THE NEW LONDON OPERA GROUP
Present
Patience
or
Bunthorne’s Bride
An aesthetic opera in two acts
Libretto by W.S. Gilbert
Music by Arthur Sullivan
First performed at the Opéra Comique, London on 23rd April 1881
Cast
(in order of appearance)
Rapturous Maidens:
The Lady Angela Nicole Oppler
The Lady Saphir Eirian Walsh Atkins
The Lady Ella Sally Hewitt
The Lady Jane Charlotte Collier
Patience (A Dairy Maid) Joanna Soane
Officers of the 35th Heavy Dragoon Guards:
Colonel Calverly Philip W. Errington
Major Murgatroyd James Chadburn
Lieutenant, the Duke of Dunstable Philip Hayes
Reginald Bunthorne (A Fleshly Poet) Chris Cann
Archibald Grosvenor (An Idyllic Poet) Graham Rogers
Mr Bunthorne’s Solicitor Bob Vaughan
Chorus of Rapturous Maidens and Officers of Dragoon Guards
Robin Avery, Tony Bannister, Juliet Crissell, Anne Duncan,
Livia Farkas, Sarah Logan, Fiona Nash, Jamie Patterson,
Claire Pooley, Rachel Stack
Production Credits
Stage Director Bob Vaughan
Musical Director Graham Rogers
Conductor Benjamin Ellin
Production Manager Steve Greenwood
Stage Manager Fay Carradine
Repetiteurs David Bignell, Martin Toyer & Anna Tetsuya
Lighting Steve Greenwood
Wardrobe Mistress Eirian Walsh Atkins
Set Design Tony Bannister
Set Construction Steve Greenwood, Bob Vaughan, Tony Bannister, Fay
Carradine,
Claire Pooley & Chris Cann
Props Bob Vaughan
Poster Design Tony Bannister
Programme Chris Cann
Orchestra
Violin Liz Errington
Cello Finn Ross
Flute Carla Finesilver
Clarinet Kathryn Harris
Bassoon tbc
French Horn Mae Woods
Piano Paul Guinery
Percussion David Bignell
With special thanks to:
John Lill, Roy Hobson, Tony Blackmore, Brook Vickers and all at Louth Playgoers for their warm welcome and invaluable assistance with all aspects of this production
The Churchwardens and Tim Roe at Holy Trinity Church, South Kensington for their support and generous provision of rehearsal space
Orchestral arrangement supplied by Martin Paterson of Pattersong Music. For more information about this and other similar G&S arrangements see www.pattersong.co.uk
Synopsis of musical numbers
Overture
Act I
“Twenty love-sick maidens we” (Maidens with Angela & Ella)
“Still brooding on their mad infatuation” (Patience, Saphir, Angela & Maidens)
“I cannot tell what this love may be” (Patience with Maidens)
“Twenty love-sick maidens we” (Reprise) (Maidens)
“The Soldiers of our Queen” (Officers of Dragoon Guards)
“If you want a receipt for that popular mystery” (Colonel with Dragoons)
“In a doleful train” (Ensemble)
“When I first put this uniform on” (Colonel with Dragoons)
“Am I alone and unobserved?” (Bunthorne)
“Long years ago, fourteen maybe” (Patience & Angela)
“Prithee, pretty maiden” (Grosvenor & Patience)
“Though to marry you would very selfish be” (Grosvenor & Patience)
“Let the merry cymbals sound” (Act I Finale) (Ensemble)
Act II
“On such eyes as maidens cherish” (Maidens)
“Sad is that woman’s lot” (Jane)
“Turn, oh, turn in this direction” (Maidens)
“A magnet hung in a hardware shop” (Grosvenor with Maidens)
“Love is a plaintive song” (Patience)
“So go to him and say to him” (Jane & Bunthorne)
“It’s clear that mediaeval art” (Colonel, Major & Duke)
“If Saphir I choose to marry” (Duke, Colonel, Major, Saphir & Angela)
“When I go out of door” (Bunthorne & Grosvenor)
“I’m a Waterloo House young man” (Grosvenor & Maidens)
“After much debate internal” (Act II Finale) (Ensemble)
Synopsis
Act 1
4:30 on a Monday morning and the apostle of despair, Reginald Bunthorne is tucked up in bed, alone. Meanwhile, in his garden twenty eligible ladies are acting strangely. They are hopelessly in love with the sleeping poet and linger languidly around in the chill morning air admiring the sunrise and comparing their assorted aesthetic artefacts.
