptmann Wozzeck, Herod Salome, Podesta Finta Giardiniera, Shuisky Boris Godunov, Truffaldino Love for Three Oranges, Schoolmaster/Mosquito Vixen, Bob Boles Peter Grimes, Captain Vere Billy Budd, Quint Turn of the Screw, Idomeneo, Zinoviev Lady Macbeth, Aegisthe Elektra, Gregor Makropoulos Case, Pirelli Sweeney Todd, Valzacchi Rosenkavalier and Dr Cauis Falstaff.

Taupe Supported by Anthony Boswood Spoletta Supported by Martyn & Amanda Hedley ANDREW KENNEDY Flamand

Capriccio studied at King's College, Cambridge and RCM. He was a member of the Young Artists Programme at the ROH and in 2005 he won the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Rosenblatt Recital Prize. He is a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award winner and won the prestigious Royal Philharmonic Society Young Artists' Award in 2006. He was also a member of BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artists Scheme. He recently made his debut at La Scala, Milan as Tom Rakewell Rake’s Progress. Plans include Tristan & Isolde (Philharmonia), Turn of the Screw (Houston) and Entführung (WNO).

Supported by Mr & Mrs Richard Morse

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THOMAS KENNEDY ensemble had a brief career as a maths teacher before studying as a postgraduate at GSMD where he won the English Song Prize and graduated with distinction last summer. He has since appeared in the title role of Il Signor Bruschino for BYO. Other appearances include Onegin, Count Almaviva and Belcore, Messiah in Nicosia, The Lads in their Hundreds directed by Iain Burnside at Kings Place and Ives' General William Booth enters the Kingdom of Heaven with Sir Andrew Davis /BBCSO at the Barbican.

MATTHEW

KIMBLE servant Capriccio & ensemble was born in Bedford and trained at GSMD. Roles include Albert Herring, Tamino Zauberflöte, José Carmen, Orpheus Orpheus in the Underworld, Beppe Pagliacci and Gastone Traviata. He has worked with Holland Park, Aldeburgh, Bregenz, Carl Rosa and Hampstead Garden Opera.

AINO KONKKA ensemble trained as a singer at Lahti University of Applied Sciences, Finland, graduating in 2009. Recent roles include 3rd Lady Magic Flute for Morley Opera, title role in Dido and Aeneas at her university and Valletto in L’Incoronazione di Poppea at Longborough Opera.

ADAM KOWALCZYK ensemble studied at GSMD. His operatic experience includes scenes from Albert Herring, Così, Zauberflöte, Rigoletto, Cavalleria Rusticana and Boheme. He has played Beppe Rita (GSMD) and Bernado Erwin und Elmire (GSMD & Weimar). He recently sang Bruschino Figlio Il Signor Bruschino(BYO). Adam sang with the Britten Festival Chorus for Death in Venice, Tosca and Playing Away at the Aldeburgh and Bregenz Festivals.

QUIRIJN

DE

LANG

Cou nt

Capriccio Recent engagements include Dandini (Garsington), Robinson Secret Marriage (Scottish), Guglielmo and Schaunard (Opera North). Following studies in Holland and America, he appeared as Gobineau The Medium, Demetrius Dream, Pelléas Pelléas et Mélisande (USA). European engagements include ENO,

Papageno and Ottokar (Reisopera), Ottone Agrippina (Amsterdam), Filippo Beatrice di Tenda (Rotterdam), Marco Trittico and Harlekin Ariadne auf Naxos (Antwerp). Plans include Malatesta Pasquale (Reisopera) and Yeletsky Spades (Grange Park). Supported by Mrs Peter Cadbury LOUISE LE BOUTILLIER ensemble A very tall child, Louise made her stage debut as a pirate in Peter Pan. She studied music at the University of York where she was cast as nun and prostitute, and went to TCM to study singing.

Recent appearances includes Idamante Idomeneo, cigarette girl in John Eliot Gardiner’s Carmen at the Opera Comique.

