Grange Park Opera Programme 2013

GRANGE PARK OPERA 2013

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2013

GRANGE PARK OPERA

POULENC DIALOGUES DES CARMELITES MESSAGER

FORTUNIO

BELLINI

I PURITANI

TCHAIKOVSKY

EUGENE ONEGIN and

JOSEPH CALLEJA

TENOR

THE SHAGREEN COVER

In 12th century Turkey the rough hide of the rump of a horse (sāğrī / çāğrī) was prepared to imitate the skin of a ray fish.

Chenopodium seeds were embedded in the soft untreated skin and trampled in to create small indentations in the dried skin. It was this rough texture which led to the meaning of chagrin - anxiety, vexation, annoyance. By the early 18th century the term shagreen was being used in France to describe the prepared ray fish skin. The round, closely set scales (whose size depends on the age of the animal) are ground down and then a dye applied from the reverse to create a beautiful jewel-like appearance. It became a sophisticated, durable, luxurious material for the French aristocracy. Its true renaissance came in the 1920’s when it caught the eye of the Prince of Wales, later the Duke of Windsor. He commissioned cigarette cases, tables, shooting sticks, humidors and even toe-caps for his shoes.

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PATRON’S

FOREWORD

How wonderful it is that so many supporters who were there at the very beginning of Grange Park Opera in 1998 are still coming to the opera season and have remained loyal through all the vicissitudes of running a festival. As such we can hold our heads up with opera festivals around the world and with the improvement I have seen over the past 15 years we are making a run for it.

When I think back to our production of Eugene Onegin in 2001 in the 330 seat theatre, I just know that this year’s Onegin is going to represent a big leap forward. In that first crumbling theatre, quirky and charming was stylish but Grange Park Opera is now different and against all odds recognised as a very serious and successful operatic festival and not just an occasional firework display.

Not only has the music-making flourished but also the great building. One example is the fenestration of the theatre, where the original windows, which then gave onto the conservatory, have been reproduced as the architect Charles Cockerell (who incidentally helped Robert Smirke build Covent Garden Theatre) designed them in 1823. This of course also allows the audience to leave the theatre directly into the garden.

During last year’s season the portico of the main building including the coffered ceiling developed major leaks. These have been repaired thanks largely to English Heritage and had this not been done it would have been impossible to put on this year’s festival.

Two years ago Wasfi told me she wanted to commission a book on the history of The Grange in the hope that the ever increasing curiosity of visitors

to the festival might be accurately satisfied. This was achieved in an amazingly short time thanks to the author, Richard Osborne, and a copy or two were just available at the end of last year’s festival.

My brother and I agreed to make available a lot of written material and photographs dating from the time since my great, great, great grandfather Alexander Baring’s acquisition of The Grange in 1817. When he was created a peer, he revived the Ashburton title which had become extinct when his cousin, Richard Dunning, 2nd Lord Ashburton of the first creation, had died childless. Richard’s mother Elizabeth Baring was Alexander’s aunt.

Though I and my brother were well aware of much of the story since 1817, we certainly learnt a good deal more about the previous owners, the Henley family and Henry Drummond. A limited number of these books was printed and if you are interested in learning more about the remarkable Greek Revival building and its owners and how it came to be the home of GPO, you will be able to acquire a copy by application to the Box Office at the price of £50.

Though we are sorry that Rachel Pearson, who had been through nearly all the Festivals, has decided to move on, we wish her well. But everyone involved with The Grange is going flat out to ensure that 2013 exceeds all expectations.

Meanwhile the sun is shining and it is easy and indeed tempting to project oneself into a warm, summery season starting only a few weeks ahead.

Sally and I and other members of our family look forward very much to seeing you.

ASHBURTON

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FIRST & FOREMOST . . . THANKS TO

JOHN & SALLY ASHBURTON WHO ALLOWED THE OPERA TO BEGIN BACK IN 1998

September 2012 - April 2013 Knowledge Box Talks: Sister Elizabeth Obbard talks to Joanna Lumley on being a nun at The Carmelite Church, Kensington • Bill Winters on the state of British banks at Hoare’s Bank, Fleet Street • Peter Conrad on madness in opera at The Freud Museum • The Grange Book launch at Berry Bros, St James • Torches & Masks at The Soane Museum • Launch of the Junior Board at Byron's Chambers, Albany • Soirées at 22 Mansfield Street & The Savile Club & The home of the Fisher family • Soane Lecture at The Hunterian Museum, Lincoln's Inn Fields • Grange Park & Joanna Lumley at Mortons Club • Meteor party at Baku and a stretch in prison at HMP Erlestoke, Wiltshire be a supporter and join the Autumn functions

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thank you

Grange Park Opera receives no government or lottery funding The following pages celebrate the people who make the opera happen They deserve immense thanks (particularly while the economy is in repose) the new grange park taxi meeting a designated train is the perfect excuse for CHEERFUL ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOHN KENNEY

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THE 100 PEOPLE WHO WERE

FOUNDERS 1998

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 & Mrs 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 • Ashe Park Mineral Water • Baring Asset Management • British Steel • 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 Guy Boney & Bente Dawkins

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 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 Mr J P Hungerford Robin & Pat Ilbert

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

The Countess of Iveagh Mr & Mrs Evan James Mr Martin Jay Mr & Mrs David Jervis Mr J T L Jervoise Neil & Elizabeth Johnson Mr & Mrs A N Joy Ms Walia Kani Mr Vincent Keaveny Maureen & Jim Kelly Peter Kerfack & Russell Townend Mr & Mrs David Leathers Mr & Mrs Adam Lee David & Linda Lloyd Jones Mr Simon Lofthouse Dr Peter Lyndon-Skeggs Mrs Stuart Macnaghten The Hon Dwight Makins Mr & Mrs Charles Marriott Mr John Marden Mr William Mather Wendy & Michael Max Mr & Mrs P N J May Mr & Mrs T McMaddy Mr Nigel McNair Scott Mr & Mrs A S McWhirter Mr James Meade Leni Lady Miller Mr & Mrs Patrick Mitford Slade

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

Miss Charlotte Moore Elizabeth Morison Mr Michael J Morley Dr & Mrs Julian Muir Lord Neill of Bladen QC Sir Charles Nicholson Bt John & Dianne Norton John Julius Norwich Mr & Mrs Michael Orr Major General & Mrs Simon Pack Mark & Rachel Pearson Ron & Lyn Peet Mr & Mrs Nicholas Phelps-Brown The Countess of Portsmouth Mr & Mrs David Potter Bruce & Lizzie Powell Mark & Veronica Powell Mr & Mrs Richard Priestley Mrs Barbara Rait Sir Peter & Lady Ramsbotham Mr Myrddin Rees MS FRCS Mr David Reid Scott 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 GoldieMorrison Mr F E B Witts Mr Charles Young

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DONORS to THE 2013 FESTIVAL

The H B Allen Charitable Trust ICAP plc Bell Pottinger Private Gazprom Marketing & Trading Sir Simon & Lady Robertson Country Houses Foundation English Heritage David Ross Foundation The Linbury Trust David & Amanda Leathers Rosenblatt Recitals Stephen Gosztony & Sue Butcher FranCois Freyeisen & Shunichi Kubo Heike Munro Francis & Nathalie Phillimore Elm Capital Associates Ltd Clore Dufffii eld Foundation Bill & Anda Winters Descendants of others guillotined at the same time as the Carmelites James & Beatrice Lupton Mr & Mrs Richard Morse Sandbourne Asset Management Mrs Peter Cadbury David & Elizabeth Challen Judith Lawless & Kevin Egan Ruth Markland Laurent-Perrier Champagne

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Jeremy & Rosemary Farr Hamish Parker Paul & Rita Skinner Tom Busher & Elizabeth Benson Noreen Doyle Raymond & Elizabeth Henley Roger & Kate Holmes Barbara Yu Larsson Donald & Rachael Stearns Lime Wood Group Ltd LONMART Insurance The Leche Trust The Boltini Trust Mr & Mrs Grant Gordon Martin & Jane Houston Ian & Clare Maurice Sir David & Lady Plastow Derek Johns Ltd Jane & Paul Chase-Gardener Diane & Christopher Sheridan Richard sharp and a number of anonymous gifts Caroline & Geoffrey de Jager Nerissa Guest Tessa & John Manser Sir Stuart Rose Christopher & Anne Saul Baring Asset Management Nexus Group Rothschild David & Simone Caukill Adam & Lucy Constable Gareth & Janet Davies The Holmes Family Christopher Swan

Johnny, Marie & Anne Veeder Niall & Ingrid FitzGerald The Golden Bottle Trust Tom & Sarah Floyd Mrs Jill Goulston Raymonde Jay Mrs T Landon Brian & Jennifer Ratner John & Carol Wates Mr & Mrs Robert Enslow Robert Hugill & David Hughes Miss Clare Williams David Laing Foundation

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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 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 Tim & Therese Parker 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 Charitable Trust John & Lesley Stuttard Mr & Mrs R H Sutton Anonymous Mr & Mrs Bernard Taylor Gordon & Sue Thorburn The Titchmarsh Family Mr & Mrs Anthony Townsend Wendy & John Trueman Adair Turner

& Orna Ni–Chionna The Hon Lucy

& Michael Vaughan John & Lou Verrill Lady Jane Wallop John & Carol Wates Miss Clare Williams Hamish & Elisabeth Williams Mark & Jane Williams The Hon Geoffrey

& Mrs Wilson The Wolf Family Mr & Mrs C H R Wunderly Caroline Wyld

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THE NEW THEATRE & ENDOWMENT FUND

DONORS 2002

DONALD KAHN & FAMILY  The Clore DufField Foundation John & Anya Sainsbury Simon & Virginia Robertson Ronnie Frost & family The Geoff & Fiona Squire Foundation Carphone Warehouse

 William Garrett James Cave David & Amanda Leathers Sir David Davies EFG Private Bank Corus AND AN anonymous donor

Lord Harris of Peckham Lydia & Miles d’Arcy-Irvine





Mark Andrews Mr & Dr J Beechey David & Elizabeth Challen Mr & Mrs William Charnley Mr & Mrs Peter Dicks Simon Freakley

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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

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SCHOLARSHIP FUND

Throughout their professional lives, singers need lessons and these scholarships help younger singers realise their potential. Vocal progress is evaluated by re-auditioning.

ADVERTISERS 



Hiscox

The Gamlen Charitable Trust

Euromoney PLC

T V Drastik Margaret Rowe & John Schlesinger Mr C H R Wunderly

Zolfo Cooper The Goldsmiths Company

Christopher Reeves Memorial Trust Diana Cornish Enid Slater Charitable Trust The Robert Gavron Charitable Trust The Shauna Gosling Trust The Atkin Foundation The Barbara Whatmore Charitable Trust

lime wood group ltd Adam Architecture Alfred Homes Ltd Durrants Hotel Mange2 ARTS ABROAD Glyndebourne Festival



two anonymous donors

The Dyers' Company

support young opera goers

PIMLICO OPERA'S TWENTY SECOND PROJECT IN PRISON RECEIVED GENEROUS SUPPORT FROM

Underwood Trust Charles Hayward Foundation Capital International Limited The Ingram Trust Edenbeg Charitable Trust John Coates Charitable Trust Eleanor Rathbone Trust The Dyers' Company

The Golden Bottle Trust The Leigh Trust David & Amanda Leathers Stephen & Joanna Barlow Lord & Lady Phillimore The Saintbury Trust The Mackintosh Foundation The Swan Mountain Trust

The Bromley Trust Eleanor Bar ton Trust Matthews Wrightson Trust Brewster Maude Trust The Bernard Sunley Foundation N Smith Charitable Settlement The Oak Trust William A Cadbury Trust

AND 222 INDIVIDUALS  www.pimlicoopera.co.uk RECEIVES NO GOVERNMENT FUNDING

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THE

GLASS CEILINGSOCIETY 2013

Robin & Anne Baring Nigel Beale & Anthony Lowrey Christina Benn Mrs Jenny Bland Anthony Boswood Anonymous Consuelo & Anthony Brooke The Lord Browne of Madingley Anthony Bunker Tom Busher & Elizabeth Benson Clive & Helena Butler Samantha & Nabil Chartouni The Hon Sir Christopher Clarke Ian Clarkson & Richard Morris Mr Howard Colvin Etienne d'Arenberg Mr Damon & The Hon Mrs de Laszlo Brian & Susan Dickie Miss Helen Dorey FSA Noreen Doyle Anonymous Martin & Eugenia Ephson Peter & Fiona Espenhahn James Fenwick The Kilfinan Trust Niall & Ingrid FitzGerald Anonymous Rowan Jarvis Simon & Alison Jeffreys Mr Anthony Johnson Anonymous Anonymous Keith & Lucy Jones

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Mr & Mrs Henry Lumley Mrs Sally Lykiardopulo Ian & Marie-Anne Mackie Sarah B Mason William & Felicity Mather Ian & Clare Maurice Madeleine & Stephen McGairl Roger & Jackie Morris Mr & the Hon Mrs J Ogilvie Thompson The One Style Tour, Taiwan Charles Outhwaite Stephen & Isobel Parkinson Sally Phillips & Tristan Wood Sir Desmond & Lady Pitcher The Countess of Portsmouth Chrissie Quayle Mr Michael Rice Nigel & Viv Robson Barry & Anne Rourke Dr Angela Gallop & Mr David Russell Mr & Mrs David Salisbury The Tansy Trust George & Veronique Seligman Stella Shawzin Mr & Mrs Brigitte & Martin Skan Prof & Mrs Peter Sonksen Fiona Squire & Geoff Squire OBE David & Fiona Taylor Alan Titchmarsh Olof & Suzie Winkler von Stiernhielm Mr & Mrs Kevan Watts Anonymous

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THE SCHOOL OF

HIPPOCRATES 2013

Jenny & Paul Aynsley Maj Gen & Mrs J Balfour Mrs Isla Baring Mrs Michael Beresford-West Anthony Bird Roger Birtles Roy & Carol Brown Anonymous Julian & Jenny Cazalet Mr & Mrs John Colwell Mrs Carolyn Conlan Dr Neville Conway Mr & Mrs Giles Currie Patricia Baines Trust Simon de Lancey Walters Michael & Anthea Del Mar Dame Alison Richard & Robert Dewar Mark & Nicola Dumas Michael & Allie Eaton Stuart Errington CBE DL Marcia & Stephen Evans Mr & Mrs Jeremy Farr Rosie Faunch Mr & Mrs Simon Fisher Mr & Mrs James Fisher Mr & Mrs Harry Fitzalan Howard Michael & Anne Forrest Mr & Mrs Geoffrey Fuller Lindsey Gardener Mr & Mrs Wyatt Gates David & Margaret Gawler Peter Gerrard

Marcus & Susan Grubb Anonymous Mr & Mrs Will Hillary Mr & Mrs Hansgeorg Hofmann Christopher & Jo Holdsworth Hunt Lucy Holmes & Alexandra Wood Judith & Peter Iredale Morag & Peter James Mr John Jarvis QC Margi & Mike Jennings Dr Ingo & Dr Maria Lucia Klรถcker Roger & Liz Kramers Diana & Terence Kyle Mr & Mrs Andrew Lax Mr & Mrs Peter Leaver Gerald Levin Robert Linn Ottley Anthony & Fiona Littlejohn Andrew Luff June, Dyrol & Becky Lumbard John MacGowan Alistair & Sara Mackintosh Wendy & Michael Max Kathryn & Sarah McLeland William Middleton-Smith Patrick Mitford-Slade OBE Dr Vivienne Monk Sue & Peter Morgan Colin Murray Piotr & Elizabeth Nahajski Mr & Mrs Jeffrey Nedas Nicholson Family

Guy & Sarah Norrie Mrs Sally Posgate Dominic & Katherine Powell Hugh & Caroline Priestley Shirley & Grant Radcliffe Dr Martin Read & Dr Marian Gilbart Read Elizabeth & Nigel Reavley Tineke Dales Zsalya Mr George Sandars Thomas & Phillis Sharpe Nigel Silby Anonymous Graeme & Sue Sloan Mrs Marveen Smith Dr Anthony Smoker Andrew & Jill Soundy Sir Nigel & Lady Teare Mr & Mrs Hugh Tidbury Mr & Mrs John Tremlett Chris & Miranda Ward Johanna Waterous & Roger Parry Kevin & Sonia Watson Edward & Mandy Weston Nigel Williams Penny & Nicholas Wilson Jane Wood Jonathan & Sue Wood Mr & Mrs Richard J Woolnough David & Liz Wootton Peter Wrangham

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THE SCHOOL OF

ARCHIMEDES 2013

Jackie & John Alexander Mr John Arney Dr Richard Ashton Richard & Jean Baldwin Paul & Janet Batchelor Peter Bell Richard & Rosamund Bernays Adrian Berrill-Cox Mike & Alison Biden The Hon Mrs Diana Birtwistle Admirer of Charles Wallach Mr Quentin Black David Blackburn Halldora Blair Elisabeth & Bob Boas Longina Boczon Mr & Mrs Anthony Bodie Johannes Boecker Mr & Mrs Boecker Mrs Margaret Bolam Mr & Mrs Graham Bourne Neville & Rowena Bowen Julian & Maria Bower Penny & Robin Broadhurst Robin & Jill Broadley R J F Bronks Dorothy & John Brook Maureen Brooking Stuart & Maggie Brooks Lady Brown Hugh & Sue Brown Mrs Charles H Brown Mr & Mrs D M Bullough Richard Butler Adams Mark & Rosemary Carawan Russ & Linda Carr Max & Karina Casini

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Peter & Jane Cazalet Mr & Mrs Jason Chaffer Mr & Mrs Luke Chappell Mr & Mrs Shane Chichester Julia Chute Mr & Mrs Peter Clarke Diana Clarkson Michael & Angela Clayton Sir Anthony & Lady Cleaver Liz & Mike Cooper-Mitchell Henrietta Corbett Corin & Richard Cotton Peter Crisp & Jeremy Crouch Mr Carl Cullingford John & Susan Curtis Clifford R Dammers Anne & Jonathan Dawson Douglas & Pru de Lavison Count & Countess M de Selys Mrs Elizabeth Dean Patrick & Nikki Despard Krystyna Deuss Mrs Diana Doherty Dr Barbara Domayne-Hayman Christine Douse Paul Drury Mrs Jennifer Duffett Nick & Lesley Dumbreck Mr & Mrs K Eckett Yvonne & Malcolm Edwards Mr & Mrs Peter Ellis Martin & Maureen Farr Barry Fearn Esq TD The Fischer Fund Sian Fisher Tim & Rosie Forbes Mr & Mrs John Foster

Lindsay & Robin Fox Mr & Mrs David Gamble Jillian Ede & David Gendron Michael & Diane Gibbons David & Anne Giles Ian & Edwina Gilroy Bruce & Karin Ginsberg Michael Godbee Dr R B Godwin-Austen Mr & Mrs P A Goodson Mr & Mrs Richard Grant Mr Robin & The Hon Mrs Greenwood David Grenier Janet Grenier Mr & Mrs Alistair Groom Diana Guerrini Max & Catherine Hadfield Andrew Haigh John Hammond Keith, Maral Charles & James Hann Tim Harris Robert & Judith Hart Maureen & Peter Hazell Maggie Heath Mr & Mrs J E Heath Paul & Kay Henderson Jonathan & Veronica Henty Peter & Valerie Hewett Michael & Sarah Hewett Michael & Genevieve Higgin Patrick & Sue Higham Mr & Mrs Herman Hintzen Diana & Michael Hobson Lady Holdsworth H R Holland . . . Continued. . .

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THE SCHOOL OF ARCHIMEDES Peter & Marianne Hooley David & Mal Hope-Mason Mr & Mrs David Hopkinson Andrew & Kay Hunter Johnston Howard & Anne Hyman Mr & Mrs Charles Irby Martin & Sandra Jay Michael Jodrell Mr & Mrs Edward Jones Julian G Jones Alan & Judi Jones Mr Per Jonsson Pierre & Caroline Jungels Dr Catherine Katzka & Dr Swen Hรถelder Vincent & Amanda Keaveny Mrs Judith Kelley Tim & Ginny Kempster Dinah Kennedy Andrew Kennedy & Lindsay Cornish Mr & Mrs J Kiernan George Kingston Kevin Kissane Mrs Gabrielle Knights William & Mary Knowles Stephen & Miriam Kramer A & Z Kurtz Mr & Mrs Bill Lawes Belinda Leathes Professor Natalie Lee Hilary & James Leek Ruth & Brian Levy Sonya Leydecker Mrs Roger Liddiard Anne Longden Brigadier & Mrs Desmond Longfield Dieter Losse Robin Mackenzie Ian & Jane Macnabb Mr J J Macnamara Sir Nevil Macready

Russell Martin & Robin Field Brian & Penelope Matthews Gill & Doug McGregor Michael McLaren QC & Caroline McLaren John McVittie Mr & Mrs J Moreton Ian & Jane Morrison David & Angela Moss Chris & Annie Newell Mr Paul Nicholls Lady (Bridget) Nixon Pamela & Bruce Noble Mr & Mrs Peter Nutting Barry & Sue O'Brien Princess Paul Odescalchi Dr Cecily O'Neill Lavinia & Nick Owen Mr Alan Parker CBE Liz & Nigel Peace Mr & Mrs Erik Penser Mr & Mrs Hugh Peppiatt Mr & Mrs Robin Petherick Mr & Mrs J Pinna-Griffith Matthew Pintus & Joanna Ward David Pitman Tricia Guild Jane Poulter David & Elizabeth Pritchard Jill Pullan Tony & Etta Pullinger Gill & Clive Purkiss Neil & Julie Record Hilary Reid Evans Mike & Jessamy Reynolds Mr & Mrs James Roberts Alex & Caroline Roe Lionel & Sue Rosenblatt Peter Rosenthal David Rosier Julian & Catherine Roskill

. . . Continued

Mr & Mrs E J M Ross Margaret Rowe & John Schlesinger Dr Peter Saunders Peter & Carolyn Scoble Elizabeth & Jonathan Selzer John & Tita Shakeshaft Sue & Gerry Sharp Rob & Felicity Shepherd David & Jeni Sieff J G Stanford Nigel & Johanna Stapleton Brian Stevens Lisa Stone Mr John Strachan Mr & Mrs Tom Sweet-Escott Caroline & Phillip Sykes Mr & Mrs H Thompson Mr & Mrs Max Thum Prof & Mrs G M Tonge Anonymous Sir Tom & Lady Troubridge Sir Michael & Lady Turner Dr & Mrs James Turtle Ayesha Vardag Mrs Peter Wake DL Richard & Judy Wake Mr Philip ter Woort & Mrs Siobhan Walker Colin & Suzy Webster J. Anthony Wechsler Niels Weise Mr & Mrs Graham J West Jane & Ian White Isobel Williams Mr & Mrs Patrick J D'A Willis Ginny & Alastair Woodrow Dr Ian Wylie & Prof S Griffiths OBE Richard Youell AND six anonymous donors

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THE SCHOOL OF

PLATO 2013

Rick & Susie Abbott Dr Stewart Abbott Philippa Abell Miss Rula Al-Adasani Mrs Rosemary Alexander Anonymous Mrs David Anderson John Andrews Phillip Arnold & Philip Baldwin Dr Derek Ashburner Brian D & Katherine Ashton Young M J Askham Mrs Nicholas Assheton Chris & Claire Aston Anonymous Priscilla & Mark Austen Roger & Lisa Backhouse Nick & Audrey Backhouse Mrs Andrew Bailey Neha & Robert Bailhache Mr Michael & Dr Marie Bakowski Chris & Elizabeth Ballard Mrs Susan Band Mrs Caroline Barber Oliver Barnes Val & Christopher Bateman Stanley Bates Peter & Clare Bevan Lisa Bolgar Smith Anonymous David & Margaret Bonsall The Hon Robert Boyle & Mrs Boyle David & Tessa Brewer Lord & Lady Bridgeman

Dr & Mrs Douglas Bridgewater The Bridgman Family Charles & Patricia Brims John & Amanda Britton Anonymous Adam & Sarah Broke George Brown & Alison Calver Finn Bruce Patricia & David Buck Mr & Mrs Martin Burton Myrna Bustani Peter D Byrne Mr & Mrs Murray Bywater Ann & Quentin Campbell Anonymous Mr Andrew Carruthers Anonymous Mr & Mrs Nicholas Carter Andrew & Jacqueline Cartwright Graham Cawsey & Virginia Korda Dr J D H Chadwick Guy Chapman Anonymous Ann Clarke Jonathan & Jane Clarke Mr & Mrs Trevor Clarke Mr & Mrs Henry Clay Adam & Noreen Cleal Mrs Laurence Colchester Dr & Mrs Peter Collins Pauline Cook Anthony Cooke Matthew & Bianca Cosans Robert & Morella Cottam

Anonymous Anonymous Johnny & Liz Cowper-Coles Alan & Heather Craft Stephen & Julia Crompton Tom Cross Brown Mr & Mrs C Crouch David & Peta Crowther A D & J M Cummins Lady Curtis Mr Antoni Daszewski Christopher & Marigold Davenport-Jones Sir John & Lady de Trafford Baron & Baronne Wencelas de Traux de Wardin B Dean Peter & Joan Dixon Matthew & Kate Dobbs Anonymous Professor & Mrs T A Downes Philippa Drew Mr & Mrs Reg Drury Matthew & Christian Dryden Cathy Dumelow Jamie Dundas Anonymous Mrs Dickie Dutton Walton & Jane Eddlestone Lord & Lady Eden Sir Malcolm & Lady Edge Jennifer Edwards Anonymous Michael & Wendy Evans

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Thank you to supporters

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. . . Continued . . .

