Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedications
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- List of Musical Examples
- Preface with Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- INTRODUCTION
- 1 Books to Make a Traveller of Thee: Pilgrims, Vagabonds and the Monodramas of Vaughan Williams
- 2 A Quarry for Profitable Working: Staging the Masques of Ben Jonson in London and Stratford-upon-Avon, 1903–1912
- 3 The Edens of Reginald Buckley: Temples and Tetralogies at Bayreuth, Stratford and Glastonbury
- 4 ‘One of the Greatest Composers the World has ever seen’: Vaughan Williams and the Purcell Revival
- 5 ‘What About an English Ballet?’ Edward Gordon Craig, Music-Theatre and Cupid and Psyche
- 6 Alice Shortcake, Jenny Pluckpears and the Stratford-Upon-Avon Connections of Sir John in Love
- 7 Bringing in the May: Alice Gomme, Cecil Sharp and Ralph Vaughan Williams at the Crystal Palace
- 8 Vaughan Williams, the Romany Ryes and the Cambridge Ritualists
- APPENDICES
- SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
- INDEX OF NAMES
- INDEX OF TOPICS
5 - ‘What About an English Ballet?’ Edward Gordon Craig, Music-Theatre and Cupid and Psyche
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 September 2014
- Frontmatter
- Dedications
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- List of Musical Examples
- Preface with Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- INTRODUCTION
- 1 Books to Make a Traveller of Thee: Pilgrims, Vagabonds and the Monodramas of Vaughan Williams
- 2 A Quarry for Profitable Working: Staging the Masques of Ben Jonson in London and Stratford-upon-Avon, 1903–1912
- 3 The Edens of Reginald Buckley: Temples and Tetralogies at Bayreuth, Stratford and Glastonbury
- 4 ‘One of the Greatest Composers the World has ever seen’: Vaughan Williams and the Purcell Revival
- 5 ‘What About an English Ballet?’ Edward Gordon Craig, Music-Theatre and Cupid and Psyche
- 6 Alice Shortcake, Jenny Pluckpears and the Stratford-Upon-Avon Connections of Sir John in Love
- 7 Bringing in the May: Alice Gomme, Cecil Sharp and Ralph Vaughan Williams at the Crystal Palace
- 8 Vaughan Williams, the Romany Ryes and the Cambridge Ritualists
- APPENDICES
- SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
- INDEX OF NAMES
- INDEX OF TOPICS
Summary
It is late February 1913, and in London five men are planning a ballet. They meet in various grand hotels close to the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, where Sergei Diaghilev's company, the Ballets Russes, is mounting a season. Two men out of the five, Diaghilev himself and the dancer Vaslav Nijinsky, are staying at the Savoy. A third, the German Count Harry Kessler, patron of avant-garde artists and engineer of collaborations between them, is at the Cecil. The other two planners have deeper London roots. The theatre artist Edward Gordon Craig, though he has been based in Italy for the last seven years, visits London quite often and is currently in town in connection with a School for the Art of the Theatre he wants to set up, while the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams actually lives all the year round in Chelsea. Between 17 and 27 February, the five men meet twice as a plenary quintet and several times in smaller groups; and it is the final meeting at the Carlton Hotel, with Diaghilev, Kessler, Craig and Vaughan Williams taking a late supper together, that is the crucial one.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Masques, Mayings and Music-DramasVaughan Williams and the Early Twentieth-Century Stage, pp. 165 - 221Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2014