JEFFREY LLOYD-ROBERTS Prince Oranges was born in Wales and read music at Lancaster University before studying at the RNCM, where he received awards from the Wolfson Foundation, Countess of Munster Musical Trust and Peter Moores Foundation. For Grange Park: Alexei Gambler, Nicias Thais, Yuri Enchantress, Husband Breasts of Tiresias, Quint Turn of the Screw, Lenski Onegin, Prince Rusalka and Erik Holländer. He has performed at the Edinburgh and Cheltenham Festivals. Roles include Peter Grimes and The Adventures of Mr Broucek (Opera North), Alwa Lulu (ENO) and roles with ROH, Garsington and Glyndebourne. Supported by Andrew & Caroline Joy

EDWARD LEE Servant Capriccio & ensemble is currently completing his Masters at GSMD. Opera includes cover Sellem Rake’s Progress (Aldeburgh), cover Monsieur Triquet Onegin (BYO), Aeneas Dido & Aeneas (Deutsche Bank), Dr Blind Fledermaus (Cambridge Philharmonic Society) and Polidoro La Finta Semplice (Opera Petit). He sang in the 2009 chorus of Eliogabalo and Norma at Grange Park.

TOM LOWE ensemble studied at the RAM Opera School. Tom’s recent roles include Mercurio and Peter Besenbender for RAO, Dancairo (Longbourgh Festival Opera), Eisenstein (Bloomsbury Opera) and Figaro (Armonico Consort). In masterclasses he has worked with Jose Cura, Bonaventura Bottone and Paul Hamburger.

HYE-YOUN LEE Cio-Cio-San Butterfly was born in South Korea and now lives in London.

A former member of Les Jeunes Voix du Rhin in Strasbourg. She made her London debut as Marie La Fille du Regiment (Holland Park) in 2008 and returned in 2009 as Musetta Bohème. Other engagements have included Lucia, Oscar Ballo in maschera, First Flowermaiden Parsifal (Strasbourg), Silvia L’isola disabitata (Opera Basse Normandie, Caen), and 1st Squire Parsifal (Paris). Supported by a Grange Park scholarship

KARINA LUCAS Smeraldina Oranges trained at RNCM and NOS. In 2006, she was selected to take part in the prestigious Aix-enProvence Summer Academy. Roles include Dorabella, Leila Iolanthe, Nymph Rusalka and Wowkle Fanciulla del West (Grange Park), Maddalena Rigoletto (Nevill Holt), Pinocchio The Adventures of Pinocchio and Third Lady Magic Flute (Opera North), Witch Macbeth (Scottish Opera), Flora in Jonathan Dove's The Enchangted Pig (a role that was written for her) at ROH, on Broadway and on tour in the UK and Sara in Tobias & the Angel.

Supported by Christopher Swan

JESUS

LEON

Pi n ker to n

Butterfly debuted in 2009 at RAH and covered Fenton Falstaff (Glyndebourne and on tour). He was a member of the DomingoThornton Young Artist Program at LA Opera, Santa Fe’s Apprentice Singer Program, Solti Accademia di bel Canto, Opera Theatre of St Louis and Boston Opera Institute. Roles performed are Nemorino L’Elisir, Duca Rigoletto, Alfredo, Edgardo Lucia, Ferrando, Almaviva, Ottavio, Rinuccio Gianni Schicchi and Rodolfo.

Supported by Ian & Clare Maurice & Dr Shirley Radcliffe

KATHRYN MCADAM ensemble graduated from Sheffield University with a first class degree in music and is now completing a Masters in Vocal Studies at GSMD. She recently played Cherubino and sang with Glyndebourne’s 75th festival chorus. Roles include: Charlotte Werther (GSMD scenes), Public Opinion Orpheus in the Underworld, Sorceress Dido & Aeneas, Anne of Cleves Dearly Beheaded, Mrs Anna & Lady Thiang The King & I.

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MONICA MCGHEE ensemble is in her final year at RSAMD. Roles include Gherardino Gianni Schicchi, Soeur Charles Dialogues des Carmélites, Else in the world première of Rory Boyle’s Kasper Hauser, and chorus in Così and War & Peace. In autumn she begins her studies at RCM. PETER MCKINTOSH Designer Tosca Opera includes the world première of Handmaid’s Tale (ENO, Royal Danish Opera, Canadian Opera), Michael Nyman's Love Counts and Silent Twins (Almeida), Roberto Devereux (Holland Park).