08/05/2013 12:15

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Thank you to supporters

THE SCHOOL OF PLATO Anthony & Jenny Newhouse Sir Charles & Lady Nicholson Jeremy & Elizabeth Nicholson John Nicoll George Nissen Mr & Mrs Francis Norton Lt Col & Mrs Richard Norton John & Dianne Norton Sir Charles & Lady Nunneley The Hon Michael & Mrs O’Brien Mr Preben Øeye & Mr John Derrick Janet & Michael Orr Mr & Mrs Richard Collin Anonymous John A Paine C A Palmer Tomkinson Anonymous Sir Michael & Lady Parker Mrs Blake Parker Deborah & Clive Parritt Mr & Mrs P Pattinson Michael Pearl John & Jacqui Pearson Lucy Pease Mr & Mrs T Peat Giuseppe & Penny Pecorelli Mrs C E Peddie Nicholas & Caroline Perry Richard & Gail Pertwee C H Petre R B Petre Jonathan & Gillian Pickering Terry Pickthall Anonymous Mr & Mrs Charles Pike Graham & Virginia Prain Judith Prickett & Raymond Sutton Edward Priday Mrs D E Priestley

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David & Judith Pritchard Sally & Peter Procopis Mr & Mrs Stephen Proctor Katherine-Lucy Pumphrey Robin Purchas Dennis & Susanne Purser Lady Purves Aviva & Gerald Raingold Mr & Mrs Michael Rappolt Jane & Graham Reddish Philip Remnant David Rendell & Ali Smith Lt Col & Mrs Ralph Reynolds John & Christine Rhodes Mrs Caroline Rimell Lady Rivett-Carnac Christopher & Zofia Road Miles & Vivian Roberts James & Catharine Robertson Anonymous Martyn & Pippa Rose Mr & Mrs James Roundell Mr Alan Roxburgh Joan & Lewis Rudd Prof & Mrs D Russell-Jones Alicia & Ray Salter Ian & Wendy Sampson John Schofield Rupert Sebag-Montefiore Prof Lorna Secker-Walker Mr & Mrs James Sehmer R Y C Sharp David Sheraton & Kate Stabb Andrew Simon Jeremy Simons Sir Jock Slater Amanda & Richard Slowe Russell & Julia Smart Robin & Phyllida Smeeton Mr & Mrs Peter J Smith Dr S L Smith Roderick & Mary Smith

. . . Continued

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15/05/2013 07:13

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tenor

JOSEPH CALLEJA

WITH IAIN BURNSIDE PIANO

One night only at The Grange: June 19

Photo: Simon Fowler Photography

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14/05/2013 13:56

JOSEPH CALLEJA TENOR

It was the film The Great Caruso starring Mario Lanza that inspired Calleja to pursue a career in opera. Born in Malta in 1978 he began singing at 16 in his church choir. 18 years later, at only 34 years of age, he has sung 28 principal roles and performed on most of the world’s leading opera stages.

Calleja made his professional debut in Malta in 1997 as Macduff Macbeth and soon won the Caruso Competition in Milan and was a prizewinner in Placido Domingo’s Operalia.

Calleja made his Covent Garden debut as the Duke of Mantua and returned to perform Alfredo, Rodolfo, Macduff and in a concert performance as Nicias in Massenet's Thais.

The Duke of Mantua has been the vehicle for debuts at Bayerische Staatsoper, Netherlands Opera, Welsh National Opera and Deutsche Oper Berlin.

At Vienna Staatsoper – in addition to his celebrated Verdi roles – he has portrayed Elvino Sonnambula, Arturo Puritani; Nemorino Elisir d’amore, title role Roberto Devereux and Pinkerton Butterfly. In the autumn he sings Gabriele Adorno opposite Placido Domingo as Simon Boccanegra Audiences at Barcelona’s Gran Teatre del Liceu first heard him as Nemorino and he debuted as Rodolfo at Dresden’s Semperoper and at the Frankfurt Opera – where he also returned for role debuts as Romeo Romeo et Juliette and Ruggiero La Rondine.

Isabella (Pesaro, Rossini Opera Festival), Alfredo in a new production of Traviata (Opèra National du Rhin, Strasbourg), Ernesto Pasquale (La Monnaie), Almaviva (Liege), Fenton Falstaff (Teatro Regio di Torino), Edoardo di Sanval in Verdi’s Un giorno di regno (Bologna), Duke (Rotterdam and Copenhagen), Rodolfo (Bregenz Festival) and Leicester Maria Stuarda (Stockholm and Parma).

Calleja made his US debut as Rinuccio Gianni Schicchi at the Spoleto Festival. His numerous roles at the Metropolitan Opera, NY, include title role Faust. Other appearances include Rodolfo opposite Anna Netrebko (Lyric Opera of Chicago), Macduff (Seattle), Alfredo (Los Angeles Opera), Almaviva and Duke of Mantua (Washington Opera), Edgardo Lucia di Lammermoor (Minnesota Opera).

A Grammy-nominated recording artist for Decca Classics, his third album, The Maltese Tenor, debuted last year as the best-selling vocal album on the core classical charts in the UK and Germany. On his new solo recording, Be My Love: a Tribute to Mario Lanza, Calleja pays homage to the famous Italian-American singer and actor.

In 2011 he sang at the Nobel Peace Prize concert in Stockholm and in February 2012, Calleja was named Malta’s first cultural ambassador.

Last summer he starred at the Last Night of the Proms at the Royal Albert Hall.

Elsewhere in Europe appearances include Duke in a new production of Rigoletto (Bayerische Staatsoper), the role of Lind in the world premiere of Azio Corghi’s

48

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15/05/2013 09:51

Joseph Calleja, tenor

Joseph will perform SOME of his favourite arias and songs including BIZET Carmen

Flower Song

OFFENBACH Les contes d'Hoffmann

Il etait une fois . . .

E lucevan le stelle Recondita armonia Nessun dorma Questa o quella Pourquoi me reveiller

PUCCINI Tosca

PUCCINI Turandot VERDI Rigoletto MASSENET Werther

with Hye-Youn Lee Che gelida PUCCINI La Bohème

manina Si, mi chiamano Mimi O soave fanciulla

with Brett Polegato Au fond BIZET Pêcheurs de perles ...

du temple saint

Granada, O sole mio, Parlami d'amore Mariu . . . and more

NEW YORKER “Only one lyric tenor on the scene today has the honeyed tone and ingratiating style to make comparisons to Pavarotti and Gigli seem serious, and it is Calleja, the man from Malta, who, after several years of fine journeyman work, is now maturing into an artist of the first rank” ASSOCIATED PRESS “Blessed with a golden-age voice that routinely inspires comparisons to legendary singers from earlier eras: Jussi Bjőrling, Beniamino Gigli, even Enrico Caruso”

Photo: Simon Fowler Photography

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 signifies support for the role

Hye-Youn Lee

Heike Munro

– Sister Blanche of the Agony of Christ

– Marquis de la Force her father Nicky Spence – Chevalier de la Force Blanche’s brother Anne-Marie Owens – Mme de Croissy the Prioress Fiona Murphy – Mme Lidoine the new Prioress Matthew Stiff

 Roger & Kate Holmes and an anonymous donor

Sara Fulgoni

– Mère Marie of the Incarnation

– Sister Constance of Saint-Denis

 Judith Lawless & Kevin Egan

Kathleen Wilkinson 

Gareth & Janet Davies

NIGEL ROBSON

– Mère Jeanne of the Child Jesus

– Chaplain

Olivia Ray – Sister Mathilde SYLVIE BEDOUELLE – Sister Gertrude PRUDENCE SANDERS – Sister St Charles  Hamish Parker

POULENC, JULY 1954

To Bernac “Did I tell you how overcome I was by Lourdes the other day? I had never seen a pilgrimage before. It was at once atrocious and sublime.

What moved me most was seeing all those young people”

SARAH MINNS 

– Sister Anne of the Cross

Tom & Sarah Floyd

NATALIE SINNOTT

– Sister Claire

 Robert Hugill & David Hughes

SUSANNA HEARD  Raymonde Jay

CATHY BELL

– Sister Catherine

– Sister Felicity

 Brian & Jennifer Ratner

 Descendants of others guillotined at the same time

SORAYA MAFI

The convent bells  Richard Sharp

CATIA MORESO – Sister Alice ELEANOR GARSIDE – Sister Valentine ROSEMARY CLIFFORD – Sister Martha JOANNA soane – Sister Antoine CHARLOTTE KING – Mère Gerald JOE MORGAN – 1st Commissary JOHNNY HERFORD – Officer CHRISTOPHER CULL – Doctor / Jailer BRAGI JONSSON – Thierry / 2nd Commissary

Conductor

Stephen �arlow

 Sir David & Lady Plastow

John Doyle DESIGNER Liz Ascroft Movement Nikki Woollaston Lighting Design Paul Keogan SOUND Design Sebastian Frost VIDEO Design Joe Stathers-Tracey Director

ENGLISH CHAMBER Orchestra

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SUPPORTED by a Syndicate david & amanda leathers with BOLTINI TRUST Stephen Gosztony & Sue Butcher BILL & ANDA WINTERS & AN anonymous donor

Francis Poulenc

DIALOGUES DES

carmelites

Based on a novella by Gertrud von Le Fort and a screenplay by Georges Bernanos First performance (in Italian) La Scala, Milan, 26 January 1957 Première in French at Théâtre National de l’Opéra, Paris, 21 June 1957 Performances on June 11, 14, 22, 30, July 6, 12 Sung in French with surtitles

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DIALOGUES DES

CARMELITES

1789 The first rumblings of the Revolution.

Both aristocrats and religious communities are being persecuted.

Act 1 Paris The Marquis de la Force is worried about his daughter Blanche who is unusually fearful and reticent. She has been jostled in the streets by the rioters. Even the shadow of the footman terrifies her. Unable to cope with daily life, she has decided to become a nun with the Carmélites at Compiègne.

Compiègne: some weeks later The Prioress tests Blanche’s motives and stresses the religious life is not a refuge. Blanche is accepted by the order.

With another young nun, Sister Constance, she discusses death. Constance has had a dream that the two of them will die young together.

On her deathbed the Prioress is delirious and rails against God: despite her long years of service He has abandoned her. Blanche and Mère Marie witness her agonised death.

Act 2 Constance and Blanche are keeping watch over the dead prioress and talk about her awful end. Blanche is petrified. The new Prioress, Lidoine gives her inaugural address warning that great trials await the nuns. Whatever threatens, the nuns should not aspire beyond their humble duty of prayer.

DINNER INTERVAL Blanche’s brother arrives to take her home; as both an aristocrat and member of a religious community, she is in great danger. Blanche refuses: she has found happiness in the Order.

August 1792 The Chaplain celebrates his last Mass. An epidemic of fear has left France unable to defend its priests and Marie suggests the Carmélites offer their own lives to the cause. The new Prioress Mme Lidoine points out that one cannot choose to be a martyr:

martyrdom is a gift from God The mob is at the main entrance. The Carmélite convent and all its property are being confiscated The nuns must give up their religious clothes Marie acquiesces: the nuns will continue to serve, no matter how they are dressed

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Carmélites

Act 3 Lidoine, the new Prioress is away. Marie proposes the nuns take a vow of martyrdom. To be binding the vote/vow must be unanimous but there is one dissenter who, it is assumed, is Blanche. Constance says the vote was hers and asks permission to change it. She kneels with Blanche to take the vow.

Paris Marie is looking for Blanche who has run away. She is found in her father’s house working as a servant. The Marquis has been guillotined.

In the Conciergerie prison, Lidoine tells the Carmélites she will join in their vow of martyrdom made in her absence.

A jailer reads the Revolutionary Tribunal’s death sentence.

Marie and the Chaplain meet elsewhere in secret. She wants to join her sisters in martyrdom. The Chaplain reminds her she cannot make a martyr of herself: it is for God to choose.

17 July 1794 One by one the nuns follow the prioress to the guillotine chanting the Salve Regina. Constance is the last. Blanche is in the crowd and pushes her way to the front to follow Constance.

CANNES, AUGUST 1955

Poulenc is with his ex-boyfriend Lucien Roubert who has tuberculosis. Poulenc writes to Pierre Bernac “I have entrusted him to my sixteen blessed Carmélites: may they protect his final hours. I am haunted by Bernanos’ phrase: we do not die for ourselves alone . . . but for, or instead of, each other. Yes I have completed my opera, apart from a few final touches. My heart is aching but . . . that’s human nature” Lucien died in October.

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POULENC AND THE MARTYRS OF

COMPIEGNE

The sixteen Martyrs of Compiègne were members of the Carmel of Compiègne, mostly discalced (barefoot) Carmelite nuns, who under the Revolution refused to obey the order of the government demanding the suppression of their monastery. Condemned to death as traitors, they were guillotined on 17 July 1794.

At the foot of the scaffold, the nuns jointly renewed their vows and began to chant the Veni Creator Spiritus, the hymn sung at the ceremony for the profession of vows. The novice of the community,

PARIS 1794

Le couvent et chapelle des Dames chanoinesses de Saint-Augustin de Picpus where the Carmelite nuns were thrown into burial pits with quicklime

Sister Constance, was the first to die. As she mounted the scaffold she chanted the psalm for daily entry into the house of God: O praise the Lord, all you nations . . . Her sisters joined her: . . . praise him, all you peoples! For his merciful kindness is ever more and more towards us; and the truth of the Lord endureth for ever. All singing, the lay Sisters went in turn to their deaths. Last came their new prioress, Mother Teresa of St Augustine, singing alone.

The revolutionaries threw the bodies into makeshift burial trenches in what had been a convent garden

POULENC, September 1953

“I am obnubilated (lovely word) by my Carmelites to such a point that I nearly called you Reverend Mother!!!

This whole venture is making me completely crazy. I can think of nothing else, I live for nothing else . . . I believe I have found a very special atmosphere. Obviously, people won’t find it exactly amusing, but I think they will be deeply moved”

54

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Carmélites

near Picpus, their severed heads and naked torsos tossed into the pit to join the 1,290 other victims of the guillotine at the Place du Trône since 13 June.

The nuns came from every level of French society, though most were daughters of tradesmen: shoemakers, turners, clerks. One was the daughter of a king’s counsellor. Sister Constance, the novice, was brought up on a simple farm. She was the youngest of the nuns, and her parents, sensing her peril, had wanted her home for some time. They even sent the police from their village, but Constance had refused to leave, saying to the gendarmes: ‘Gentlemen, I thank my parents if, out of love, they fear the danger that may befall me. Yet nothing except death can separate me from my mothers and sisters.’

Robespierre saw no room for mercy in the Terror; for him ‘slowness of judgments amounted to impunity’ and ‘uncertainty in punishment encouraged the guilty’. The Carmelites appeared before the odious Antoine Quentin Fouquier-Tinville, Robespierre’s public prosecutor, the lawyer son of a Picard small landowner. Their trial was a farce. By the time it began, the records had already been written, the printed condemnation of the Carmelites by the Tribunal had already been signed, and Fouquier-Tinville had already told the executioner how many victims to expect at the guillotine later in the day. This was a trial without lawyers, witnesses, or presentation of evidence. One of the nuns asked Fouquier-Tinville what he meant by calling them ‘fanatics’; he replied ‘I’m referring to your stupid religious practices.’ They were summarily condemned for ‘crimes against the French people.’ The execution was carried out that same evening. They had been given nothing to eat since dawn, and had to barter a pelisse against sixteen cups of chocolate before they climbed into the tumbrels.

founded in 1593 by St Theresa of Avila and St John of the Cross, in their remolding of the Carmelite order.

St Theresa’s famous and absorbing Autobiography dramatically illustrates the power which her spirituality had come to exert over her body. The section on the embarrassment of levitating in public, and the importance of having stout nuns on either side of one during prayer, to keep one on the ground, has mesmerized readers over the centuries. The deaths of the Carmelites of Compiègne provided Christians with a wonderful illustration of the power of faith, and the revolutionaries with a bitter and gnawing irritation. None could doubt the strength given the nuns by their regime of contemplative prayer.

The Carmelites of Compiègne have excited much scholarly interest as well as novels and plays. The Relation, an account of the affair by Mère Marie de l’Incarnation de Dieu, led to the beatification of the

Only ten days later, Robespierre himself was guillotined, his face covered in blood. In a botched suicide attempt he had shattered his jaw with a pistol shot. Fouquier-Tinville’s turn came nine months later, after a trial lasting forty-one days.

The discalced Carmelites were a mendicant order

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nuns in 1906, and inspired a German novella, Die Letzte am Schafott (The Last One to the Scaffold, 1931) by Gertrud von Le Fort. The novella provided the spark for a French play by Georges Bernanos, a film by Brückberger and Agostini, and Poulenc’s opera, first performed at La Scala Milan in 1957.

Inevitably the opera is concerned with one’s approach to death. Bernanos, who had been wounded several times in the First World War and witnessed the battles of Verdun and the Somme, was in 1948 dying of cancer, aged 59, when he started work on his play.

The line given to Constance, in scene three of the first act, Mais quoi, à cinquante-neuf ans n’est-il pas grand temps de mourir? (But don’t you think that by fiftynine it’s high time you died?), is one of many internal ironies in the text. The novice is speaking of the first prioress, who is fifty-nine and on her death bed.

The religious theme attracted Poulenc. Born in 1899, son of a Parisian pharmaceuticals magnate, he had been taught music by his pianist mother. A member of Les Six, he made his mark in the 20s as a composer of light-hearted diversions, neoclassically dry and ironic, like Concert Champêtre or Les Biches, written for Diaghilev and presented by the Ballets Russes in 1924. But he had always been emotionally vulnerable, and a visit to Rocamadour in 1936 overwhelmed him, and led to a profound consolidation of his Catholic faith. The intensity of the later choral works, like the Mass and the Stabat Mater, and his achievements as a major composer

of mélodies (art songs) admirably qualified him to set Les Carmélites. Bernanos’s libretto is exquisitely written and Poulenc loved setting fine words. He said of his song settings: The musical adaptation of a poem ought to be an act of love and never a marriage of convenience. I have never been able to do without poetry.

The central character of Blanche is not a historical figure but a symbol, the invention of Gertrud von Le Fort – who gave Blanche her own family name: she is Blanche de la Force in the opera. The German authoress, deeply troubled by the turn of events in Germany in 1931, said she had created Blanche ‘as an incarnation of man’s anguish faced with an entire era moving inexorably towards its end.’

The three most prominent musical motives in the opera are associated with fear, often labelled respectively la peur (fear), l’anxiété (anxiety), and la crainte (terror). Blanche’s Carmelite name, Sister Blanche of the Agony of Christ, identifies her with Christ at the moment when he confronts his terror at the prospect of crucifixion. Blanche represents the sensitive vulnerable woman facing her fears at the dreadful evolution of events; fears both personal, of pain and death, and general, for the direction of society; fear of fear itself, of not being able to find the courage to join the other nuns on the scaffold.

When the ballot is taken, it is Blanche alone who votes that they should not sacrifice themselves; Constance, knowing this, takes responsibility, saying

POULENC & DENISE DUVAL

“For me, this girl is pure sunlight” “In the case of Blanche, I know Denise so well that I have given her only open sounds in the high register” left Denise as Blanche right Poulenc and Denise

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The Carafa Chapel, Santa Maria sopra Minerva, Rome

Cardinal Oliviero Carafa (1430 – 1511) devoted himself to the patronage of art and literature.

Bramante’s first architectural commission in Rome, came from Carafa. As Cardinal Protector of the Dominican order he generously embellished Santa Maria sopra Minerva and its associated priory.

Filippino Lippi’s Annunciation depicts his donor Carafa kneeling with St Thomas Aquinas’ hand urging him in his devotion. This was Lippi’s first large-scale fresco.

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that the dissenting vote was her own, and that she’s now changed her mind. So unanimity is achieved, and Blanche, we hope, can surmount her fear.

Gertrud von Le Fort’s novella presents an apocalyptic vision of a world threatened by the totalitarianism of Hitler and Stalin. Bernanos laments a France humiliated by the Second World War, desperately in need of moral rebirth and a new confidence. For Poulenc the story of the Carmelites mainly carried a spiritual message. Poulenc repeatedly insisted that his opera was about the transformation within Blanche, from terror and timidity to courageous acceptance of her need to stand with her sisters. He stressed that he was concerned with the power of divine grace through which Blanche found sufficient strength to overcome her fears. Accordingly, throughout the opera, Poulenc emphasizes Blanche’s internal conflict and, in the final scene he altered Bernanos and von le Fort’s ending to stress this point: in the novella and the play Blanche proclaims her solidarity with the Carmelites by joining in their singing of the Veni Creator Spiritus, and this causes her to be set upon and trampled by the crowd. But Poulenc has Blanche march with Constance to the guillotine, and the last dreadful thud is the fall of the blade upon her.

So, for Poulenc, Blanche is puzzled by a world in which people say only half of what they mean, a frightened little girl lost, and seeking help from divine grace, amid events over which she has no control, and we, the audience, feel ourselves not just drawn to Blanche, but one with her: the fears we experience are her fears; her final reunion with Constance at the guillotine represents our willingness to identify with the Carmelites, to join spiritually with them in their anguish, which is also their triumph. The final scene carries its powerful impact because the audience senses itself mounting the scaffold with Blanche, and thus acknowledging the moral necessity of standing up to the tyranny of wicked men. All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. Through Blanche we join the Carmelites in their stand, however much we might individually doubt our courage to do so.

At a time when Boulez was writing Le marteau sans maître and Stockhausen his ‘punctual’ music, Poulenc found that his nuns wanted to sing tonally, in a continuous flowing cantilena springing from the style of his songs, and harking back in opera to his hero Mussorgsky or even to Monteverdi.

Despite its late date, the music of Les Carmélites is much closer in style to Debussy’s Pelléas than to Schoenberg’s Moses und Aaron, or Berg’s Wozzeck.

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The work gave Poulenc the opportunity to explore his gift for writing sacred music - the famous and exquisite a cappella Ave Maria is an obvious example; it also gave him an overwhelming religious theme which he clearly found inspirational. Dialogues des Carmélites has few competitors as the great French opera of the mid-twentieth century.

Using a huge orchestra (triple woodwind, four horns, two harps, piano, and one guillotine) with magical discretion, Poulenc develops the drama by means of about twenty leitmotifs, often harmonic progressions, to represent ideas or individuals, projected through music of great clarity and intensity, all the more powerful for being understated.

A key scene is in the first act, between Blanche, who in fear of the Terror has taken refuge in the monastery, and another novice Constance. Constance talks of her simple life in her country village, and the fun they had at her brother’s wedding. This reflects a constant theme of the opera: the contrast between the enclosed life of the monastery and the more open, but not necessarily more dangerous, life outside.

The two nuns talk of the first prioress, who is dying, and this brings them, given the uncertainties of the times, to discussing their own attitudes to death. Constance suggests that they should substitute, if they could, their own ‘little lives’ for that of the prioress. The idea is one of several which take flight in the opera, for the two young nuns soon see the prioress die of her illness, renouncing her God, in a terrible agony of remorse and doubt after an exemplary life, while they themselves manage finally to overcome

left ST CECILIA

An early Christian martyr with an exceptionally troublesome end. The first attempt was suffocation by steam. It then took three attempts to behead her before she died.

The sculptor Stefano Moderno attested that he was present when her tomb was opened in 1599. He recorded the position of her body as it was found, with three outstretched fingers testifying to her belief in the Holy Trinity.

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their appalling fear of the guillotine, and go to their deaths without flinching, confident in their salvation.

This is an exchange of a kind, but not the exchange originally envisaged by Constance.

Poulenc suffered a severe breakdown in the course of writing the Carmelites. Always hypochondriac, he was deeply affected by Bernanos’s play. He persuaded himself he had stomach cancer, despite his doctors’ assurances to the contrary. Then his travelling-salesman boyfriend, Lucien Roubert, suggested they split up, with the result that poor Poulenc went into a serious decline and spent the latter part of 1954 in a clinic.

Premiered in 1957, in Italian at La Scala in January, then in French in Paris the following June with a famous cast, including Denise Duval, Régine Crespin, and Rita Gorr, Les Carmélites has down the years cast its spell not only on the public but on many of the great female singers of the age: Maria Ewing, Jessye Norman, Leontyne Price, Joan Sutherland,

Irmgard Seefried, Anneliese Rothenberger, Josephine Barstow, and Anja Silja have all returned to the work, attracted by its undemonstrative vocal presentation of powerful feelings, and a fascination with these extraordinarily brave people. Poulenc treats the voice with respect, and avoids histrionics or exaggeration.

He knows the power of musical understatement. For the singers there may be few great vocal moments and no romantic passion, but the intense measured projection of the relationship of these women to their vows, to their order, to their sisters, and to their God, is the richer for its restraint. Dialogues des Carmélites has rarely failed to overwhelm its audience with its clear and deeply-touching presentation of the heights to which the human spirit can aspire.