These Rapturous Maidens are shocked when Lady Jane tells them that their passion is hopeless, since Bunthorne loves Patience, the local milkmaid, while she in turn is indifferent to him. Just then Patience turns up on her milk round, full of news. A cavalry regiment has just returned to the village and the officers are all ex-fiancés of the rapturous maids. They promptly flee as fast as their aesthetic principles allow.
The officers of the 35th Dragoon Guards burst in having deluded themselves that the maidens will swoon into their arms as soon as they set eye on their lovely uniforms. Bunthorne chooses this moment to appear, complete with his twenty acolytes. The officers are miffed at their ex-girlfriends’ behaviour, and get into an awful state when Bunthorne reads his latest poem, some drug-crazed nonsense about laxatives! Realising they’ve been dumped the officers bluster off.
As things quieten down, Bunthorne admits that he only feigns aestheticism to gain attention, a ruse that works every time. Having got that off his chest, he tries to interest Patience in poetry, but his florid manner so scares the naïve milkmaid that she never wants to have anything to do with him again.
Lady Angela is nosy about the details of Patience’s private life and her penetrating questions reveal that Patience once loved a little boy she played with when a toddler. Not finding any good gossip, Angela explains to Patience that “Love Must Be Unselfish”. Patience wants to experience this emotion and straight away decides to fall in love with a stranger. (Do not try this at home). The first stranger Patience meets is none other than Archibald Grosvenor, her nursery sweetheart. He has matured into a poet, with an accessible style verging on the banal. As Patience begins to discover how love upsets our sense of reason, she remembers Angela’s wise words: “Love Must Be Unselfish”. Grosvenor is the personification of manly perfection, so she convinces herself that she must not love him. He can love her, however, as neither of them has a very high view of her approximation to perfection. The lovers part in tears.
Over lunch, Bunthorne’s solicitor has come up with a scheme to raise money for charity and whittle the twenty maidens down to one wife. He’ll raffle off his client! Patience derails the enterprise when she offers herself to Bunthorne without the rigmarole of a lottery. He seizes his opportunity and his dairymaid, disappearing into the “Bower of Love” which has been obtained for the occasion.
Deflated, the maidens redirect their ardour and seek comfort in the rugged arms of the dragoons. The course of true love seems to be running smoothly, but Grosvenor heroically puts an end to that. On seeing his faultless physique, the maidens abandon the officers and go after another poet. Bunthorne is horrified to realise that he is no longer the only aesthete on the block.
Act 2
Saturday lunchtime and nineteen lovesick maids pester Grosvenor (he doesn’t get the complete twenty as Jane retains her limpet-like attachment to Bunthorne). Grosvenor is irritated by the stalking maidens and recites some of his least amorous poetry to them, vainly hoping that they will go away. They do not take the hint, so he has to request a holiday to get some peace and quiet. As soon as he’s alone and about to indulge in one of his blameless little hobbies, Patience returns, anxious to know if he still loves her, even though she is unable to reciprocate. Patience doesn’t live up to her name and is yet again reduced to tears. Bunthorne is almost as upset by Grosvenor’s magnetism, and plots with the resourceful Lady Jane to defeat this rival.
Suddenly, the Dragoon officers emerge from the shrubbery. They have assumed the outward garb of mediaeval aesthetics; by hiring a variegated selection of Wagnerian costumes, and are trying to master singing. This tokenism is greeted with rapture by two passing maidens. The girls try to sort out the slipshod and haphazard dress of the officers, whilst working out the marital permutations for three men and two women.
Things are set for an aesthetic pitched battle to achieve the poetic laurels. But when Bunthorne threatens to curse his rival, Grosvenor renounces the artistic lifestyle for that of a Pooterish city clerk. Bunthorne is relieved to be left as the champion poet, and his cheerfulness is noticed by the long-suffering milkmaid. However Grosvenor is now imperfect and she can freely love him, and does. The nineteen maidens have followed in the headlong rush to renounce aesthetics and are off to London and the shops! This leaves Bunthorne and Jane as the only aesthetes in the village.
A trumpet sounds: the Duke of Dunstable, Adjutant of the 35th Dragoon Guards has decided to announce his engagement. He is an advanced thinker, and plumps for Jane, who has no hesitation in deserting Bunthorne for the Duke’s title and huge wealth.
