The Best of Grange Park Opera

TH E B E S T O F

“ W E H AV E M A N Y R EC R E ATI O N S F O R O U R S P I R IT S W H E N O U R WO R K I S DO N E : A C A LE N DA R O F P U B LI C F E S TI VA L S & G A M E S; O U R PR I VATE H O M E S , R E F I N E D A N D E LEG A NT; DA I LY D E LI G HT S TO D R I V E AWAY O U R C A R E S ” P E R I C L E S 43 0 B C TO T H E C I T I Z E N S O F AT H E N S

THE BEST OF 2015 Calendar Page 4

Fiddler on the Roof

P

ericles (see opposite) had the right idea: we need recreation for the spirits, refinement and elegance and daily delights … in other words, enjoy yourself.

And where better than being at Grange Park, bathed in mellifluous Puccini, Tchaikovsky, Saint-Saens . . . Or weeping and laughing with the Jewish milkman in Fiddler on the Roof who is about to be turfed out of his home. Unlike Pericles’ idea of a home, the Jewish milkman’s home isn’t “refined and elegant”, but it is his home and he would have preferred to stay. For Grange Park’s production in 2015, we don’t have any old milkman for you. It is superstar Bryn Terfel.

In our new magazine, you read about the operas coming up – and have a moment of indulgence looking back at summer 2014. It was our most successful season ever. And if you’ve not been to Grange Park, we want to whet your appetite with the pages that follow. Our productions are heralded throughout Europe but Grange is more than just a night at the opera, it’s a night to remember (something that Tatler acknowledged when they came along to our opening night and joined in the dancing to ‘The Beatles’ in the mansion).

But you don’t have to wait until summer 2015. This autumn we have our Grange Park Opera happenings in London as well. (Details on the website.) And booking begins in November for an experience that, as Pericles says, “drive away our cares”. Guaranteed.

Page 8

Bryn Terfel Page 10

Tevye’s shtetl Page 12

Camille Saint-Saëns: Genius, but not nice Page 16

Albert Robida Playful inventions Page 18

How the world changed 1830-1930 The life and times of this season’s composers Page 20

To Save or Not To Save

The extraordinary story of the rescue of The Grange Page 30

Wasfi Kani OBE Chief Executive

GRANGE PARK OPERA 24 Broad Street Alresford SO24 9AQ 01962 73 73 60 info@grangeparkopera.co.uk

2015 CALENDAR JUNE THU 4

FIDDLER

ON THE

ROOF

FRI 5

FIDDLER

ON THE

ROOF

SAT 6

LA BOHEME

THU 11

LA BOHEME

FRI 12

FIDDLER

ON THE

ROOF

SAT 13

FIDDLER

ON THE

ROOF

SUN 14

LA BOHEME

THU 18

FIDDLER

FRI 19

LA BOHEME

SAT 20

SAMSON

ET

SUN 21

FIDDLER

ON THE

WED 24

SAMSON

ET

THU 25

FIDDLER

ON THE

ROOF

FRI 26

FIDDLER

ON THE

ROOF

SAT 27

LA BOHEME

SUN 28

SAMSON

ET

THU 2

FIDDLER

ON THE

ROOF

FRI 3

FIDDLER

ON THE

ROOF

SAT 4

SAMSON

ET

DALILA

THU 9

SAMSON

ET

DALILA

FRI 10

EUGENE ONEGIN

SAT 11

LA BOHEME

SUN 12

EUGENE ONEGIN

WED 15

EUGENE ONEGIN

THU 16

SAMSON

FRI 17

LA BOHEME

SAT 18

EUGENE ONEGIN

ON THE

ROOF

DALILA ROOF

DALILA

DALILA

JULY

ET

DALILA

“ TH E F LOO D LIT G RO U N DS O F G R A N G E PA R K O N A B E AU TI F U L S U M M E R’ S N I G HT I S A L M O S T E N O U G H TO M A K E E V E RY TH I N G F E E L R I G HT W ITH TH E WO R LD AG A I N ” FINANCIAL TIMES

“ W H E TH E R O R N OT YO U B E LI E V E TH E Q U E E N O F S PA D E S I S TC H A I KOVS K Y AT H I S B E S T, IT F I N DS G R A N G E PA R K O PE R A N E A R IT S PE A K” FINANCIAL TIMES

2015 OPER AS LA BOHEME The world’s favourite opera – and it’s not hard to see why. The impoverished poet Rodolfo falls in love with seamstress Mimi. They live life to the full in their Parisian garret, but the course of love doesn’t always run smoothly. And in the end there’s a heartbreaking reckoning.

PUCCINI

SAMSON ET DALILA One of the glories of French opera.

Samson, mighty but vulnerable, is a complete sucker for protestations of love from the manipulative and conniving Dalila who is hell-bent on revenge. But it is Samson who brings the house down. Wonderful choruses, the frenzied Bacchanale and the most beautiful mezzo-soprano aria ever written ‘Mon cœur s’ouvre à ta voix’ (My heart opens to your voice). It will melt yours.

SAINT-SAENS

EUGENE ONEGIN It’s his most famous opera for a reason: it has it all. Feckless flaneur, Onegin – who breaks the heart of Tatyana only to realize that it is he who is the victim of love – has wonderful tunes and tearjerking moments. The set and costumes of the St Petersburg ball made even our sophisticated audience applaud in 2013.

Not to be missed.

TCHAIKOVSKY

BOCK & HARNICK

FIDDLER ON THE ROOF Possibly Grange Park Opera’s most ambitious production – ever. World superstar, Bryn Terfel, takes on the role of Reb Tevye, the village milkman in pre-revolutionary Russia. Tevye has five daughters, no money for their dowries, but one firm idea: to hang on to the traditions of his Jewish forebears. His daughters have other ideas – as do the Tsarist forces that begin to threaten not only the village but a whole way of life.

JERRY BOCK SHELDON HARNICK 23 N OV 1928 – 3 N OV 2010

3 0 A PR I L 1924

From 1956 to 1970 composer Bock and lyricist Harnick collaborated on nine Broadway shows, collecting Tony awards for Fiorello! (1959) and Fiddler.

It proved a difficult act to follow.

However, the duo returned to the theme of the Jewish community in transit with The Rothschilds (1970) tracing the rise of the banking family from the Frankfurt ghetto through the five sons’ industry.

Every songwriting duo writes in a different way. Their method was to be in different rooms. Harnick: “Jerry would put the music onto tape as piano pieces. I’d get a reel of tape delivered which sometimes contained eight or ten pieces for my consideration. I would listen and maybe in a couple of numbers something caught my attention and I’d get to work on a lyric. It could be a wonderful waltz or I might pick up on a little march theme. That was how a show came together. People told us we were brave to be doing a very specifically Jewish show. I used to tell them I spent three years in World War II in the army fighting Hitler. May be that was brave: this was just Broadway.”