A movement in the Catholic Church is pressing for the canonisation of the sixteen Martyrs of Compiègne.

miCHAEL FONTES

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Sister Constance born 1765, was brought up on a simple farm. She was the youngest of the nuns, and her parents had even sent the police from their village to bring her back.

This is not a farm . . . but the factory at Jouy. The light cottons which imitated the painted cottons from India so undermined the French silk and wool industry, they were banned in 1686, equipment confiscated and destroyed. Goods remained in clandestine circulation and the ban proved unenforceable. It was lifted in 1759. In 1760 the factory was moved from the overcrowded Arsenal and Gobelin quarters in Paris to the outskirts at Jouy where there was the necessary clean water supply. Christophe-Philippe Oberkampf the owner made a donation of 50,000 livres to the royal treasury in November 1789.

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MY RELATIONS IN THE

GARDEN OF PICPUS

by david LENTAIGNE

The Carmelites are in Picpus Cemetary today, along with another 1,306 victims of the Terror, including two of my ancestors guillotined 4 days before the nuns. My direct ancestor, younger brother to the two guillotined, was sentenced with them, but escaped from the prison (Versailles) as the Jailor’s wife felt sorry for him! Rumour has it he was rather personable.

The total number guillotined throughout France has been estimated at between 16,000 and 40,000.

The convent of Canonesses on the Rue de Picpus dedicated to Saint Augustin was founded in 1647 to glorify the victory of Lepanto. In March 1794 it was confiscated and became a 150 bed prison hospital. The garden had high walls and at the far end, communal burial pits were dug and the wall breached for access.

The singing of the Carmelites on 17 July 1794 had silenced the gaping, jeering crowd. Their bodies were thrown back into the tumbrel and transported 800 metres to the Jardin de Picpus where they were

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stripped, thrown into the pits and covered with quicklime to speed decomposition. The first pit was 25’ x 15’ x 20’ deep, and when that was full another was dug 30’ x 20’ by 24’ deep. A third pit was dug but never used.

The Terror came to an end just ten days after the death of the Carmelites.

A number of the principal architects of the Revolution were denounced and guillotined, including Robespierre and Danton. One of my cousins, Charlotte de Corday, managed to assassinate Marat in his bath, as brilliantly painted by David.  The land with the two pits was acquired in secret by 1796

by Amelie de Hohenzollern whose brother was in one of the pits. Six years later the larger site was acquired by subscription from those with relatives therein, led by the Marquise de Montagu, and her sister Madame de La Fayette, whose great uncle and aunt, grandmother and sister were all buried there.

All those who are descended from those lying within are entitled to be buried in the graveyard today.

One of these is La Fayette, who was one of the original revolutionaries, and who also helped the Americans start their revolution. The American flag has flown over his grave since his burial – even during the German occupation in the Second World War. Somehow, the Nazis did not find the courage to alienate the French aristocracy.

CHARLOTTE CORDAY

Marie-Anne Charlotte de Corday d’Armont visited Marat on 13 July and plunged into his chest a kitchen knife with a six inch blade. (He had a debilitating skin condition and conducted much of his business from the bath). At her trial, Corday said “I killed one man to save 100,000”

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SISTER CONSTANCE 200 years IN

POULENC

PARIS

TO

It has been some time since there was a French opera at The Grange and, with more on the runway, a timeline is in order – incorporating some fine dining, engineering and, as always, trains.

1765 Sister Constance (Marie-Geneviève Meunier) born 28 May in Saint–Denis 1778 Paris. Voltaire dies. Women carried water from the river Seine to their homes in buckets. Voltaire wrote “they will not begrudge money for a Comic Opera, but will complain about building aqueducts worthy of Augustus” FAST FORWARD . . .

1803 First restaurant guide: Almanach des Gourmands.

Post-revolution, cooks of aristocratic households had opened restaurants. By 1804 there were 500-600 1805 Napoleon builds vaulted sewer network 1818 Jouy producing 1.5 million metres per year of Toile. It was the second largest business in France exceeded only by the mirror factory at Saint-Gobain 1820s Stendhal at a Rossini opera “There is no parallel in Paris, where cautious vanity anxiously eyes a neighboring vanity beside it; these are men possessed of seven devils, determined at all costs, by dint of shrieking, stamping, and battering with their canes against the backs of the seats in front, to enforce the triumph of their opinion, and above all, to prove that, come what may, none but their opinion is correct - for, in all the world, there is no intolerance like that of a man of artistic sensibility . . .”

1830s 1833 April Bellini travels Italy – Paris – London – Paris. Never to leave France again.

1835 January Première of Puritani at Théâtre-Italien September Bellini dies in Puteaux near Paris October Saint-Saëns born. His most successful

pupils were Fauré (b 1845) and Messager (b 1853) 1836 Benvenuto Cellini at Opéra. Berlioz was utterly dismissive of Bellini’s operas 1837 France’s first train: Le Pecq (near SaintGermain-en-Laye where Debussy was born 1862) to Embarcadère des Bâtignoles (later Gare Saint-Lazare) 1840s 1843 Factory at Jouy closes . . . fashions change 1847 French rail network lags behind from fear of undermining the canal network. The line Gare du Nord - Compiègne was one of the first. It transported guests for glittering Imperial série. The first of the série, it was said, was for necessary people, the second for bores, the third for the fashionable set, the fourth for the intellectuals. Never was anybody satisfied with the week to which he or she had been assigned 1850s Haussmann sets to work straightening up the city Service a la Francaise (food all at once) gives way to Service a la Russe (courses) 1853 A 220 yard pneumatic tube connects the Stock Exchange with Lothbury’s Telegraph Station avoiding delay in the transmission of critical information 1857 De Musset dies. Of a ball at the Tuileries he writes “but I wouldn’t give two sous to see the last act”.

1860s Pasteur’s Germ Theory. Saint-Saëns: “People refused to believe that these organisms which developed in great numbers in an enclosed jar were not produced spontaneously. The youth of the time went wild over the question”

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1860 March Wagner, in Paris for Tannhäuser, calls on Rossini 1861 24 year old Isabella Beeton, publishes Book of Household Management. She dies at 28 September Tchaikovsky’s first trip to western Europe.

“Life in Paris is extremely pleasant” 1862 Paris’ new Grand Hôtel boasts electricity, elevators, ice-making machines 1863 London goes subterranean (i) A 24 inch diameter pneumatic tube is built from Euston station (under platform 1) and the Post Office in Eversholt Street (600 yards). A capsule of 35 bags of mail could make the journey in one minute – twice the speed of mailcarts (ii) The Metropolitan Railway, the world’s first underground Paddington - Farringdon Street. The line was cut and cover and the first true underground was the 1900 Central Line 1864 Paris goes subterranean: La Morgue, Quai Napoléon displays the cadavars of those found dead or drowned – several hundred a year. Sewer tours popular. Les Misérables

by Victor Hugo (living in exile in Guernsey) devotes pages to the marvels of Haussmann’s sewers.

1866 Paris’ first pneumatic tube: 3 inch diameter connects the Grand Hôtel and Place de la Bourse 1868 Rossini dubs Dugléré ‘the Mozart of French cooking’.

Specialities include crayfish bordelaise & larks with cherries Paris, Babylon by Rupert Christiansen paints a rich picture of Paris life as it ratchets towards its top pitch of hysteria 1869 The Opéra: the smartest brothel in Paris. A revival of Meyerbeer Le Prophète includes a 20 minute ballet on a frozen pond with dancers on roller-skates – the latest craze H J Heinz cans horseradish in Pittsburg J Sainsbury opens first store (173 Drury Lane) Margerine invented in France September The Kinck family murder – a rivetting read in Paris, Babylon – was the mirror to society’s underbelly: the bourgeois’ fear of the worker, the celebration of profit.

Flaubert to George Sand “The case represents the mental disorder of France”

Degas Ballet of the nuns Act 3 of Robert le Diable Première at Paris Opéra 1831

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1870s 1870 July France declares war on Prussia and the Prussians approach Paris which prepares for a siege September Hugo returns from exile Crown Princess Vicky of Prussia writes to her mother Queen Victoria “May we all learn what frivolity, conceit and immorality lead to”

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Cosima Wagner “R says he hopes Paris (‘this kept woman of the world’) will be burned down . . . a liberation from all that is bad” Empress Eugenie escapes but leaves her furs at Tuileries Palace – a fascinating list in RC’s book With all normal communications severed, hot air balloons and carrier pigeons put to use November Horse, dog, cat and rat are part of the Parisian diet December 25 US Ambassador Washburne’s Xmas menu: oyster soup, sardines, corned beef, preserved green corn, roast chicken, green peas, salad, pumpkin pie, macaroon cakes, nougat, cherries, strawberries, chocolates, plums etc etc December 31 The zoo’s 200 animals killed and eaten. It is predicted food will run out on January 20 1871 January Other forms of communication are tested: hollow zinc balls, courier dogs, submarines February Seige ends . . .

FAST FORWARD . . .civil war . . . commune and Paris tumbles into the Belle Époque September Rimbaud arrives at Verlaine’s house – the curtain rises on a torrid tale. Rimbaud ”Musset is fourteen times execrable to us, suffering generations carried away by visions - to whom his angelic sloth is an insult! The insipid tales and proverbs! . . behind the gauze of a curtain: he closed his eyes” 1878 Fauré and Messager travel to Bayreuth At Brailov, von Meck’s estate, Tch “I am passionately fond of all Musset’s dramatic works. I have often dreamt of making a libretto from one of his comedies or dramas.

But, alas, they are for the most part too French” 1880s 1882 Tch in Paris with niece Tanya who is giving birth to a secret illegitimate child 1888 Paris has ≈200 km of tubes for mail. Around the same time London was concerning itself with people in tubes. Was the term ‘tube’ taken from the pneumatic mail?

1890s Marie Curie discovers new elements including polonium and radium. She coins the term radioactivity 1890 Saint-Saëns Samson et Dalila (GP 2015) 1893 June 10 Tchaikovsky and Saint-Saëns receive doctorates at Cambridge University

DEATHS 1893 Tchaikovsky 1897 Brahms 1899 Francis Poulenc born 1898 Waterloo & City Railway opens (the Drain) Work begins on Paris Metro 1900s 1902 April Pelléas et Melisande première conducted

by Messager at Opéra-Comique 1907 June Fortunio première at Opéra-Comique 1910 Massenet Don Quichotte (GP 2014) 1913 Rite of Spring causes a riot in Paris 1916 FP’s first meeting with Stravinsky “When I saw him coming through the door, I thought it was God Himself arriving” 1917 FP’s Father dies. Mother had died in 1915; composes Rapsodie Nègre, an overnight sensation; drafted into the army; forgoes formal study 1918 - 1921 FP serves with anti-aircraft divisions and frequently confined to guardhouse for overstaying leave in Paris 1918 Spanish flu kills Apollinaire the inventor of the word Surréalisme – used first in Satie’s ballet Parade DEATHS 1912 Massenet 1918 Debussy 1921 Saint-Saëns 1929 Messager 1920s Paris: Man Ray . . . Picasso . . . Stravinsky . . .

Diaghilev . . . Cole Porter . . . joy . . . debauchery . . .

1922 April “I remember a strange luncheon at my home during which Bartok and Satie met for the first and last time. They both dedicated certain works to me on that day.”

1923 Clarence Birdseye sells frozen food in US 1924 Messager conducts première of FP’s Les Biches 1930s The heyday of Paris pneumatic post: 386km of tube under ground, a letter travelling at 40mph 1936 August The death of FP’s friend and fellow composer Ferroud, killed in a car accident, awakened in FP a religious fervour 1940 July 10th Anti-aircraft division, 72nd Battery “I make a most charming soldier, all in khaki . . . we were not taken prisoner in Bordeaux . . . After days of travelling in cattle trains we have now taken root in a heavenly village in Lot where I sleep in a barn . . . I have my hands - which is what I keep telling myself all day

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long, joyfully. Paris is intact. I would readily sacrifice all of Noizay for it” 1945 Food rationing ends in France 1946 September Birth of FPs daughter MarieAnge. FP was openly gay 1947 Meets Denise Duval “At the time the prima donnas of the Opéra Comique all wore extravagant clothes and had manners to match. I was very different, a real debutante [age 26], rehearsing in a little skirt and sweater. This appealed to Poulenc . . . one day he said “Denise, I’d like you to come with me to Christian Dior”. I had no idea what the name Christian Dior represented. I was still very provincial and at the Folies Bergères there had been no question of buying Haute Couture dresses. But we arranged a meeting and there was a fashion parade. At the end Christian Dior turned to me and said “Mademoiselle, with a body like yours you must always wear closefitting, figure-hugging clothes”. I replied “Thank you and when I’m rich I will come and buy my dress here”.

At this point Dior turned to Poulenc and said “This girl will only go out dressed by me”.

1948 Bread rationing ends in UK (other food rationing continued to mid-50s) 1950s 1950 Elizabeth David’s Book of Mediterranean Food 1952 First Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise 1953 March “Now sit down: La Scala has commissioned me to write an opera on . . . Les Dialogue des Carmélites.

I said yes and can think of nothing else. Performance guaranteed Scala, San Carlo, Cologne, Covent Garden, Berlin . . and perhaps even Paris” August “I am in love with Sister Constance” 1954 February Cannes “How is Paris? Is it going all out to become dodecanised? [P refers to serial music] The Carmelites, poor things, can only sing in tune. They must be forgiven” October “Writing in my railway scrawl . . . stuffed full of sedatives . . . No doubt my Sacred Ladies wanted to purify me by fire” [boyfriend Lucien had left] November “I am in a clinic for three weeks in an attempt to get some sleep” December “I am better, but still horribly on edge and sleep still evades me . . . My thanks for the truffles ... from what black hole I am only just emerging” 1955 December 24 to Rose Dercourt-Plaut,

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Polish–American soprano “I finished copying out the last scene of Les Carmélites at five o’clock, at precisely the time my friend from Toulon was dying! Is that not strange!!! ....[Lucien Roubert his ex] I am crazy about my little radio, which works wonderfully. I take it with me on all my trips and, thanks to you, any depressing thoughts are banished from my hotel rooms.”

1955 World McDonaldisation begins. Hits UK 1974 1956 March “Very beautiful Webern. There is a touching atmosphere at these concerts. Crowds of young people cram in together for standing room at 150 Fr. I do not understand how anyone can ignore a trend like this.”

June “Weather good for England but one is freezing cold all the same” July to Britten “. . . your exquisite Aldeburgh Festival. It is so much YOU - full of intelligence, finesse, and heart.

And from your window I saw Peter Grimes [GP 2014] 1957 January Carmélites rehearses for Milan première “There will be about 40 rehearsals in all, of which THIRTY a l'italienne with orchestra!!! ” May “Carmélites will be opening in Paris June 21 . . .

My morale is high, as in Cannes in March I met a love of a career Sergeant (29 years old and as kind as he is handsome)” [Louis was with FP for his last six years] 1959 April to his doctor “What I can't understand is this phobia about Paris . . . Nothing interests me any more (except the theatre). The society I used to frequent bore me to death” 1961 June to Rose D-P “If the socks exist in white, I would like to have two or three pairs. I have bought some shoes in white suede! An old Maestro’s folly!” FP had a predilection for American shirts, underwear and socks 1962 FP considers writing an opera on Cocteau’s play La Machine infernale.

1963 January 11 Beatles release Please Please Me 1963 January 30 Poulenc dies in Paris Shortly after FPs death Suzanna, his housekeeper at Le Grand Coteau, Noizay, drowned herself in a pond at the edge of the vineyards. Her husband André who tended the grounds continued to live in a small outhouse until his death in the mid 1980s



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 signifies support for the role

ALEX VEAREY-ROBERTS –  David Laing Foundation

ILONA DOMNICH

Fortunio, a lawyer ’s clerk

– Jacqueline

 Martin & Jane Houston

– Maître André, her husband QUIRIJN DE LANG – Clavaroche Tristan StockS – Landry, André’s clerk Mark Cunningham – Maître Subtil Bragi Jónsson – Guillaume Joe Morgan – Lieutenant d’Azincourt Johnny Herford – Lieutenant de Verbois Sylvie Bedouelle – Madelon Cátia Moreso – Gertrude Timothy Dawkins

POULENC

“To write successful operettas one needs special skills, like those of the great Messager – yes, Messager was a great musician”

Conductor 

w

Toby Purser

Mrs T Landon

Daniel Slater DESIGNER Francis O’Connor MOVEMENT Nick Winston Lighting Design Warren Letton VIDEO Design Dick Straker Director

ˆ the orchestra of MaItre AndrE'

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André Messager

fortunio

w

Libretto by Gaston Arman de Caillavet and Robert de Flers, based on Alfred de Musset ’s comedy Le Chandelier First performance the Opéra-Comique at the Salle Favart in Paris on June 5, 1907 Performances on July 10, 13 Sung in French with surtitles

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fortunio Act 1 A Sunday morning in the park at the beginning of Spring A game of boules is in full swing. The winner is Landry, who celebrates his victory with a toast to his boss – the lawyer Maître André – and to André’s beautiful wife, Jacqueline. Fresh from the country arrive Fortunio and his uncle, Subtil. Subtil is hoping that André will offer Fortunio a position as a junior clerk. Fortunio, however, has no such ambitions: the big city frightens him and he wants to return to his village. To help him settle in, Subtil introduces Fortunio to Landry.

Captain Clavaroche and his officers settle down to discuss women. With whom should Clavaroche have an affair? The most beautiful woman about, the officers say, is too pure, too honest – and too married.

She’s the one, responds their Captain. This beauty now emerges from church on the arm of Maître André, many years her senior. Clavaroche wastes no time to introduce himself and discovers all he needs to know: she and André sleep in separate rooms.

The sight of Jacqueline has turned Fortunio’s world upside down and Subtil returns to find a transformed Fortunio, desperate to work as a clerk.

He is presented to André and Jacqueline.

Act 2 Some days later… Jacqueline’s bedroom, dawn André bursts into his wife’s room accusing her: last night a man was spotted climbing through her window. She is hurt. Begging her forgiveness, André creeps away. As one door shuts, another opens and out of the cupboard tumbles Clavaroche. How can they put her husband off the scent? She must find a decoy, a ‘chandelier’. The maid, Madelon, can pick him. She chooses Fortunio.

Alone with the shy Fortunio Jacqueline explains that she has a ‘friend’ who requires his services. Once he has agreed, she comes clean: she herself is the friend. He would gladly die for her.

Jacqueline watches him from her window and is struck with sympathy for the boy.

DINNER INTERVAL 72

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Fortunio

Act 3 The park, that evening . . .

Jacqueline whispers to Clavaroche that their plan is implemented. André sings in his wife’s honour and asks Fortunio if he has a love song. The heartfelt rendition worries André. He invites the soldier home. Jacqueline tells Fortunio she’ll be back soon. She is curious: of whom was he singing? She admits that she loves him.

Fortunio overhears Clavaroche tell Jacqueline that armed guards will patrol the grounds that night. And that he will send Fortunio to Jacqueline.

Fortunio is heartbroken realising Clavaroche is her lover and he is merely a decoy – a ‘chandelier’.

Act 4 Jacqueline’s bedroom: the early hours Madelon rushes in with the news that Fortunio has evaded the guards and is outside her room. He knew that he might be killed but he doesn’t care . . . such is his love. Jacqueline also has strong feelings.

Jacqueline hears footsteps and conceals Fortunio. André arrives with Clavaroche to apologise. The soldier is suspicious but finds nothing and out they go.

Jacqueline and Fortunio are alone…

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ALFRED DE MUSSET, THE CAT, AND THE WOLF-TRAP

Alfred de Musset Called his cat 'Pussay' His accent was affected, But that was only to be expected Sir Lancelot used to dance a lot, and we all know that by the same token Alfred de Musset called his cat ‘Pussay’, even though de Musset’s plays have not found their way much onto the London stage. De Musset did not actually intend them for the stage:

above FORTUNIO MIS EN SCENE

Albert Carré directed the première of Fortunio. It was normal to create a book of diagramatic moves which could be used in revivals. This book was used by Denise Duval when she performed the opera

he wrote for what he called ‘armchair theatre’, for reading, for production by the imagination rather than presentation on the boards.

Born in 1801, a brilliant poet at an early age, a harddrinking dandy quickly accepted into the Parisian literary elite, de Musset was, it happens, like Baudelaire, extremely fond of cats. He remained romantically attached to his own youth well into middle age, despite his mundane job as a librarian.

ALBERT CARRé 1852-1938

A central personality in the theatrical and musical life of Paris, he commissioned Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande, Charpentier’s Louise and Dukas’s Ariane et Barbe-bleue

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Affairs of the heart dominated his imagination, and his personal credo was well projected by Perdican, the jeune premier of his best-known play, Never Trifle with Love, On ne badine pas avec l’amour: All men are mendacious, fickle, false, deceitful, hypocritical, arrogant and spineless, despicable and sensual; all women are perfidious, artful, vain, prying and depraved: the world is a bottomless sewer where shapeless creatures slither and writhe in mountains of filth; but the world does contain one thing which is holy and sublime, the union of two of these disgusting and detestable creatures. We are often deceived in love, often wounded, often unhappy, but we love nevertheless, and at the edge of the grave, we can look back and say: I have often suffered, I have been jilted, but I have loved, I have been in love. It was I who lived, not some fake person created out of my pride and my boredom.

In The Chandelier (1835) de Musset saw himself as Fortunio, the amorous young clerk, whose strength of emotion triumphs with Jacqueline after her more casual and plainly lustful dalliance with Clavaroche, the swaggering dragoon.

operetta. He had also a reputation as a conductor and an operatic administrator, at Covent Garden, the Paris Opera and the Opéra-Comique, where he conducted the first performance of Pelléas et Mélisande, in 1902; Debussy dedicated the work to him in recognition. Messager had an affair with Mary Garden, the first Mélisande, a Scottish soprano whose strange French gave Mélisande an otherworldly quality the early audiences found unsettling - apparently she said curage (the act of scouring drains) instead of courage. So the final words of Act Four, as Golaud emerges from the shadows to kill Pelléas, her Ah! Je n'ai pas de courage, (I can’t bear it) came over as Alas! I have no means of scouring the drains. Debussy, who was strangely fascinated

by Garden’s accent, reacted sharply to hearing that Maggie Teyte was taking over the role: "Une autre anglaise - Mon Dieu!" For Fortunio (1907) Messager took with him some of the Pelléas cast: the Pelléas, Jean Périer, to sing Landry, and the Golaud, Hector Dufranne, as Clavaroche.

When the Comédie-Française presented the play in October 1850, Fortunio’s song at the supper, in which he none-too-covertly expresses his feelings for Jacqueline, had been set by Jacques Offenbach, soon to be the leading composer of operetta under the Second Empire. This setting became so famous some critics call it his greatest song - that Offenbach decided to profit from its success, and wrote a brief operetta called La Chanson de Fortunio based on the melody. The situation is reversed; Fortunio is now an elderly lawyer suspecting his young wife of infidelity and he hears one of his young clerks start singing to his wife his own old song of seduction.

So Messager was venturing onto well-trodden ground when he set Fortunio. A pupil of Saint-Saëns and Fauré, with whom he went to Bayreuth in its early days, Messager had established himself by the end of the century as a composer ready to explore the hinterland between the tragic passion of grand opera, and the banality and lubriciousness of French

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De Musset named his characters with care, and when he called someone Fortunio, he expected you to take note. Two years earlier in his very similar play, Les Caprices de Marianne, Cúlio, the young lover, Fortunio’s counterpart, falls into an ambush when courting the wife of Claudio, a jealous judge, and is skewered to death by hired assassins in the judge’s garden. Fortunio, on the other hand escapes Clavaroche and his fellow bandits in the garden, in both opera and play, but Jacqueline makes clear that she realises he has risked his life.

Le Chandelier starts from a situation of symbolic banality: an old notary, Maître André, is being energetically cuckolded by his much younger wife, Jacqueline, for the moment by means of the complacent Clavaroche, an officer of dragoons.

Traditionally it’s the girl who is the ingénue and there is, of course, always a young man: the fun usually resides in seeing how the young man thwarts the old husband’s plans to prevent him seeing the ingénue. Here the young man is the ingénu and the fun resides in seeing if he is going to hoodwink the established lover, Clavaroche, a much more dangerous opponent than the blundering Maître André. Escape is by no means certain, in the play at least - Cúlio’s painful death in the earlier play lingers in the memory – but in operetta bloody death for the jeune premier is not the norm. De Musset is mostly concerned, of course, with the impact made on Jacqueline by this delicate and impressionable fellow, with his combination of vulnerability, passion, and bravery.

De Musset, like Browning, was fascinated by Renaissance Italy, its combination of moral depravity and cultural richness – he sets Les Caprices de Marianne, like another of his plays, Lorenzaccio, in the Italy of Romeo and Juliet. To make the point that he admired Shakespeare he called the characters Claudio, Hermia, Malvolio, and so on. However, he sets Le Chandelier in France, in ‘une petite ville’, at a time unspecified, though the moral tone is closer to Jacobean tragedy than to Balzac or Stendhal: Clavaroche would be quite happy towards the end to murder Fortunio, just to mislead Maître André about who is after Jacqueline. Even Maître André,

the old lawyer, puts a wolf-trap in the garden. It catches the household cat, which seems to lose nothing more dire than its dignity.