Theatre includes 39 Steps (London, NY, Australia, Korea, Russia, Japan, China, Israel, Italy, UK & US Tours) for which he received two Tony nominations on Broadway - Best Scenic Design and Best Costume Design. Also Prick Up Your Ears, Entertaining Mr Sloane, Fiddler on the Roof, The Dumb Waiter, Summer & Smoke, Donkeys’ Years, The Birthday Party, Boston Marriage (West End), King John, Brand, Merry Wives of Windsor, Pericles, Alice in Wonderland (RSC).

VALI MAHLOUJI Associate Designer Oranges trained at the Slade and Motley in London.

Stage designs include Spectre (ICA), Veiled (Riverside), Le Petit Prince (Berliner Festspiele), Blood River (Sadler’s Wells), The Maids (Southwark Playhouse), The Blind (Arcola), Valparaiso (Red Lion), An Inspector Calls (German tour). He is also a published translator, writer and curator. Translations have been produced by the Royal Court (Amid the Clouds) and the Barbican (Quartet: A Journey North/Daedalus & Icarus) and broadcast on BBC Radio.

GIANLUCA MARCIANO Conductor Tosca studied piano in Italy, performed as a concert pianist and then coached in many Italian opera houses (Parma, Genova, Maggio Musicale Fiorentino). Conducting engagements include Faust, Traviata, Rheinnixen (Ljubljana), Nabucco, Barbiere, Cenerentola, Carmen, Turandot and Tabarro (Zagreb), La Damoiselle Elue, Mamelles de Tiresias and La Pietra del Paragone (Sassari), Boheme (Novi Sad), Zauberflöte (Florence) and La Favorite (Chelsea). Plans include Turandot (Oviedo) and Giovanni (Longborough).

Supported by Samantha & Nabil Chartouni

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STEPHEN MEDCALF Director Capriccio Winner of the Abbiati Italian Opera Critics award, his credits include Magic Flute and Fanciulla del West (Grange Park), Manon Lescaut (Parma), Pikovaya Dama (La Scala), Carmen and Aida (Cagliari), Così (Lisbon), Death in Venice (Salzburg), Il Pirata and Menotti’s Saint of Bleecker Street (Marseille), Le disgrazie d’amore (Pisa) and Lucrezia Borgia (Buxton). He returns to Buxton to direct Luisa Miller and he makes his ROH debut in 2011 directing Delius’ A Village Romeo & Juliet.

TOBIAS MERZ Goro Butterfly New Zealand–born Tobias studied at Conservatorium in The Hague and sang in the chorus at Grange Park for three seasons. Roles include Leonard Meryll Yeoman of the Guard (Carl Rosa), Alfred (Opera della Luna), Cyril Princess Ida (Buxton G&S Co).

Other appearances include Alfred Fledermaus (Waikato Opera), Bastian Bastian & Bastienne (Netherlands), Così (Opera Australia), Adventures of Mr Broucek (Opera North).

VUYANI MLINDE Tchelio Oranges is from South Africa. He was a Jette Parker Young Artist at ROH where he sang Zaretsky Onegin, Jake Wallace Fanciulla, Cappadocian Salome, Tutor Elektra, Ceprano Rigoletto, 4th Elder Lohengrin and Tom Ballo in Maschera. Other roles include Palémon Thais (Grange Park), Sparafucile, Bonze Butterfly, Angelotti Tosca, Leporello / Commendatore, Gremin Onegin, Seneca Poppea, Bartolo Figaro, Doctor Pelléas & Mélisande and Sarastro. This season Vuyani returns to ROH as Colline Boheme and 2nd Nazarene Salome. In the autumn Vuyani will join the ensemble of Oper Frankfurt.