“ I WO R R I E D W ITH M Y CO L LE AG U E S TH AT TH E S E T TI N G , A S M A L L J E W I S H TOW N S H I P I N E A S TE R N E U RO PE I N TH E E A R LY 19 0 0 s , M I G HT LI M IT TH E S H OW ’ S A P PE A L . B U T TH E R E A L S U B J EC T I S FA M I LY. IT ’ S TH E M O S T U N I V E R S A L S TO RY TH E R E I S ” SHELDON HARNICK

FIDDLER ON THE ROOF

BY JERRY BOCK & SHELDON HARNICK

STARRING

Some musicals are operatic in the scope of their themes and music. Fiddler on the Roof is one of them. What’s more, Grange Park Opera’s production has superstar Bryn Terfel at the heart of the drama 1964 NEW YORK TIMES REVIEW It has been prophesied that the Broadway musical would take up the mantle of meaningfulness worn so carelessly by the American drama in recent years. Fiddler on the Roof does its bit to make good on this prophecey. The new musical, which opened last night at the Imperial Theater, is filled with laughter and tenderness. It catches the essence of a moment in history with sentiment and radiance.

BRYN TERFEL

“I’VE PL AYED HEROES, I’VE PL AYED VILLIANS – NOW I’M A MILKMAN. BUT IN MY MIND TEV YE IS AS GREAT AS ANY OF THEM. HE DOES THE HARDEST THING OF ALL: ACCEPTING THAT HE HAS TO ADAPT IN ORDER TO SURVIVE” BRYN TERFEL

BRYN TERFEL’S HEROES & VILLAINS THE GOOD FIGARO

MARRIAGE OF FIGARO, MOZART

LEPORELLO

DON GIOVANNI, MOZART

HANS SACHS

DIE MEISTERSINGER , WAGNER

DUTCHMAN

FLYING DUTCHMAN, WAGNER

FALSTAFF

VERDI

THE BAD WOTAN

THE RING, WAGNER

SCARPIA

TOSCA, PUCCINI

DON GIOVANNI

MOZART

MEPHISTOPHELES

FAUST, GOUNOD

NICK SHADOW

R AKE’S PROGRESS, STR AVINSKY SWEENEY TODD DULCAMARA

SONDHEIM

ELISIR D’AMORE, DONIZETTI

THE SHTETL OF TEVYE

DAIRYMAN

THE A shtetl (pl shtetlekh) was a market town with a large Jewish population. Sholom Aleichem grew up in one. His Tevye stories are the basis of ‘Fiddler on the Roof ’ and his shtetl was just 100 miles from Kamenka, Tchaikovsky’s sister’s estate

C

atherine the Great’s 18th century Pale of Settlement dictated where Jews could live: roughly Lithuania, Belarus, Poland, Moldova, Ukraine, and some of western Russia. Some Jews were permitted to live “beyond the pale” and there were rural areas and cities within the pale where Jews were forbidden: There was a drastic deterioriation in the situation of Jews from 1881 when Alexander III became Tsar.

From Aleichem’s autobiography “Voronko is small but beautiful and full of charm. With strong legs you can traverse the entire village in half an hour. It has no railroad, no sea, no tumult – it hosts two fairs a year, founded by Jews for the pupose of stimulating business and making a living.” c 1860 “Pockmarked and blind in one eye, Frume the Maid was a very stingy and devoted servant. As a mark of her loyalty, integrity and extreme devotion she hit the children ... and ran the household with an iron hand. She woke them, bathed them, taught them morning prayers, slapped them, gave them breakfast, brought them to and from school, beat them, gave them supper, said the nighttime Shema with them, whacked them again and bedded all of them down in one bed, the children next to each other while she slept across the foot of the bed. With Frume around, the children were in miserable bondage.”

“Ideleh the Gaven had a wild shock of hair greased down with goose fat and a flat nose with fused nostrils. He was head over heels in love with Frume. The day they got married was a great celebration not so much because a horse thief took a blind maid in marriage but because the children were getting rid of her for ever.”

c 1870 “Probably like every Jewish boy, Sholom considered his village the midpoint of the world and the Voronko Jews the chosen people of God. Naturally at the top of this ladder of chosenness stood his father Nochem, in his silk gaberdine with its broad sash and his Napoleonic hat.

Suddenly the pillars of this fortress began to totter: the young prince grew aware that bigger cities and richer Jews existed.

Shimmeleh, considered a heretic because he wore a cape and rounded and trimmed his beard, spread the news that he was leaving Voronko. Where to? Odessa. ‘Go to Ephrussi’s office: see all the clerks and his granaries full of wheat. All the people in Voronko won’t even have half of what one Ephrussi in Odessa has. Imagine, he’s so rich, when he goes riding he takes a six horse carriage and an outrider gallops before him. He’s dressed from head to toe in silk and velvet, he eats only white challa and roast duck all week long and washes it down with the best cherry brandy.’”

“Right after his departure the Voronko householders began talking about moving to bigger towns ‘Change your place, change your luck’.” The family move to Pereslayav to run an inn. The parents go on ahead and Meir Velvel the Coachman in his Jewish three-horse troika is entrusted to bring the children later “If you remember the sensation of travelling for the first ime, you know how quickly the road flies, how the ground disappears beneath the wheels and the horses’ legs.... Suddenly a huge wagon drawn by big-horned oxen appeared. A barefoot peasant in a floppy hat walked alongside. Meir Velvel greets him in Yiddish interwoven with Russian ‘May the good Lord bless you! May your stomach swell

and your pants fall down’... After two days being shaken and rattled and jounced the wagon rolled into a dark courtyard where a smoky lantern and a little hay broom – traditional signs of an inn – hung on a gate. As dark and desolate as the town looked at night, in the morning it shone and sparkled ... long, broad streets with wooden sidewalks, houses roofed with tin, brick shops with iron doors, white churches, mounds of watermelons and cantaloupes, an infinite number of apples and pears on the ground.”

1872 PT reviewing a Moscow concert: “I love Moscow as the Laplander loves his snowfields and smoke-filled yurts, as the mouse loves his hole, and the Jew his native Berdychev.” A census categorises Berdychiv Jews as liquor-dealers, clerks, houseowners, merchants, artisans, idlers. It is where Sholom’s father went to find a wife when the children’s mother died of cholera. 60 miles away was Brailov, where Tchaikovsky holidayed with his patron Nadezhda von Meck 1879 Première of Eugene Onegin 1884 Tchaikovsky was a frequent visitor to his sister’s estate at Kamenka which had a large Jewish population 30 May PT: Walked over to the mills.

A mad Jew. Sat on the roof at sunset; watched a hail-cloud move away, and Nata tucking into some cucumbers which had just been brought over from Verbovka 1894 Aleichem writes Tevye the Dairyman 1906 Aleichem leaves for America Video clip: https://www.facinghistory.org/chunk/2512

Right: 1799 map after Russia has annexed parts of Poland & Lithuania Note: “Among whom are 640,000 Jews”

Kamenka

Voronko Berdychiv

Pereslyav

Brailov

Odessa

WO R LD -W E A RY O N EG I N B R E A K S TH E H E A RT O F TAT YA N A O N LY TO R E A LI S E TH AT IT I S H E W H O I S TH E V I C TI M O F LOV E .

