Talk:The Little Sweep

Expansion of article
This is still a work in progress, but I'm saving this interim version for the moment. I have much more referencing to do, more detail to add to the synopsis, and more details of the first performance. Some errors have been corrected, but I think there may be a few still to find. Morag Kerr (talk) 02:19, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
 * There's a bit more now on the opera itself, though more is still needed. Maybe I should keep this until it's all done, except nothing is ever done, and hey, maybe someone else will come along with good suggestions. Morag Kerr (talk) 01:43, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Voice designations
In the first edition of the score, the two litte-girl parts (Sophie and Tina, aged 10 and 8) are designated as "soprano". This seems to me incorrect and outdated, as the parts are written for girl children, not adult women, and the voice of a pre-pubescent girl should be described as treble rather than soprano. This is in contrast with the role of Juliet, which is intended to be taken by an adult woman who can "look convincingly youthful". In the first performance, the parts of Sophie and Tina were taken by young girls (Shirley Eaton was 13 when she played Tina in the first television broadcast), while the part of Juliet was written for a professional soprano who was 32 years old at the time. I have therefore designated all the actual children, girls and boys, as "treble". Anyone wanna argue? Morag Kerr (talk) 10:33, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I just followed the link to the "Amadeus Online" article in the reference list, and it leads to an announcement of the first performance written in Italian. In the cast list, Sophie and Tina are designated "voce bianca" rather than "soprani" (Juliet and Rowan).  I rest my case. Morag Kerr (talk) 12:38, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Original research, the play
I only realised while I was putting together the section on the play that I have a piece of original research on my hands. I don't have a copy of the published Let's Make an Opera! play, I was working from annotated typescripts used by the cast during the 1949 and 1950 performances, and the early ones (at least) pre-date the publication. (I also have the score in manuscript, with a single-handed rehearsal piano reduction which is different from the published two-piano vocal score.) What is becoming clear is that the version of the play performed in the Jubilee Hall on 14th June 1949 (which is on quarto paper) is radically different from the undated "revised version" (on foolscap) which seems to be only a few months or even weeks older. As well as the change in the play itself, "Elisabeth Parrish" has become "Pamela" (and most of the surnames have simply vanished), suggesting this coincided with the Rowan role being taken over by Pamela Woolmore. (I need to ask Elisabeth Parry if she remembers when she gave up the part, more original research, ho hum, but it will be verifiable, it might even be in her recently-published memoirs.) My guess is that the original version didn't survive beyond the first Aldeburgh Festival run, because Anne Sharp, who gave over a hundred performances as Juliet, barely remembers the version set in the village hall. Certainly, the radio script which is dated November 1949 (and also has "Pamela" playing Rowan) resembles the revised version much more than the original. It appears that the published version (which I have ordered) is or is based on the "revised version".

So, the published Let's Make an Opera! play is not what was staged at the premiere. The premiere version is unpublished. This however can be remedied, and once the original version is online as a pdf (gimme a minute here....) it may be of some small interest to scholars concerned with minutiae and trivia.

It is clear Crozier didn't have much regard for the play. In a 1979 article he implied it had been written merely to pad the performance out to fill an evening, and said that while it served its purpose at the time, it had worn less well than the opera. He suggested that groups staging the work in future should devise their own updated preamble, or simply have a short rehearsal of the audience songs. The sheer magnitude of the changes between the various versions, and the amount of crossing out and scribbling in of new lines on the typescripts, indicates something quite fluid. Pencil markings on the second (1950) radio script suggest large chunks were simply cut on that occasion. It obviously wasn't Crozier's cherished baby!

Nevertheless the play is still performed, and it's also of historical interest. And for an article like this, reference should be made to the version as it was performed on the first night. Nice as it would be for a musicologist to come along and "research" this properly, I doubt if that's going to happen because it is basically trivia, and hardly central to the work of either Britten or Crozier. Nevertheless, if and when I can get these original scripts digitised and online, they will be verifiable, and we can have a nice little article here that goes right back to the beginning of the work. Morag Kerr (talk) 11:24, 24 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Er, bingo, slightly. The programme book of the 1949 Aldeburgh Festival has an article by Crozier describing the play, and it is perfectly clear from that description that he is referring to the dress rehearsal/lighting rehearsal version of the already-written opera, not the "Gladys tells a story" revised version.  The programme books for the Wolverhampton and Cheltenham Festival performances which immediately followed the Aldeburgh Festival run are similar, and all name the Rowan character as "Elisabeth Parrish".


 * The "revised stage version" typescript isn't dated, but it is similar or identical to the two-act published version (yes I found it) which is still dated 1949. This now has the Rowan character as "Pamela Wilton".  The Third Programme radio version is dated October 1949, and that appears to be an adaptation for radio of the "revised stage version", or possibly the two were contemporaneous.  Elisabeth Parry has a slightly confusing account in her autobiography of realising that she was being pushed out in favour of Pamela Woolmore, which seems to suggest the broadcast had already happened, but this account happens in late August, and ends with her receiving a letter informing her that she is being replaced for the broadcasts.  She seems to be describing further Aldeburgh performances at that time.  (She makes no mention of the June/July Wolverhampton and Cheltenham performances but according to the programmes, she did them.)