Supported by David & Amanda Leathers GARETH MORRIS 1st Servant Capriccio studied at Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama and RAM. Roles include Borsa and Bardolfo (Nevill Holt), Roberto Devereux (Valladolid), Tamino, Ferrando, Don Ottavio, Basilio, Curzio, Prunier, Dr Blind, Sesto, Paris (von Suppé’s The Ten Belles) and Normanno / Arturo Lucia di Lammermoor.Plans include Alfred Fledermaus (Opera della Luna) and Borsa Rigoletto (Grange Park). Supported by Tom & Sarah Floyd

PETER MUMFORD Lighting Design Tosca / Capriccio Opera credits include Bluebeard's Castle, Butterfly, Così, Die Soldaten, Poppea (ENO); Trovatore (Paris); Traviata (Antwerp); Onegin, Butterfly (Opera North); Siegfried, Götterdämmerung (Scottish Opera /Edinburgh Festival); Carmen, Butterfly, Peter Grimes, Met 125th Gala (Met); Onegin, Bartered Bride (ROH). Directed/designed John Luther Adams’ Earth & the Great Weather (Almeida Opera). Co-directed and designed sets/lighting for L’Heure Espagnole, L’Enfant et Les Sortilèges (Opera Zuid). 1995 Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in Dance for The Glass Blew In (Siobhan Davies), Fearful Symmetries (Royal Ballet) and 2003 Olivier Award for Best Lighting Bacchai (National).

GEORGINA-ROSANNA MURRAY ensemble is from Manchester and studied double bass then vocal studies at RNCM and TCM. Opera scenes include Idamante, Leocasta Giustino (TCM), Shepherd Boy Tosca (Pavilion) and Mother Goose (cover) Rake’s Progress (BYO). Plans include Lucretia (cover) Rape of Lucretia (Elemental Opera), Zephyrus Hyacinthus & Apollo.

FRANCIS O'CONNOR Designer Capriccio trained at Wimbledon School of Art. At Grange Park: Fanciulla, Flute, South Pacific, Giovanni and Iolanthe. Also: Mirandolina, Ariadne, Pasquale (Garsington); Lucrezia Borgia, Roberto Devereux (Buxton); Pinocchio (Opera North, Chemnitz, & Minneapolis); Pasquale (Geneva); Traviata (ENO); Manon (Opera North); Vogelhändler (Komische Oper, Berlin); Maometto II (Strasbourg). Recent theatre: Two Men of Florence (Boston); Much Ado (Singapore); Taming of the Shrew, Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Love’s Labours Lost (RSC). Also The Deep Blue Sea (West End); Moonlight & Magnolias (Tricycle, London); Translations (NY); for Galway’s Druid Theatre The Cripple of Inishmaan (NY); Beauty Queen of Leenane (London & Broadway), Lonesome West (Broadway), My Beautiful Divorce (London with Dawn French) and complete Synge plays cycle (Ireland, UK, NY).

FELIPE OLIVEIRA 4th Servant

Capriccio /ensemble was in Medical School for 4 years before giving up to study at RSAMD. Roles include Papageno, Giovanni and Guglielmo, Schaunard

Boheme and the title role Onegin. Recent work includes Elijah, Belcore L’Elisir d’amore and Silvio Pagliacci.

ANNE-MARIE OWENS Princess Clarissa Oranges has performed for many of the world’s great opera companies including the ROH, Glyndebourne, WNO, Opera North, Opéra National de Paris, La Monnaie, NYCO, Santiago, Arizona, Cagliari, Naples, Komische Oper, Berlin, Bayerische Staatsoper, Opera Australia and at the Hong Kong and Saito Kinen Festivals. Her vast operatic repertoire has included Brangäne Tristan & Isolde, Amneris Aida, Azucena Trovatore, Venus Tannhäuser, Herodias Salome, Fricka Rheingold and Walküre, Santuzza Cavalleria Rusticana and Auntie Peter Grimes. At Grange Park: Jezibaba Rusalka, Quickly Falstaff. Supported by The Holmes Family LILLY PAPAIOANNOU Nicoletta Oranges /ensemble was born in Greece and recently completed her studies at GSMD. Opera includes Ottone L’Incoronazione di Poppea (RSAMD), Baba the Turk Rake’s Progress (BYO), Aeneas Dido & Aeneas (Bury Court) and Rhone in Peter Cowdrey’s new opera The Lovely Ladies.