Does Fortunio really teach Jacqueline the power of true love, or is he just a slightly older Cherubino, ready to fall for any bit of skirt; and she a recidivist flirt, willing to amuse herself with him, until another officer of dragoons appears, as Zerbinetta might say? Landry raises the question at the start of Act III, in a much shortened version of an amusing speech given to Guillaume in the play, concluding that Jacqueline won’t mind if the uniforms change slightly, if the lining of the tunic changes colour, if a yellow becomes a green or a blue. Jacqueline has a weakness for military men, particularly for the ones stationed in her town. Maybe de Musset wants us to accept that Fortunio will cure her of this penchant. It seems too distant a possibility to form the moral axis of the play.

Clavaroche is a dragoon and swears like one.

‘Bon dieu!’, ‘Peste!’, ‘Parbleu!’, ‘Morbleu!’ he says frequently in the play. The opera takes this further, adding ‘Palsambleu!’, ‘Mordiable!’, even ‘Par le Saint Sambreguoi!’

In the play Clavaroche is the established lover from the start and the opera’s first act with its scenesetting, the entrance of Clavaroche and the arrival of Fortunio in the town, the game of Bowls, are all taken for granted. This avoids the difficulty, very evident in the opera, of presenting Jacqueline as virginal in the first act, not even sharing a bed with her husband (‘mon coeur n’a pas d’histoire’, ‘nous faisons tous deux nid à part’) – does Clavaroche really need such a come-on? – and boldly adulterous in the second, which starts, where the play begins, with Clavaroche in the wardrobe and the ridiculous old husband accusing Jacqueline of unfaithfulness.

Clavaroche’s two big speeches point the drama perfectly. The first explains the ruse of the ‘chandelier’, the decoy, the young man who ‘carries the candle’ acting as a lightning conductor for the watchful mistrust of the husband. De Musset’s best jeu d’esprit of the play is given to Clavaroche in

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Fortunio

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this speech, when he explains that the suspicions of a jealous husband don’t manage to glide off into space; they aren’t swallows. They’ve got to come down to earth sooner or later and it’s best to find a sure place for them to nestle. The abbreviated version in the libretto doesn’t quite catch the playful appropriateness of the image. In the second speech, the soliloquy, Clavaroche tells us how frayed his nerves are becoming in his role as lover-in-residence to Jacqueline. This confirms our developing view that his feelings for Jacqueline have never matched those of Fortunio: the importance of the speech lies in the indication it gives of how Clavaroche will take his forthcoming amatory reverse. He may be prepared to murder Fortunio in the garden, to prolong his affair for a week or two, but he won’t put up any very determined or violent resistance if Jacqueline falls for the little wet.

De Musset was extremely good looking, both in his own view and in that of many women. His affair with George Sand is well chronicled, with its unlikely climax in Venice, where de Musset caught typhoid and George, temporarily short of company in bed, seduced the doctor. The insights this all gave de Musset led, rather surprisingly, to his writing a famous lesbian novel, Gamiani, or Two Nights of Excess, in response to a bet to write a dirty book containing no dirty words.

Fortunio, like de Musset as he saw himself after his brush with George Sand, comes into a dangerous world, unprepared for anything as potentially complicated as women or wolf-traps. De Musset has good fun at the expense of his naivety: the scene where he eavesdrops on Jacqueline and Clavaroche and loses his illusions is particularly entertaining (‘Heavens above! He’s her lover!’ – ‘Das ist kein Mann’).

He wasn’t always played by a man either. The Comédie-Française usually cast a woman in the role, and some thought Messager ought to make him a low soprano, like Cherubino, or Octavian.

The composer was wise to insist on giving him to a male singer: Fortunio’s naivety would have been compromised, and thus destroyed as a comic device, if we could have had doubts about his sexual development. He has passed the stage of falling in love with every woman he sees, the Cherubino of Non so più cosa son, without ever going through it probably; some boys don’t. He is severely short of sexual experience. He has created in his mind an ideal woman with whom he is ideally in love, hence Landry’s remark comparing him to a weeping willow. Cherubino would have been much more experienced and worldly at Fortunio’s age.

Fortunio is swept off his feet by Jacqueline and realises for the first time the erotic power of his youth and his simplicity. In return he makes her see that she too can fall in love.

GEORGE SAND

Baudelaire was not a fan: “She is stupid, heavy and garrulous. Her ideas on morals have the same depth of judgment and delicacy of feeling as those of janitresses and kept women. The fact that there are men who could become enamoured of this slut is indeed a proof of the abasement of the men of this generation”

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Fortunio

The play creaks at the hinges because de Musset’s humour alone cannot sustain it; he’s too interested in moral issues to make a success of froth. The medium suits Messager much better because of his lightness of touch, his sense of humour, and his gently subtle melodic gift. ‘Every time those two pigeons are given a little flutter on Classic FM half the elderly ladies in Surrey ring me up for the disc’: the London dealer wasn’t complaining.

Messager slips into tunes without formally announcing them; he often takes you by surprise: you find yourself in the middle of a number before you realise it has started, almost as though the music has been playing in another room into which you have casually strolled.

Landry’s account of his life, after the saule plereur song, is a good example, as is the malgré tout, malgré vous duet, or Landry’s c’est un notaire song, where the accompaniment establishes the rhythm before Landry is quite ready for it.

We are carried away by the sublime self-confidence and good humour of the whole performance.

Messager never dawdles: the march past of the soldiers at the end of Act One, which would have lasted five minutes in a Gounod opera, probably with added chorus, is over in fifty seconds. The ‘ghost of old Klingsor’ may not be leering at him at the bar-ends - Debussy’s comment on the difficulty of escaping Wagner’s influence - but Messager has learnt the lesson from Pelléas not to linger.

Messager had, of course, to lay the ghost of Offenbach, of the famous setting of the chanson de Fortunio – the song at the supper, Si vous croyez que je vais dire. All Paris knew the Offenbach version and Messager must have been relieved when his setting of the same words was encored at the first performance.

If you are the sort of person who wishes Brahms had kept the syrup flowing for a bit longer at the start of the slow movement of the Double Concerto you will wish Messager had been more self-indulgent, but for the rest of us, and that includes those elderly ladies in the home counties, Messager’s musical good humour and wonderful delicacy turn what is really rather a sordid little story into an evening of magic and delight.

miCHAEL FONTES

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 signifies support for the role

MATTHEW STIFF

– Lord Walton, Puritan supporter of Cromwell

CLAIRE RUTTER

– Elvira, daughter of Lord Walton

 Mr & Mrs Grant Gordon

 Francois Freyeisen & Sunichi Kubo

DAMIANO SALERNO

– Sir Riccardo Forth, in love with Elvira

 Mr & Mrs Richard Morse

CHRISTOPHOROS STAMBOGLIS  Rachael & Donald Stearns

JESUS LEON

– Sir Giorgio Walton, Elvira’s uncle

– Lord Arturo Talbot

 Ian & Claire Maurice: his body

Diane & Christopher Sheridan: his head Johnny, Marie & Anne Veeder: his arms Niall & Ingrid FitzGerald: his legs

OLIVIA RAY

– Queen Henrietta Maria, widow of Charles I

 Adam & Lucy Constable

ALBERTO SOUSA

– Sir Bruno Robertson

 Christopher & Anne Saul

And support from Paul & Rita Skinner, David & Elizabeth Challen

BELLINI 1834 In PARIS

“My health has been more than a little upset by the great distractions that Carnival offers in Paris. The soirées, balls, suppers brought on me a sort of crisis”

Conductor

Gianluca Marciano

 Raymond & Elizabeth Henley

Stephen Langridge DESIGNER Conor Murphy FESTIVAL Lighting Design Paul Keogan VIDEO Design Willem Bramsche & Thomas Bergmann Director

ENGLISH CHAMBER Orchestra

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SPONSORED by ICAP

PLC

Vincenzo Bellini

I PURITANI

Libretto by Count Carlo Pepoli based on Old Mortality by Walter Scott First performance Théâtre-Italien in Paris, January 24, 1835 Performances on May 31, June 8, 16, 18, 20, 26, 29 Sung in Italian with surtitles

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I puritani 1640s England during the Civil War. The country is divided between supporters of Parliament under Oliver Cromwell (the Roundheads) and the Royalists faithful to the Stuart monarchy (the Cavaliers). King Charles has been beheaded* and Queen Henrietta Maria has escaped in disguise.

Act 1 A Puritan stronghold near Plymouth commanded by Lord Walton Puritan soldiers anticipate victory over the Royalists. Walton’s daughter Elvira has been promised in marriage to Puritan Riccardo. He returns to Plymouth to discover she is in love with Royalist Arturo.

Riccardo laments his loss and Sir Bruno urges him to devote his life to leading the Parliamentary forces.

Elvira tells her uncle, Giorgio, that she would rather die than marry Riccardo. Her uncle reassures her that he has persuaded her father to let her marry her lover, Arturo. Although Arturo is a Royalist, he is heralded as he approaches the castle.

Everyone gathers for the wedding celebration and Arturo greets his bride. A mysterious lady – a suspected Royalist spy – has arrived by sea and Walton is charged to take her to London to appear before Parliament. Arturo learns that she is Henrietta Maria, widow of the executed King Charles I, and vows to save her.

Elvira prepares herself for her wedding and sings a happy polonaise. Leaving for the celebrations, she carelessly drops her wedding veil.

Arturo must somehow smuggle the former Queen out of the fortress - HE USES the veil as a disguise As they are about to leave, Riccardo stops them, determined to kill his rival Henrietta separates them and removes the veil revealing herself as the former Queen Riccardo lets them escape knowing this will ruin Arturo The others return for the wedding and Riccardo announces that Arturo has fled with Henrietta Soldiers rush to capture them Elvira, believing herself betrayed, is beset by madness

DINNER INTERVAL * Charles I was executed in 1649 but let not facts get in the way of a good story 82

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I Puritani

Act 2 Giorgio mourns Elvira’s mental breakdown. Riccardo brings news that Arturo has been condemned to death

by Parliament.

Elvira wanders in, deranged and reliving her happy past. In her madness, she mistakes Riccardo for Arturo.

Giorgio tries to convince Riccardo to save Arturo; without him, Elvira will die of grief. The two men reach an agreement: if Arturo returns as a friend, he shall live – if as an armed enemy, he shall die.

Act 3 Three months later Arturo is still on the run, but has returned to Plymouth to see Elvira. He overhears her sing their old love song and is torn between his love and his loyalty to the Stuarts. They are reunited.

Though Arturo reassures her of his devotion, she fears that they will soon be parted. When soldiers burst in to arrest Arturo, she comes to her senses. Even Riccardo is moved by the plight of the lovers. With Arturo’s execution imminent, word is brought that, although the Royalists have been defeated, Oliver Cromwell has pardoned all prisoners.

The lovers are re-united for ever.

Dulwich Picture Gallery

CROMWELL DIES 1658 PEPYS 1660 March 5th “To Westminster by water, only seeing Mr

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Pinckney at his own house where he shewed me how he had always kept the Lion and Unicorne in the back of his chimney, bright, in expectation of the King’s coming again.”

PEPYS 1660 May 25th “I went [on board] . . .with a dog that the King loved, which dirted the boat, which made us laugh, and me think that a King and all that belong to him are but just as others are”

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BELLINI'S PARIS OPERA

On the Feast of St Simon and St Jude, one cold late-October morning in the 1960s, a chaplain of Winchester College, who went on to great things, startled his captive audience of assembled boys by opening his morning address: “Nothing is known about St Jude, except his name, and the fact that he was crucified...somewhere towards the end of his life”.

Not much is known about Bellini, compared to many other composers of his time. Soon after his birth in 1801 in Catania, Sicily, he showed enough talent to be classed as a prodigy . . . by his highly musical family. Some of the stories are pure fancy: one doubts that he could sing an aria by Valentino GOETHE 1787 In SICILY “The broad beans are planted thus: they dig holes in the soil at suitable intervals, put in a handful of manure, wait for rain and then sow the beans. The bean-straw is burned and the ash used for washing linen. They never use soap. Instead of soda, they use the burned outer shells of almonds. They wash laundry first with water and then with this kind of lye”

Fioravanti at the age of eighteen months, for instance. Was he really studying music theory at two, before most other boys have moved into short trousers? Or conducting a choir, aged three?

Musical talent takes many astonishing forms: the teenage Glazunov, who had been listening behind a curtain, once played back faultlessly a new symphony lasting 45 minutes which Tanayev had just dashed off on the piano to Rimsky-Korsakov. By comparison the feats attributed to Bellini suggest precociousness rather than extraordinary talent.

Taught mostly by his grandfather, young Bellini probably began to play the piano and to compose CATANIA “We drove up

the streets where the lava which destroyed most of the city in 1669 has remained visible. The solidified stream of fire had been used like any other stone; streets had been marked out on it and some even built”

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I Puritani

around the age of six, and he set a Tantum ergo for performance in church at that age. By the time he was a teenager he had become well known in Catania, and the city combined with a local nobleman to award him a four-year scholarship to study in Naples, at the Real Collegio di Musica. Not until he was eighteen did he finally move on from Sicily.

In Naples Bellini met Francesco Florimo, his lifelong friend, and, according to many, lover. Bellini was an enthusiastic, if slightly passive, womaniser, and Florimo became jealous of any suggestion of physical intimacy with other people. He kept many of Bellini’s letters to him and, it is said, confected many more. The tone is often extravagant: “Receive my embraces and believe that I am always your Bellini, who loves you”; “My love for you has become necessary for my very existence.” Italian commentators have tried to explain to us cold northern people that this is the way Italian men of the period exchanged

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the time of day. Bellini scholars continue to argue about the nature of the relationship between the two men. Tellingly many of Bellini’s female lovers said they were jealous of Florimo.

Bellini’s great masterpieces all date from the last five years of his short life. By 1827 he had left Naples and was established in Milan, where he had great success with Norma (1831) and La Sonnambula (1831). He wrote I Capuleti e i Montecchi (1830) for Venice. He arrived in Paris in August 1833 after an only moderately successful stay in London. He didn’t speak enough English or become sufficiently familiar with the city to go out much on his own. The English received his operas enthusiastically, but their season lasted only four months, and he found them more interested in German opera and in pantomime than in Norma or Sonnambula. Then there was the fog and the expense and the language.

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In Paris there was also the language, but the city had its compensations. Chopin declared upon his arrival in 1831 that Paris could claim to have the best musicians and the best opera in the world.

Rossini was effective king. His music had turned him into a celebrity: in the course of the 1820s he had composed a series of wonderfully successful operas, culminating in William Tell (1829), after which he composed next to nothing; he limited himself to directing the Théâtre-Italien and eating fillet steak in scintillating company.

Bellini’s French wasn’t much better than his English.

The French language contains several well known traps for foreigners. Bellini fell into an unusual one: the French have a sad tradition that, wanting a smart felt hat (un chapeau de feutre), he went into a shop and asked for un chapeau de foutre (a hat for f******). One wonders what the assistant fetched for him.

So Paris in the 1830s was the cultural centre of the world, and boasted three major opera houses, one of which, the Théâtre-Italien, didn’t insist that its operas were in French. The Opéra mounted largescale operas, generally in French, with recitative not dialogue. The Opéra-Comique concentrated on lighter French works, and left Italian opera to the Théâtre-Italien. Bellini wrote Puritani for the ThéâtreItalien. He longed to have a work presented at the Opéra, but for that he would need to find a good French librettist, to develop a style suited

to the language, and time. Unfortunately time was something, as it turned out, he was not to have.

The most detailed portrait of Bellini at this period comes from the caustic Heinrich Heine. The famous German lyric poet was in self-imposed exile in Paris, working as French correspondent of the Augsberg Allgemeine Zeitung. Bellini met him at the salon of Princess Cristina Belgiojoso, a fashionable, intelligent, and politically-active Milanese exile – wanted by Metternich for high treason. Cristina later became a prominent figure in the Risorgimento, the movement to unite Italy, and a close friend of Cavour. Bellini had given Cristina piano lessons in Milan. To the Princess’s salons came many liberal politicians and prominent artists, Liszt and Chopin, Delacroix, Michelet, Dumas, Hugo, de Musset and George Sand. They went together on country outings and canoeing trips. They held billiards matches and musical evenings at Port-Marly on the banks of the Seine.

Heine and Bellini disliked each other from the first.

Heine realized that Bellini was homesick, ambitious, insecure and anxious about his health, and he played cruelly on his worries: ‘You are a genius, Bellini, but you will pay for your great gift by dying young. All great geniuses die young, look at Raphael or Mozart’. Bellini was uncomfortable near Heine, distrustful of the red tints in his ‘devilish’ light-brown hair. When Heine approached him he used to make signs as if to protect himself from the evil eye.

FITZCARRALDO 1982

A film written and directed by Werner Herzog starring Klaus Kinski. In Peru, an Irish rubber baron must pull his steamship over a steep hill to access rich rubber territory. He serenades the natives with Puritani while they undertake this gargantuan task.

Mick Jagger was originally cast as Fitzcarraldo’s assistant. There were delays, his shooting schedule expired and he went on tour with the Rolling Stones

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I Puritani

1834 TO HIS LIBRETTIST PEPOLI

Carve in your head in adamantine letters: The opera must draw tears, terrify people, make them die through singing

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Heine’s celebrated posthumous portrait of Bellini tells us much about both of them: He wished so much to live; he had such a passionate antipathy to death that he would not hear it mentioned. He was afraid of it as a child who fears to sleep in the dark.

He was a good, dear child himself, sometimes rather naughty, but one only needed to threaten him with his early death, and he became at once whimpering and praying.

Cristina Belgiojoso also mentions that Bellini was preoccupied with his health; in a letter to Madame Jaubert from Athens years later she wrote: Bellini’s tunes are often on my lips and I run my fingers over a piano that, bad as it is, helps me project my musical thoughts. I often think back with sadness to the early death of that great composer, not with a selfish feeling of regret over the masterpieces he carried to the tomb, but because death was so frightening to him.

What did Bellini look like? Heine gives us an answer of a sort: He had a tall, slender figure, which moved in an elegant, I might say a coquettish, manner; always extremely smartly dressed. […] His hair was curled in such a fanciful, melancholy way, his clothes sat so languidly about his frail body, he carried his little Spanish cane so idyllically, that he always reminded me of the affected young shepherds that we see in our pastorals with their be-ribboned sticks, and brightcoloured jackets, and pantaloons. And his gait was so young-lady-like, so elegiac, so ethereal. The whole man looked like a sigh in dancing pumps.

The epithet has stuck: a sigh in dancing pumps.

Cristina Belgiojoso described him as rounded, effeminate, though most elegant. His whole person was in harmony with his tender and dreamy compositions. She seemed also to meet in him a sexual reserve towards her which she must have found disappointing, given her taste for casual flings.

In Paris Bellini missed the influence and sound dramatic judgment of Felice Romani, the famous Genovese poet and librettist, his collaborator in most of his earlier operas. He had chosen as librettist for Puritani, Count Carlo Pepoli, an Italian nationalist revolutionary, exiled in Paris; and Pepoli was no proper substitute. However, while the

action in Puritani may often leave us incredulous, the poetry of the arias appealed to Bellini, and it is hard not to be swept away by many of the individual numbers. The moment when the theme of Qui la voce sua soave returns in the mad scene has few equals in opera.

The premiere of Puritani, a brilliant success, took place in January 1835, and Bellini died the following September, as a result of a cholera epidemic, though not from cholera. When first in Paris Bellini had lived in the Bains Chinois, which sounds louche and exciting, but was actually quite a smart private hotel in the centre of the city. It was in the heart of the opera district, 29 Boulevard des Italiens, almost opposite the Opéra itself, then in the Rue Le Pelletier. This put it two streets away from the Théâtre-Italien at the Salle Favart, all only a short distance from today’s Richelieu-Drouot Metro.

Bellini soon moved out of the city centre. In London he had made friends with Solomon Levy, second son of a Jewish clothing manufacturer, who had taken a house in Puteaux, a village on the Seine to the north-west of the city. Levy lent this house to Bellini, who used it as a quiet base away from the city to compose and relax. The Levys took pains to ensure that he was not disturbed. Puritani was mostly written here, on the banks of the Seine, just across the river from the Bois de Boulogne.

The Paris cholera epidemic of 1832 had left 20,000 dead and a vivid impression on the natives. More than 100, a significant proportion, had died in the small village of Puteaux. So when the disease returned in less severe form in 1835, killing 200 people a day in Marseille and then moving north through Provence in July and August, it occasioned panic in Paris. In Puteaux, which had no doctor or pharmacist, Bellini fell ill at the start of September.

This was probably a recurrence of his amoebic dysentery from five years earlier in Venice. The Levys, anxious that he might have cholera, left him severely alone, in the care of their gardener, who was under instructions to repel visitors. Several of Bellini’s friends found themselves turned away violently by this gardener. Cristina sent an elderly Italian, Luigi Montallegri, who had been a doctor in

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Napoleon’s armies but who was unqualified to practise in Paris. Bellini’s condition deteriorated rapidly in the course of a week and, despite Montallegri’s efforts, he died alone and poorly tended, on September 23, aged 33.

This sad story lends poignancy to our appreciation of his last opera, I Puritani di Scozia (The Puritans of Scotland).

That extra element about Scotland is usually omitted as misleading, particularly, perhaps, for performance in Britain. Foreign people often tell us that we understand little about their countries. The librettists of Italian opera leave us way behind in this regard, frequently displaying the most disarming ignorance of the manners and elementary geography of the British Isles. Donizetti’s invitinglynamed, Emilia di Liverpool, given its premiere in Naples in 1824, was adapted by its librettists from a play even more improbably named Emilia di Laverpaut. The initial description of Liverpool is delightful: The action takes place in a valley, a few leagues from London. The curtain rises to show a village nestling in Alpine mountains with cypresses and a hermitage; various peasants’ cottages scattered hither and thither. Apart from the Alpine mountains, the cypresses and the hermitage, little seems to have changed.

Puritani takes this one stage further by locating Plymouth in Scotland. Pepoli based his libretto on a play by François Ançelot and Xavier Saintine, Têtes rondes et Cavaliers. The play is set in Plymouth, famous as a puritan stronghold during the English Civil War, and besieged obstinately though unsuccessfully by the royalists. For some reason many commentators have insisted falsely that the play is

*

1835 May 25th Bellini to Florimo “. . . such a triumph, such enthusiasm,

such a furor, that many people shouted and never was so much applause recorded in a London theatre. They write me that Princess Victoria was seen to clap her hands at the great duet of the basses and to call out bis before anyone else”. Doca, Co-director of the King's Theatre wrote to Bellini “. . . In fact, I am sick of hearing it in every corner of England, and I shall say, only partly in jest, even in the diligences, the music of I Puritani. One day, finding myself in a horticultural garden where the seven or eight military bands played almost nothing but Puritani, I left in despair. I went to the city and there I heard it being hummed in the streets”

*What survives of Bellini’s own words is only what the

shady Florimo has allowed us to know

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derived from Scott’s Old Mortality, a novel about the Covenanters’ rebellion of 1679, an attempt to re-establish presbyterianism generally in Scotland.

The book was translated into Italian as I Puritani di Scozia. The translator must have felt that people knew about puritans and about Scotland, but thought that covenanters needed explaining.

Neither Pepoli nor Bellini can have read it. They clearly believed Plymouth to be in Scotland, and their opera to be based on Scott’s novel.

Donizetti, whose grandfather Izett came from Perth, the Scottish one, would have known better, maybe. The ‘exotic’ settings and lively plots of Scott’s novels recommended them to many European playwrights and librettists of the 1820s and 30s. Donizetti, true to his ancestor, wrote two operas based on Scott novels, Il Castello di Kenilworth (1829) and Lucia di Lammermoor (1835). He and Bellini had had several operatic duels, operas

presented in the same opera house at the same time, before Rossini asked them each for an opera for the Théâtre-Italien, for early 1835. Donizetti’s Marino Faliero received its premiere a month and a half after Puritani, and used the same four lead singers, Grisi, Rubini, Tamburini and Lablache, the famous ‘Puritani quartet’, so admired by Queen Victoria. The public greeted the Donizetti work with a warmth which fell well short of the acclaim accorded to Puritani. It’s tempting to believe that Donizetti returned to Naples and wrote Lucia in a huff, taking ideas for the mad scene in Lucia from Puritani. But Donizetti was far less edgy than Bellini, and too good-natured and sensible to take these things personally. Furthermore both Donizetti and Bellini had written mad scenes previously, Donizetti in Anna Bolena (1830) and Bellini in Il Pirata (1827).

Donizetti, composer of seventy operas in the course of his life, worked fast, dashing off Lucia in six weeks. Asked if Rossini could have written the

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Barber of Seville in thirteen days, he replied: I don’t see why not; he’s very lazy.

Donizetti presents Lucia’s madness by breaking up the music, as if Lucia cannot maintain a consistent train of thought. The normal construction of recitative and aria collapses, as music from previous scenes keeps imposing itself on her disordered mind. The flute, or Donizetti’s preferred instrument the glass harmonica, mimics the voice of the absent Edgardo, rendering Lucia’s distraction more extreme. Bellini, for the mad scene in Puritani, on the other hand, relies upon a resource unavailable to Donizetti, his extraordinary melodic gift. It was his most remarkable contribution to music, admired by composers as diverse as Chopin, Wagner and Stravinsky. The intensity of Qui la voce suggests obsession in Elvira, rather than the distraction evoked by Donizetti in Lucia’s famous scene.

