Today I remain as astonished by the quality of this performance as I was at the time. Originally I went out of curiosity, thrilled to much of what I saw, and ended up going to all three performances. Of course, I was also drawn by the presence of Sarah Walker as Elizabeth I and Christopher Gillett as Essex, heading an unusually strong cast. If the music took the orchestra to its limits, the singing of the principals was utterly compelling. After 31 years I can still see and hear the magical Lute Song Scene as if it were yesterday.
I can even recall the night that Essex carefully laid the lute, a real, VERY expensive lute, on a stairway and turned tenderly towards Elizabeth, whereupon the lute began to bump its way down the steps with increasing speed as it headed towards the orchestra pit and its horrified owner, a member of the orchestra. I’ll never know how Christopher Gillett, moving faster than I would have thought humanly possible, saved the lute from a dismal future as kindling without disrupting that heart-stopping scene, and, unless Mr Gillett ever reads this, we may never know what choice Elizabethan epithets he may have been muttering under his breath.
All part of the magic of Haddo, and one of its most challenging but finest achievements.
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