The Daily Telegraph - 07.08.2019

The Daily Telegraph Wednesday 7 August 2019 *** 25

The music that made Victoria swoon

A Prom showcasing

the Queen’s favourite

composers will

include work by her

husband. Matthew

Dennison reports

the tragic Lucia di Lammermoor

and Lucrezia Borgia, and the comic

operas L’Elisir D’Amore and La Fille du

Regiment. Each provided examples of

the stirring emotional scenarios that

thrilled the intensely romantic Victoria.

That Victoria and Albert later

admitted the French composer

Giacomo Meyerbeer to Bellini and

Donizetti’s lofty pedestal may well be

attributable to soprano Jenny Lind,

“the Swedish nightingale”. Her London

debut in 1847 bowled them over. They

cancelled or cut short a number of

engagements in order to attend every

one of her 16 appearances.

Albert’s “education” of Victoria

predictably extended to music. His

tastes ranged more widely than his

wife’s. In March 1840 he became a

director of the Ancient Concerts,

intended to promote the work of

neglected earlier composers like

Handel, and he was also an admirer

of Felix Mendelssohn, who became

one of Victoria’s favourite composers.

(The Prom later this month will feature

Mendelssohn’s Piano Concerto No 1

and the composer’s lively Scottish

Symphony.) The amateur concert

he arranged on June 12 1840, with

contributions by the men and women

of Victoria’s court, and Victoria and

Albert singing a duet from Luigi Ricci’s

Arts

Fine words from the king of the quip

C

live Anderson has perhaps never

quite reached Star of Africa

national-treasure status in quite

the same way as, say, Parkie or

Wogan. But for many years, on

both Channel 4 and BBC One, the

sometime criminal barrister was

far and away the sharpest,

funniest and most irreverent

television host we had, one who

• when it came to saying the
  wrong, hilarious thing –
  couldn’t help himself.
  His faux-pas-torpedoed
  interviews with Cher and
  the Bee Gees (more later)
  have deservedly gone
  down in television
  history, and I still
  remember the inveterate
  smart aleck once asking a
  guest who he thought was
  going to win the big match
  the following day.

“Well,” came the earnest response,

“the head says Arsenal...”

“... but the arse says Headnal,”

came the marvellous interruption.

At 66, Anderson continues to

sparkle on Radio 4’s Loose Ends and

this year, he has brought the stage

version of that old favourite Whose

Line Is It Anyway? up to the Edinburgh

Fringe. But he is also now making his

solo Fringe debut in a show that,

while not (and not claiming to be)

anywhere near comedy’s cutting

edge, is a complete delight.

Me, Macbeth and I is a complex

monologue, delivered with splendid

fluency and brio, in which

Anderson delves into his long

obsession with “the best play

ever written”, explores his own

half-Scottishness, and – hurrah!

• extols the evergreen
  virtues of the calamitous
  TV interview. He also
  finds time to poke
  some very articulate
  fun at our current
  political class.
  It turns out that
  Anderson’s
  lifelong obsession
  with Macbeth
  stems from his
  having craved but
  been denied a
  prominent role in
  a production
  when he was at
  school. He

rattles entertainingly through the

so-called Scottish Play’s centuries-old

association with bad luck – did you

know, for example, that the man

playing Lady Macbeth died during the

very first night? – and weaves around

this his own, slightly fraught history

with his father’s kilt.

We end up in the domain of the

disastrous TV interview which, as

Anderson rightly says, is the best and

most unforgettable kind of interview

there is. He goes into the finer details

of Rod Hull and Emu almost pecking

Parkie to pieces and Grace Jones

lamping Russell Harty. But the high

points here are his explaining exactly

what happened with him and Cher

(whom he infuriated with a priceless

reference to her plastic surgery) and,

of course, the brothers Gibb, who

walked out of his BBC show in 1996

after his typically Andersonian

response to Barry telling him that they

used to be called Les Tosseurs.