“A S E N S ITI V E LY I NTE LLI G E NT S TAG I N G ” DA I LY T E L E G R A P H

BIG PIC OF quichotte

EUGENE ONEGIN RETURNS ..... BLAH BLAH AND PLAY

e

YS SIX PERFORMANCES IN JUNE / JULY 2015

EUGENE ONEGIN

TCHAIKOVSKY

CAMILLE SAINT-SAËNS: A GENIUS, BUT WAS HE NICE?

The French composer took a dim view of women, says Michael Fontes. He even cast out the mother of his two sons. It sheds a fascinating light on the sexual interplay in his magnificent opera, Samson et Dalila

N

ijinsky didn’t talk much. If you can perform an entrechat-dix, perhaps no more should be expected of you. But one memorable remark is attributed to him. The Ballets Russes, invited to dinner by Lady Ripon, were playing a dangerous game discussing what animals they were each most like. Diaghilev was a bull-dog and Stravinsky a fox. Suddenly Lady Ripon turned to Nijinsky and asked him what animal she most resembled. Nijinsky looked at her carefully and said: ‘Vous Madame – Chameau!’ Apparently she took it on the hump, but she was heard to mutter several times during the evening, ‘A Camel! How amusing! Really!

A Camel!’

Saint-Saëns would have been a parrot.

With a sharply-hooked nose, he strutted like a bird. His bouncy gait made him recognisable from far off down the street. Born in 1835 and cosseted by two recent widows, his mother and his great aunt, he quickly showed himself to be probably the most extravagantly gifted musician since Mozart. When he was ten they hired the Salle Pleyel.

He played, among other things, the third Beethoven Piano Concerto, and Mozart Concerto, K 238, for which he provided his own cadenza, but what particularly astonished the audience was his offer to perform, as an encore, any of Beethoven’s 32 piano sonatas, from memory. He once amazed many great musicians at a party where they were showing off, by singing Don Giovanni’s serenade Deh, vieni alla finestra, playing the mandolin accompaniment with his left hand unseen inside the piano plucking the strings.

Extremely rich by inheritance, agnostic, republican and anticlerical, he was prolific and hard-working, writing an average of 14 personal letters a day. His interests included astronomy, botany, and antique musical instruments. A great champion of French music, he stressed the importance of Greek and Roman culture to western civilization, and of the classical virtues, form and structure, in art.

He appreciated Wagner, in the early days, and the feeling was mutual.

Wagner said that Saint-Saëns played his music better than he could himself. He also marvelled, as did most people, at the French composer’s memory: how could anyone, for instance, play Tristan accurately on the piano after just two hearings?

He stayed with his mother until her death in 1888 after which he had no real fixed home, spending much of his time in North Africa, Algeria and Egypt, as well as travelling further afield, to South America and to the Far East.

Saint-Saëns lived until 1921 and detested Stravinsky, who he thought must be insane, and even late Debussy. A friend met him in Paris in the early 1900s.

‘Hello, Camille, what are you doing in the Champs-Élysées?’ she asked. ‘Oh, I’m just hanging about thinking of nasty things to say about Pelléas’, came the reply. SaintSaëns knew that he had a reputation for being critical of new directions in music.

Saint-Saëns’ letters suggest that he was an amusing and playful friend, and many of his pupils, like Fauré, were devoted to him, but he was probably too gifted and too acerbic to be generally liked.

People must also have resented his independence of spirit, evident in remarks like “I take very little notice of either praise or censure, not because I have an exalted idea of my own merits (which would be foolish), but because in doing my work, and fulfilling the function of my nature, as an apple-tree grows apples, I have no need to trouble myself with other people’s views.” He failed, even on his second attempt, at the age of 27, to win the Prix de Rome. Berlioz, who was on the jury, said that Saint-Saëns knew everything but critically lacked inexperience.

With a few great exceptions he took a dim view of women. His extreme secretiveness and discretion kept his sexual preferences a mystery, and until the late 20th century his biographers preferred not to speculate. One strikingly took this to the pitch of failing to mention his marriage at all. He blamed his wife, whom he had brought home to live with mother, for the deaths of his two little boys, and soon afterwards, in 1881, deserted her definitively and without warning on a trip they had taken together to La Bourboule. She received a communication telling her to return to her family. They never saw each other again, though she came, in thick black veils, to the state funeral in 1921. She died in 1950 at the age of 94.

He started work on Samson and Dalila in 1867, when he was organist of the Madeleine, three years before the terrible French humiliation at the hands of the Prussians. The French were soon to feel themselves, for a little while, a subject people, like the Israelites in the opera.

SAMSON ET DALILA The biblical Samson lacks subtlety. A Judge of Israel, he slays Philistines with casual disdain.

And Samson said, With the jawbone of an ass, heaps upon heaps, with the jaw of an ass have I slain a thousand men.

One is reminded of young Hal’s evocation, in Henry IV, Part 1, of his rival Hotspur’s typical morning,: the Hotspur of the north, he that kills me some six or seven dozen of Scots at a breakfast, washes his hands, and says to his wife “Fie upon this quiet life! I want work.”

Samson’s sex life shows a similar insouciance, unusual in a spiritual leader.

One modern translation puts it very clearly: One day Samson travelled to Gaza. While there, he saw a prostitute and had sex with her. The word spread among the people of Gaza, “Samson has come here!”

Clearly the Philistines see Samson’s libido as his weakness and, in the Bible, Dalila is their implement entirely. The opera concentrates on the events in Gaza, which it distorts interestingly.

Samson is now an inspiring spiritual figurehead rather than the supernatural brute of the Bible, and Dalila, of her own initiative, hatches the plan to seduce him to discover his secret.

Samson’s tender heart makes him dangerously susceptible to Dalila’s magic.

Both Omphale’s spinning wheel, SaintSaëns first symphonic poem, and Samson and Dalila, deal with the enthralment of powerful men – Omphale is after Hercules – by cynical and conniving women. Dalila’s music of seduction, particularly her great aria “Mon coeur s’ouvre à ta voix” (My

SAINT-SAENS

heart opens to your voice) is so powerfully pitched that we can ourselves be seduced into believing that she loves Samson, that only against her deeper feelings does she fulfil her plan to betray him. Dalila must mean it; the music cannot lie. It’s the delicious ironic trick Mozart pulls in ‘Deh vieni non tardar’: the sincerity of the music renders the lie all the more shocking.

Ferdinand Lemaire, a distant relation of Saint-Saëns, who wrote the libretto, borrowed ideas from Voltaire’s libretto for Rameau. The three-act structure projects the story forcefully.

The first act shows the Israelites oppressed by the Philistines, and provides the trigger: Samson’s murder of the vicious satrap Abimelech.

The second act presents the central confrontation between Samson’s pious duty to his people and his sensual attraction to Dalila, who is in the great tradition of nineteenth-century contralto she-devils, like Ortrud, Amneris, or even Kundry, in her worse moments. The third act sees the blinded Samson derided by the Philistines in their furious oriental bacchanal and his deeply satisfying revenge when he brings down the temple to kill them all, a finale in the grand tradition of French romantic opera: Meyerbeer’s Le Prophète includes the explosion of a powder magazine and Auber’s Muette de Portici the eruption of Vesuvius.