 * There was a November/December season of Let's Make an Opera! at the Lyric Hammersmith in 1949, which must have been the revised version. Whether there were any performances between Cheltenham (9th July) and the London season is unclear (Elisabeth seems to think there were), but the alteration to the play must have happened some time in that period, and presumably before the October radio broadcasts.  By the 1950 Adeburgh Festival the Crozier introduction has been replaced by a shorter one by Eric W. White, which doesn't give any detail about the play. Morag Kerr (talk) 02:26, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

Children's names
Now this really is trivia, too trivial even to include in this trivial article. "Gay" is an unusual name for a boy. In the play, one of the characters says so, to be firmly told by Gladys, "it was HIS name." But looking at the wiki page on the Earls of Cranbrook, whose family these children were, it becomes clear.

The Earls of Cranbrook alternate the Christian name of the first-born son between the generations, from John to Gathorne and back again. Lord Cranbrook pere in 1949 was a John, and his eldest son was Gathorne Gathorne-Hardy, born in 1933, who is now 5th Earl of Cranbrook (whose son born in 1968 is John Gathorne-Hardy, and so it goes on). This makes the present Lord Cranbrook (Gathorne, presumably "Gay") 15 years old when the opera was being written.

At least one of the four boys was not a son of the Earl, but a nephew, as several sources refer to the children in the opera being based on the "sons, daughters and nephews" of Lord Cranbrook. In her 1966 book, Imogen Holst names the Gathorne-Hardy children in the course of desribing a visit to their home for tea,, and the only one she omits is Sammy.

Anybody got a copy of Burke's Peerage? Morag Kerr (talk) 11:47, 24 February 2011 (UTC)


 * OK, I'm being slow in the uptake here. www.thepeerage.com/p3562.htm#i35618  This entry lists the children of the 4th Earl of Cranbrooke as Gathorne (15), Juliet (14), Catherine Sophia (13), Christina (9) and Hugh (7), ages at the time of the first performance of Let's Make an Opera.  Gathorne, who is now Dr Gathorne Gathorne-Hardy and the 5th Earl of Cranbrooke, seems to have had a pretty starry career as a zoologist.  www.thepeerage.com/p5864.htm#i58637  Names-wise, that's Gay, Juliet, Sophie, Tina and Hughie.


 * I've also found Jonny, Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy, who is a published author with a wiki page in his own right. The Little Sweep connection was noted on the page when I accessed it, and he's singled out as being one of Britten's Children.  This wiki page states fourteen-year-old Jonny "could not help flirting slightly" and saw "at once aware I attracted him".  This is unsourced but probably from Gathorne-Hardy's autobiography.  Jonny is obviously one of the nephews, and although the "Britten's Children" page says "Jonny and his siblings [....] provided the children's names", all we've actually got left is Sammy, who was presumably Jonny's younger brother.  This also explains the spelling of "Jonny" without the "h", which appears once the opera gets into print although the typescripts have "Johnny".


 * So it appears that Gay, the eldest "Brook" child, was about the same age or slightly older than "Jonny Crome", but Gay's age was revised downward to below that of his sister Juliet when the opera was written. And Hugh and Tina were not twins.


 * Oh dear, this is getting worryingly obsessive. Morag Kerr (talk) 13:35, 24 February 2011 (UTC)


 * A trawl through the online documentation of the relationships of the nobility, plus a read of Jonathan Gaythorne-Hardy's autobiography, has clarified all this quite nicely. It's probably worth a mention after all. Morag Kerr (talk) 01:28, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

Original research, the original cast recording
It just so happens that I have in my back pocket a copy of the original 1949 radio broadcast of The Little Sweep (only the opera, not the play). It was taken from reel-to-reel tapes which were themselves taken from the archived acetates in 1975. This performance has never been commercially released. It is now quite firmly out of UK copyright, and has been since 1999. Apparently it's still within some strange US copyright law, and so can't be put up on wikipedia directly (well, maybe 30 seconds would get past the thought police), but it can certainly be freed now under UK law. YouTube might be about to encounter it, if I can ever figure out how to do that. Morag Kerr (talk) 12:04, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Title of article
This article is wrongly titled in my opinion. The Little Sweep is merely the title of the second half of the work. All contemporary writings about the production refer to Let's Make an Opera!, and that is certainly what I have always heard those involved with the performances call it. Of course The Little Sweep can be performed on its own, but that's not how it was written. It is impossible to construct an article on The Little Sweep in isolation from the complete work it is part of, and the article should bear the title of the complete work. Morag Kerr (talk) 02:31, 6 March 2011 (UTC)