If you don’t know or remember that

pearl of inappropriateness, you can

probably more or less guess. Certainly,

by the time Anderson – segueing from

Richard and Judy back to Macbeth

• wraps with a triumphant rendition of
  the “To-morrow, and to-morrow, and
  to-morrow” soliloquy, you can’t help
  feeling that this laird of verbal misrule
  has earned the right to do so.

Edinburgh Fringe

Clive Anderson:

Me, Macbeth and I

Assembly Studio Three

★★★★★

By Mark Monahan

Treasure: Clive Anderson

presents his solo show

T

o both Queen Victoria

and Prince Albert music

mattered. Listening

to music, observers

agreed in the 1850s,

Queen Victoria could

still be transfigured, her face restored

fleetingly to a prettiness it had

otherwise lost. In Prince Albert, too,

music inspired a kind of rapture.

Exposure to music had formed a key

element in Victoria’s education. At 13,

her diary records her “writing music”:

copying out musical scores. She played

piano duets with her mother, the

Duchess of Kent, as she would later

with Albert. Mother and daughter were

balletomanes and passionate opera-

goers. With breathless hyperbole in her

journal, and in colourful watercolour

sketches, a star-struck teenage Victoria

recorded every performance. She

recreated favourite costumes for her

collection of 132 wooden peg dolls. Her

admiration for Swedish ballerina Marie

Taglioni inspired a degree of posturing:

“After dinner I dressed myself up as

‘La Naiade’ as Taglioni was dressed,

with corals in my hair,” she wrote on

January 6 1833. In the same way, for a

fancy dress ball held in her honour in

the Assembly Rooms in York when she

was 16, she wore “a wreath of white

roses round my head” in homage to her

favourite soprano, Giulia Grisi, who

wore just such a headdress in Bellini’s

opera I Puritani, which had premiered

in London that year.

Albert went a step further. His

own compositions include a setting

for Hark! The Herald Angels Sing and

sacred liturgical pieces. As a young

man he wrote some 37 lieder, or

songs, in the manner of Schubert

and early Schumann – acclaimed by

Mendelssohn and later described

by Yehudi Menuhin as “pleasant

music without presumption”. Five are

included in a special Proms concert

on August 16 celebrating the 200th

anniversary of Victoria’s birth.

For the first time, visitors to the

Proms will be able to hear a piano from

the Royal Collection commissioned by

Victoria and Albert and delivered to

them on April 30 1856. This spectacular

gilt-bronze and brass-mounted

instrument, painted with whimsical

vignettes of cherubs and monkey

musicians and sumptuously gilded,

was made by the firm of S & P Erard,

whose previous clients included Marie

Antoinette. Pianos were purchased for

all the couple’s private apartments – at

Buckingham Palace, Windsor, Balmoral

and Osborne House; Albert awarded

Erard’s – based in London since 1792

and operating latterly from premises at

158a New Bond Street – the equivalent

of a royal warrant for piano-making.

Marriage did not curtail the queen’s

enthusiasms. Victoria and Albert

were very regular operagoers. In

the first year of their marriage, they

went to the theatre 45 times: 29 of the

performances they attended were

ITV; ROYAL COLLECTION TRUST/HER MAJESTY QUEEN ELIZABETH II 2019

opéra-comique, today’s Royal Opera

House was remodelled as an opera

house in 1846 and opera was also

staged at the Lyceum and the Drury

Lane Theatre. Committed operagoers

thus had a choice of up to five

programmes each season. Modern

work held sway, with the exception of

Mozart, which Victoria regarded with

admiring respect rather than undiluted

enjoyment.