Supported by Dr Jonathan Holliday & Dr Gwen Lewis BRYONYPERKINSDancerCapriccio trained at London Contemporary Dance School and has worked with Richard Jones Rumpelstiltskin, The Tell Woman Collective, Spring Loaded, Neat Tim at ROH, QEH, Barbican, Eden Project, Glastonbury Festival and in Berlin, Le Cartoucherie Paris. She is co-founder of dance company Eade & Perkins Present.

Supported by Raymond & Elizabeth Henley LINDSAY

POSNER

Director

Tosca was associate director at the Royal Court Theatre from 1987 to 1992 where his production of Death & the Maiden won two Laurence Olivier Awards. Opera credits include: Roberto Devereux (Holland Park), Love Counts (Almeida), Jenufa (Opera Theatre Company, Dublin), and Dada: Man and Boy (Almeida and Montclair Theatre, USA). Theatre credits include: A View From The Bridge (Duke of York’s), Carousel (Churchill Theatre, UK tour and Savoy), Fiddler On The Roof

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(Sheffield Crucible / Savoy), Tom & Viv (Almeida), The Birthday Party (Duchess), Oleanna (Garrick), Power (NT), Sexual Perversity in Chicago (Comedy), Twelfth Night (RSC), and The Provok’d Wife (Old Vic).

ROBERT

POULTON

Scarpia

Tosca spent his early career at Glyndebourne where roles include Ned Keene, Lido Boatman Death in Venice and Kuligin Katya Kabanova.

He sang Magnifico, Falstaff and Forester for Grange Park. Roles elsewhere include Magnifico (Spanish tour with the Liceu), Mozart’s Figaro, Ramiro L’heure espagnole, Marcello, Tom Cat/Clock L’enfant et les sortilèges, Prus Makropulos Case, Golaud (GTO), Marco Gianni Schicchi (ROH), Count Almaviva, Ned Keene, Leandro Oranges, Animal Tamer/ Acrobat Lulu, Chorebus Trojans, Gunther, Alfonso, Arjuna Satyagraha (ENO), Falstaff, Don Magnifico, Father Hansel & Gretel, Leporello (WNO), Leandro, Germont, Podesta Thieving Magpie (Opera North), Harasta Cunning Little Vixen, Punch Punch & Judy, Starek Jenufa (Amsterdam), Giovanni, Leandro, Prus (Opera Zuid) and Death in Venice (Salzburg).

Plans include Marco (ROH), Musiklehrer Ariadne auf Naxos (WNO), Harasta (Amsterdam) and Ortel Meistersinger (GFO). Supported by William & Kathy Charnley EMILIA POUNTNEY ensemble studied music at Edinburgh University and singing at TCM. Appearances include chorus for Grange Park Opera in Eliogabalo, Der Fliegende Hollander and Rigoletto and 1st Witch Dido & Aeneas (Hampstead Garden Opera). Plans include 2nd Soprano Le Vin Herbe.

TOBY

PURSER

Con ductor

Butterfly has worked at Grange Park as conductor of Rigoletto (2009), chorus master (2007-8), and assistant conductor (2006). He conducted the prisoners of HMP Wandsworth in West Side Story and Carmen the Musical (Pimlico Opera). He is Artistic Director of Orion Symphony Orchestra with whom he recently released a CD and performs regularly at the RFH and Cadogan Hall. He is Principal Conductor of London International Orchestra and Principal Guest Conductor of Kammerphilharmonie Graz. Other orchestras he has worked with include the BBC Philharmonic, Orchestra of Opera North, St Petersburg Festival Orchestra, Sinfonia Viva and Orpheus Sinfonia.

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CLAIRE RUTTER Tosca was nominated for the Maria Callas Award following her US début as Fiordiligi Così (Dallas). She has sung Norma (Grange Park) Tosca and Countess Figaro (Bordeaux), Amelia Ballo in Maschera (Florida); Tosca, Elvira Ernani and Amelia (ENO), Violetta (Den Norske Opera and ENO), Donna Anna Giovanni (Montpellier, Bordeaux, De Vlaamse Opera and ENO), title role in Verdi's Giovanna d’Arco (Ludwigshafen Festival/ Opera North), Miss Jessel Turn of the Screw (Oviedo) and Mimi Boheme (Beijing International Festival). Recent engagements include Amelia (Helsinki), Alice Ford Falstaff (Santa Fe) and title role Aida (Opera Australia and ENO).