By the early twentieth century the opera had become enormously popular – the Paris Opéra had given more than

five hundred performances – and it’s easy to see why. Saint-Saëns, who had been well received in Bayreuth, followed Wagner’s example in producing a seamless web of music, not broken up into individual numbers, and using leitmotifs, which he preferred to call motifs conducteurs. The tunefulness and richness of the writing have caused many of the great moments to become show-stopping favourites. The modern operagoer, on a first visit, is amused to find many old friends in the music and an evening of grand opera that packs real dramatic punch.

Michael Fontes was a master at Winchester College for for ty years. He now runs Les Orchidées de Najac, studying and photographing the wild flowers and butterflies of Najac in Aveyron, France.

He has been writing for the festival programme every year since 1999.

LEAVING THE OPER A IN THE YEAR 20 0 0

BY ALBERTO ROBIDA. DRAWN IN 1881

ALBERT ROBIDA

14 M AY 18 48 – 11 OC T 1926

PLAYFUL INVENTIONS In 1881 electric lighting was installed in the Palais Garnier and Alberto Robida dreamed up this futuristic vision of Paris without the horse-drawn carriage. Inspired by gentlemen aviateurs, Robida anticipated the private jet – and Easyjet.

Jules Verne (1828-1905) placed his inventions in the hands of mad scientists.

Robida integrated his inventions into everyday life. His Téléphonoscope was a flat screen television display that delivered the latest news 24-hours a day, the latest plays, courses, and teleconferences.

Le Vingtième Siècle (1883) predicted the social advancement of women, mass tourism, pollution, and more.

La Guerre au vingtième siècle (1887) describes modern warfare with robotic missiles, poison gas, giant tanks, flying fortresses, anti-aircraft weapons, torpedoes and germ warfare.

Visit Friends of Albert Robida website: www.robida.info/ for more extraordinary pictures including Le Vingtième siècle. La vie électrique (1890).

1868 Jean-Marie Le Bris, a gentleman aviateur, with his flying machine

HOW THEIR WORLD CHANGED

A lot happened between the birth of Saint-Saëns (born 1835) and Sheldon Harnick’s lifetime (born 1924). Here we chronicle the events that formed a backdrop to their lives and their music – from the Emancipation of the serfs to ‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes’

1830

France invades Algeria. Her empire in the 1920s and 30s was second largest in the world behind the British Empire. French colonial towns created replicas of Paris through both architecture and cultural life with opera houses in Algiers, Hanoi, Saigon 1835 Oct Camille Saint-Saëns (SS) born 1840 May Pytor Tchaikovsky (PT) born 1845 Child prodigy SS gives debut public recital in Paris. As an encore, he offers any of Beethoven’s 32 piano sonatas from memory. Word spreads across Europe and to the United States 1849 France establishes concession in Shanghai 1853 Algiers opera house SS on failing to win the Prix de Rome: “They did not give it to me on the ground that I didn’t need it.”

1858 Dec Puccini born 1859 March Creator of Tevye, Sholom Aleichem, born in Voronko, Ukraine 1860 The Jewish Ephrussi family of Odessa were ‘Kings of Grain’ with interests in docks, canals, bridges and railways. Like the Rothschilds, their sons are sent to establish family branches across Europe. Charles (1849-1905) is sent to Paris and keeps company with high society 1861 Mar Tsar Alexander II decrees that landowners can no longer sell serfs, transfer them to other estates or remove their children Sep PT’s first trip to Europe. “Life in Paris is extremely pleasant.”

SS “Bizet and I were great friends. ‘You’re less unfortunate than I am’ he used to tell

me. ‘You can do something besides things for the stage. I can’t – that’s my only resource’.”

To succeed, a composer must win the attention of (i) the remnants of the old aristocratic patronage class, such as the Prince of Monte Carlo (ii) the fashionable elite haute bourgeoisie of Paris – including critics and colleagues (iii) a burgeoning spectator public. This third group demands and supports an extensive concert life and its growth after 1870 brings about SS greatest period of success. However, SS is resentful that his stage works are rebuffed by Paris society. A princess, when asked to sponsor a new SS opera, Macbeth, quips “What – isn’t he satisfied with his position. He plays the organ at the Madeleine and the piano at my house.

Isn’t that enough for him?”

1862 Napoleon III begins the onslaught on SE Asia: Cambodia, Saigon and southern Vietnam 1866 PT Symphony no.1 1867 SS begins Samson et Dalila 1871 Following active service in the Franco-Prussian War, SS is urged by his mother to leave the mayhem of Paris.

The immediately leaves for England and stays in London for several months. The first tube lines are in operation This is the first of 179 overseas trips to 27 countries 1872 PT works as a critic and struggles to make a mark as a composer. He reviews a Moscow concert: “I love Moscow as the Laplander loves his snowfields and smoke-filled yurts, as the mouse loves his hole, and the Jew his native Berdichev.”

Summer SS in Weimar to see the first revival of Das Rheingold under the baton of Franz Liszt (1811–1886). He persuades SS to finish Samson et Dalila 1873 Oct SS first visit to Algeria where around 200,000 French have settled.

Resumes work on Samson et Dalila 1875 Nearing 40, Saint-Saëns marries Marie Laure Emile Truffot, 19 Nov SS concert tour to Moscow. PT admires his briskness, wit, musical mastery and “ability to combine the grace and elegance of the French school with the seriousness and depth of the great German composers”. Modest Tchaikovsky: “It turned out that the two new friends had many likes and dislikes in common, both in the sphere of music and in the other arts, too. In particular, not only had they both been enthusiastic about ballet in their youth, but they were also able to pull off splendid imitations of ballerinas ... seeking to flaunt their artistry before one another, they performed a whole short ballet on the stage of the Conservatory’s auditorium: Galatea & Pygmalion. 40-year-old Saint-Saëns was Galatea and interpreted, with exceptional conscientiousness, the role of a statue, whilst the 35-year-old Tchaikovsky took on the role of Pygmalion. N G Rubinstein stood in for the orchestra. Unfortunately, apart from the three performers no one else was present in the auditorium during this curious production.”

Dec PT to brother Anatoly: “I have become great friends with Saint-Saëns, a splendid and intelligent Frenchman, who may be able to do me some important favours with regard to propagating my fame in Paris.”

1876 Aug SS among the 52 Frenchmen

at the inauguration of the Bayreuth Festpielhaus. SS is received by Wagner at Wahnfried. Tchaikovsky is not Nov PT to Taneyev: “Last year SaintSaëns advised me to give a concert in Paris with a programme drawn exclusively from my own compositions. He told me that one could organise this at the Châtelet with Colonne’s orchestra and that it is not particularly expensive. Now I would like to carry it out. Would you be so kind, my friend, as to call on Mr Camille de SaintSaëns and discuss this in detail with him: 1) does he still recommend me to give a concert? 2) how much approximately will this treat cost me? 3) when is the best time to do this? I am even prepared to conduct the concert myself. This will seem odd to you, but the point is that I can bring myself to do this precisely because it would be in Paris and not Moscow, where people know me too well and where the opinion has become far too deeply ingrained that I am not cut out to be a conductor.”