Victoria’s love of opera dominated

her musical tastes. On her first visit to

the theatre, at the age of 13, she saw

Rossini’s Barber of Seville. It remained a

favourite until Albert’s death, although

her admiration for Rossini’s work in

general never rivalled that she felt for

Bellini or Donizetti

• she dismissed
  the plot of La
  Gazza Ladra as
  “very stupid”.
  Albert’s
  first visit to
  Victoria, in
  company with
  his brother
  Ernest in May
  1835, included
  outings to see
  operas by both
  men; later, Victoria
  referred to “the
  dear Puritani...
  the first opera we ever
  heard together”. She went
  on to see it, and two more of
  Bellini’s operas – Norma and
  La Sonnambula – 20 times each,
  while four operas by Donizetti
  became equally firm favourites:

Matthew Dennison is the author of

Queen Victoria: A Life of Contradictions

(William Collins)

Prom 40 is on Friday Aug 16 at 7.30pm.

Tickets: 020 70 70 4441; royalalberthall.

com

Until Aug 25. Tickets: 0131 623 3030;

edfest.com

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Royal first: Victoria and Albert’s

piano will be played at the Proms

Keen musicians: Victoria (Jenna Coleman)

and Albert (Tom Hughes) in ITV’s Victoria

The London debut of

soprano Jenny Lind, “the

Swedish nightingale”,

bowled them over

Readers can watch

Glyndebourne Festival

Opera’s brand new

production of Die

zauberflöte (The Magic Flute)

starring Björn Bürger (right)

and Sofia Fomina for free

on the Telegraph website.

The performance is now

available on demand until

Monday August 12

at 9.30am.

To watch Die zauberflöte

(The Magic Flute), please

visit: telegraph.co.uk/

opera/what-to-see/

magic-flute-livestream-

glyndebourne

Watch The Magic Flute for free online

rflöte

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STEVE ULLATHORNEedfest.com

Mendelssohn

Songs Without

Words

The composer

played selections

to Victoria and

Albert at

Buckingham

Palace one

evening in June

1842. Victoria
      described him as
      “the greatest
      musical genius
      since Mozart”.

Bellini

I Puritani

Victoria’s “dear

Puritani” and the

first opera the

couple saw

together.

Meyerbeer

Les Huguenots

The only

contemporary

opera of which

Victoria

commissioned

sketches, during

its run at Covent

Garden in 1855.

Ricci

Non funestar,

crudele

From Il Disertore

Per Amore, which

Victoria and

Albert sang

together at a

concert organised

by Albert the

summer after

their wedding.

Especially

for Albert

Handel

Judas

Maccabaeus

Described by the

prince as “quite

splendid”.

Martin Luther

A Mighty Fortress

Is Our God

A Lutheran

chorale for a

Lutheran prince

and requested by

Albert as he lay

dying.

Especially

for Victoria

Auber

Le Domino Noir

One of Victoria’s

favourite operas

following its

London premiere

in 1838. It was the

last opera she saw

at Covent Garden

in 1861, before

Albert’s death

ended her

opera-going.

Victoria and Albert’s playlist

From Ricci to Martin Luther

operas. Seven years and five children

later, in 1847, they were at the opera

32 times. Despite Victoria’s four

further pregnancies, they maintained

these attendance levels into the early

1850s.

Victoria and Albert’s preference for

the opera was typical of the time. It was

a bias London’s theatreland was well

equipped to satisfy. Victoria’s preferred

venue was, appropriately, Her

Majesty’s Theatre in the Haymarket,

also called the Italian Opera

House. Its repertoire

was dominated by

work by living

Italian

composers,

chiefly

Victoria’s

favourites

Bellini and

Donizetti.

Closer to

Buckingham

Palace, the St

James’s Theatre

championed French

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the first oper

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Bellini’s operas – N

La Sonnambula – 2

while four operas

becameequally fi

ctoria and Albert’s

played at the Proms

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Il Disertore Per Amore, was the first

time Victoria heard excerpts from

Mozart’s The Magic Flute. That year

Albert also composed a chorale to be

performed after the christening of

their first child, Vicky.

Victoria’s admiration for his work

was unreserved. That five of his songs

should be performed in a concert to

mark the bicentenary of her birth

would surely have delighted her. At

Albert’s death her visits to the opera

and theatres ceased. As in every area

of her life, a curtain descended.

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