Starting out as a professional conductor in the 1960s I took any job I could get: amateur orchestras, choirs, start-up Avant Garde groups,-anything that would give me experience and pay a penny or two. It reminded me of Joseph Haydn in Vienna once his voice broke at the cathedral, making a living singing, playing the fiddle, harpsichord or organ, all as a freelance.

A piece I was asked to conduct by a couple of schools was Britten’s delightful one-act opera Noye’s Fludde. It’s a 15th century Chester Guild Play set to music for children’s choir and orchestra, with a handful of professionals, and audience participation. Kids also play bugles, handbells, teacups and sandpaper!

I conducted a set of more ambitious performances of the piece in a Kensington church in the late 60s, and this had major long-term consequences for me. Because the baritone who sang the part of Noah was Norman Platt. He liked what I did and asked me to conduct Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas in Worcester the following autumn. It turned out he was launching a brand new opera company based in Kent, where he lived. Was I interested? I certainly was, and awaited orders.

It all began very slowly: a Monteverdi Poppea in Tunbridge Wells Assembly Rooms, a Handel Atalanta in Suffolk, a Figaro one year later in Canterbury. After a few years of these fits and starts we had got a Board together, a valuable Finance Director retired from the City, and a Company Manager. I approached Jack Phipps at the Arts Council for a major presentation meeting. The outcome was a trial week of two Mozart operas in Eastbourne. I asked my acquaintance and Camden Town neighbour Jonathan Miller if he would direct Cosi fan Tutte, which he did brilliantly, and Norman’s Figaro completed the repertoire.

The week was a big success, and suddenly we were on our way. We were offered a five-week tour of south England theatres the following Autumn, underpinned by the Arts Council, and another tour in the Spring.

For sixteen years (1969-85) we ploughed this hard-working but delightful furrow in Bath, Cambridge, Southsea, Brighton, Paignton, Poole and Plymouth, as well as serving our Kent base in Canterbury and Tunbridge Wells, and appearing in Lisbon, Oporto, Schwetzingen, and Venice,- 39 towns in all. We played five shows a week, Tuesday to Saturday. I conducted every night, at Norman’s specific request, totalling more than 500 performances over the years. The superb young orchestra, booked by the excellent leader, Hohn Holloway, and later by Colin Kitching, became central to the operation. The other day one of the old players told me he thought it was the best orchestra he had ever played in.

All performances were in English, often with specially commissioned translations. But we were intent on the primacy of the composer, which applied equally to the Baroque, Classical, and Romantic periods. At this time many of our musicians were attracted to historical instruments, so it was not difficult to play the Monteverdi operas with them. The very first time I ever conducted a period group was rehearsing for our Lisbon Poppea. For this I made a new edition, following the manuscripts, and the traditions of he Venetian opera houses, and escaping from the lush orchestrations of my old friend Raymond Leppard. The “orchestra” consisted of merely five solo string players and pairs of Harpsichords and Chitarrones. On the vocal side the crucial novelty was a soprano for the castrato role of Nero. Monteverdi wrote his duets for two intertwining sopranos, not a soprano and tenor.

The Mozart operas (the core of our repertoire) we played with quite intimate forces , and the Verdi with larger, but still compact ones. Our smallish theatres, beautiful though many were, had no room for more. But this size gave an immediacy and historicity which we treasured.

We were intent on this text being heard and understood. In a comic opera I could judge whether or not that was the case by listening out for the laughter. If there wasn’t enough I got the orchestra to play softer. I also invented a further ingenious solution. In full rehearsals I had a large red lamp on a stand in the middle of the orchestra pit. A long lead led from it to the middle of the theatre, with a push button switch at the end. A member of my music staff would press it whenever the orchestra covered the singers. The effect was, you might say, electric.

The Kent years were a very important time for me. Hundreds of rehearsals and performances refined my ideas and my technique. It was invaluable to have this constant work. Something that I didn’t get quite right on a Tuesday I could improve on Saturday. I am indebted to Norman Platt for this opportunity. He was a very difficult man to work with, often driving his team to distraction in meetings. But he had vision and dogged courage. He died a disappointed man when the company was dropped by the Arts Council, a few years after I left.