1877 Apr–Sep PT (37) hectic courtship, marriage, separation. Wins financial support from Nadezhda von Meck, a widow whose husband has made a fortune from the railways. He died of a heart attack on hearing that his youngest child was not his Dec World première of Samson & Dalila in Weimar ten years after SS had started work on the opera 1878 Jan PT explains to Karl Albrecht why he felt it right to refuse to represent Russia at the World Fair in Paris that summer. “It would be unbearable for me to have to stand humbly in front of SaintSaëns, say, and sense his patronising glance directed at me when in my heart of hearts I consider myself to be a whole Alpine mountain higher than him. In Paris my self-esteem (which, in spite of my apparent modesty, is huge) would suffer terribly all the time precisely due to the need to meet various celebrities who would treat me condescendingly. As for foisting my works on them, creeping up to these people and trying to convince them of my worth — that

is something which I am incapable of.”

1878 SS’s two sons die within six weeks: one from an illness, the other upon falling out of a fourth-storey window (as the composer, approaching his house, watched). SS blames his wife Massenet (36) elected to Académie des Beaux-Arts in favour of SS (43).

Massenet commiserates: “My dear colleague, the Académie has committed a grave injustice”. SS replies: “I entirely agree with you.”

1879 Mar Première of Onegin, Moscow 1880 Jul SS performs for Queen Victoria at Windsor Sep France’s Republicans declare three goals: to break down class differences, to reduce the influence of the Catholic Church and to lay the foundations for a lasting democracy. Minister Jules Ferry asks SS to devise a strategy to introduce the study of singing into schools. SS proposal states (i) music is an emblem of not only civilization but also the level that a culture has achieved. It demonstrates to the world the evolutionary stage a nation has reached. (ii) Everyone can learn music, not just those with specialised talent. It should not be assocated with privileges of upper-class or aristocratic heritage. (iii) knowledge of music can increase one’s intelligence There is a burgeoning of choral societies in Paris in unexpected corners. The Bon Marché department store has a mixed choral society, a wind band and offers employees free music lessons to “encourage a taste for study”. The owner Aristide Boucicault believed music lessons taught discipline and personal competitiveness, useful attributes in an effective sales force Charles Ephrussi purchases 40+ works

by Monet, Manet, Degas, Renoir, Pissarro, and other Impressionists.

Renoir immortalises him in Luncheon of the Boating Party (in a top hat with his back to the artist). Renoir is enraged

to find out that Charles also supports Gustave Moreau: “It was clever of him [Moreau] to take in the Jews, to have thought of painting with gold colours… even Ephrussi fell for it!”

Charles buys from Manet a picture of some asparagus. “It was a bundle of twenty stalks bound in straw. Manet wanted 800 francs for it, a substantial sum, and Charles thrilled, sent 1,000. A week later Charles received a small canvas signed with a simple M in return. It was a single asparagus stalk laid across a table with an accompanying note: ‘This seems to have slipped from the bundle.’”

1881 SS deserts his wife whilst on holiday. They separate but never divorce 1881 – 1894 Tsar Alexander III turns back the clock to re-establish orthodoxy, autocracy and patriotism 1883 Feb PT to Anatoly “I still haven’t been able to see Saint-Saëns’s new opera [Henri VIII], which was finally put on after many months of expectation. All Paris is now talking ... It was a great success. SaintSaëns has received 60,000 francs from his publisher. Yes, the good fortune of being born a Frenchman! I feel, I know that my Mazeppa is much better than Saint-Saëns, and yet my opera won’t be produced anywhere beyond the miserable stage of the Mariinsky Theatre and what I’ll get for it is mere small change.”

1884 Apr Paris. PT “Today I went to the famous Grand Prix. It was the first time in my life that I had seen a horse race. It was very boring and I will never again be lured to any such time-wasting activity. What’s more it poured with rain.” The Ephrussis were race horse owners and had many Grand Prix winners.

France takes north and central Vietnam.

Laos added in 1893. Jules Ferry declares: “The higher races have a right over the lower races; they have a duty to civilise the inferior races.”

1886 Jewish France by Édouard Drumont sells 150,000 copies in the first year and fans the flames of antisemitism

“ TH E WO R D ‘ D E S TI N ATI O N ’ ( W H E N U S E D A S A N A DJ EC TI V E ) WA S M A D E TO D E SC R I B E TH I S M AG I C A L PL AC E . TH I S TH O U G HT- PROVO K I N G A N D V I S UA L LY C LE V E R A N D AT TR AC TI V E PRO D U C TI O N I S A M I LE S TO N E F O R TH E CO M PA N Y ” T H E A RT S D E S K

DON QUICHOTTE

MASSENET (2014 FESTIVAL)

1887 Spring SS second visit to Russia.

He sees Onegin and “went into raptures over it”. SS invites PT (who was in Maydanovo) to two concerts he is giving in Moscow. PT declines saying that he did not feel well enough to make the journey. In a letter to von Meck, PT tells the truth: “I knew beforehand that the audience numbers would be very low and I felt so sorry for Saint-Saëns that I preferred not to have to witness this humiliation of an esteemed colleague.”

1888 PT receives life annuity from the Tsar but bemoans lack of recognition “Nobody reads about me in the papers in Russia. It is a great pity. The point after all is not that I personally have been favoured with the attention of the European public, but that in my person attention has been paid and honour has been accorded to the whole of Russian music, to all Russian art.”

Makes his first conducting tour of Europe. Paris. “I found many glories but little money.”

1889 Mar Eiffel Tower is completed 1890 Oct Paris première of Samson 1891 Expulsion of Jews from St Petersburg and Moscow ends the special dispensation which had allowed them to live in the imperial cities 1892 Feb Samson premiered in Algiers Mar Samson premiere at Carnegie Hall in a concert version 1893 Jun SS + PT in England to collect honorary doctorates in music from the University of Cambridge. PT notes the triumphant reception of his music makes SS feel awkward about taking the podium afterwards. In 1900 SS looks back to this visit and gave his impression of Francesca da Rimini, noting how this

work literally bristled with difficulties and violent effects: “[Tchaikovsky], the gentlest and most affable of men here gave free rein to a frenzied storm and showed no more clemency towards the musicians and his listeners than Satan towards the sinners in hell.”

Sep Samson premiere at Covent Garden Oct PT rehearses SS Cello Concerto No. 1 for a concert in St Petersburg. He is dead before the concert takes place Nov PT dies in strange circumstances.

SS writes to the Russian Embassy in Paris: “I would be much obliged to you if you could let people in Russia know the extent to which I share in the grief felt by the friends of the great composer whose talent I admire enormously and towards whom I had been bound by friendship for a long time... His death is a great loss for the art of music, since he had many years of creative work ahead of him, perhaps even his finest years.”