So the assorted couples set off lightly on marriage’s happy path, leaving Bunthorne to find solace in his flowerbed, alone.
The Background to Patience
“Patience? Oh that’s the opera about Oscar Wilde, isn’t it?”
Well up to a point. With the advantage of hindsight we now view Wilde as the archetypal aesthetic poet. But when Patience was written in 1880, Oscar had not yet fully blossomed having only just come down from Oxford and no significant poetry of his had yet been published. So who were the Aesthetes whose follies Gilbert ridiculed?
The Aesthetic movement had a long and tortuous history, spreading across Europe and including philosophers, writers, artists, architects and interior designers. The basic tenet of Aestheticism – that art is its own justification with no requirement to be either moral or useful – was originally promulgated in the early 19th Century by German Romantics, such as Kant, Schiller and Goethe. They considered that art must be autonomous and therefore the artist was a man apart and superior to mere mortals. The Aesthetes considered themselves to be ruled by the cult of beauty and insisted that life should copy art. They regarded nature as crude and lacking in vision when compared to their art. The main features which distinguished the art of the Aesthete were: sensuality, suggestion rather than statement and an excessive reliance on symbols.
As the 19th Century developed, the Aesthetic movement began to impose its superiority by denigrating other artists such as the populist reality of painters such as Frith (Derby Day) and Landseer (The Monarch of the Glen) and writers akin to Dickens and Thackeray.
The English Aesthetic writers were a very small and select group. Before the ascendancy of Wilde, the leading exponents were the Oxford pedagogue Walter Pater, the artist and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Bunthorne’s true stylistic model Algernon Charles Swinburne. His poem Dolores opens in a very Bunthornian vein:
“Cold eyelids that hide like a jewel
Hard eyes that grow soft for an hour;
The heavy white limbs. and the cruel
Red mouth like a venomous flower;
When these have gone by with their glories,
What shall rest of thee then, what remain,
O mystic and sombre Dolores,
Our Lady of Pain?”
This could all too easily be from the pen of the author of Heart Foam:
“Oh, to be wafted away,
From this black Aceldama of sorrow,
Where the dust of an earthy to‑day
Is the earth of a dusty to‑morrow!”
In painting, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood with their harking back to mediaeval purity of colour, form and subject, formed a visual link to the principals of aestheticism. However in the thirty-three years between the founding of the Brotherhood and the production of Patience, the original members had outgrown the movement and drifted off to more lucrative fields, (the portrait of Gilbert by the one time Pre-Raphaelite – Millais – now hangs in the National Portrait Gallery). The founders had been replaced by others artist such as Edward Burne-Jones with his “angular and flat” style of draughtsmanship. Burne-Jones also introduced into the Brotherhood a vision of Arthurian Albion, a storybook world of classic chivalry which diluted the revolutionary aspects originally associated with Pre-Raphaelitism, it provided an enchantingly decorative view of the “Middle Ages” – the dream world of Aesthetics, which Burne-Jones found sold rather successfully.
By the 1870’s the Aesthetic movement had become the self appointed arbiters of “good taste” and therefore open to ridicule. The rivalry of the aesthetes was highlighted in 1877 when Whistler brought a libel case against John Ruskin. The utilitarian critic had described the American painter’s Nocturne in Black and Gold, the Falling Rocket, exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery, as “flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face”. Whistler won damages of a farthing but Ruskin’s reputation had been ruined. During the trial, on Sunday 24th November, Gilbert reported in his diary that he had breakfasted with Whistler, but he gives no further details of this tantalizing meal.
In Punch, the leading cartoonist George du Maurier, created a couple of Aesthetes Maudle and Postlethwaite, whose “precious” exploits and mannered obsessions did more than anything to delineate the cult of Aestheticism to the average reader. Following du Maurier’s example there were a number of plays with an Aesthetic theme; the most notable was FC Burnand’s The Colonel, which Wilde himself borrowed from when he created the concept of “Bunburying” in The Importance of Being Earnest. One notable difference between Gilbert’s Patience and these other contemporary satires on the movement is that Gilbert indicates that his Aesthetes are not posing for mere financial gain. Bunthorne pays his taxes, Grosvenor is a man of property and the Rapturous Maidens describe themselves as “young and wealthy”.