At the beginning of next season Claire returns to Dallas for Donna Anna. Supported by Neil & Elizabeth Johnson EDWARD SAKLATVALA ensemble read music at King’s, Cambridge where he sang in the choir and performed with the university opera society. Roles included Selem Rake’s Progress, Reverend Adams Grimes and 1st Armed Man Flute.

Edward sang chorus in Cavalleria Rusticana, Pagliacci (Dorset Opera) and Roberto Devereux and Boheme (Holland Park).

Plans include Ballo in maschera and Cenerentola (Reisopera).

JAMES SCARLETT ensemble was born in Bromley studied Fine Art at Canterbury and then a post-graduate diploma at TCM. Opera roles include Prince Nilsky Gambler (Grange Park), Dr Cauis Falstaff (Nevill Holt and Pimlico tour), Tonio Fille du Regiment, Almaviva Barbiere, Ramiro Cenerentola, title role Comte Ory, Nadir Pêcheurs de perles, Michele Saint of Bleecker Street, Curzio Figaro, Mercury Orpheus in the Underworld and Florestan Bohemian girl.

AMY SEDGWICK Kate Pinkerton

Butterfly /ensemble studied at Huddersfield University and GSMD. Roles include Venus/Public Opinion Orpheus in the Underworld (Unexpected Opera), Fox Cunning Little Vixen (covered and sang at Grange Park), Rosina Barber (St Albans Chamber Opera), 2nd Lady Flute (Swansea City Opera), 3rd Lady (Opera Nova), Fenena Nabucco and Giovanna Rigoletto (Kentish Opera).

Ensemble experience includes: Eliogabalo, Bluebeard, Flute, Falstaff and L’Elisir (Grange Park), Figaro, Così (Garsington).

SHERMAN Su zu ki was born in Australia and studied at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. She has been a soloist for Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s as part of the Young Australia Programme and recorded with Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra.

This season her roles include Hélène Belle Hélène, Sesto Clemenza di Tito and Cyrus Belshazzar at the RNCM.

KATE VETCH ensemble trained at Birmingham Conservatoire where roles included Cenerentola, Tancredi, Isabella L’Italiana in Algeri, 3rd Lady Flute, Sandman Hansel & Gretel. Recent engagements include work with BYO, Holland Park, Pimlico Opera, and soloist in Mozart Requiem / Coronation Mass, Messiah, Vivaldi Gloria / Magnificat, Haydn’s Nelson & Schöpfungsmesse and Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater & Magnificat.

PHILIP SPENDLEY Sciarrone Tosca 2nd Servant Capriccio gave up his job as a bank manager to study music and graduated from GSMD. Roles there included Michele Tabarro, Earl of Dunmow Dinner Engagement, Figaro and Olivier Capriccio. He sang Onegin, Schaunard Boheme (BYO). He has performed title roles with Pavilion Opera in Paris, Madrid, Turin, Amsterdam and Budapest.

Supported by John & Jennifer Beechey

HE N RY WA D D I N GT O N Sacristan Tosca / Leandro Oranges studied at RNCM. He sings regularly with Glyndebourne (most recently as Christus Matthew Passion), ROH, La Monnaie, Liceu Barcelona, Teatro Real Madrid, Opera North, WNO, ENO, Garsington and Grange Park. Repertoire includes Falstaff, Banquo Macbeth, Colline, Basilio Barbiere, Tutor Comte Ory, Geronimo Secret Marriage, Publio Clemenza, Plutone Orfeo, Valens Theodora, Bottom / Quince Midsummer Night's Dream, Soljony Three Sisters (Eotvos), Leporello Giovanni, Magnifico, Fernando Fidelio, Alfonso Così, Pallante Agrippina and Frère Laurent Roméo & Juliette. Plans include Zuniga Carmen (ROH), Sacristan (WNO), Ratcliffe Billy Budd (Netherlands) and Kothner Meistersinger (Glyndebourne).