1894 Dreyfus affair erupts against a backdrop of scandals involving Jewish businessmen. Edmond de Goncourt proclaims Paris salons to be “infested with Jews and Jewesses.” There are around 40,000 Jews in Paris, well integrated into society and an additional 45,000 Jews living in Algeria Dec The Paris Salon du Cycle includes two cars. France has 20 cars in use 1894 Nicholas II proclaimed Tsar.

His empire’s Jewish population had increased from 1m to 5m over 100 years. Many Jews emigrate – largely to North America 1895 SS first trip to Saigon – via Suez 1895 Dec In the Grand Café beneath the Jockey Club the Lumière brothers’

present their new invention, the Cinematograph 1895 Proust on SS: “He understands how to rejuvenate a formula ... He borrows charms from Beethoven and Bach ... at every moment he instills bursts of inventiveness and genuis into what seemed to be a field bound by tradition.”

1896 Feb Première La Boheme in Turin Dec Alfred Jarry (b 1873), imbiber of absinthe and forerunner of the 1920 and 1930s futurist and surrealist movements, targets SS. Paris Première / final performance of Ubu Roi. “My lords, I have the honour to inform you that as a gesture to the economic welfare of my kingdom, I have resolved to liquidate the entire nobility and confiscate their goods”.

SS denigrates Debussy, Strauss, Stravinsky 1897 Paris. Blériot makes the world’s first automobile headlamp. The profits of his showroom finance his interest in aviation and cine photography 1898 1st Paris Motor show.

1899 Arnold Schönberg (b 1874) composes Verklärte Nacht. In the 1920s, he develops twelve-tone technique, the most polemical feature of 20th-century music. (He disliked the term atonality) SS travels to South America, the first of three trips visiting Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay in various combinations 1900 Apr Michel Ephrussi fights a duel with swords with Count Guy de Lubersac over anti-semitic remarks towards Robert de Rothschild. Ephrussi is wounded in the chest but recovers 1901 Jan Opening of Saigon’s magnificent opera house. First season includes Boheme, Samson

1901 Oct Alberto Santos-Dumont flies around the Eiffel tower in a dirigible 1903 Pogrom in Kishinev. Aleichem asks Tolstoy to contribute to a Yiddish collection for the benefit of the victims.

Tolstoy provides three stories 1905 Fictional shtetl Anatevke is burned 1906 The first flight of over 100m Aleichem leaves Russia for US SS first trip to US. (Tchaikovsky had been in 1891, Strauss in 1904, and Puccini in Jan 1907) June SS writing on the evolution of Music “Decadence in art is not synonyous with inferiority. ... the woman who has lost the first flower of her youth, or the fruit that has just surpassed perfect ripeness: are they less flavourful? Inferiority comes later, when the fruit is spoiled, when the woman grows old. Still there will always be those who love old women and mushy pears.”

1906 Oct Rasputin first meeting with Nicholas II and “made a remarkbly strong impression on Her Majesty and on me.

Instead of five minutes, our conversation lasted well over an hour.”

1907 Nov Jarry dies in Paris (age 34) of tuberculosis, aggravated by drug and alcohol use. His last request was for a toothpick. Pablo Picasso (b1881), fascinated by Jarry, buys many of his manuscripts 1908 Paris Motor Show devotes a section to aircraft Nov Silent film “L’assassinat du duc de Guise” accompanied by an original score

by SS (aged 73). Alas SS thoughts on moving pictures are not recorded 1909 Jul Blériot flies over the Channel.

Metzinger paints a cubist portrait of Apollinaire: “I am honoured to be the first model of a Cubist painter, Jean Metzinger, for a portrait exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants.”

Sep Freud travels to US to deliver lectures on psychoanalysis. On docking in New York, Freud is rumoured to have remarked to Jung, “They don’t realise that we are bringing them the plague.”

Dec James Joyce (1882-1941) returns to Dublin (from Trieste) and opens Ireland’s first cinema, the Volta Cinematograph Recherche de temps perdu, a sevenvolume novel by Marcel Proust (1871– 1922) takes shape. Charles Swann, a member of the Jockey Club, is modelled on Charles Ephrussi. The gentlemen of the Jockey Club held numerous boxes at the Opera, “many little suspended salons” (Proust). The ballet required in every opera was never in the first act when the Jockey Club would still be at dinner 1912 May Joseph Stein born. He writes the ‘book’ for Fiddler Aug Massenet dies. SS writes to his publisher “Massenet behaved despicably toward me; he managed to hold back my career by many years ...There are enough other people around to sing his praises and speak of the goodness of the abominable being ... Selfishness, lies and avarice have never had a better incarnation! Still his death, which I was expecting, was very difficult for me ... but writing his eulogy is beyond me ... I never stopped defending him against those who foolishly denied his talent. That talent was not without defects; but who does not have faults?”

1913 May Paris riot at the première of Rite of Spring. Spurious story that SS

walked out. SS: “Don’t talk about beauty, it’s no longer fashionable” 1914 Aug Referring to Bizet, Stravinsky and Ravel, Schönberg writes “Now comes the reckoning! Now we will throw these mediocre kitschmongers into slavery, and teach them to venerate the German spirit; to worship the German God.” 1916 Schönberg in the army. A superior officer demands “is this notorious Schönberg?”; Schönberg replies: “Beg to report, sir, yes. Nobody wanted to be, someone had to be, so I let it be me.”

May Aleichem dies Dec Rasputin murdered 1918 July Nicholas II murdered Nov Paris. Apollinaire (b1880) dies 1921 Dec SS dies in Algiers 1924 Apr Sheldon Harnick, lyricist of Fiddler born Nov Puccini dies 1928 Nov Jerry Bock, composer of Fiddler born 1930s James Joyce travels to Switzerland with daughter Lucia whom he believes to be schizophrenic. She was analysed

by Carl Jung. After reading Ulysses, Jung concluded that Joyce had schizophrenia.

Lucia and James “were two people heading to the bottom of a river, except that he was diving and she was sinking.”

1933 Whilst holidaying in France, Schönberg is warned that the Nazis and Hitler have come to power. In a Paris synagogue he reclaims membership of the Jewish religion and leaves Europe with his family for the US Nov Jerome Kern’s Roberta opens featuring ‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes’. The cast includes Bob Hope

“ TH E M O S T RO M A NTI C S E T TI N G – TH E P O E TRY O F TH E B U I LD I N G S C H I M E S PE R F EC TLY W ITH TH E B E AU T Y O F TH E O PE R A S O N S TAG E ” H A R P E R’ S B A Z A A R

“A F E S TI VA L M U S T B E F E S TI V E .

A N D IT M U S T P O S S E S S SO M E TH I N G W H I C H I S D I S TI N C TI V E ...

A S PEC I A L ATM O S PH E R E ...

N OTH I N G OV E RW H E L M I N G B U T SO M E TH I N G TH AT I S IT S OW N ” E M FORSTER

TO SAVE OR NOT TO SAVE?