The popularity of Patience and the ready availability of Aesthetic artefacts from such enterprising stores as Liberty’s in Regent Street, led to a vogue for blue and white china, peacock feathers, spindly furniture and Japonaiserie, not just in the artistic salons of South Kensington, but in every front parlour of the land. However the objects were not treated in the reverentially pure minimalist way intended by the Aesthetes, and as Osbert Lancaster observed “the artistic little snuff-bottle from Yokohama shared a corner of the mantelpiece (now tastefully draped with a fringed green plush) with the shell-work light house from Shanklin.”
It is indeed a topsy-turvy irony that the Aesthetic movement is now chiefly remembered as the inspiration for Patience, and lives on in programme notes!
Cast Biographies
Robin Avery (Chorus)
Robin Avery’s past credits include leading roles in Anything Goes, Kiss Me Kate, Babes in Arms, Singin’ in the Rain, A Funny Thing Happened on The Way To The Forum, Sweet Charity, Fame, Eleanor Rigby, Gotham Rock, Humbugg, Annie, Bugsy Malone, numerous revues, and at some stage the complete works of Gilbert and Sullivan. Unfortunately, this all counts for naught as he was in the pit at the time, fiddling with an increasingly large number of complicated looking bits of brass.
To trace his stage career you have to go back to Primary School, and his appearance as Joseph, aged nine. Drawing on all his experience from this, he hopes to be able to portray a Dragoon in slightly a less gaudy costume than an amazing technicolor waistcoat.
Robin is going to miss the anonymity of the pit….and his port!
Tony Bannister (Chorus / Set Design)
Patience is Tony’s fifth newLOG production. In 2006 he appeared in Ruddigore here in Louth and in Michael Balfe’s The Bohemian Girl in London. In 2005 he appeared in The Pirates of Penzance and Rutland Boughton’s Bethlehem. He sang Pish-Tush in The Mikado in 2004, and chorus in the 2003 ULOG production of Iolanthe. Tony first performed with ULOG as Marcel in Sandy Wilson’s Divorce Me, Darling! which he also co-directed. He later appeared in ULOG’s productions of Princess Ida and Ruddigore.
Non-G&S appearances with ULOG included The Emcee in Movie Star! andBert, the cockney landlord in Cinderella. Elsewhere, Tony has appeared in Cyrano de Bergerac and the British premiere of Ivona, Princess of Burgundy, both at the Theatre Royal, Plymouth; as Malvolio in Twelfth Night with Frenzic Theatre; Rusty Charlie in Guys and Dolls at the George Wood Theatre, London and as Jonas Fogg in Sweeney Todd at the Electric Theatre, Guildford. TV includes Human Rights, Human Wrongs (Channel 4).
Chris Cann (Reginald Bunthorne)
Chris last performed Patience on stage twelve years ago in a University production, where he appeared in a symphony of purple silk as a Wagnerian Lady Jane! He has performed in all the extant Gilbert and Sullivan operas. Principal roles include The Learned Judge (Trial by Jury), Alexis Pointdextre (The Sorcerer), Major-General Stanley (The Pirates of Penzance), The Lord Chancellor, Lord Mountararat, Strephon and Private Willis (Iolanthe), Cyril (Princess Ida), Pooh-Bah (The Mikado), Dick Dauntless and Sir Despard Murgatroyd (Ruddigore), The Duke of Plaza-Toro and Don Alhambra del Bolero (The Gondoliers), King Paramount (Utopia Limited) and Ludwig (The Grand Duke). Chris has directed productions for the University of London Opera Group, New London Opera Group and the Centenary Opera Company including The Sorcerer (twice), HMS Pinafore, Iolanthe (twice), Princess Ida, The Mikado and Ruddigore (twice). Chris has also directed the newLOG spring concerts of G&S, Viennese and French operetta in Louth and appeared as Mr Box in Cox and Box. As founding Artistic Director of newLOG, Chris produced acclaimed concert performances of Rutland Boughton’s Bethlehem (December 2005) in which he also sang the dual roles of Jem the Shepherd and Zarathustra the Wise Man; and Michael Balfe’s beautiful romantic opera The Bohemian Girl (2006) in London.