Leandro Supported by Ed & Lulu Siskind Sacristan Supported by Peter & Annette Dart

HELEN

Butterfly

LISA SWAYNE ensemble trained at RSAMD. Roles include Diana Orpheus in the Underworld (Kentish Opera), Methodist Preacher Pastoral Messiah (Unexpected Opera) and Berginella / Frasquinella Pericole (Opera South). This is Lisa’s second season at Grange Park.

ADAM TORRANCE 7th Servant Capriccio /ensemble was born in Scotland and is currently studying at GSMD. Recently, he created the role of Fidencio in a new opera Dante (Grimeborn) and sang Damon Acis & Galatea (Westminster Opera). He sang chorus in Rake's Progress (Aldeburgh Festival and Ponte De Lima).

ALEXANDROS TSILOGIANNIS ensemble has roots in Greece but was born in Kenya and grew up travelling around the world.

Currently studying at GSMD He has performed Duke Rigoletto, Ferrando Così and Tamino Zauberflöte. Alexandros recently sang for the President of East Timor and will soon make his début recital in Athens.

DEREK WELTON Farfarello Oranges /B o n z e Butterfly studied at GSMD. Roles include Count Figaro, Masetto Don Giovanni, Guglielmo, Papageno, Silvano Calisto, title role Salieri's Falstaff, Vertigo Gluck’s La rencontre imprévue, Prince/King Sallinen’s The King goes forth to France, Podkolyosin Martinu's The Marriage, Mill La Cambiale di matrimonio, Nick Shadow Rake’s Progress (BYO). Plans include debut with Halle Orchestra and UK/ US tour of The Enchanted Pig (Opera Group).

Supported by Mr & Mrs Robert Enslow BELINDA WILLIAMS Linetta Oranges / ensemble read English at Warwick, and vocal studies at TCM and RAM. She is a Britten-Pears Young Artist. Roles include Dorabella and L’Enfant L’Enfant et les Sortilèges (Orchestra of St Paul’s, Covent Garden), Popova The Bear, ‘Voce

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3’ Laborintus 2 by Berio (Mahogany Opera), Cherubino, Giacinta La Finta Semplice, Sesto Giulio Cesare, Baba the Turk Rake’s Progress, Mère Jeanne Dialogues des Carmélites (TCM), and Hansel (Opera Minima). She has appeared as a soloist for Tête à Tête Opera, Opera de Baugé, Cheltenham Festival and BBC Radio 4.

Supported by The family of Oleg Prokofiev

Peter Grimes (ROH). He is also a composer and has had works premiered at the Wigmore and Barbican Halls, the Purcell Room and live on national radio.

Supported by an anonymous donor NIKKI WOOLLASTON Choreographer

Tosca / Butterfly RODERICK WILLIAMS Olivier

Capriccio encompasses a wide repertoire, from baroque to contemporary music, in the opera house, on the concert platform and in recital. He has enjoyed close relationships with Opera North and Scottish Opera, and is particularly associated with the baritone roles of Mozart. Recent performances include Papageno Flute (ENO) and Boheme (ROH). He has also sung world premieres of operas by David Sawer, Sally Beamish, Michael van der Aa and Alexander Knaifel.

He has an extensive discography including recordings of English song with Iain Burnside. Future engagements include Count Figaro (Scottish Opera) and Ned Keene

Eliogabalo Grange Park Opera 2009

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Choreographic & musical staging credits: Backbeat (Citizens Glasgow); Oklahoma! (Chichester); Wuthering Heights (Tamasha Theatre Company); Marguerite (Haymarket, London and Japan); Kismet (ENO); The King & I (UK Tour); Nymph Errant (Minerva, Chichester); Vivien Ellis Awards (Her Majesty’s, London); Dick Whittington, Cinderella and Aladdin (Watford Palace Theatre).

Associate and Resident Choreographic credits include: Oliver! (London Palladium); Cats (New London Theatre); Anything Goes (RNT); On the Town (ENO, Châtelet) and Sinatra (London Palladium & UK tour). Nikki also worked as part of the choreographic team on the Commonwealth Games Manchester 2002.