The Euston Arch, the first great monument of the railway age, was demolished in 1961. The Grange, one of Britain’s most celebrated neo-classical stately homes, was also in the shadow of the wrecking ball ten years later. This time the outcome was a victory, thanks a timely exhibition.

T

he public outcry sparked by the news that the demolition of The Grange had begun in September 1972, was a prelude to the landmark exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum two years later, The Destruction of the Country House. It was commissioned by the museum’s new young director Roy Strong and curated by John Harris and myself. By the time of the opening in October 1974 we had compiled a list of 629 notable historic country houses demolished since the end of World War Two. The exhibition opened just two days before a general election in which the new Labour Government swept to power with promises of a swingeing new wealth tax and greatly increased inheritance taxes. To the newly formed Historic Houses Association it appeared that everything that had been achieved in preserving historic houses and opening them to the public was about to be lost.

Their petition, with 1.5 million signatures, persuaded the Government to grant concessions which prompted many more great houses to open to the public.

endangered historic buildings could be put to viable new uses.

The vast amount of publicity generated by the V & A show prompted me and a group of colleagues including Simon Jenkins and Dan Cruickshank to found SAVE Britain’s Heritage, a campaigning group dedicated to publicising the plight of endangered historic buildings.

629 houses had gone and we were determined to apply the brakes. This was 1975, European Architectural Heritage Year. Soon SAVE found it was not enough just to protest in the press.

Legal action was needed to prompt government and local authorities to use their powers to secure action. More than this it was necessary to show how

A visitor to the festival will marvel at the magnificent giant Doric portico modelled on the Theseion, the most complete ancient temple in Athens and the Ionic conservatory, transformed in 2002 into an opera house. Inside the mansion, however, is a scene of shabby decay that is baffling: rooms without ceilings and vistas up to the roof beams. Why?

SAVE led the campaign to stop the demolition of Battersea Power Station, obtaining the first planning permission for leisure use. At the same time we proposed its not-so-little sister Bankside Power Station on the Thames opposite St Paul’s should become an art gallery.

Our dream came true when it opened in 2000 as Tate Modern and became the most visited modern art gallery in the world.

Among the many rescues and revivals of historic houses over the last forty years, The Grange stands out as being saved by the nation in every sense, by national public outcry, by formal guardianship as an ancient monument, and by a substantial investment of public money from ministers and since 1984 by English Heritage. It is the more remarkable for keeping something of the romance of a ruined classical temple in an Arcadian landscape, coming alive on summer evenings for the opera.

The Grange is one of the closest run battles in the history of country house conservation. Permission to demolish had been granted by the County Council and dynamite was the method chosen.

In July 1972 a pre-demolition sale of

fixtures and fittings took place. The main staircase was stripped out and sold, marble wall linings, doors, chimney pieces and chandeliers of the entrance hall all went. By September the slates on the roof were being removed. It took an article in The Sunday Times, which the editor Harold Evans elevated to the front page, to draw attention of the public to the imminent demolition. It was a fortunate moment. The Council of Europe’s great exhibition The Age of Neoclassicism was due to open at the Royal Academy the next week. The Secretary General of the Council wrote an anguished letter to the new Prime Minister, Edward Heath, the man who was to take Britain into the Common Market, asking him to secure a reprieve for The Grange, which was included in the exhibition.

The next year, in a fine public-spirited gesture, agreement was reached on placing The Grange in the guardianship of the Ministry of Public Works. A roofless country house was very different from the medieval castles and abbeys which made up the overwhelming majority of monuments in care, but in November 1975 the Ancient Monuments Board agreed repair works of £103,500. Before anything could happen a government moratorium on major capital projects put a stop on repair. By early 1979 the estimated cost had risen to between £490,000 and £535,000.

Right and overleaf Colour pictures of The Grange in 1970.

Black & white image: the Entrance Hall of The Grange in 1979. This is how it looked when the opera company began in 1998.

National Monument Record

The man who had kept a constant eye on the state of The Grange was the architect John Redmill, a member of the SAVE Committee. Stirred by his ever more alarming reports, SAVE wrote to the Labour Secretary of State for the Environment, Peter Shore, demanding an immediate assurance that his department would immediately take all necessary steps to preserve the building from further decay during the winter. Ministers had solemnly undertaken to carry out repairs and to open the Grange to the public. They had done nothing of the sort so we were threatening a writ of Mandamus. This is a judicial order obliging a minister to carry out his statutory duties. Civil servants repeatedly requested more time and it was only when we threatened to serve the court papers the next day that on February 22nd 1979 we heard that Shore had authorised his department to proceed with repairs.

Scaffolding had risen halfway up the building when a general election was called in June 1979, followed by a bombshell in the form of a press notice from Michael Heseltine, the new secretary of state, saying he was reviewing the whole matter. One proposal was renovation ‘to a state where it could be adapted as an art gallery or a museum.’

In response SAVE issued a lightening report ‘Ten Days to Save the Grange’, tied to the closing date of November 31st, which Michael Heseltine had allowed for representations. Fortunately the sheer volume of representations persuaded Michael Heseltine (who now attends the opera festival) to proceed with essential repairs which would cost around £1m.

Today, part of the fascination of a walk round the outside of the Grange, is to find the brick carcass of a grand 17th century house built by the architect William Samwell for Robert Henley.

William Wilkins, the architect who transformed the Grange into a Greek temple, simply recased the Charles II house. Samwell’s brick carcass was the saving of the building. The construction is supported by massive vaulted basements and thick, solid brick structural walls.

Even when water began to soak into the tops of the walls and push the Roman Cement away from the brick the essential structure remained sound. (The 17th century writer John Evelyn had praised the ‘well turned arches’ at Samwell’s house in the basement of the Prince of Wales in Newmarket.)

The Grange was repaired without resort to new steel work or concrete foundations and ring beams. Leadcoloured aluminium was used for re roofing. The soffit of the portico, originally formed on traditional lath and plaster had been brought crashing down by water sitting on top of it. This was replaced by fibreglass, though this is not visible to the naked eye below.

No house in England more dramatically portrays how close many great country houses came to complete destruction.

Hundreds of houses were not so lucky.

MARCUS BINNEY CBE was the principal founder of SAVE Britain’s Heritage, architecture correspondent of The Times, former editor of Country Life, author In Search of the Perfect House, director of the Railway Heritage Trust and a trustee of HMS Warrior.

THE NUTTERY

The constitution of Athens allowed that from time to time a vote might be taken to expel for a period of ten years any politician who seemed too powerful or potentially tyrannical. During this exile his property was held in trust, but when it was over he could return to Athens with no stigma to his name. The mechanism was known as ostracism, because each citizen would write or scratch the name of his chosen victim on a piece of broken pot (an ostracon), before casting it into the voting urn.

Yet it was a process fraught with potential risk. Themistocles, father of the Athenian navy and hero of Salamis, had been ostracised, and had ended up fleeing to (of all places) Persia. There he had been granted wealth and land and now he was giving the enemy advice on how best to deal with Greece.

[Akin to the naughty step.]

A N N A PE R R E N A Anna Perenna was the Roman deity of the ‘ring’ of the year. Her festival fell on 15th March, the primitive Roman New Year’s Day, and offerings made ut annare perannareque commode liceat (that the circle of the year may be completed happily).