Some critics praise the improvements in Bellini’s handling of the orchestra in Puritani - he had been listening to Beethoven symphonies - but it was the power of the big numbers, like ‘A te, o cara’, ‘Ah! per sempre’ sung by divine voices which brought that Paris audience to its feet in 1835. You can criticise Bellini as much as you wish for the hurdygurdy arpeggios of his accompaniments but if you don’t feel the transporting power of the vocal line itself, to which those simple accompaniments give dominance, you are as bloodless as a turnip and we should have none of you.

Bellini the melodist shows a quite exquisite sensitivity and, what’s more, puts his particular talent to real dramatic use. The magic of the soaring

line of Qui la voce takes us out of ourselves into the deranged world of Elvira’s erotic imagination.

We feel ourselves lifted into the secret heart of the singer. We wonder at the vocal technique which can sustain these soaring lines. We want the heavenly music never to end, and we empathise with the singers because the tension in the vocal line, suspended firmly on what should seem like threads of fine silk, reflects the emotional tension of the character on the stage.

Wagner, naturally averse to Italian opera, conceded that the Italians were masters of song. He wrote in his short essay on German Opera (1834): I shall never forget the impression lately made on me by a Bellini opera when at last a simple noble song showed forth again. He’s referring to The Montagues and the Capulets, which he had seen in Leipzig with Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient as Romeo.

People say that, of the three major components of music, melody, rhythm, and harmony, melody is the poor relation. Capable they think of less subtlety, less obviously intellectual, more immediately attractive and therefore, they pretend, less worthy of admiration, it is as available to the Greek shepherd up a mountain with his pipe as to the famous composer writing a symphony for a concert hall. These things may be true, but once a great Bellini aria starts to unfold before us, we are carried away on mighty pens. This is more than a beaker full of the warm South; it is a gift from a young Sicilian, whose ability as a melodist has known no equal.

miCHAEL FONTES PARIS 1860 Rossini & Wagner met In one of the Rossini’s weekly dinners, so the story goes, Turbot à Allemande was on the menu. The servants placed before the guests a very appetizing sauce of which each took his portion. Then nothing else was served. Rossini, mischievously enjoying their embarrassment and himself gulping down the sauce, remarked “and so, you are still waiting for something? Enjoy this sauce; believe me, it’s excellent. As for the turbot. Isn’t it the same with the music of Wagner? Good sauce, but no turbot! … no melody”

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VICTORIA & OPERA Victoria saw roughly 40 performances of Puritani before Albert ’s death and afterwards she didn’t go out much. Her Majesty the Queen has presented for the first time, the complete online collection of Queen Victoria’s journals from the Royal Archives. More than 1,000 entries mention the opera.

1 AUGUST 1832 Princess Victoria is 13 years old We left K.P. [Kensington Palace] at 6 minutes past 7 and went through the Lower-field gate to the right.

We went on, & turned to the left by the new road to Regent's Park. The road & scenery is beautiful. 20 minutes to 9. We have just changed horses at Barnet a very pretty little town. 5 minutes past ½ past 9. . . . Fastforward . . .

18 MAY 1835 She expresses enthusiasm for the Puritani quartet “A te o caro!” in recital at Kensington Palace 21 MAY Attends the London première of Puritani.

The finest parts in the opera (to my opinion) are: the chorus in the chapel, behind the scenes in the beginning, the quartet “A te o cara”, the beautiful polacca “Son vergin vezzosa” It is the loveliest thing I ever heard. . . .

After the opera was over a complete shower of bouquets and wreaths came down upon the stage. Upon the whole, as yet, I do not like the opera so much as Marino Faliero. The choruses are very noisy and odd too, I think.

The house was very full. We came home at 10 minutes past 12. I was very much amused!

26 MAY Back for another Puritani We came home at 12. I was very much amused indeed!

I quite forgot to mention each time, that Lablache is the most perfect representation of a Round-head one can imagine. His costume is perfect, and his large figure and good-humoured face render him a perfect tableau vivant. But he looks by far too good-natured to be one of those cruel Puritans who lived in that time.

Again to Puritani on 13 June and 30 June

26 September 1835 I read in the Morning Post of today the death of - Bellini! This is indeed a most terrible loss! He was carried off by a malignant dysentery at Puteaux on the 23rd instant, at the early age of 29! All the true lovers of fine music (of which I am one of the greatest), must join in lamenting the loss of one whose compositions gave such delight. His compositions were always so feeling and beautiful and touched a cord in my heart more than any other composer. He who composed the heart-stirring duet “Il rival” and the sprightly and thrilling Polacca “Son vergin vezzosa”, now lies still and cold in the grave, never more to move! Alas! how short is life! One ought therefore to employ one’s time properly and usefully! He is indeed a very great loss.

20 May 1836 Having met Albert on 18 th they attend Puritani. This is just one of many trips to see the opera in that month.

15 JUNE 1837 The news of the King are so very bad, that all my lessons save the Dean's are put off, 10 minutes to 1.- I just hear that the Doctors think my poor Uncle the King cannot last more than 48 hours! Poor man! he was always kind to me, and he meant it well I know; I am grateful for it, and shall ever remember his kindness with gratitude. He was odd, very odd and singular, but his intentions were often ill interpreted! Wrote my journal. At about a ¼ p.2 came Lord Liverpool and I had a highly important conversation with him alone. He stayed till 3. Wrote! - Wrote a letter to dear Feodore. At a little after 5 Mary, dearest Lehzen and I drove out and came home at ½ p.6. At a little after 7 we 4 dined, Mamma not coming down to dinner. At a little after 8, Mary and Charles went to the Opera; it

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was Grisi’s benefit and my dear Puritani was given. Stayed up till 10.

19 JUNe 1837 News from Windsor that the poor King was so ill, that he could hardly live through the day… Stayed up till a quarter p.10. Read in W.Scott's life while my hair was undoing.

20 June 1837 I was awoke at 6 o’clock by Mamma, who told me that the Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Conyngham were here, and wished to see me. [they] acquainted me that my poor Uncle, the King, was no more… and consequently that I am Queen.

28 June 1838 Coronation 3 AUGUST 1839 Got up at 10 and breakfasted after 10. Signed.

Wrote my journal. At 1 came Lablache [singing teacher] and stayed till 25 m. to 2. I sang twice over with him the Duo, “Io di tutto”, then I sang “Casta diva”, and finished with “Ragio d'amor”.

10 February 1840 Marries Albert 25 April 1840 Puritani with Albert 20 January 1845 At Stratfield Saye. Dinner guests include Lord and Lady Ashburton and Miss Baring.

18 February 1846 –Dinner guests include Mr Bingham Baring [who would become 2nd Lord Ashburton] 1 JANUARY 1849 Heard from Ld John Russell, that poor old Ld Auckland had had a stroke at the Grange (Ld Ashburton's) & was still unconscious. He had been quite well & out shooting, & when walking in the afternoon fell down in a fit. As soon as Albert returned (which he did perished with cold) I got another letter from Ld John with the melancholy news, that all hope was over, Ld Auckland having had another seizure, from which he could not possibly recover. It is shocking & a sad beginning of the New Year 2 July 1859 The last diary entry for Puritani.

14 december 1861 Albert dies Queen Victoria didn’t go to the opera until April 1863 left from Victoria’s sketchbook

As part of his promotion of German opera Wagner called Bellini’s music ‘insipid and threadbare’. As an old man, however, he returned to a love of Bellini.

NAPLES 1880 Florimo wrote: He made this certain in person during the visit he paid to me when he said “They all think me an Orcus with regard to Italian music but no, no, a thousand times no. Bellini is one of my predilections: his music is all heart, closely, intimately linked to the words. The music that I hate is that vague indeterminate music which laughs at the libretto and at the situation!”

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 signifies support for the role

– Tatyana

SUSAN GRITTON

 Francis & Nathalie Phillimore

Frances Bourne  Ruth Markland

Brett Polegato

– Olga, her sister

– Eugene Onegin

Mrs Peter Cadbury: his legs

Noreen Doyle: his heartless body Christopher Swan: the arrogant & callous heart

Robert Anthony Gardiner – Lensky,  Barbara Yu Larsson: his head

Anonymous: an arm Miss Clare Williams: a leg

Anne-Marie Owens

at Larina ball  Nerissa Guest THE DUEL  Sir Stuart Rose POLONNAISE at St Petersburg  John & Carol Wates ECOSSAISE at St Petersburg  Jane & Paul Chase-Gardener WALTZ

a poet & Onegin’s friend

– Madam Larina, Tatyana’s mother

 Jeremy & Rosemary Farr

– Filipyevna Clive Bayley – Prince Gremin Kathleen Wilkinson

LUCY BURNS

 James & Béatrice Lupton

BIANCA HOPKINS  The Holmes family

Stuart Kale

STEVE JOHNSTONE

– Monsieur Triquet

 Derek Johns Ltd

– Zaretsky

NICHOLAS DWYER  Mrs Jill Goulston

–

JONATHAN ALLEY Captain  David & Simone Caukill

1877 Nadezhda von Meck offers Tchaikovsky an annual allowance and he gives her the Onegin sketches. “I’ve never composed any other work with such ease . . . and the manuscript is sometimes quite legible – there aren’t many corrections”

DAVID MURLEY ASHLEY JAMES ORWIN SARAH O’CONNELL  Tessa & John Manser

Martyn �rabbins Director Stephen Medcalf Conductor

 Tom Busher & Elizabeth Benson

Francis O’Connor Choreographer Lynne Hockney FESTIVAL Lighting Design Paul Keogan DESIGNER

bOURNEMOUTH SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

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SPONSORED by gazprom MARKETING & TRADING

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

eugene onegin

Text by Konstantin Shilovsky, the composer and his brother Modest Tchaikovsky Based on the novel in rhyming verse by Alexander Pushkin First performance Maly Theatre, Moscow, 29/17 March 1879 Performances on May 30, June 1, 6, 9, 12, 15, 23, 27, July 5, 11 Sung in Russian with surtitles

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ЕВГЕНІЙ ОНѢГИНЪ

eugene onegin

Tatyana, a dreamer, falls in love with the glamorous Onegin whose arrogance conceals an inability to love. The peaceful household is destroyed when Onegin kills his friend Lensky.

Years pass and Onegin meets Tatyana again, now married to a prince. Her poise entrances Onegin. But he has missed his moment.

Act 1 On the country estate of the widowed Madam Larina, they celebrate the harvest. Madam Larina’s daughter Olga teases her older sister Tatyana for avoiding the fun; she prefers romantic novels. Olga’s fiancé, the poet Lensky, arrives with his friend Eugene Onegin. Onegin asks Tatyana how she tolerates the boredom of country life. Unnerved by his good looks and elegance, she struggles to answer.

In her bedroom, Tatyana persuades her nurse Filipyevna to speak about her own marriage. Tatyana admits she is in love. Alone, she sits up all night writing a passionate letter to Onegin. At dawn she gives the letter to Filipyevna to deliver.

In the garden. Tatyana and Onegin have a difficult conversation. He has received the letter and his response is measured. He admits he was touched by her letter, but predicts that he would quickly tire of her and can, therefore, only offer friendship.

He leaves with WORDS OF ADVICE THAT she take better control of her emotions A short pause . . . please remain seated Act 2 Some time later It is Tatyana’s name day and a party is underway. Onegin dances with her but is bored by the guests’ provincial ways. Annoyed with Lensky for having dragged him there, Onegin dances with Olga whose head is turned by his charm. Monsieur Triquet serenades Tatyana with a song he has written for her. The dancing resumes and Lensky erupts in jealousy and quarrels with Onegin for flirting with Olga. Larina begs them calm down but Lensky cannot curb his rage. Onegin accepts his challenge to a duel.

Lensky waits for Onegin at the appointed spot. He reflects on the folly of his life and imagines Olga visiting his grave. Onegin finally arrives, and they agree that the duel is pointless. They would prefer to laugh together than to fight, but honour must be satisfied. Onegin kills Lensky.

DINNER INTERVAL 96

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Eugene Onegin

AFTER THE DUEL Reader, whatever fate’s direction, we weep for the young lover’s end, the man of reverie and reflection, the poet struck down by his friend!

Left-handed from the habitation where dwelt this child of inspiration, two pines have tangled at the root; beneath, a brook rolls its tribute toward the neighbouring valley’s river.

The ploughman there delights to doze, girl reapers as the streamlet flows dip in their jugs; where shadows quiver darkly above the water’s lilt, a simple monument is built.

And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music

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. . . OLGA MARRIES A LANCER Presently Olga’s ringing answer inside the Larins’ house fell mute.

Back to his regiment the Lancer, slave of the service, was en route.

Weltered in tears, and sorely smarting, the old dame wept her daughter’s parting, and in her grief seemed fit to die; but Tanya found she couldn’t cry: only the pallor of heart-breaking covered her face. When all came out onto the porch, and fussed about over the business of leave-taking, Tatyana went with them, and sped the carriage of the newly-wed.

TCHAIKOVSKY JULY 1876

“I will do my utmost to get married this year [and] abandon my habits for ever”

And long, as if through mists that spurted, Tanya pursued them with her gaze . . .

So there she stood, forlorn, deserted!

The comrade of so many days, oh! her young dove, the natural hearer of secrets, like a friend but dearer, had been for ever borne off far and parted from her by their star.

Shade-like, in purposeless obsession she roams the empty garden-plot . . . in everything she sees there’s not a grain of gladness; tears’ repression allows no comfort to come through -Tatyana’s heart is rent in two.

1877

April - Antonina Milyukova confesses her love in a letter May - he starts Onegin 18 July - he marries her On the honeymoon he writes to his brother “In the physical sense my wife has become absolutely detestable”

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Act 3 A few years later A ball at the Gremin Palace, St Petersburg Onegin has wandered the world seeking meaning to his life. He has found nothing and is back where he began, socialising. He sees Tatyana, bearing herself with great dignity – no longer the country girl – and the elderly Prince Gremin introduces her as his wife Tatyana. Onegin is in love with her.

Tatyana receives an impassioned letter from Onegin.

He rushes in and falls at her feet. With poise, she asks if it is her status that makes her attractive now.

The days when they might have been happy have passed. Onegin reiterates his love. Faltering for a moment, Tatyana admits that she still loves him, but she will not leave her husband and ruin her life.

Onegin is alone regretting his foolish past and an empty future.

RUSSIA’S WOODEN CHURCHES

On his conversion to Christianity in 988 Prince Vladimir “ordained that wooden churches should be built and established where pagan idols had previously stood”. Thousands were built by carpenters using neither saws nor hammers & nails – only axes.

Richard Davies spent nine years photographing them for his book ‘Wooden Churches - travelling in the Russian north’

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in the words of galina1891-1985 von meck Galina had two famous grandmothers: the composer's sister Sasha and Nazheda von Meck, his benefactress.

These extracts are from her autobiography.

Vassily Davydov, G's great-grandfather, was a Decembrist and the conspirators met on his Kamenka estate.

Pushkin, a frequent visitor to Kamenka, was not completely trusted by the conspirators. This was not because they thought he would betray them. It was because they knew how impulsive he was.

One cold winter’s night a year after the Decembrist uprising a row of carts came out of the Petropavlovsk Fortress in Petersburg. The Decembrists were being taken to Siberia. Huddled in their convict coats, their chains were fastened to metal belts round their waists and to metal bands round their ankles.

The trek went on and on for days.

Vassily never returned, though his children were allowed back to St Petersburg to be schooled. In 1877 Tchaikovsky was staying in Kamenka whilst writing Onegin. He was considering if Tatyana and Onegin should run off together.

Vassily's widow Sasha - the illegitimate child of the butler

- was adamant such an ending would be sacrilegious and she should know. She met Pushkin.  However interesting PT was as a personality, his sister Alexandra [another Sasha] was no less of a personality than he was. She was charming and kind and she was a born healer. My mother told me that if one of the children had a headache, my grandmother had only to put her hand on the pain and it would go instantly. Once she was driving in the big closed coach drawn by four horses back from the station to Kamenka, when they were caught in an awful thunderstorm. It was getting dark and the storm came right over their heads. Suddenly my grandmother said “Children look”. She put her hand up and they saw that she had a halo of light round her head and a halo of little lights round each finger.

My grandfather Leo adored her. But like all people who have the capacity and the strength to heal, she never could help herself.

right KAMENKA

Tchaikovsky’s sister lived there and he often visited left

1800 two kopek coin

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My Grandmother Alexandra suffered from gall stones nearly all her life and she got into the habit of using morphia. She went too far and became a morphia addict. She fought against the habit but at moments her craving became so great that a feeling of hate, anger and frustration took possession of her. I had, given to me by my mother, a diary which my grandmother kept during the last months of her life, a document of real horror, full of tragic and frightening feelings of hate and craving for the

awful drug. That diary was taken away when I was arrested and I never saw it again.  My mother had three brothers. Dimitri and Yuri used to visit us on our estate. But I only met Vladimir, my Uncle Bob, twice and on the second of these occasions, he was dead. Uncle Bob was PT’s favourite nephew. A certain amount of mystery surrounded his name. He committed suicide at the

TATYANa (Tanya) DAVYDOVA 1861–1887

1882 Spring in Kamenka. “My niece is worse than ever, poisoning herself with morphine, and poisoning her parents and everyone else living in her company with her attacks of illness, which are repeated daily because of the morphine” 1883 Tchaikovsky extended his stay in Paris as Tanya was pregnant. After she gave birth to a boy, Georges-Léon, the composer himself registered the birth, organised the baptism and helped to arrange Georges-Léon's adoption by his brother Nikolay.

1887 January “We received news of the sudden death of my poor niece Tanya. She died in Petersburg at a bal-masqué. Morphia destroyed her.”

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age of 37. That was in 1906. He had been living in Klin in the house that PT had left to him and I think that part of the reason for his suicide was that, like his two uncles, Peter and Modest, he too could not get rid of his homosexual habits. He considered them shameful. When we got the telegram from Modeste, Mother decided to take me with her to Klin as she thought that I should face the sorrows of life and not be afraid of death. We found Uncle Bob on his bed in the wing of the house which had been built for him, looking happy and peaceful, in spite of the two bullet wounds in his head.  Grandfather Davydova died of a skin infection he caught in a dirty railway carriage returning from Kiev to his estate Verbovka. 

grandmother cut it short. A child came - Milochka.

Nadezhda von Meck did not tell her husband.

I have a family group of the Mecks taken in Brailovo which distresses me every time I look at it. My grandfather sits in the middle, serene and content. My grandmother sits with her back to her husband (her lover is also present) with her arms held quite fiercely around Milochka.

For four years my grandfather knew nothing.

Then on 24 January 1876 he took the night express to Petersburg, going there on business. As usual he stayed at his daughter’s, the Countess Alexandra [Sasha] Benningsen. The next day in the evening during a seemingly peaceful after-dinner conversation, my Aunt Sasha presented my grandfather with the fact that his youngest daughter was not his daughter at all.

Grandfather von Meck [Karl] built railways not only well, but much cheaper than the State did. To build one kilometre of a State railway cost 200,000 roubles. Karl built a km for 40,000. He became a millionaire (in roubles of course). First he bought a large house in Moscow. Then he bought Brailovo, the magnificent estate in Bessarabia where Tchaikovsky stayed as a guest. The family scarcely ever travelled anywhere but in their own private railway carriage.

In one way, life was for the Meck children a princely existence.

To understand what happened later one must not forget that my grandmother married when she was barely seventeen and I very much doubt her feelings towards the man whom she accepted. She had refused him twice before and almost certainly had no feeling for him of deep intensity and passion.

She was more than a good wife to him and bore him innumerable children. She gave birth eighteen times altogether.

Rich, respected, her eldest children grown up, I very much doubt that the personal hurricane which suddenly turned her life over had been in her mind at all. At the age of forty, a man [Alexander Yolshin] was introduced to her, only a few years younger, goodlooking and charming. Passion swept over them like a storm that comes suddenly and as suddenly comes to an end, but often leaves devastation behind. My

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Grandfather, stunned and upset, retired to his room and a few hours later, early in the morning, died of a heart attack.  And what of grandmother’s love? Well, he did not forget. Out of a desire not to lose her, he married her eldest daughter, Elizabeth. They had one child, also a daughter.  There are false rumours that my grandmother was partly insane during the last years of her life. Her son Vladimir had several strokes. He had enjoyed fast living and drinking. His wife was also very sick. Between them they undermined the family fortune. Her in-laws started protesting about the material help she was giving to Tchaikovsky. Out of sheer spite my ‘dear’ Aunt Sasha Benningsen told my grandmother the frightful truth about why my grandfather had died so suddenly. My grandmother was shattered. Then came the final blow.

Milochka, her youngest and favourite daughter, became engaged to Prince Shyrinsky Shykhmatov. He was an auburn-haired, blue-eyed giant and looked like one of the Boyars. A magnificent shot, he could lift a bear out of his lair and fight him single-handed.

Soon after, they married. All would have been well if my dear Aunt Sasha had not made mischief again.

She told him that Milochka was illegitimate.

A dormant love of power blossomed in Andrei

Shyrinsky Shykhmatov. First over his young wife.

Then he blackmailed his mother-in-law. Unless she terminate the Tchaikovsky stipend, he would make public how the great lady, the widow of the great railway builder, Karl von Meck, had sinned. Everyone would know. And Tchaikovsky would be told too.

By 1890 my grandmother, unable to attend to business, was ill with TB of the larynx. Furthermore her right hand had atrophied. Faced by the fear that Tchaikovsky would learn about her past, she woke from her wonderful dream and realised that life in all its harshness had caught up with her. Besides, she saw that Peter Tchaikovsky did not need her so much. He was at the height of his fame. And though she was forced to dictate all her letters in these later years, she wrote the last one to him herself - the one he tore up - and this filled the bitter cup to the brim.

Tchaikovsky never replied.

At the end of August 1893, Tchaikovsky went to see my mother [Anna] in Moscow. He begged her to tell Madame von Meck how sorry he was for having been silent for three years.

My mother went to Nice and found her mother broken-hearted and sick. Mother gave her Tchaikovsky’s message. Grandmother sat up and said in half a whisper “In my letter I never said goodbye to him forever. I told him that circumstances in the family were such that I could not give him all my attention all my life. He did not need me any more. I did not want our

HARRIET BACKER 1845–1932 was a Norwegian painter and a pioneer among female artists. She studied in Munich and Paris. George Bernard Shaw proclaimed her sister Agathe (b 1847) one of the century's greatest pianists. Agathe studied with Hans von Bülow in Florence, Franz Liszt in Weimar, and was a close friend of Edvard Grieg. She was a prolific composer and her mature style is said to anticipate the impressionist style of Debussy and Ravel

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Eugene Onegin

I loved you once, nor can this heart be quiet; For it would seem that love still lingers there; But do not you be further troubled by it; I would in no wise hurt you, oh, my dear.

I loved you without hope, a mute offender; What jealous pangs, what shy despairs I knew!

A love as deep as this, as true, as tender, God grant another may yet offer you.

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THE VON MECK FAMILY 1874 Back row standing: Alexander Fralovsky (Nadezhda’s brother), Nicholas von Meck (N+K’s son, Galina’s father) Middle row: Julia, Alexander Yolshin (Nadezhda’s lover), Nadezhda von Meck (with Milochka the child of Yolshin on her lap), Karl von Meck, Vladimir (fast-living son, ruined family fortune), Elizabeth (either N + K’s eldest daughter who married Yolshin or Vladimir’s wife), Count Pavel Benningsen and his wife Alexandra (who spilled the beans) Seated at front: N+ K’s younger children Sophia, Alexander, Mikhail, Maximilan

Alexandra Potapova M Vassily the Decembrist the butler’s (who knew Pushkin) 1792-1855 illegitimate child (d 1895) Unmarried Nicholas many illegitimate children

The Tchaikovsky children

5 other Lev Davydova M Alexandra [Sasha] Peter Modest (the composer) (librettist) children

+ 3 boys

Karl von Meck M Nadezhda 1820-1876

1831-1894 18 pregnancies 11 children

Alexandra Nicholas M Anna Davydova (spilled beans) Tatiana (the addict) Vladimir (ruined the for tune) Milochka§ M Andrei Shykhmatov

Elizabeth M Alexander Yolshin (N’s former lover)

+3 girls +3 boys

Galina § Milochka, daughter of Yolshin

1891-1985

Bob+ 2 more boys

2 adopted (from unmarried Nicholas)

2 boys killed in the war 2 more boys 2 girls died as children

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Eugene Onegin

friendship to deteriorate into formal notes wishing each other a Happy Christmas. Tell him that my feelings have never changed towards him. He will always remain my greatest and beloved friend”

My mother returned to Moscow and gave Tchaikovsky my grandmother’s message. On the same day he went to see his friend the music critic Kashkin. His first words were “I have made it up with Madame von Meck. I am so happy”.  At the beginning of October, Tchaikovsky was in Petersburg to conduct his Sixth Symphony. He fell ill on the 20th October and five days later he died at his brother’s flat.