James Chadburn (Major Murgatroyd)
Jim is delighted to be back in Louth for his third newLOG summer production. Tonight he adds Major Murgatroyd to a list of G&S principal roles which already includes the Sergeant of Police (The Pirates of Penzance), Lord Mountararat (Iolanthe) and Old Adam Goodheart (Ruddigore), all with King’s College London G&S Society. Favourite roles in other productions include Bottom (A Midsummer Night’s Dream), Fagin (Oliver!), and the Lord Chamberlain (Princess Ivona). He has directed The Pirates of Penzance and a German-language production of Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s play Elektra. He is a founder member of the King’s Alumni Theatre Society, and has sung in numerous choirs including the Chamber Choir of Strasbourg Cathedral. In 2005-6 he was a member of the choir in the National Theatre’s runaway success Coram Boy, and he currently sings in the London Philharmonic Choir.
Charlotte Collier (The Lady Jane)
Charlotte first encountered G&S at the tender age of three when she was taken to see The Mikado performed by the Ashby de la Zouche Gilbert and Sullivan Society. This experience has undoubtedly contributed to her lifelong enthusiasm for both Law and Music. After qualifying as a solicitor (no client has yet been raffled but several partners have!) she decided to devote more time to music and undertook a Post Graduate Diploma at Trinity College of Music. Since then she has performed throughout the UK and abroad either as a soloist or with her ensemble Absolutely Opera! Her G&S roles include Little Buttercup (HMS Pinafore), the Fairy Queen (Iolanthe),Lady Blanche (Princess Ida), Dame Carruthers (The Yeomen of the Guard) and theDuchess of Plaza-Toro (The Gondoliers), On the concert platform Charlotte is an accomplished recitalist and also enjoys oratorio performances, including The Messiah (Handel); B Minor Mass and St John Passion (Bach); Petite Messe Solonnelle and Stabat Mater (Rossini); Requiem and Solemn Vespers(Mozart), and Elijah (Mendelssohn). Last year Charlotte sang with Scottish Opera in their productions of Carmen and Der Rosenkavalier.
Juliet Crissell (Chorus)
Juliet has been involved with music and the theatre from an early age, but only discovered Gilbert & Sullivan as a student in 1999. Since then she has tripped her way through a number of shows, even surviving a 30-hour G&S “marathon” sing-through of the complete Savoy Operas. The allure of studenthood is too strong, however, and in September she is going back to university to train as a physiotherapist. She’s delighted to be back in Louth again, and hopes that this visit isn’t her last!
Anne Duncan (Chorus)
This is Anne’s second appearance with newLOG. She enjoyed Ruddigore so much last year that she just had to be involved with her absolute favourite G&S opera, Patience. Previous performances include HMS Pinafore, Ruddygore and, most recently, The Gondoliers, all with King’s College, Gilbert and Sullivan Society. Anne is now a die-hard fan of all things G&S.
Benjamin Ellin (Conductor)
Benjamin Ellin is currently Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of EMFEB, Music Director of the Seychelles International Festival of Music, Director of Music at the Pembroke Academy of Music and Principal Conductor of the Hayes Symphony Orchestra. Born in Bolton (1980), Benjamin studied at Chetham’s School of Music, Manchester and The Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London, where he graduated in 2002 after studying conducting and composition. In August 2006 he was one of only seven conductors selected to take part in the first ever Masterclass with Gianandrea Nosesda in Stresa, Italy as part of the 45th International Festival. In May 2005 Benjamin conducted the London Symphony Orchestra in masterclass at LSO St Luke’s where he conducted Schubert’s 8th and Sibelius’ 5th Symphonies. He has studied with Sir Colin Davis since 2002 and in 2003 received tuition from Bernard Haitink KBE. In 2001 Benjamin participated in the International Workshop for Conductors in St. Petersburg, Russia, studying with Alexandre Polistchuk and Michail Kukuchkin with support from HRH The Prince of Wales. Benjamin made his newLOG debut in December 2005, conducting an acclaimed concert performance of Rutland Boughton’s Bethlehem. He returned in 2006 to conduct Michael Balfe’s The Bohemian Girl.