It was a celebration for everyone – regardless of social status – with revelry and licentiousness. Tents were pitched or bowers built from branches; people made love. They beseeched the goddess to bestow as many more years to them as they could drink cups of wine at the festival.

They all got blind drunk. And hence perennial.

TH E P U N I S H M E NT O F S L AV E S fr om HOW TO M A N AG E YO U R SL AV ES by J ER RY TON ER

Vedius Pollio invited his friend the divine emperor Augustus around for dinner.

One of the Vedius’ slaves broke a valuable crystal cup, whereupon Vedius order the slave to be taken and thrown to the huge lampreys which he kept in his fish pond. Obviously he was just showing off to the emperor by letting him see how hard he could be. But this was savagery, not roughness. The boy escaped and ran to Augustus’ feet for refuge. He begged that he be allowed to die by some other means than as fishmeal. Augustus was outraged at this novel form of cruelty. He ordered Vedius to free the slave. He then told the other slaves to bring all the crystal cups they could find and smash them in their master’s presence. Vedius was instructed to fill in the fish pond and get rid of the lampreys.

Rome 1999: An excavation at 6-10 metres found a fountain to Anna Perenna

fr om PA RT H EN ON , POW ER & POL I T IC S by DAV I D S T U T TA R D

Slave Auction (c1884) Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904)

O S TR AC I S M

An ostracon inscribed “Aristeides the son of Lysimachus.”

This page of nuts or nuggets is inspired by the great squirrel John Julius Norwich (b 1929) who sends at Christmas to lucky friends his ‘Cracker’: a collection of literary odds and ends. John Julius once asked General de Gaulle if he could have his portion of apple pie, even though the old boy had dropped cigarette ash on it.

BIG PIC OF spades

EUGENE ONEGIN RETURNS ..... BLAH BLAH AND PLAY

BIG PIC OF onegin

EUGENE ONEGIN RETURNS ..... BLAH BLAH AND PLAYS SIX PERFORMANCES IN JUNE / JULY 201

BIG PIC OF grange park daytime EUGENE ONEGIN RETURNS ..... BLAH BLAH AND PLAYS SIX PERFORMANCES IN JUNE / JULY 2015

HAPPENINGS PETER GRIMES BRITTEN (2014 FESTIVAL)

MELDING ENJOYMENT WITH IDEAS This calendar of evening events will be added to. Keep in touch. info@grangeparkopera.co.uk OCTOBER & 14 OCTOBER PRINT ROOM AT THE CORONET

YS SIX PERFORMANCES IN JUNE / JULY 2015

Notes from Underground Everyone loves the Coronet in Notting Hill Gate. Built in 1898, complete with orchestra pit, it has been a cinema since 1913. The Print Room of Westbourne Grove has moved in and stages the first live theatre production in the Coronet since 1913.

9 OCTOBER SAVILE CLUB, BROOK STREET programme tba

23 OCTOBER TOUR OF DR JOHNSON’S HOUSE, GOUGH SQUARE

15

31 OCTOBER DINNER IN COLLEGE HALL, WINCHESTER COLLEGE WITH ELOQUENCE FROM JOANNA LUMLEY 7PM

4 NOVEMBER THE SECRET CHARTERHOUSE, CHARTERHOUSE SQUARE. TALK AND DRINKS Saint-Saëns was very famous. Was he nice?

13 NOVEMBER VISIT ISIS PRISON, WOOLWICH

Governor Grahame Hawkings talks about his prison which works to manage and support offenders affiliated with gangs and youth violence

“A S U PE R B PRO D U C TI O N ” S T E P H E N F RY

“ IT WA S J U S T S E N S ATI O N A L ; U T TE R LY DA R K A N D B E AU TI F U L LY S TR A N G E M U S I C , SO S W E E T A N D SO R ROW F U L – TH E N SO F I E RC E A N D SC A RY. I LOV E D IT A L L” J OA N N A LU M L E Y

26 NOVEMBER APOTHECARIES’ HALL, BLACKFRIARS programme tba

21 JANUARY 2015 WINE TASTING AT BERRY BROTHERS, ST JAMES’

18 FEBRUARY 2015 22 MANSFIELD STREET programme tba

FRIDAY 27 FEB – SUNDAY 8 MAR 2015 OUR HOUSE A MUSICAL, ISIS PRISON, WOOLWICH

“Drama and the humanities have long been a source of learning for young people. Teamwork, confidence and taking responsibility are all skills we would like to see in all young people”.

Prisoners and Pimlico Opera collaborate in a high-quality production – and invite the public to see the results.

A N I G H T AT SHARE A SECRET WITH YOUR FRIEND

LA TRAVIATA

VERDI (2014 FESTIVAL)

T H E O P E R A DS

An evening at Grange Park has opera as its centrepiece, but what happens before, during and after is also part of the fun. Let us do the organising for you.

ON ARRIVAL • Your own waiter serves canapés & champagne in a private Maharajah pavilion where there will be festival programmes for your guests.

THE OPERA • Eight perfect red velvet seats in the middle of the stalls in the intimate theatre.

THE INTERVAL IN THE MANSION • Three delicious courses with wine, artisan breads, coffee with Fortnum & Mason truffles.

POST PERFORMANCE • Your guests are invited onto the stage for a glass of champagne with the stars.

LA BOHÈME • EUGENE ONEGIN • SAMSON ET DALILA £3,250 for eight FIDDLER ON THE ROOF £4,500 for eight CONTACT Charlotte Pomroy 01962 73 73 65 charlotte@grangeparkopera.co.uk

MAIN ROLES

ORCHESTRA

OFFICE

(inc computers, software, staff, rent, print)

491

360 CHORUS

HOW YOU HOW CAN HELP

£’000s

WHAT IT COSTS

STAGE TECHNICIANS

254

(Crew, wardrobe etc.)

793

OTHER ARTISTS

232

300

SCENERY, COSTUMES OTHER FESTIVAL COSTS (Loos, gardens, transpor t) & LIGHTS

468

PAYING FOR IT

160

£’000s

0 Grants

GRAND TOTAL £3,058

TOTAL £1,937

271 Earned

1,668 Tickets

£1, 121,000 more than a million pounds!

SHORTFALL

Half of Samson £6,000 The leg of a Philistine £800 The arms of a tailor £2,500 A pink bonnet £3,500 An aria £4,000 A bolshevik £8,000 Charlotte Pomroy has a full menu of singers, body parts and arias

charlotte@grangeparkopera.co.uk Or join as an annual supporter £200-£1,100 whose contributions make up a quarter of the cost of putting on the operas It is gifts from benefactors and their love of music that allow the festival really to make a mark, to strike out boldly and with panache.

We receive no government money and rely on enthusiasts and ticket sales to stage world-class opera with international singers.

photographe Iris Velghe

Cuvée Rosé.

The Ultimate.

Making a Making a song & dance Making a song & dance about tea song & dance about tea since 1707. about tea since 1707. since 1707.