My grandmother outlived her beloved friend by only a few months.  Galina's own life spanned an era of turbulence. In the preRevolution years she was married to an Englishman for 13 years and lived in Russia. She continued to look after the estate after the end of her marriage. In 1923 she was arrested for assisting a prisoner over the Russian frontier. She spent several years in Moscow’s Lubyanka prison and exiled in Siberia. There she married fellow prisoner, Dmitry Orlovsky, who later ‘disappeared’. She was released in 1935 and made her way to England via Germany.

happy families are ALL alike; EVERY unhappy family is unhappy in its own way TOLSTOY ANNA KARENINA

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COMPULSIVE DUELLIST

PUSHKIN

The author of Eugene Onegin, Alexander Pushkin, Russia’s greatest poet, died after a duel. Struck by a bullet to the lower abdomen, he succumbed to traumatic peritonitis in terrible agony two days later, on January 29th (old style) 1837, at the age of 37.

Duels were illegal across Europe. Governments didn’t want their most mettlesome officers killed, or junior officers encouraged to secure advancement by insulting and then murdering their superiors. The object was usually not so much to kill your opponent as to gain satisfaction, to preserve your honour by

showing that you were prepared to die for it.

Pushkin was a compulsive duellist, who walked about public gardens swinging an 18-pound cudgel to strengthen his pistol arm. When away from the capital, he kept in trim by firing off a hundred rounds a day. He challenged others on at least fifteen occasions and was called out himself six times.

Through the intercession of his seconds, only four of these challenges turned into actual confrontations.

The cause of his final duel could not have been more

CODE DUELLO, 1777 drawn up in Tipperary 1. The two adversaries will be placed twenty paces apart, each five paces from the barrier, which will be ten paces wide between them.

2. Each having a pistol, they shall upon the signal given, advance towards the barrier if they wish, but neither must go beyond it.

3. It is further agreed that he who fires first must in no way change his place, so that he should accept to be fired upon from the same distance as he himself fired.

4. If when both parties have fired the business remains unresolved, they shall restart the duel, each returning to his original place, twenty paces from the other.

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Eugene Onegin

sordid or banal. His beautiful and flirtatious young wife, Natalia, whom he had married in 1831, when she was nineteen, had become a source of potential offence to the madcap poet. Already anxious about her fidelity to him and very heavily in debt, Pushkin itched under the constraints imposed on him by the Tsar. Conscious of the poet’s eminence and concerned about his anarchic and liberal views, Tsar Nicholas had appointed himself Pushkin’s personal censor and protector. For the poet this meant an absurd uniform, a need to attend court functions, and an inevitable, deeply resented feeling that he was being watched.

Pushkin convinced himself that d’Anthès had married the sister to get closer to Natalia and his diary suggests that the poet inquired of the local prostitutes whether there was physical evidence of the ambassador’s attentions to the young Frenchman.

Pushkin persuaded himself, maybe correctly, that his wife was having an affair with Georges-Charles d’Anthès, a French royalist émigré, who had been formally (with the consent of his father) adopted by a homosexual lover, Baron van Heeckeren, the Dutch Ambassador to St Petersburg.

The shots were exchanged in a snowy field near the frozen Neva. Traditionally the person challenged had the right to fire first. D’Anthès’ bullet knocked Pushkin to the ground, penetrating his right pelvic bone, continuing through the lower abdomen, and crushing the right part of the sacral bone. Pushkin managed to raise himself onto an elbow and fire his own shot, which lightly wounded D’Anthès in the arm. Given Pushkin’s prowess with a pistol, and his hatred of his adversary, people have wondered if D’Anthès was wearing steel protection of some kind. D’Anthès’ friends suggested that Pushkin’s shot glanced off a button.

Angry at the public attention being paid to his wife, Pushkin started circulating vicious rumours about the homosexual pair. Van Heeckeren became anxious that his protégé, who stood up for the older man, might be killed in a duel with Pushkin, and tried to effect a truce by arranging a marriage between d’Anthès and Natalia’s sister, who adored the young Frenchman. Pushkin was not led by this marriage to doubt that Natalia was the real object of d’Anthès’ interest, and a confrontation became inevitable when Pushkin and many of his acquaintances received copies of an anonymous letter saying that he was Acting Grand Master of the Order of Cuckolds.

Pushkin was clearly serious about this final duel, fixed for five in the afternoon, for he chose as his second a friend he knew would not try to dissuade him. He behaved very like Eugene on the fatal day, sleeping late, breakfasting at eleven with his family, stopping on his way for a lemonade at the fashionable Wolf et Beranget Confectionery on Nevsky Prospekt.

D’Anthès was sentenced to hang and then exiled to France.

Every true Russian still spits on the ground at the mention of his name: a tradition which started soon after Pushkin’s death.

Pushkin’s wife, Natalia Nikolaevna Pushkina (née Goncharova) painted in 1849 more than a decade after the poet’s death

by Ivan Makarov

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BiograPhieS JONATHAN ALLEY

STEPHEN BARLOW

Captain Onegin & ensemble

Conductor Carmélites

Graduated from Queensland Conservatorium where he performed in Going into Shadows, Semele, Mamelles di Tirésias and L’enfant et les Sortilèges. He went on to the Opera School, Sydney Conservatorium performing in Angélique, Hin und zurück, Fledermaus and Les Mamelles. He has worked with Opera Queensland and Opera Australia and with Ozopera, singing Ricardo The Sound Garden. On scholarship he studied at RNCM, singing Morales Carmen, Mr Gedge Albert Herring and Elviro Serse. He won the Joyce and Michael Kennedy Award. Recent engagements include Elixir of Love (Mananan Festival Opera) and as baritone soloist for Gloria 3 – Making Music Malta.

Studied at Trinity‚ Cambridge and GSMD, co-founder of Opera 80, current Artistic Director of Buxton Festival. Recent and future projects include Barber of Baghdad, Intermezzo, La Colombe, La Princesse Jaune (Buxton), Boheme, Falstaff‚ Norma, Capriccio‚ Rusalka, Tristan und Isolde and Pique Dame (Grange Park), Les Contes d'Hoffmann (Beijing), Otello (Birmingham) and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Guildhall).

He has appeared at Glyndebourne, ROH, ENO, Opera Northern Ireland, Scottish Opera and Opera North as well as conducting his own opera King (Canterbury Cathedral) and his Clarinet Concerto with Emma Johnson and the Ulster Orchestra, The Rake’s Progress (Reisopera), Carmen, Faust and Nabucco in Australia and Bluebeard’s Castle (Auckland Philharmonia). He has conducted most of the major orchestras worldwide. Recordings include Joseph James’ Requiem with Sumi Jo and his own composition Rainbow Bear with his wife‚ Joanna Lumley‚ as narrator.  Sir David & Lady Plastow

LIZ ASCROFT Designer Carmélites

Trained at Wimbledon School of Art graduated with BA Hons, awarded Arts Council Trainee Design Bursary, UNESCO award for Promotion of the Visual Arts, Prague Quadrennial and TMA Best Designer Award. Designs include Pygmalion, Dublin Carol, See You Next Tuesday (Dublin), Brian Friel’s The Bear and Afterplay (Albery Theatre, tour and Spoleto Festival), One For The Road and A Kind of Alaska (Albery and Lincoln Center Pinter Festival), The Children’s Hour, Three Sisters and On the Shore of the Wide World (Royal Exchange and Cottesloe), Lucky Seven, Vincent River, Apocalyptica, Yellowman, Anna and the Tropics, Rubenstein’s Kiss, Losing Louis (Hampstead Theatre, The Trafalgar and tour), Give Me Your Answer Do and Peggy For You (Comedy Theatre and tour) Lucia di Lammermoor (world tour). Currently working on Porgy & Bess (Denmark).

ROBIN BAILEY ensemble Trained at RAM. Roles since leaving include Tony West Side Story (Pimlico Opera in HMP Erlestoke), Fenton Falstaff (Iford), Almaviva, Rodolfo, Ottavio (Soho Theatre/ OperaUpClose), Aberle Piccard Space (BBC Concert Orchestra) Nanki-Poo (Charles Court Opera), Nemorino L’Elisir (Hampstead Garden Opera). Film sound tracks including Great Gatsby, Dark Shadows, Prometheus, Rango and Puss in Boots. Robin sings with Gabrieli Consort and OAE. He attended the Les Azuriales programme in Nice and was awarded the U27 Young Artist’s prize.  signifies support for the role

CLIVE BAYLEY Gremin Onegin

Appears with the major opera companies in a repertoire ranging from Monteverdi to Verdi, Puccini, Berg, Britten and Birtwistle. He has sung King of Clubs Love for Three Oranges, König Marke Tristan und Isolde and Vodnik Rusalka (Grange Park Opera). He has appeared at ROH, Opera North, ENO, WNO, Deutsche Oper am Rhein, Glyndebourne, BBC Proms, Geneva Opera, San Francisco Opera, Bregenz Festival, Bayerische Staatsoper, Royal Danish Opera, Opera National du Rhin, Frankfurt Opera and in concert with CBSO, OAE, LSO, London Sinfonietta and Hallé. His 2012/13 season opened with Desifej Khovanshchina and the General Gambler (Frankfurt) and most recently Sir Walter Raleigh Gloriana (Hamburg and ROH).  James & Béatrice Lupton SYLVIE BEDOUELLE Madelon Fortunio & ensemble

Studied on GSMD Opera Course.

Recent roles include Third Boy Zauberflöte (Metz), Frugola Tabarro (Arcola), Volusio Cajo Fabrizio (Handel Festival). While at GSMD, Sylvie sang Mère Marie Carmélites, Elisa La Spinalba and Mrs Herring Albert Herring. She was a member of the Glyndebourne Chorus for two seasons.

Future plans include recitals at Fête musicale de la forêt, Festival de Bougue and Estivales de Megève.  Hamish Parker

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Biographies

CATHY BELL ensemble After Cambridge, Birmingham Conservatoire roles include alto roles King Arthur, Schwertleite Walküre, Arasse Siroe (LHF), 3rd Boy (Diva), 3rd Lady (Palestine Mozart Festival). Chorus includes Alceste, Giovanni (Aix-en-Provence), Fliegende Holländer (Scottish Opera), Semele (Beijing).  Brian & Jennifer Ratner LARISSA BLACKSHAW ensemble From Cheshire, studied as a child at Royal Academy of Dance, then read music at Bristol and took a postgraduate diploma at TCM. Appearances include Laura Drei Pintos (UCOpera), Rose Maybud Ruddigore (Oxbridge Opera at Buxton), soprano soloist in Messiah (Merry Opera).

EMMA BLAKE ensemble Graduated from the West Australian Academy of Performing Arts where she performed the roles of Helena Midsummer Night’s Dream and Madame Lidoine Carmélites. In chorus of West Australian Opera she performed in Peter Grimes, Madama Butterfly, Carmen and Aida.

MARTYN BRABBINS Conductor Onegin

Chief Conductor of Nagoya Philharmonic and Principal Guest Conductor of Royal Flemish Philharmonic. Artistic Director of Cheltenham Music Festival (20052007), Associate Principal Conductor of BBCSSO (1994-2005). He studied composition in London and conducting in Leningrad, winning first prize at the 1988 Leeds Competition. He regularly appears with major UK orchestras and annually at the Proms, in Scandinavia, Australia and Japan. Highlights of 2012 included First Night of the Proms and his debut with Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. He has worked with Opera de Lyon, Flemish, Netherlands, Frankfurt and Hamburg Operas and at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, and makes his debut at Bavarian State Opera in 2013. This season Brabbins conducted Pilgrim’s Progress (ENO).

PETER BROOKE ensemble Recent roles include Iago Otello, Ford Falstaff, Fasolt Rheingold, Sacristan Tosca, Belcore L’Elisir, Bottom Midsummer Night’s Dream, Basilio Barbiere, Fernando Fidelio, Marullo Rigoletto and Curio Giulio Cesare. Plans include Belcore (Opéra de Baugé) and Leporello (Opera Vera).

JOANNA BLEACH ensemble Roles include Belinda and Second Witch Dido, First Bridesmaid Trial

by Jury and Yum-Yum Mikado. As a solo opera busker in Covent Garden she has sung at charity events for The Tsunami Appeal, Chicken Shed, Haiti Earthquake and Marie Curie Trust Ball.

CAMILLA BULL ensemble Graduated from GSMD and roles since include: Polinesso Ariodante, Orpheus Orpheus and Euridice, Didymus Theodora, and Aunt Jane Hugh the Drover (Hampstead Garden Opera), Page Rigoletto (Bury Court Opera) and Maddalena (Southbank Sinfonia).

Camilla recently completed the ENO Opera Works.

FRANCES BOURNE

LUCY BURNS

Olga Onegin

Dancer Onegin

At Grange Park Opera sang Cherubino Figaro and Fox Vixen.

Other engagements include Annio Clemenza, Amando Grand Macabre, Gymnasiast/Groom Lulu‚ (La Monnaie); Amando (ENO, Buenos Aires); Hansel Hansel and Gretel‚ Hermia Midsummer Night’s Dream‚ Stéphano Roméo et Juliette and Louhi in Dove’s Swanhunter (Opera North); Rosina Barbiere (Holland Park); Waltraute Ring, Jane in Micha Hamel’s Snow White and Pitti Sing Mikado (Reisopera); Mother Goose Rake’s Progress (St Endellion).  Ruth Markland

Trained at Elmhurst Ballet School and joined Phantom of the Opera in Vienna and UK / Asia tours.

Credits include Fairy Queen, Grande Macabre, Rigoletto and Mikado (ENO), Cunning Little Vixen, Manon (Japan tour), Adriana Lecouvreur, Troyens (ROH), Fledermaus, Midsummer Night’s Dream, Rinaldo, Meistersinger (Glyndebourne). Lucy toured with Wiener Ballet Theatre, Storm Dance, Raymond Gubbay’s Johann Strauss Gala and recently One Night in Vienna.

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CAMERON BURNS

CHRISTOPHER CULL

Chorus Master

Doctor/Jailer Carmélites & ensemble

Studied at New College, Oxford, Solti Peretti Accademia, BrittenPears Programme, Aldeburgh and the NOS. An experienced vocal coach and pianist, has worked regularly at ROH, ENO, WNO, Nationale Reisopera, Netherlands as well as the Mariinsky Theatre, St Petersburg. He is a vocal coach at RWCMD. Cameron held the Conducting Scholarship with the London Symphony Chorus and was Assistant Chorus Master at ENO.

Alumnus of Queen’s University Belfast and Royal Irish Academy of Music Christopher has worked with Wexford Festival Opera, Northern Ireland Opera, Lismore Festival and Opera Ireland. Roles include Morales Carmen, Alfonso Così, Malatesta Pasquale, Angelotti Tosca and Fabrizio La pietra del paragone.

MARK CUNNINGHAM Maître Subtil Fortunio & ensemble

SUSANNA HEARD ensemble Susanna participated in ENO’s programme The Knack where she appeared in Grant’s A Very Private Beach. At Trinity Laban postgraduate opera scenes she took the title role in Suor Angelica.

Other appearances include Mlle Silberklang Schauspieldirektor (Grimeborn Festival), Elvira Giovanni (masterclass Teatro delle Ali di Breno), Dame Vera Lynn at the Marks & Spencer’s Head Office and The Barber of Savile Row (Unexpected Opera).  Raymonde Jay ALEXANDRA CASSIDY ensemble From Nottingham, trained at RSAMD, NOS and Solti Accademia di Bel Canto with Nucci. Roles include Zulma L'italiana in Algeri (SO), Mercury & Second Witch Dido (Old Vic Tunnels), Lehrbuben Meistersinger (GFO), Trio Spilt Milk and Trouble in Tahiti (Grimeborn), Mrs Herring Albert Herring, La Ciesca Schicchi, Minkswoman Flight (RSAMD).

Born in Cwmbran, South Wales he studied at Birmingham Conservatoire and GSMD Opera Course. He has worked with ETO, Swansea City Opera, Savoy Opera, Garsington, D’Oyly Carte, Buxton Festival, OHP, Longborough and Mid Wales Opera. In 2005 he covered and played the role of Piangi in Phantom of the Opera in the West End. TIMOTHY DAWKINS Maître André Fortunio

Studied at the RCM and joined GFO. Roles with Grange Park Opera include Sparafucile Rigoletto, Surin Queen of Spades, Angelotti Tosca, Haushofmeister Capriccio, Badger/Parson Vixen, Ashby Fanciulla del West. Other roles: Graf Dominik Arabella (GFO), Colline Boheme, Don Fernando Fidelio, Quinault Adriana Lecouvreur and Tom Ballo in maschera (OHP), Leporello Don Giovanni (Batignano Festival), Le Spectre Hamlet (COG), Speaker Magic Flute (USA tour).

QUIRIJN DE LANG Clavaroche Fortunio

ROSEMARY CLIFFORD ensemble At GSMD, roles include L’Enfant L’Enfant et les Sortilèges (AIMS), Hero L’Egisto, Miss Jessel Turn of the Screw, Rosina Barbiere (GSMD scenes), Leonora Fidelio. Chorus work includes St Matthew Passion (Jonathan Miller/National Theatre), Figaro (GSMD) and Queen of Spades (Grange Park Opera).

Born in the Netherlands, studied at Milanese Scuola di Musica and the Curtis Institute, Philadelphia.

For Grange Park Opera has sung Count Capriccio, Yeletsky Queen of Spades. Recent and future roles include Pantalon Love for Three Oranges (Nederlandse Opera), Laski Le Roi malgré lui (Wexford) and Christus St John Passion (Reisopera). Other appearances include Surintendant Cendrillon, Masetto Giovanni (La Monnaie), Ottokar Freischütz, Pete Dayton in Neuwirth’s Lost Highway (ENO), Guglielmo Così, Schaunard Boheme and Demetrius Midsummer Night’s Dream (Opera North), Harlekin Ariadne auf Naxos, Dandini La Cenerentola and Selem Il Turco in Italia (Garsington). As a regular guest of De Vlaamse Opera, he has sung Marco Gianni Schicchi.

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Biographies

ILONA DOMNICH

NICHOLAS DWYER

Jacqueline Fortunio

Zaretsky Onegin & ensemble

Born in St Petersburg, studied at RCM and has worked ENO, Grange Park Opera, ETO and the Anghiari and Ischia Festivals in Italy.

Roles include Tatyana Onegin, Gilda Rigoletto, Rosina Barber, Blonde Entführung, Zerlina Giovanni, Pamina Zauberflöte, Contessa Figaro, Venus Judgment of Paris, Mimi Boheme, Madam Herz Schauspieldirektor, Colombina The Jewel Box and Lisetta Vera Constanza.  Martin & Jane Houston

Previously appeared at Grange Park Opera as Jailer Tosca, Herald Rigoletto and Captain Onegin. Roles include Marcello Boheme, Escamillo Carmen and Alidoro Cenerentola (OperaUpClose), Guglielmo Così (Situation Opera) and Javert Les Miserables (Pimlico Opera in HMP Erlestoke).  Mrs Jill Goulston

JOHN DOYLE Director Carmélites

Previously for Grange Park Opera: Madama Butterfly. Opera credits include Lucia di Lammermoor (Houston, La Fenice, Mariinsky, Scottish Opera, Sydney), Peter Grimes (Metropolitan Opera), The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (LA Opera, 2 Grammy Awards). Theatre credits in USA include Passion (Classic Stage), Sweeney Todd (Tony Award: Best Director, Musical), Company (Tony Award: Best Musical Revival), A Catered Affair (Drama League Award, Best Musical Production) - all Broadway, Ten Cents a Dance (Williamstown/McCarter Theatre), Road Show (Public Theatre/Menier Chocolate Factory), Where’s Charley?

(Encores! NY), Wings (Second Stage, NY), Kiss Me Kate (Stratford), Caucasian Chalk Circle (ACT), Merrily We Roll Along and Three Sisters (Cincinnati). John has been artistic director of four UK regional theatres. Numerous credits include Gondoliers, Mack & Mabel (West End), Fiddler on the Roof (Watermill), Midsummer Night’s Dream (Regent’s Park), Oklahoma! (Chichester), Amadeus (Wilton’s Music Hall). He directed the feature film Main Street.

MATTHEW DUNCAN ensemble Trained at RNCM, roles include Melchior Amahl and the Night Visitors, Baron Traviata (Kuala Lumpur), Tom Merrie England (Opera South), Schaunard Boheme (OperaUpClose), Calchas Belle Helene, Guglielmo Così, (Merry Opera). In the ensemble at Grange Park Opera he has appeared in Butterfly, Idomeneo, Tristan und Isolde, Tosca and Love for Three Oranges.

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SEBASTIAN FROST Sound Designer Carmélites

Trained at GSMD, in 2008 he received the first ever Best Sound Design of a Musical Tony Award nomination for Sunday in the Park with George on Broadway. Designs include Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe (Kensington Gardens), Annie (West Yorkshire Playhouse), Queen of Spades (Grange Park Opera). Other work includes Queen’s Golden Jubilee celebrations, international motor shows for Rolls Royce, Jaguar, Ford, exhibitions for Star Trek, Thunderbirds, Sony and installations for Disney, Harrods, Harry Potter.

SARA FULGONI Mère Marie Carmélites

For Grange Park has sung Adalgisa Norma, Clairon Capriccio, Brangäne Tristan und Isolde, Polina Queen of Spades and Suzuki Butterfly. She has appeared at Santa Fe Opera, ENO, WNO, Palau de les Arts Valencia, Geneva, Beijing Music Festival, Dallas, San Francisco, Canadian Opera Company, Gran Teatre del Liceu, De Nederlandse Opera, Bayerische Staatsoper, Royal Danish Opera, ROH, Opernhaus Zurich, Teatro Comunale di Bologna, De Vlaamse, La Monnaie. Plans include Maddalena Rigoletto (La Monnaie and Opéra National du Rhin).  Descendants of others guillotined at the same time as the Carmelites ROBERT ANTHONY GARDINER Lensky Onegin

Studied at RNCM, Frankfurt Opera School, NOS. As a Jette Parker Young Artist at ROH roles include Egoldo Mathilde di Shabran, Filch Beggar’s Opera, Conte de Lerma Don Carlo, Gaston Traviata, Lover Tabarro. Other appearances: Siebel Faust (Opera North), Eurimaco Il ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria (Frankfurt), Aubrey Maria di Rohan, Ctesippe Penelope and the lead in John Barber’s We are Shadows (Spitalfields Festival).  B arbara Yu Larsson, Anonymous, Miss Clare Williams

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ELEANOR GARSIDE ensemble Studied at RNCM with roles of Belinda Dido, Yum-Yum Mikado, Miss Wordsworth Albert Herring, Atalanta Xerxes and Mabel Pirates of Penzance. She was a chorus member for the 2012 Wexford Festival.

SIMON CHALFORD GILKES ensemble

Australian-born, Simon is currently at RCM. He has performed with ETO, Sydney Chamber Opera, Tête-a-Tête, as Peter Quint, Fenton, Grimoaldo, Bajazet, Arnalta, Don Curzio, Le Mari, Mr Upfold and The Schoolmaster.

REBECCA GOULDEN ensemble Born in Bolton, opera roles include Onion Desire Caught by the Tail (Grimeborn Opera), Danish Lady/ Youth Death in Venice (Bregenz, Aldeburgh), Pamina Magic Flute (Netherlands), Gretel Hansel and Gretel (Cleveland Philharmonic).

Recently she performed Miss Jessel Turn of the Screw (Dartington), cover Sirene Rinaldo (Gylndebourne), Mimi Boheme (Wexford).

SUSAN GRITTON Tatyana Onegin

At Grange Park Opera Countess Madeleine Capriccio. Susan has performed Liù, Micäela and Marenka (ROH), Ellen Orford (La Scala, Opera Australia & Tokyo), Governess and Female Chorus (Aldeburgh), Konstanze (Bayerische Staatsoper & Deutsche Staatsoper), Fiordiligi, Vittelia, Rodelinda and Blanche de la Force (Bayerische Staatsoper), Elettra (Netherlands Opera), Donna Anna (Opéra de Montreal & Bolshoi), Theodora (Glyndebourne) and Countess Almaviva, Pamina, Fiordiligi and Vixen (ENO). Recent concert highlights include LSO/Elder, Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia/Pappano, Royal Concertgebouworkest/ Denève and the Vienna Philharmonic/Rattle.  Francis & Nathalie Phillimore ALEX HAIGH ensemble Studied at TCM and ENO Opera Works. He recently appeared as a member of the Quidco Quartet (BBC) and has sung with ENO, RPC, BBC SO and Apollo5, the sister group to VOCES8.

JOHNNY HERFORD Officer Carmélites de Verbois Fortunio & ensemble

Roles include Papageno Magic Flute, Traveller Curlew River and Directeur / Gendarme Mamelles de Tirésias and principal roles in operas by Judith Weir, Jonathan Dove and Sir Peter Maxwell Davies. He has performed as a recitalist at the Wigmore Hall, Kings Place, and Oxford Lieder Festival.

LYNNE HOCKNEY Choreographer Onegin

Trained at the Royal Ballet School and has worked with directors as diverse as James Cameron‚ Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sir Peter Hall. Her work has been seen at repertory theatres throughout the UK and USA and her extensive list of film credits include The Village‚ Titanic‚ True Lies‚ Town & Country‚ Wild‚ Wild West and Rocky & Bullwinkle. Most recent engagements include Hall’s Cenerentola (Glyndebourne and Berlin) as Revival Director, Rosenkavalier (Bolshoi‚ Moscow), Giulio Cesare (Erfurt), Traviata (Magdeburg), Don Quichotte (Nederlandse Opera), Tancredi‚ Iolanta‚ Francesca da Rimini and Orfeo ed Euridice (Theater an der Wien), Otello (Graz), The Maiden in the Tower (Buxton Festival), Jenufa (Glyndebourne), Jenufa, Boheme and A Little Night Music (Malmö) and Onegin (Opera de Lyon).