Philip W. Errington (Colonel Calverly)
Philip has appeared in Louth as the Pirate King, Sergeant Bouncer and Robin Oakapple. He has sung in all the G&S operas and this is his third Patience! Previous roles include Counsel for the Plaintiff and Usher (Trial by Jury), Dr Daly (The Sorcerer), Dick Deadeye (HMS Pinafore), Pirate King (The Pirates of Penzance), Colonel Calverly and Archibald Grosvenor (Patience), Strephon (Iolanthe), King Gama (Princess Ida), Ko-Ko (The Mikado), Robin Oakapple (Ruddigore), Jack Point (The Yeomen of the Guard), The Duke of Plaza-Toro (The Gondoliers) and Ludwig (The Grand Duke). Over far too many years he has sung with the University of London Opera Group, Imperial College Operatic Society, Imperial Opera, The Philharmonia Chorus, The Minotaur Music Theatre, Grosvenor Light Opera Group, and, for one night only, stars of the old D’Oyly Carte Opera Company! By day he is a Deputy Director within the Department of Printed Books and Manuscripts at Sotheby’s. He is also somewhat of an authority on the works of the former Poet Laureate John Masefield (copies of his edition of Selected Poems available at all good bookshops)!
Livia Farkas (Chorus)
Livia was born in Ozd, north Hungary, the land of Bull’s Blood, the great Hungarian red wine! She began her vocal training in Budapest with Palma Morvay than later joined the Hungarian Society of Dance and Musical Art. Livia has had voice classes with various singing teachers in Italy and New York and was a student of musicianship at the Béla Bartók Centre, London. She now studies singing with Professor Philip Doghan. Livia has appeared in several charity concerts and school performances as a soloist, singing mainly Mozart, Pergolesi and Franz Léhar. This production of Patience is her newLOG debut.
Steve Greenwood (Production Manager / Lighting Designer)
As well as being one of the founding directors of newLOG, Steve has also worked with the University of London Opera Group and Imperial Opera. He enjoys having his finger in as many theatrical pies as possible, having produced, designed or stage managed (sometimes all three) a variety of shows with the three companies including The Pirates of Penzance; Princess Ida; The Mikado; Ruddigore; Cheryomushki; Cinderella; Divorce Me, Darling!; Elegies for Angels, Punks and Raging Queens; A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum; Nine; Something’s Afoot; Here’s a How-de-do!; The Shakespeare Revue; A Viennese Soirée; La vie Parisiènne; Bethlehem and The Bohemian Girl. Steve has never been tempted to actually appear in a show, though…he just doesn’t have the time!
Philip Hayes (Lieutenant, the Duke of Dunstable)
Philip joined the University of London Opera Group in 1994, taking part in many productions, including Iolanthe at the Riverhead Theatre in 2003 in which he played Earl Tolloller. Other roles for ULOG included The Defendant (Trial by Jury), Cyril (Princess Ida) and Luiz (The Gondoliers). For newLOG Philip sang the roles of Sym the Shepherd and Nubar the Wise Man in the concert performance of Rutland Boughton’s Bethlehem in 2005 and in Michael Balfe’s The Bohemian Girl in 2006. In March 2007, he performed in the concert of French operetta, La Vie Parisiènne at the Riverhead Theatre.
For other groups Philip has sung Tamino (The Magic Flute), Count Almaviva (The Barber of Seville), The Prince (Rusalka) and Jupiter (Semele), all for Aylesbury Opera Group; Alexis Pointdextre (The Sorcerer) and Ralph Rackstraw (HMS Pinafore) for the Centenary Opera Company; Remendado(Carmen)for Southgate College Opera, and The Earl of Essex (Gloriana) for Brent Opera. He has sung with the Philharmonia Chorus in London, highlights including concert performances of Wagner’s Lohengrin and Weber’s Der Freischütz at the Edinburgh Festival and a forthcoming performance of Beethoven’s Fidelio in Oxford’s Sheldonian Theatre.
Outside the world of light opera, Philip is employed as a VAT consultant at an accountancy firm.
Sally Hewitt (The Lady Ella)
Sally Hewitt is not supposed to be here. Between accountancy exams and weddings she has enough to do. Somehow, though, she found herself agreeing to fit a trip to Lincolnshire into her non-existent free time. This will be her fifth summer in Louth – apparently she is never going to be allowed to escape.
Previous appearances in Louth have included Pitti-Sing (The Mikado) and Zorah (Ruddigore) with newLOG; and Celia (Iolanthe) in the very last performances by the University of London Opera Group in 2003. Other G&S roles include Hebe (HMS Pinafore), Mad Margaret (Ruddigore), Casilda (The Gondoliers) and Baroness von Krakenfeldt (The Grand Duke). Despite any outward signs of a nervous breakdown, Sally is delighted to be back this year.
