Making an Exhibition of Myself by Peter Hall

Author:Peter Hall [Hall, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781840021158
Publisher: OBERON BOOKS Ltd
Published: 2000-01-15T05:00:00+00:00

Part Three

PRIMA LA MUSICA

Chapter One

When I was twenty-four, I applied to be Carl Ebert’s assistant. I felt that this great opera director, heir to the European tradition of Reinhardt, would have much to teach me. He interviewed me in a taxi, as he rode, frantic, from the Ritz to Victoria Station on his way to Glyndebourne.

Even in the cramped confines of a taxi, Ebert seemed an ebullient, charming personality. He had a handsome actor’s face, a ready smile, a warm manner and abundant white hair that cascaded in all directions. An interview when there isn’t much time concentrates the mind. I talked rapidly and far too much – a fault I always have at interviews. He wasn’t, I thought, much impressed by my inadequate German and patchy Italian. Victoria was reached and he rushed off to catch the train for Lewes. I wandered back to the Arts Theatre thinking I would hear no more.

To tell the truth, I was ambivalent about the great man. His command of the language of theatre – the lights, the design, the grouping of the characters on stage – was extremely impressive. But he had an irritating habit, common then in Europe, of illustrating the music; by which I mean drilling the singers for hours to walk and gesture precisely to the time and pulse of the score. This had a tendency to make everybody act like Mickey Mouse. At its best it could give vigour to comedy; but it trivialised operas such as Così fan tutte, and made it hard for Rossini to lift above the facetious. It was, however, the style of the day and Ebert was the master of it. His work was wonderfully specific. He didn’t leave the singers attitudinising with generalised emotions.

Two weeks later, I received an offer of the job. But in that two weeks my life had changed. I had been asked to take over from John Fernald as director of the Arts. Regretfully, I declined Ebert’s offer, thus delaying by twenty years the time I first worked at Glyndebourne.

I continued to go every year, however, and Glyndebourne finally, for me, was like a marriage. I fell in love there; knew great joy and great sorrow there; and, at the end, great pain and bitterness. It was like the experience of a whole lifetime and always extraordinarily vivid. The little opera house hidden in the Sussex Downs has been as important to me as Stratford-upon-Avon.

Michael Birkett introduced me to this enchanted place when we were both students at Cambridge. His father, Norman Birkett, the eminent QC and judge, had a friend who bought tickets for every performance. He must have been a rich man; he was certainly a kind one. He gave Michael two of his tickets and Michael invited me.

Michael was already in Sussex, but it was necessary for me to get myself there from Cambridgeshire. I had one of my father’s free railway passes to London, but no funds to get further. There was also the problem of dress.

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