SUSANNE HOLMES ensemble Trained at RCM and Flanders Opera Studio. Work includes Anna Intermezzo and cover Hamor Jephtha (Buxton Festival), Third girl The House of the Sleeping Beauties (La Monnaie), Hansel, Dido, Papagena, Second Lady, Second Boy, Mercedes, Piacere Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno, Celia La Fedelta Premiata, Der Trommler Der Kaiser von Atlantis and Baba the Turk.

BIANCA HOPKINS Dancer Onegin

From Gold Coast, Australia, she trained at New Zealand School of Dance and danced with Royal New Zealand Ballet. In Europe has danced with Vienna Festival Ballet, Springs Dance, Ballet Soul, Antique Dances, Incandescence Circus Theatre and Murley Dance.

She performed in Manon (ROH at Buckingham Palace), Faust, Mikado (ENO).

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MATTHEW HOWARD ensemble Studies at TCM and now holds a permanent position at All Saints, Margaret Street and works as a consort singer with Stile Antico, I Fagiolini and Tenebrae. He has sung with BYO and this is his second season with Grange Park Opera.

RICHARD IMMERGLUCK ensemble

Studied at GSMD. At Grange Park Opera was Imperial Commissioner Butterfly.

Other appearances include Sid Albert Herring, Ceprano Rigoletto, Leporello Giovanni, Sharpless Butterfly, Earl of Essex Merrie England, Marullo Rigoletto and the title roles Barber of Seville and Figaro.

STEPHEN JEFFERY ensemble After training at Birmingham Conservatoire and RCM he has sung with Wexford Festival Opera, Grange Park Opera, Opera de Baugé, Stanley Hall Opera and Blackheath Halls Opera. In 2005 he appeared in Kenneth Branagh’s feature film of The Magic Flute.

BRAGI JONSSON Thierry / 2nd Commissary Carmélites Guillaume Fortunio & ensemble

From Iceland, studies at RCM. Opera roles include Leporello Giovanni (Youth Symphony Orchestra of Iceland), Basilio Barbiere (Opera Lyrica, Oxford), Zaretsky Onegin, Sacristan / Sciarrone Tosca (Nordurop, Iceland) and Ceprano Rigoletto (Icelandic Opera).

STEVE JOHNSTONE Dancer Onegin

Born in Yeovil, graduated from London Contemporary Dance School. Since leaving The Place has worked with Katie Green, Luca Silvestrini, Jennifer Lyn Crawford, Ironinc, Dye Nye Opera, ROH and ENO. Steve also choreographs his own work under the name Off The Map. STUART KALE Triquet Onegin

For Grange Park Opera: Caius Falstaff, Nilsky/Rash Gambler Gambler, Spoletta Tosca and Taupe Capriccio.

Around the world appearances include ROH, La Scala,

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Bayerische Staatsoper, Théâtre du Châtelet, San Francisco Opera, De Nederlandse, New Israeli Opera, Canadian Opera, Oper Zürich, WNO, Opéra national du Rhin, ENO, Grand Théâtre de Genève, Oper Köln and the opera houses of Nantes, Bordeaux, Marseilles, Montpellier, Toulouse, Nancy, Parma, Bologna, Genova, Cagliari, Turin and Rome.  Derek Johns Ltd PAUL KEOGAN Lighting Design Puritani, Onegin, Carmélites

Studied drama at Trinity College Dublin and Glasgow University.

For Grange Park Opera Onegin, Idomeneo and Queen of Spades.

Other work includes Taming of the Shrew (RSC), Misanthrope (Lyric Belfast), Molly Sweeney (Gate, Dublin), Penelope, Pierrot Lunaire (Almeida), Walworth Farce (Druid Theatre), Novecento (Trafalgar Studios), Drum Belly, Curse of the Starving Class (Abbey, Dublin), Intemperance (Everyman, Liverpool), Harvest (Royal Court), Born Bad (Hampstead Theatre), Blue/Orange (Crucible), Trad (Galway Arts Festival), Makropulos Case (Opera Zuid), Zauberflöte (National Opera of Korea), Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, The Silver Tassie and Dead Man Walking (Opera Ireland).

MITESH KHATRI ensemble Was a postgraduate student at Birmingham Conservatoire. Since then work includes Nobleman Count Ory (Opera South), Jonathan Dove’s Life is a Dream (Birmingham Opera), Butterfly (Longborough) and at Grange Park Opera Idomeneo and Butterfly.

MATTHEW KIMBLE ensemble From Bedford, trained at GSMD, has since worked with Aldeburgh Festival, Grange Park Opera, OHP, Bregenzer Festspiele, Carl Rosa, Chelmsford Opera, International G&S Festival and Hampstead Garden Opera.

CHARLOTTE KING ensemble Read music at Goldsmith’s and now postgraduate at GSMD. She was Siegrune (St Endellion), Sesto, Sorceress (Riverside), cover Mrs Chin / Old Crone (BYO) and chorus in Queen of Spades (Grange Park Opera).

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STUART LAING ensemble From Australia, studies at GSMD Roles include Spärlich Lustigen Weiber von Windsor, Stage Manager Our Town, Lysander Midsummer Night’s Dream, Almerik Iolanta (GSMD), Normanno Lucia (Clonter Opera), Basilio / Curzio Figaro, Rev Adams Peter Grimes, Nick Fanciulla del West, Remendado Carmen (Western Australia).

STEPHEN LANGRIDGE Director Puritani

Artistic Director of Goteborg Opera. Previously at Grange Park Opera: Maria Stuarda, Figaro and Bluebeard with his father, Philip Langridge. This year at ROH he directs Parsifal and revival of Minotaur. Previous collaborations with Birtwhistle include Io Passion and Mask of Orpheus. Other recent work includes Madama Butterfly (Norwegian National Opera), Lohengrin (Royal Swedish Opera), Don Carlo (Teatro de São Carlos, Lisbon), Boheme, Wake and Hippolyte et Aricie (Reisopera), Damnation de Faust (Lyric Opera of Chicago), Otello (Salzburg Festival and Rome), Rigoletto (Vienna Volksoper), Salome (Malmö).

HYE-YOUN LEE Blanche de la Force Carmélites

Selected by Independent on Sunday as The Face to Watch in Classical Music 2013 for her performance as Elettra Idomeneo at Grange Park Opera. Born in South Korea, she was a member of Les Jeunes Voix du Rhin in Strasbourg and Atelier Lyrique at the Paris Opera. She has appeared with Finnish National Opera Park, Lausanne, Mulhouse, Strasbourg and Paris.

Future engagements include Cio-Cio-San (Scottish Opera), Song of Hiawatha (Three Choirs Festival) and Donna Anna (Bergen Opera).  Heike Munro JESUS LEON Arturo Puritani

Roles include Cavaradossi Tosca, Pinkerton Butterfly (Grange Park Rising Stars), Ernesto Pasquale (Glyndebourne on Tour), Nemorino L’Elisir (Sonora Philharmonic, Mexico), Fenton (cover) Falstaff (Glyndebourne), Riccardo Maria di Rohan (Berlin), Ottavio, Rinuccio Gianni Schicchi and Arkady A Month in the Country (Opera Institute, Boston University), Duca Rigoletto (San Francisco Lyric Opera and New Opera Festival di Roma), Rodolfo, Edgardo Lucia (Riverside

Opera, California), Almaviva (Opera Theatre of Saint Louis), Ferrando (cover) (Santa Fe) and Alfredo (West Bay Opera, Bregenz, Dijon and Caen). Jesus has toured United States, Cuba, Thailand, Belgium, Italy and Mexico.  Ian & Claire Maurice, Diane & Christopher Sheridan, Johnny, Marie & Anne Veeder, Niall & Ingrid FitzGerald WARREN LETTON Lighting Designer Fortunio

Trained at Rose Bruford, original lighting designs include West Side Story, Les Misérables (Pimlico Opera in prison), Wind in the Willows (ROH), Mozart & Salieri, Bastien und Bastienne, Portrait de Manon, Nuits d'Eté (ROH Jette Parker Young Artists), Lady from the Sea (Scottish Opera), Magic Flute (Longborough), The Gentle Giant, Summer Collections (ROH2), Hooray for Hollywood, Broadway, Noitamina, Legends (Orchard Theatre), Phantasy (Rambert Dance), Heart of Darkness (Opera Genesis, ROH2), In Good Company (ROH2, Birmingham Royal Ballet, Australian Ballet, National Ballet of Canada), Noughts & Crosses (RSC), Carousel (Opera North).

SORAYA MAFI Constance Carmélites

Born in Lancashire, studied at RNCM and is now at RCM. Roles include Virtú Poppea, Franzl Vixen, Ida Fledermaus, Second Witch Dido, Maria West Side Story and PeepBo Mikado. She created the role Cheryl in Iain Burnside’s Journeying Boys. In September, she joins RCM Opera School.  Judith Lawless & Kevin Egan GIANLUCA MARCIANÒ Conductor Puritani

His opera debut was in 2007 with Croatian National Opera.

He is now Musical Director Tbilisi State Opera & Ballet, Georgia, Artistic Director of Al Bustan Festival in Beirut, and Principal Guest Conductor of the Beijing Drama, Dance and Opera Orchestra. Productions in Georgia include Forza del Destino, Cavalleria Rusticana, Nabucco, Attila, Trovatore, Mitridate and Aida, concerts with Andrea Bocelli. He appears often in opera houses of Zagreb, Minsk, Sassari, Prague and at Grange Park Opera. Recent engagements include a new production of Turandot (Ópera de Oviedo).  Raymond & Elizabeth Henley

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STEPHEN MEDCALF

CATIA MORESO

Director Onegin

Gertrude Fortunio & ensemble

Credits include Capriccio, Magic Flute, Fanciulla del West (Grange Park Opera), Aida (RAH), Figaro (Glyndebourne), Pique Dame (La Scala), Così (Châtelet) and Ezio (Champs-Elysées). He has also worked with Salzburger Landestheater, Buxton Festival, Opéra de Marseille, Teatro Regio di Parma, Teatro Lirico di Cagliari, Teatro Nacional de São Carlos, Opera Bergen, Kiev Festival, Teatro delle Muse, Teatro Massimo Palermo. Recent and future engagements include Village Romeo & Juliet, Foroni’s Cristina Regina di Svezia (Wexford), Our Town (GSMD), Finta Giardiniera (Landestheater Niederbayern), Zauberflöte (Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía, Valencia).  Tom Busher & Elizabeth Benson

Trained at GSMD, NOS. Roles include Giano Trionfo d’amore, Woman Farmer Village Romeo & Juliet, Third Lady Magic Flute, Eva Comedy on the Bridge, Second Witch Dido, Page Salome, Giovanna Rigoletto, La Baronne Cherubin, Elisa La Spinalba, Madame de Croissy Carmélites, Proserpina in Oliver’s Euridice, Carmella Vida breve, Marcellina Figaro.

Plans include 2nd Harlot Solomon (Lisbon).

ANJALI MEHRA Movement Puritani

Studied at Central School of Ballet, and made her West End debut in Bombay Dreams. Recently she has appeared in Matthew Bourne’s Play without Words, revived the choreography for Richard Jones’s production of Macbeth (Opera de Lille) recreated the choreography for his Hansel & Gretel (Bayerische Staatsoper, Munich). Anjali choreographed Jakob Lenz (ENO) and L’Orfeo (Silent Opera).

DAVID MILNER-PEARCE ensemble

From North Yorkshire, he studied at RAM and RCM. Roles include Snug A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Papageno, Keçal Bartered Bride, Jupiter Orpheus in the Underworld, Major Patience, Guglielmo Così, Don Giovanni (title role) and Earl of Dunmow A Dinner Engagement.

SARAH MINNS ensemble Trained RAM, RWCMD. Credits include Verity Jago (world premiere by Mike Westbrook), Kate Pinkerton Butterfly, Musetta, (OperaUpClose), Eleanor Vale, Bianca/Gabriella Rondine, Sprite Fantastic Mr Fox (OHP), Carolina Matrimonio Segreto, Karolina Two Widows, Fox Vixen, Gretel Hansel & Gretel, Miss Wordsworth Albert Herring (Welsh National Youth Opera).  Tom & Sarah Floyd

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JOE MORGAN d’Azincourt Fortunio Commissary Carmélites & ensemble

Studied at GSMD. Roles include Alfredo, Tamino, Paris Belle Hélène (Merry Opera), Nemorino, L’elisir (Pop-Up Opera), Jupiter Semele (Opera in Space), Caius Falstaff (Opera Berbiguieres) and Pinkerton in Finding Butterfly. Plans include Tamino Magic Flute (Opera Minima).

DAVID MURLEY Dancer Onegin

Trained in France and London Studio Centre. Opera credits: Carmen, Giulio Cesare, Zauberflöte (Glyndebourne), Traviata, Manon, Queen of Spades (ROH). Other work includes: Pinocchio (Wizard Theatre); Nonsuch Dance; Sahara Pranam Bollywood Spectacular in India; Pam Ann's Christmas Cracker (Soho Theatre). Film/TV credits: Margot (Mammoth Screen); Filth and Wisdom by Madonna; It’s Now or Never (ITV); Magic FM Christmas advert.

CONOR MURPHY Designer Puritani

In 1998 Conor designed Grange Park Opera’s first production Marriage of Figaro. Recent work with Stephen Langridge includes Lohengrin (Royal Swedish Opera), Boheme and Wake (Reisopera).

Other recent opera: Aida (Dublin), L’Heure espagnole, Gianni Schicchi (Wiesbaden), Rape of Lucretia, Rake’s Progress (Angers Nantes Opera, St Etienne), Powder Her Face (ROH, Vlaamse Opera), Salome (Montpellier, Korean National Opera). Theatre and dance includes Government Inspector, The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui, The Crucible and The Rivals (Abbey Theatre), Labyrinth of Love (Rambert), Giselle Re-Loaded, Midsummer Night’s Dream and Carmen (Saarbrücken). Current work includes Clemenza di Tito (Opera North and Nancy).

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FIONA MURPHY Madame Lidoine Carmélites

Studied University College Dublin, Curtis Institute Philadelphia and became a young artist member of Houston Grand Opera’s Studio program. As a mezzosoprano she performed with Chicago Opera Theater, Houston Grand Opera, Curtis Opera Theater, Opera Company of Philadelphia, ENO, WNO and Opera Ireland. As a soprano work includes Governess Turn of the Screw (Opera Northern Ireland), concerts with Bryn Terfel (Grange Park Opera), Alfie Boe, RTE Concert Orchestra and at Lincoln Centre with OAE.  Roger & Kate Holmes, Anonymous

Lady Sangazure Sorcerer, Duchess of Plaza-Toro Gondoliers, Katisha (New London Opera).

ASHLEY JAMES ORWIN Dancer Onegin

Trained Rambert School and joined Rambert Dance for A Linha Curva.

Toured Bourne’s Swan Lake including a season on Broadway. Other work includes Troyens (ROH), Chorus Line (Crucible), Romeo & Juliet (tour), Tiger-Bharatanatyam (ROH2), Cinderella, Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs (High Wycombe), Film includes Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows, Anna Karenina, Production 45, The Muppets...Again!

SARAH O’CONNELL

ANNE-MARIE OWENS

Dancer Onegin

Madame de Croissy Carmélites Madam Larina Onegin

From East Sussex, she studied at the Legat School then joined Ballet West in the Scottish Highlands. and toured with them as a soloist.

Her repertoire includes Lead Pas de Deux Onegin (GFO), Dream (Wales UK tour), Featured dancer in Street Dance 3D the movie, O Caritas by Peter Darrell (Curve Foundation), Manon (ROH and Japan tour), Phantom of the Opera 25th Anniversary gala and most recently The Snowman tour.  Tessa & John Manser FRANCIS O’CONNOR Designer Onegin and Fortunio

Trained at Wimbledon School of Art. Credits include Midsummer Night’s Dream, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Written on The Heart (RSC); in NY and Broadway Beauty Queen of Leenane, Translations, The Cripple of Innishmaan, Silver Tassie (Lincoln Center Festival). Opera: Onegin, Capriccio, Fanciulla del West, Magic Flute, Giovanni, South Pacific and Iolanthe (Grange Park Opera), Moses (St Gallen), Rusalka (Nürnberg) and designs for Opera North, ENO, Strasbourg, Berlin, Switzerland, Garsington, Buxton. Awards include two Irish Times Awards, Boston Globe and Critics’ Circle Award. His designs for the opera Pinocchio nominated for Der Faust Prize, Germany.

NICOLE OPPLER ensemble At Grange Park Opera: Mother Madama Butterfly. Other roles include Annina Traviata (Park Opera), Novice Suor Angelica (Fulham Opera), Cherie Blair: Counsel for the Defence Trial! A Footballer's Tale (Minotaur Music Theatre), Emilia Otello (Vox Lirika), Lady Angela Patience,

Born in South Shields, studied at GSMD. At Grange Park: Jezibaba Rusalka, Clarisse Love for Three Oranges and Countess Queen of Spades. Anne-Marie has performed for ROH Covent Garden, Glyndebourne, WNO, Opera North, Opéra National de Paris, Théâtre Royale de la Monnaie, Opéra de Lausanne, New York City Opera, Santiago Opera, Arizona Opera, Santa Fe Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Teatro Lirico di Cagliari, Opera di San Carlo, Komische Oper Berlin, Bayerische Staatsoper, Opera Australia and at the Hong Kong and Saito Kinen Festivals. Her vast repertoire includes many major roles from Fricka Rheingold and Walküre to Auntie Peter Grimes.  Jeremy & Rosemary Farr IRIA PERESTRELO ensemble Studied at GSMD. Opera includes Susanna, Adele Fledermaus (Teatr Wielki, Warsaw), Gingerbread Woman Village Romeo & Juliet, L’Arlesiana chorus (Wexford), Moth Midsummer Night’s Dream (Barbican), Zerlina (Portugal), Cis Albert Herring (Silk Street Theatre), Fairy Godmother Cendrillon, Amore L’Egisto, Orfeo (Zêzere Arts), Gazela in Filipe Pires’ Os Zoocratas (Teatro Rivoli and TNSC Portugal).

CHRISTINA PETROU ensemble Graduated from GSMD. Recent roles Lauretta Gianni Schicchi (Young Artists at OHP), Giovanna Rigoletto (Bury Court), Bubikopf Emperor of Atlantis (Dioneo Opera) and Adina L’elisir (Pavilion). Chorus includes: Francesca da Rimini, Forza

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del Destino (Opera Holland Park), Treemonisha (Pegasus), Cavalleria Rusticana (Barbican and Cervia, Italy), Rake’s Progress (Aldeburgh Festival and Ponte de Lima Festival, Portugal) and Rondine (BYO).

BRETT POLEGATO Onegin Onegin

Finalist at 1995 Cardiff Singer of the World, his career has encompassed over fifty opera roles at La Scala, Opéra National de Paris, Glyndebourne, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Houston Grand Opera, Teatro Real, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Carnegie Hall in signature roles including Pelléas, Almaviva Figaro and title roles Onegin and Giovanni. Recent engagements include Starbuck Moby Dick (Calgary Opera), Kurwenal Tristan und Isolde (CBSO), Sharpless Butterfly and Dandini Cenerentola (Seattle Opera).  Mrs Peter Cadbury, Noreen Doyle, Christopher Swan TOBY PURSER Conductor Fortunio

Artistic Director of Orion Orchestra, Principal Guest Conductor of Kammerphilhamonie Graz. At Grange Park Opera, Toby has conducted the Rising Stars in Onegin, Madama Butterfly, Rigoletto (and main festival). He has performed Hänsel und Gretel, Il Seraglio, Bailey’s The Black Monk (world premier), Sciarrino’s Infinito Nero, as well as numerous opera galas. In prison with Pimlico Opera he has conducted six productions. He has guest-conducted L’Ensemble Orchestral de Paris, Orchestra of Opera North, Sinfonia Viva, St Petersburg Camerata, St Petersburg Festival Orchestra and Orpheus Sinfonia. He is director of the conductors’ class at Aberystwyth International MusicFest.  Mrs T Landon OLIVIA RAY Enrichetta di Francia Puritani Soeur Mathilde Carmélites

Studied at RNCM, GSMD and Aspen, Colorado. Opera includes Curra Forza del destino, Mrs Fox The Fantastic Mr Fox, Suzy/ Lolette La rondine, Alisa Lucia di Lammermoor (Opera Holland Park), Juno Orpheus in the Underworld and Olga Onegin (Scottish Opera), Rosina Barber (Stanley Hall), Périchole (Opera South), Angelina Cenerentola (London Opera Productions), Carmen (Pavilion), Esmeralda Bartered Bride and Mother Tales of Hoffmann (Mid Wales Opera), Irene Theodora and Pulcheria Riccardo Primo (Opéra de Baugé).  Adam & Lucy Constable  Hamish Parker

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NIGEL ROBSON Chaplain Carmélites

Sang Arbace Idomeneo for Grange Park in 2012. Recent engagements include Makropoulos Case (Opera North), Ulysses (ENO), Idomeneo (Champs-Elysées). He has appeared with Nancy, Nationale Reisopera, Flanders, WNO, Drottningholm, Bayerische Staatsoper, Canadian Opera Company, Glyndebourne, Garsington, La Monnaie, Tours and Teatro Colon, Buenos Aires. Built around a poem written by his father and using audio and visual projections, The Tenor Man’s Story opened the 2005 Enschede Festival.

BROCK ROBERTS ensemble A Masters student at Birmingham Conservatoire he started his career with Dayton Opera, USA moved to Germany where he worked as a soloist in Munich and Hamburg before coming to the UK to further his studies. Recent roles include Gherardo Gianni Schicchi, Sam Kaplan Street Scene and Johnny Inkslinger Paul Bunyan.

JAMIE ROCK ensemble From Dublin, he studied at RIAM, RAM and RSAMD. Has performed Papageno (Wexford), Sid Albert Herring, Mozart’s Figaro (RSAMD), Schaunard Boheme (Silent Opera), Bartly Riders to the Sea (Anna Livia Dublin), Masetto Giovanni (Les Amis de George Bizet Paris).

CLAIRE RUTTER Elvira Puritani

Title roles at Grange Park Opera: Norma, Madama Butterfly, Tosca.

Her performances as Lucrezia Borgia (ENO) and Aïda (RAH) were televised by Sky Arts and other UK appearances include performances with Opera North, Scottish Opera and WNO. International engagements include Dallas Opera, Florida Grand Opera, Santa Fe, Flanders, Finnish National Opera, Opéra de Bordeaux, Opéra de Montpellier, Opéra de Rennes, Opéra national du Rhin and Norwegian Opera.

Her recording of The Kingdom with the Hallé won a 2011 Gramophone Award. Future engagements include Donna Anna Giovanni (Finnish National Opera), Beethoven Choral Symphony (RPO), Strauss Four Last Songs and an Opera Gala (Buxton Festival), title role Turandot (Scottish Opera).  François Freyeisen & Shunichi Kubo

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DAMIANO SALERNO Riccardo Puritani

Born in Syracuse, Sicily, he studied piano and singing at the Conservatory of Pescara, then Accademia di Studi Verdiani of Busseto and RAM. He sang the title role in Rigoletto at Grange Park Opera in 2011. Other roles include Germont Traviata, Miller Luisa Miller, Sharpless Madama Butterfly, Ping Turandot, Albert Werther, Silvio Pagliacci, Lescaut Manon Lescaut, Melitone Forza del destino, Belcore L’elisir d’amore and Figaro Barbiere di Siviglia in many international houses including La Fenice, Genova, Opera di Roma, Bayerische Rundfunk, Bologna, Parma, Oviedo, St Gallen and Torino. He recently gave a Rosenblatt Recital at Wigmore Hall, London.  Mr & Mrs Richard Morse PRUDENCE SANDERS ensemble Studies at GSMD. Roles include Musetta Boheme, Adina L’elisir (OperaUpClose), Governess Turn of the Screw, Cunegonde Candide (Cambridge Philharmonic), soprano soloist Mittwoch aus Licht (Birmingham Opera), Bianca Rondine (Go Opera).  Hamish Parker JAMES SAVAGE-HANFORD ensemble

Read Music at Cambridge and is a postgraduate student at RWCMD. Roles include Pluto Orpheus in the Underworld (Opera’r Ddraig), Remendado (OperaUpClose), Back-to-Front Policeman in Laura Bowler’s The Sandman (Tête à Tête), tenor soloist in the Armonico Consort’s tour Too Hot to Handel. He sang chorus in Queen of Spades at Grange Park Opera in 2012.

CATARINA SERENO ensemble Studied at Catholic University, Oporto and GSMD. Roles include Pamina Magic Flute (Merry Opera), Medoro Orlando Generoso (Barber Opera), Elle La Voix Humaine, Jessy Das Kleine Mahagonny, Madame Silberklang Der Schauspieldirektor and Voce 4 in Berio’s Laborintus II (Mahogany Opera).

NATALIE SINNOTT ensemble Trained at ENO on the Baylis Programme and RAM. She has appeared as Miranda The Golden Ticket, Suitor La Cour de Celimene and Second Boy Zauberflöte (Wexford Festival), Vittoria The Gondoliers (G&S Company).  Robert Hugill & David Hughes DANIEL SLATER Director Fortunio

Studied at Bristol and Cambridge.