Sarah Logan (Chorus)
This is Sarah’s fourth production since she joined the ranks of newLOG in 2005. Since then, she has appeared as a chorus girl in The Pirates of Penzance and as the Matron of the Rederring Rent-a-Bridesmaid Service in last year’s Ruddigore. Sarah also sang in the successful concert performance of Rutland Boughton’s Bethlehem in December 2005. Although relatively new to G&S, Sarah has a life long love of choral work and has been a member of the University of London, Banstead and Hereford Choral Societies. Stage appearances include Miss Prism in The Importance of Being Ernest and writing, directing and performing in three medical reviews with the Hereford Hospital players.
Fiona Nash (Chorus)
Fiona is pleased to be performing in a newLOG production for the first time. She was previously a member of the King’s College London Gilbert and Sullivan Society, performing in six shows, including HMS Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and Ruddygore. She is currently an overworked junior doctor and in her limited free time enjoys singing with the Southwark Cathedral Merbecke Choir and the choir of St. Michael’s church, Wimbeldon.
Nicole Oppler (The Lady Angela)
Nicole took a BA degree in English Literature at Durham University, where she also studied singing with Janet Briggs, before graduating from the Opera Foundation and Opera Diploma courses at Birkbeck University. Previous roles include Ruth (The Pirates of Penzance) and Katisha (The Mikado) with Durham University Opera and Annio (La Clemenza di Tito), Prince Orlofsky (Die Fledermaus) and Third Lady (Die Zauberflöte) with Opera Express as well as Belinda and Witch (Dido and Aeneas), Olga (Eugene Onegin), Dorabella (Così fan tutte), Susanna (Le Nozze di Figaro), Romeo (I Capuleti e i Montecchi) and Lucretia (The Rape of Lucretia). Her most recent role has been the Duchess of Plaza-Toro in The Gondoliers with King’s College London Gilbert & Sullivan Society.
James Patterson (Chorus)
Jamie is returning to the Louth stage with newLOG for the fourth time, in the familiar role of “Chorus Man Number Two”. Jamie has been involved in a variety of G&S stage antics in his time, including playing the Carpenter in HMS Pinafore and Giorgio in The Gondoliers. Outside of G&S repertoire, Jamie is a counter-tenor Lay Clerk at Ealing Abbey and regular deputy at Westminster Cathedral and a number of other churches in London. Jamie recently appeared in Jonathan Dove’s Opera Tobias and the Angel and performs regularly as a counter-tenor on the concert platform.
Claire Pooley (Chorus)
Claire is delighted to be returning to Louth for her third appearance at the Riverhead Theatre. Having previously appeared as a green-faced hockey- playing fairy in Iolanthe and a slightly puzzled church organist in last years’ production of Ruddigore, Claire is this year playing a rapturous maiden in love with all things from Liberty’s of London, anything designed by William Morris or even vaguely aesthetic. She is planning to redecorate her home entirely in her wonderful Morris wallpapers. Sadly this will be Claire’s last show in Louth as she is going to retrain as a primary school teacher next year and they won’t give her time off even for good behaviour!
Graham Rogers (Musical Director / Archibald Grosvenor)
This is Graham’s ninth appearance at the Riverhead Theatre: he has taken part in four Gilbert & Sullivan productions here, as well as concert shows including A Viennese Soirée, A Night at the Savoy and, earlier this year, La Vie Parisiènne. A devotee of Gilbert & Sullivan, Graham’s many Savoy Opera roles include Counsel for the Plaintiff and the Usher (Trial by Jury), Dick Deadeye (HMS Pinafore), Sergeant of Police (The Pirates of Penzance), Strephon and Private Willis (Iolanthe), Florian (Princess Ida), Ko-Ko and the Mikado (The Mikado), Robin Oakapple (Ruddigore), Giuseppe (The Gondoliers), Captain Sir Edward Corcoran KCB (Utopia Limited) and the Prince of Monte Carlo (The Grand Duke). Other recent roles include Count Arnheim in newLOG’s Christmas performance in London of Balfe’s romantic opera The Bohemian Girl, Dave the Shepherd and Merlin the Wise Man in Rutland Boughton’s nativity opera Bethlehem, and Mr. Cox in Sullivan’s Cox and Box in Louth. As Musical Director, Graham conducted newLOG’s productions here of The Pirates of Penzance (2005) and Ruddigore (2006), but he is delighted to be treading the boards tonight. Graham works for BBC Radio 3, and also writes on music: he has contributed a number of pieces to the forthcoming book 1001 Classical Recordings to Hear Before You Die.