Here’s a list of my Kent Opera repertoire:

Monteverdi    Orfeo

                     Poppea

                     Ulisse

                     Combattimento

                     Ballo delle Ingrate

Purcell           Dido

Blow              Venus and Adonis

Handel          Atalanta

Gluck             Iphigenia in Tauris

Telemann       Sokrates

Mozart           Idomeneo

                      Seraglio

                      Cosi

                      Figaro

                      Don Giovanni

                      Magic Flute

Beethoven      Fidelio

Verdi              Rigoletto

                      Traviata

                      Falstaff

Tchaikovsky    Onegin

Sullivan          Pinafore

                      Ruddigore

Offenbach      Robinson Crusoe

Britten           Turn of the Screw

Ridout            Angelo

                      Pardoner’s Tale

Tippett           King Priam

(28 Operas)

What an exciting, joyful list it is. Nine comedies, nine tragedies, and eight somewhere in between. Quite a few were directed by Norman Platt, but outstanding were the seven directed by Jonathan Miller (Cosi, Rigoletto, Orfeo, Onegin, Traviata, Falstaff, Fidelio) and the three by Nicholas Hytner (Turn of the Screw, Figaro, Priam).

Operas are always challenging to bring off; so many elements need to work perfectly together: Conductor, Director, soloists, chorus, orchestra, scenery, costumes, stage crew, lighting. It is immensely satisfying when the conductor and director are closely in sympathy. Then the cast, and the stage management can feel that all things are going in the same direction.

My very last production with Kent, Michael Tippett’s King Priam, is a particularly demanding score, so the ease with which it was produced was quite extraordinary. The singers turned up at the very first music call knowing their parts perfectly by heart (unusual even for an easy work). Stage rehearsals went extremely smoothly. The orchestra sailed through the complex textures. With just one performance a week I was always fearful that something would go wrong next ime. No, it was impeccable every week, even when our oboist was sick, and a brilliant replacement sight-read her way through the whole work perfectly.

One famous, mad, recurring passage for violins, connected with Priam’s wife, Hecuba, is virtually unplayable,- entirely full of accidentals (sharps and flats). In the original Covent Garden production in 1962 the passage was ignominiously played on a piano. The 1980 London Sinfonietta recording also ducked the issue, using a solo violin.

Ever one for faithfulness to to a score, I determined to have it played by the prescribed 8 Violins all together. In rehearsal, and before every single show the players sat in a circle and slowly went through the fiendish passages. The result was impressive if sometimes not absolutely perfect. We were excited, but a little apprehensive, when Tippett himself visited a stage rehearsal in Canterbury shortly before the first night. When we got to the first Hecuba passage, whoops of joy came from the back of the auditorium. Michael, who was around 80 at the time, was seen climbing enthusiastically over all the seats to reach us. When he arrived he called out: “Darlings, how perfectly marvellous to hear it at last”. I apologised for it not being quite perfect, but he replied: “It’s not MEANT to be perfect!!” We felt better about it after that.

A golden moment in golden production.

One extraordinary performance of Falstaff took place at the Theatre Royal in Bath (one of our favourite venues). Cast and orchestra arrived for the afternoon warm up to find no sign of a set on stage, and a very worried technical staff. The ceiling of the stage area of this venerable 18th century theatre was dropping bits of plaster onto their heads. The City Architect had forbidden performances for the whole week. I went up onto the stage with him and asked whether any space was safe at the very front. He reckoned just 3 metres.  We chalked out a line and pulled back the front curtain with stage weights. I cancelled the music call and challenged the cast to spend the hour talking with each other as to how they could re-stage the piece, chorus and all, Falstaff in his laundry basket, all the stage business, from conspiracy to finale, in this tiny area. But the show would go on!

When the audience was all in I addressed them: I told them their beloved theatre was falling down. No, luckily not their bit but ours. There would be costumes but absolutely no scenery. I was looking forward to the evening, but if anyone wanted their money back the Box Office was open.

A few poor souls crept out, but far more stayed. And they were rewarded with one of the most vivid performances I have ever presided over. Of course the orchestra sounded magnificent. But the intimacy of the singers’ acting, thrust so unusually far forward, and challenged by improvisation and the  sense of occasion, was electric. At the close the house erupted with cheers and tumultuous applause. I have met people in the intervening years who came up to me and said things like: “I was there. The Bath Falstaff with no scenery. Best evening of opera I ever attended”.

Through my friendship with Italo Gomez, who became the intendant at La Fenice in Venice, a quieter, but equally satisfying engagement was our appearance there in the late 70s. We played Purcell and Blow with original instruments in the pit. Our daughter Amy was one of the child dancers.

After some years we began an annual week of performances at Sadlers Wells in London. They were quite successful , but we realised how much more engaged our provincial audiences were than the easy-going Londoners. Kent Opera was made for the provinces; but that did not mean that it was “provincial” It  was highly successful and valued. And for me it was life-changing.