Richard Church in Covent Garden - the 1910's

from The Golden Sovereign, page 202:

I went occasionally to Clapham, to the Sunday evenings of chamber music, and Bertie continued to smuggle me in to rehearsals at Covent Garden.  He gave me a ticket for the first performance in England of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande.  I sat through the opera, convinced that I was immersed in a glaucous, underwater world, where all motion was slow and tidal, and all colour but gradations of green.

cite as

Richard Church, The Golden Sovereign (London, 1957), p. 202. https://led.kmi.open.ac.uk/entity/lexp/1445897115457 accessed: 29 March, 2024

location of experience: Covent Garden

Listeners

Richard Church
editor, Civil service, Novelist, Poet […]
1893-1972

Listening to

hide composers
Pelléas et Mélisande (opera)
written by Claude Debussy

Experience Information

Date/Time the 1910's
Medium live
Listening Environment in the company of others, indoors, in public

Notes

In his autobiography, Richard Church sets this experience around 1912-13, but according to the Royal Opera House website, the opera was first performed in England earlier, in 1909.


Originally submitted by lcc5 on Mon, 26 Oct 2015 22:05:16 +0000
Approved on Tue, 29 Mar 2016 15:01:30 +0100