Joanna Soane (Patience)
Joanna studied singing and clarinet at Trinity College of Music and the Royal College of Music, where her teachers were Kenneth Woollam and Morag Noble. She is currently studying with Philip Doghan. Joanna started her career as a mezzo-soprano, roles including Cherubino (The Marriage of Figaro) Hansel (Hansel and Gretel), Jenny Diver (The Beggars Opera) with members of the Consort of Early Music and the title role in Iolanthe for the Buxton International Gilbert & Sullivan Festival. Since re-training as a soprano Joanna has played the role of Lidoshka in Shostakovich’s opera Cheryomushki, Angelina (Trial by Jury) and Mabel (The Pirates of Penzance)for Grim’s Dyke Opera. In 2005 she was a principal for the Savoy Opera Company, singing the role of 2nd Bridesmaid and Barbarina in The Marriage of Figaro. Joanna has also appeared as a chorister in Carmen at London’s Royal Albert Hall for Raymond Gubbay’s Opera Company. This year she sang Violetta (La Traviata)in Taunton, Fiordiligi (Così fan tutte) in London and a series of opera concerts for the Verona Arena Foundation in Italy.
In oratorio, Joanna has sung most of the main repertoire. Recent concerts include Mozart’s Exsultate Jubilate with the Erato Orchestra, Mozart’s Requiem, and Mass in C Minor, Handel’s Messiah, Haydn’s The Creation, Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Vivaldi’s Gloria and Rossini’s Petite Messe Solennelle.
Rachel Stack (Chorus)
Rachel has just finished her second year studying German at King’s College, London and is moving to Germany in August to be a teaching assistant for a year. She has enjoyed performing from a young age, starting dance classes at two years old and has danced ever since. She now teaches an Irish dancing class for children. Rachel has performed in many shows both dancing and musical and started performing in Gilbert and Sullivan operettas at the age of 13. Her previous shows include Iolanthe, The Mikado and The Gondoliers (twice). She has also performed in a Musical Review, My Fair Lady and many pantomimes, last Christmas playing the part of the fairy godmother in Cinderella.
Bob Vaughan (Stage Director / Mr Bunthorne’s Solicitor)
Bob Vaughan is delighted to return to Louth once again, and to be directing his first full length show for newLOG, having been responsible for Cox and Box in last year’s spring concert A Night at the Savoy. Previous productions that Bob has directed for the University of London Opera Group have included Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Sorcerer, HMS Pinafore, Iolanthe (twice), The Mikado, Ruddygore, Utopia Limited, The Grand Duke, the centenary production of Gilbert and Cellier’s The Mountebanks, Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld and La Belle Helene and W.S. Gilbert’s play Rosencrantz & Guildenstern. In real life Bob is a Radar systems engineer and for relaxation vanishes into the Chiltern Hills were he is a volunteer station master on the award winning Chinnor & Princes Risborough Railway
Eirian Walsh Atkins (Wardrobe Mistress / The Lady Saphir)
Eirian is happy to revisit the stage at the Riverhead in one of her favourite G&S operas. She hopes that you won't find her lovesick maiden too sorrowful, and urges you to watch out for the Holy Grail. She has previously appeared in Louth in The Mikado, The Pirates of Penzance and Ruddigore with newLOG, and performed the title role in Iolanthe in the last performances by the University of London opera Group in 2003.
Previously with newLOG:
Whilst this is the first complete production of Patience by newLOG, excerpts from the opera have been heard in two of our annual spring concerts. In the very first newLOG performance, the G&S concert Here’s a How-de-do! in 2004, Catrine Kirkman sang Patience’s first song “I cannot tell what this love may be” and tonight’s Bunthorne, Chris Cann, was partnered by Sue Foister’s Lady Jane in “So go to him and say to him”. Catrine Kirkman returned to the title role in the concert A Night at the Savoy in 2006, singing the duet “Long years ago, partnered by Kirsti Whitlocke as Lady Angela. At the end of the concert, the company gave the sparkling quintet “If Saphir I choose to marry” as an encore.