Associate Director of Nottingham Playhouse and Tricycle Theatre (1993-95).

Opera includes Rigoletto, Falstaff, Giovanni (Grange Park Opera), Nabucco (Vlaamse Opera), Lohengrin (San Francisco, Houston, Geneva), Tristan und Isolde (Norway), Eugene Onegin (Holland Park), Traviata (Houston), Gazza Ladra, Don Pasquale (then Geneva and Caen), Cenerentola, Midsummer Night’s Dream and Giovanni (then Birgitta Festival, Tallinn) all Garsington Opera; Wozzeck (Santa Fe), Peter Grimes (Geneva), Xerxes (Stockholm), L’Arbore di Diana (Valencia), Samson (Buxton), Betrothal in a Monastery (Glyndebourne, Valencia), Manon Lescaut (Opera North, Oslo, Oviedo), Manon (Opera North), L’Elisir (Opera North, WNO, NZ Festival), Bartered Bride (Opera North, Strasbourg, NZ), Vixen (Bregenz, San Francisco, Geneva), Barbiere, Der Vogelhändler (Berlin), Boheme (Scottish Opera, Opera Ireland). Plans include: Tannhäuser (Estonia Opera), Peter Grimes (LPO, RFH) and Salome (Santa Fe).

JOANNA SOANE ensemble Studied singing and clarinet at TCM and RCM and has appeared with Grange Park Opera, Opera Holland Park, Northern Ireland Opera, Raymond Gubbay at RAH, Buxton G&S Company, Savoy Theatre and Iolanthe (Buxton Opera House).

ALBERTO SOUSA Bruno Puritani

An alumnus of the Solti Te Kanawa Accademia di Bel Canto, the Universidade de Aveiro, Portugal and GSMD. Appearances include Prince Philippe A Dinner Engagement (Wexford Festival), world première of Timothy Burke’s Spilt Milk and Boy 1 Trouble in Tahiti (Grimeborn Festival), Orfée Orfée aux Enfers (Teatro de Aveiro, Portugal), Macheath Die Dreigroschenoper (Ópera Norte, Portugal).

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Biographies

Other roles include Beppe Rita, Leandro La Spinalba, Ramiro Cenerentola, Almaviva, Nemorino, Belfiore Finta Giardiniera, Gonzalve L’heure Espagnole, Ernesto Pasquale, Rinuccio Gianni Schicchi, L’Aumonier Carmélites, Eric in the world premiere of Coleridge-Taylor’s Thelma. Christopher & Anne Saul NICKY SPENCE Chevalier de la Force Carmélites

Trained at the GSMD and NOS. Recent highlights include lead role in the world premiere of Nico Muhly’s Two Boys (ENO) in which he will debut at the Metropolitan Opera, Dies Natalis (BBCCO), Tamino (Scottish Opera), Novice Billy Budd (ENO), Steuermann Fliegende Holländer (CBSO & Scottish Opera). Plans include Don Ottavio Don Giovanni (NZ Opera), Steva Jenufa (La Monnaie), Isacco La Gazza Ladra (Frankfurt Opera) and appearances at St John Smith Square, Spitalfields Festival and the Purcell Room.

CHRISTOPHOROS STAMBOGLIS Sir Giorgio Walton Puritani

Born in Athens he won the Maria Callas Scholarship to GSMD. He went on to the Accademia Rossiniana. He participated at the opening concert of the Athens Megaron and now appears there regularly as he does with Greek National Opera and the Odeon of Herodes Atticus. Recent debuts: ROH, Metropolitan Opera, Carnegie Hall, Grand Théâtre de Genève. Roles include Attila, Pasquale, Filippo II Don Carlos, Timur Turandot, Basilio Barbiere, Bartolo Nozze di Figaro, Ramfis/Re Aida, Conte Rodolfo Sonnambula, Magnifico/ Alidoro Cenerentola, Alfonso Così fan tutte, Fiesco Simon Boccanegra, Silva Ernani, Oroveso Norma, Banco Macbeth, Enrico VIII Anna Bolena, Dulcamara L’Elisir and Leporello/ Commendatore Giovanni. This is his debut at Grange Park.  Donald & Rachael Stearns HELEN STANLEY ensemble Roles include Olga Onegin, Mrs Herring Albert Herring, Dido and the title role in Savitri. She sang in the chorus of Madama Butterfly and Idomeneo (Grange Park Opera).

She has also sung Schmitt’s La Tragedie de Salome (BBCSO) and Daniel-Lesur’s Cantique des Cantiques (BBCSC). Helen studied at TCM and now studies at RAM.

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MATTHEW STIFF Lord Walton Puritani Marquis de la Force Carmélites

Studied music at Huddersfield and then GSMD. Has worked with Opera North, Iford Arts, Chelsea Opera Group, BYO, Musique Cordiale Festival, Clonter Opera and OperaUpClose. Roles include Kecal Bartered Bride, Gremin Onegin, Dulcamara L’Elisir, Budd Albert Herring, title role and Antonio Figaro, King Rene Iolanta, Togno Spinalba, Charon Euridice, King Balthazar Amahl and the Night Visitors, Magnifico Cenerentola, The Writer Four White Walls.  Mr & Mrs Grant Gordon TRISTAN STOCKS Landry Fortunio

Trained GSMD and Dennis O’Neill’s International Academy of Voice. In 2009-2010 he was in the Glyndebourne Festival chorus and sang Gunner’s Mate Billy Budd.

Other roles include Figaro Barber of Seville (Opera Brava), Schaunard Boheme (Suffolk Opera) and Syke Prophet and Loss (Oundle International Festival). Since making the transition from baritone to tenor, Tristan has appeared as Le Fils Mamelles de Tirésias (Aldeburgh Music), Arbace and Gran Sacerdote Idomeneo (Dorchester).

TOM STODDART ensemble He recently created the role of Chandler in Comedy Central's Friends-The Opera and appeared as Jack Rance Fanciulla del West (King’s Head Theatre), Leporello Giovanni (OperaUpClose/Soho Theatre) and Paul Les Enfants Terribles (Grimeborn Festival).

JOSEPHINE THORPE ensemble Studied at NOS. Roles include Olga Onegin (Longborough Opera), Grandmother The Sofa (Independent Opera), Amneris Aida (Kentish Opera), Carmen (ECO), Giulietta Un Giorno di Regno (Iford), La Périchole Le Carrosse du Saint-Sacrement, Ines Il Trovatore (Dorset Festival Opera), Octavian Rosenkavalier (Northern Wagner Orchestra), Agathe Les Enfant Terribles (Grimeborn Festival).

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DANIELLA VARADI ensemble Born in Sheffield. Roles include Terynka Cunning Little Vixen, Chorus Suor Angelica, Sorceress Dido & Aeneas (Operamus), Jennie Hilderbrand Street Scene. Daniella is a featured artist in the drama Line of Duty (BBC2), sang chorus Bartered Bride (BYO) and danced at the London 2012 Olympics opening ceremony.

ALEX VEAREY-ROBERTS Fortunio Fortunio

Graduate of Benjamin Britten Opera School, finalist at Les Azuriales Young Singers Competition and studied with Mirella Freni in Modena. Covered Lensky Onegin in 2012 for Grange Park Opera Rising Stars. Elsewhere, has sung Nemorino L'Elisir (Opera up Close), Don Jose Carmen (Co-Opera Co), Contino Belfiore Finta Giardiniera and Vasek Bartered Bride (BBIOS).  David Laing Foundation

KATHLEEN WILKINSON Filipyevna Onegin Mère Jeanne Carmélites

Current and future engagements include Filipyevna Onegin (ROH) and Auntie Peter Grimes (Opéra de Lyon). Recent appearances include Brigitta Die Tote Stadt (ROH), Mistress Quickly Falstaff (Glyndebourne Festival and Tour) and Marcellina Figaro (Opéra de Rennes).

Kathleen studied at RNCM and has worked with WNO, ENO, Scottish Opera, Opera Holland Park and Edinburgh International Festival. In Europe she has sung with Opera Ireland, Teatro Coliseo Porto, Puccini Festival Torre del Lago and Sopot International Wagner Festival, Poland.  Gareth & Janet Davies

NICK WINSTON Movement Fortunio

Theatre: I Dreamed a Dream (National tour), Horrid Henry: Live and Horrid! (West End and tour), Loserville (Garrick Theatre, West End, Broadway World nomination: Best Choreographer), The Band Wagon (Sadler’s Wells), The Wizard of Oz (RFH), Elaine Paige in Concert (RFH and tour), Annie, A Christmas Carol (West Yorkshire Playhouse), Merrily We Roll Along (Clywd Theatr Cymru), Follies (Royal Theatre, Northampton), Christmas Carol, The Cherry Orchard, (Birmingham Rep), By Jeeves and Tell Me on a Sunday (National tours).

Opera: Adventures of Pinocchio (World Premiere), Turco in Italia (Garsington), Benzin (Chemnitz Opera) and The Cunning Little Vixen (Ryedale Festival). TV: Sondheim at 80, starring Dame Judi Dench (BBC Proms).

NIKKI WOOLLASTON Movement Carmélites

At Grange Park Opera: Revival Director Madama Butterfly and movement Tosca. Part of the choreographic team for the London Olympics 2012. Stage credits include: Backbeat (Duke of York’s, Glasgow Citizens’), Rigoletto (OHP), Oklahoma! (Chichester), Wuthering Heights (UK Tour), Marguerite (Haymarket, London and Japan), Kismet (ENO), The King and I (UK Tour), Nymph Errant (Minerva, Chichester), Vivien Ellis Awards (Her Majesty’s, London), Dick Whittington, Cinderella and Aladdin (Watford Palace), Mother Goose (Bury St Edmonds). Associate and Resident Choreographic credits include: Oliver! (London Palladium), Cats (New London Theatre), Anything Goes (National Theatre), On the Town (ENO & Châtelet), Sinatra (London Palladium & UK tour). Directorial credits include: She Loves Me (Chichester – Assistant Director & Choreographer).

Nikki recently directed West Side Story in HMP Erlestoke for Pimlico Opera.

FORTUNIO ORCHESTRA VIOLIN 1 Joanna West leader Megan Pound Peter Hembrough Vernon Dean Jeff Moore Cecelia Romero Eloise Prouse Joanna Leel

VIOLIN 2 Alice Butcher Claire Turk Clare Raybould Anna Giddey Louise Bevan Nancy Taylor Viola Jason Glover Mike Briggs Dan Manente John Rogers

Cello Brian Mullan Natalie Rozario Claire Constable Nick Allen

Bass Liz Bradley Antonia Bakewell Flute Tim Taylorson Jane Dixon-Wayne

Management Strand Oboe Horn John Crossman Jonathan Hassan Jennie-Lee Keetley Lindsey Kempley Ilid Jones Kevin Elliott Jane Hanna Clarinet Mark Lacey Trumpet Karen Hobbs Fraser Tannock Alex Jagger Bassoon Laura Garwin Louise Watson Connie Tanner Trombone Richard Cross

Matthew Eckland Dan West Tuba Jim Anderson Timpani/ percussion Mark Taylor Martin Briggs Harp Louisa Duggan

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ENGLISH CHAMBER ORCHESTRA VIOLIN 1 Stephanie Gonley leader John Mills Susannah Candlin Julia Rumley Shana Douglas Julian Trafford Edward Bale Clare Thompson Kaija Lukas Gaelle-Ann Michel VIOLIN 2 Shlomy Dobrinsky Natalia Bonner Catherine Schofield Alison Gordon Ruth Funnell Julia Burkert-Milone James Dickenson Sebastian Rudnicki

Viola Jonathan Barritt Andrew Williams Lydia Lowndes-Northcot Rona Murray Graeme McKean Martin Fenn Bryony Mycroft Cello Tim Lowe Julia Graham Dietrich Bethge Alexandra Mackenzie Ken Ichinose Simon Wallfisch Bass Paul Sherman Ben Russell Jacqueline Dossor Steve Rossell

Flute Anna Noakes Kate Hill Robert Manasse

Trumpet Neil Brough Simon Munday Ross Brown

Oboe Philip Harmer Deborah Goodyer Adrian Rowlands Ruth Contractor

Trombone Colin Sheen Ian Moffat Andrew Waddicor

Clarinet Douglas Mitchell Jill Turner Jane Calderbank Shaun Thompson Bassoon Paul Boyes Lizbeth Elliot Claire Webster Horn Richard Berry Michael Kidd Richard Dilley Richard Bayliss

Tuba Jim Anderson Timpani/ percussion David Corkhill Tim Barry Scott Bywater Harp Angela Moore Louisa Duggan Management Pauline Gilbertson Charlotte Templeman

BOURNEMOUTH SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA VIOLIN 1 Amyn Merchant leader Ben Buckton Kate Turnbull Karen Leach Magdalena Gruca-Broadbent Jennifer Curiel Tim Fisher § Julie Gillett-Smith Kate Hawes Laura Kernohan VIOLIN 2 Carol Paige * Susan Bowran Penny Tweed § Katie Littlemore Anne Maybury § Lara Carter § Eluned David Janice Thorgilson §

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Viola Jessica Beeston Jacoba Gale § Eva Malmbom Nigel Giles § John Murphy Michael Smith § Cello Jesper Svedberg * Roger Preston § Philippa Stevens § Calum Cook Stephanie Oade Ben Birtle Bass David Daly * § Nicole Boyesen § David Kenihan § Nickie Dixon

Flute Anna Pyne * Sarah de Bats Owain Bailey * Oboe Edward Kay * § Rebecca Kozam Clarinet Kevin Banks * § Christine Roberts Bassoon Chris Cooper * Robert Walker § Horn Stephen Nicholls Ruth Spicer § Robert Harris § Kevin Pritchard Edward Lockwood

Trumpet Chris Avison Peter Turnbull * Trombone Kevin Morgan * § Robb Tooley Kevin Smith Timpani Geoff Prentice * Harp Eluned Pierce * Dougie Scarfe Chief Executive Heather Duncan Head of Concerts & Programming Adam Glynn Orchestra Manager Helen Harris Librarian Bob Jackson & William Maybury Stage Managers § with BSO for more than 20 years * denotes principal

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PATRON The Rt Hon Lord Ashburton KG TRUSTEES GRANGE PARK OPERA William Garrett Chairman Joanna Barlow OBE Wasfi Kani OBE Emma Kane Iain Burnside Hamish Forsyth Simon Freakley The Hon Mark Baring ENDOWMENT FUND Mark Andrews Chairman William Garrett Emma Kane Wasfi Kani OBE Mark Lacey Marie Veeder PIMLICO OPERA Mark Andrews Chairman Fiona Maddocks Shirley Radcliffe Ian Maurice John Derrick FOUNDING CHAIRMAN Sir David Davies JUNIOR BOARD Carolina Lane Oliver Bolton Sam Atiko Lucy Miles Anna Milne Arthur Kay Rachel Drewer THE PLACE Richard Loader Sue Paice John & Victoria Salkeld roses David Manston sweet peas Michael Sennett tents Steve Penn trains FRONT OF HOUSE Jill Hardy Manager Alex Don Fergus Cross PRINTING Cantate Communications

THE HOME TEAM alphabetical order

Lucinda Bredin Scott Cooper Bernard Davies Lizzie Holmes Wasfi Kani OBE Annabel Larard Michael Moody Jennifer Munday Emma Neal Claire Partridge Liz Pauls Charlotte Pomroy Emilia Pountney Annabel Ross Helen Sennett Caroline Sheahan Rebecca Thomas Jan Tuffield CHORUS MASTER Cameron Burns REPETITEUR Jeremy Cooke Kylie Los Sergey Rybin Charlie Forrest LANGUAGE Sergey Rybin Onegin Alexia Mankovskaya Béatrice Lupton MUSIC CONSULTANT Phillip Thomas David Gowland STAGE MANAGER Jude Cound Anne-Maria Casson Laura Deards DEPUTY STAGE MANAGER Samantha Kerrison Jennifer Hunter Kim Battistini Suzie Erith ASM Eleanor Bailey Bella Burton

PRODUCTION MANAGER Alison Ritchie TECHNICAL STAGE MANAGER Declan Costello DEPUTIES Sylva Parizkova Niall Mulcahy James Pitkin Scott Darkins STAGE TECHNICIAN John Sherrard Ricky Copp Lizze Marshall Tom Perkins LIGHTING PROGRAMMER Warren Letton Sarah Brown HEAD OF LIGHTING Dan Last CHIEF ELECTRICIAN Pete Coxall DEPUTIES Adam Sansom Roy Peche LIGHTING HIRE White Light SETS Puritani & Carmelites Set Up Scenery Painted Chris & Liz Clark Puritani LED wall developed by Michael Scott, Built by Glasson Onegin & Fortunio Built & painted Visual Scene PROPS Lindah Balfour Supervision Lizzie Marshall Maker WIGS Darren Ware Carole Hancock WIGS & MAKE-UP Helen Keelan Mistress Debbie Goodship Deputy Amy Callingham Assistant YOUNG ASSISTANTS Lauren Collins Puritani

COSTUME SUPERVISORS Yvonne Milnes Caroline Hughes Deborah Andrews DEPUTY Lydia Crimp COSTUME WORKROOM Janna Bannon Cutter Josie Thomas Maker Aileen Faller Student sewer Christina Herron Student sewer Additional Costume Makers Karen Crichton Maureen Cordwell Roxy Cressy Andy Bates Elspeth Threadgold Roxy Cressy Kate Arveschoug MILLINER Jane Bedden WARDROBE MISTRESS Alyson Fielden Rebecca Hopkins Assistant DRESSER Agnieszka Dudzik Rosanna Sutcliffe Adrienne Honie Ford EGG CUPS Volunteers Sue Batchelor Sue Brown Henrietta Cooke Pru de Lavison Andrea Harris Inge Hunter Angela Larard Susie Lintott Caroline Perry Hugh & Jane Powlett Clare Read Joanna Seligman Katherine Sellon Di Threlfall Clare Whitfielld Tony Boyd Heron THE RESTAURANT Emily Grafton Manager Celine Ragouilliaux Dep Manager Will Perkins Wine Manager David Kearney Kearney’s Event Catering

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09/05/2013 12:34

THE NUTTERY The great squirrel Viscount Norwich sends a Cracker each Christmas – a personal collection of quirky quotes and literary odds and ends. This Nuttery of the Festival programme is inspired and partly stolen from John Julius

95 years ago H A L FISHER (1865 – 1940) whilst Warden of New College, Oxford, wrote his celebrated three volume

History of Europe (1935). He died after being knocked down by a lorry in London during the blackout on his way to sit on a Conscientious Objectors’ Tribunal. Photograph c 1920 OPERATION MINCEMEAT was a wartime disinformation plan aiming to convince the

German High Command that the Allies planned to invade Greece and Sardinia in 1943 instead of Sicily. Seemingly top secret documents were attached to a corpse deliberately left to wash up on a Spanish beach. The corpse’s synthetic identity was of a Major Martin, a man of some means. Besides his standard issue uniform the corpse was dressed in H A L Fisher’s quality woollen underpants to endorse his rank and status.

The events were presented as fiction by Duff Cooper, John Julius’ father, in his 1950 novel Operation Heartbreak, then revealed as a true story in the ‘The Man Who Never Was’

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40 years ago The bicycle ride from Winchester was long and tiring. It was also against school rules, as were the sherry and cigarettes in our bag. One of us knew the way, turning left here, right there along lanes that rise out of the Itchen valley through summer fields swaying with grain. The rest of us followed along, excited both by the escape from school and by our imminent destination; the first secret meeting of our self-styled Arcadian Society.

Cresting a hill, we turned down a farm track, the chalky gravel pinging under the bicycle tyres, and plunged deep into the fields. We rattled dustily down to the edge of a great lake from where, on the rising ground ahead of us, we had the first glimpse of a ruined Greek temple atop its Acropolis. It was the Grange.

The sullen form of the building rose above the bountiful tangle of gardens long-forgotten, and dark hollow windows stared at us reproachfully as we pushed our bikes up onto the terrace.

All around our feet were fragments of history, pieces of carved wood and plaster, shards of mirror and unidentified pieces of iron. A startled rabbit ran away into the drawing room. We followed.

Inside the house time had been banished, with only the long fingers of sunlight that pierced the decaying roof as reminders of the quotidian passage of the sun. Around us wallpaper came away in strips, damp panelling slumped off the walls like an old tramp falling asleep and ceilings bowed threateningly over our heads. Everywhere there were relics of domestic mundanity, light-switches or window latches, a wash basin or radiator but they were different now, released from their duty to Man, their creator, who had now abandoned this place.

By being here it seemed that we had passed into another world, into another era. We were in a place of silence; a place without fear; a place of extreme beauty and calm, an embodiment of art and poetry.

We were, we thought, walking with the spirits of Poussin, Claude and Turner; Keats, Alain-Fournier and T S Eliot; Sibelius and Mendelssohn – and Pink Floyd. It was everything we had been cramming into our heads

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and absorbing into our spirits at school – both fact and fiction – and here it all came alive as a fusion of reality and the ethereal.

We sat in the afternoon sun at the base of the portico and discussed life and death and infinity.

It was 1974. Unbeknown to us a great tide was turning as we sat there thinking, smoking and learning.

Over the hills and far away many, many houses like the Grange were dying, and at London’s V&A The Destruction of the Country House exhibition shrieked at the nation to stop the demolition; 1,500 significant houses across Britain had been lost to date. By the mid-‘80s the tide had changed. The National Trust was enjoying record membership, nostalgia was becoming big business, Brideshead was on television.

The nation prospered.

Years after that first visit, I realised that on those overgrown terraces I had crystallised many of my inspirations for art, and that I had grasped the concepts of our position within a continuum of artistic endeavour. The continuum, I told myself, could only be understood in terms of transience, like a delicate thread easily broken – something whose value was only truly measured when it had itself become lost.

Long after I left school, and with a few years as a professional artist behind me, I embarked on a collection of paintings of silent houses, and ruined and abandoned mansions which, like the Grange, had stretched the thread of transience to breaking point.

Today the Grange reawakens to the sound of opera, to the murmur of conversation and laughter, and the chink of glasses. Under the avuncular gaze of sublime architecture nestling in an Elysian landscape we, like those schoolboys, are immersed in the comforts of art, of music and poetry, indulged in the rarity of gentle discourse, and are revitalised by nourishment both spiritual and prandial.

Grange Park Opera has created a lasting legacy of the spirit of the country house, and a tribute to those great houses that were not so lucky.

Alexander Creswell

09/05/2013 12:34

DEATH & TAXES Dear Mr Addison, I am writing to you to express our thanks for your more than prompt reply to our latest communication, and also to answer some of the points you raise. I will address them, as ever, in order.

Firstly, I must take issue with your description of our last as a ‘begging letter’. It might perhaps more properly be referred to as a ‘tax demand’. This is how we at the Inland Revenue have always, for reasons of accuracy, traditionally referred to such documents.

Secondly, your frustration at our adding to the ‘endless stream of crapulent whining and panhandling vomited daily through the letterbox on to the doormat’ has been noted. However, whilst I have naturally not seen the other letters to which you refer, I would cautiously suggest that their being from ‘proper councils, Lombardy banking houses and puissant gasmongerers’ might indicate that your decision to ‘file them next to the toilet in case of emergencies’ is at best a little ill-advised.

In common with my own organisation, it is unlikely that the senders of these letters do see you as a ‘lackwit bumpkin’ or, come to that, a ‘sodding charity’. More likely they see you as a citizen of Great Britain, with a responsibility to contribute to the upkeep of the nation as a whole.

Which brings me to my next point. Whilst there may be some spirit of truth in your assertion that the taxes you pay ‘go to shore up the canker-blighted, toppling folly that is the public services’, a moment’s rudimentary calculation ought to disabuse you of the notion that the government in any way expects you to stump up for the whole ‘damned party’ yourself. The estimates you provided for the Chancellor’s disbursement of the funds levied by taxation, while colourful, are in fairness a little off the mark. Less than you seem to imagine is spent on ‘ junkets for Bunterish lickspittles’ and ‘dancing whores’, whilst far more than you have accounted for is allocated to, for example, ‘that box-ticking façade of a university system’.

A couple of technical points arising from direct queries: The reason why we don’t simply write ‘Muggins’ on the envelope has to do with the vagaries of the postal system.

You can rest assured that ‘sucking the very marrows of those with nothing else to give’ has never been considered as a practice because even if the Personal Allowance does not render it irrelevant, the sheer medical logistics involved would make it financially unviable.

I trust this has helped. In the meantime, whilst I would not in any way wish to influence your decision one way or the other, I ought to point out that even if you did choose to ‘give the whole foul jamboree up and go and live in India’ you would still owe us the money.

Please forward it by Friday.

Yours sincerely, H.J. Lee Customer Relations ROBERT POULTON 1957–2012

Roles at Grange Park Opera included Falstaff (right) Scarpia, Onegin, Forester in Vixen, Magnifico. On the day after his death in a car crash, the BBC website’s fourth most-read news story was ‘Hedgehog stuck in crisp packet’.

Rob’s accident was tenth. He would have found that very funny.

Above

H M Revenue & Customs gave permission to The Guardian to publish this letter and Mark Tennant sent it to John Julius for his 2012 Cracker

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