 Tom Higgins |
Sunday 13th January 2008“A String of Melodic Pearls”Tom Higgins
Opera South Director of Music |
 Michael Balfe |
When Michael Balfe’s The Bohemian Girl was first produced at London’s legendary Drury Lane Theatre, the first night audience “went almost wild with enthusiasm”. With its sparkling melodies, animated choruses, and charming orchestration all wedded to a fairy-tale gipsy romance, the opera had an incalculable effect upon London society — “the town went gipsy mad”.
Since then, over 150 years later, the work has never lost its power to charm and amuse. Indeed, the second act aria “I dreamt that I dwelt in marble halls” remains one of the world’s most popular favourites. Opera South celebrates the Michael Balfe bi-centenary in 2008 with a major new production of The Bohemian Girl in February in the Haslemere Hall.
Conductor Tom Higgins, whose BBC recording of Sullivan’s last completed work for the stage The Rose of Persia has recently received its commercial release, discusses one of the immortal works in the operatic repertoire, and how the first English opera came to be composed by an Irishman.