NEWCASTLE'S MUSICAL HERITAGE AN INTRODUCTION By ...

occasional visits of the Carl Rosa Opera Co. They had been doing a worthy job
since the 19 th century, touring opera productions around provincial towns, but it
has to be said that by the 1950s their standard was very much second rate.
Having said that during their 1952 Season at the Theatre Royal they treated the
Newcastle opera lover to some of the most exciting singing the town had ever
heard, when a young Maltese singer, Oreste Kirkop, appeared briefly with the
company on his way up the operatic ladder. He was everything the stock
company tenors were not: young, good looking, energetic, exciting and with a
beautiful voice that rang out on the top notes. He was a passionate Cavaradossi
in ‘Tosca’ and ably accompanied in the leading role by Victoria Sladen, but it was
in Rigoletto that he was perfectly matched with one of the most beautiful
coloratura voices of the time, the diminutive Gwen Catley. Oreste Kirkop, alas!
chose the short cut to fame and ended up in Hollywood where he was for a brief
period heralded as the successor to Mario Lanza, but he was soon to fade from
the picture and into operatic oblivion. Two years earlier, in 1950, the British
dancer, Anton Dolin, had appeared at the Theatre Royal in what was described
as a Ballet Gala. The music danced to was Les Sylphides (Chopin), Le Beau
Danube (Strauss) and the one act version of the Nutcracker Ballet by
Tchaikovsky, which comprised mainly the music from the second act of the
ballet. However the tour de force was Dolin’s solo performance of Ravel’s Bolero.
The curtain parted to reveal a crouched figure bathed in a spotlight on a stage in
total darkness and perfect silence. The music, almost imperceptible at first,
began with the tap tap of the drum and in the course of the next twelve minutes
or so both dancer and orchestra rose to a nerve tingling climax before collapsing
in a discordant heap to the deafening sound of applause. Dolin deserved all
‘Sixes’ for his performance, but that was reserved for Torvell and Dean, who
many years later performed the same dramatic scenario on ice to even greater
effect.
From this brief account of some of the highlights of the early 1950s concert
and theatre scene it would be easy to assume that the town was well catered for
when it came to live music and yet, to have lived through this period was to find it
rather dull and easily conclude that Newcastle was a bit of a cultural desert. This
was largely due to the feeling that, on the one hand, little emphasis was being
given locally to raising cultural standards and, on the other, that a
disproportionate emphasis appeared to be placed, by the town, on other activities
and pursuits that served only to bring it into disrepute. There seemed to be total
disregard for anything of a cultural nature and life was spent in the pursuit of
enjoyment. The occasional classical event at the City Hall served only to raise
expectations and increase dissatisfaction at one and the same time. It raised the
same old question time and time again - Why should Newcastle have to rely on
outsiders for its regular doses of musical culture and what prevented it from
having an orchestra of its own There was the feeling that Newcastle had no
musical history of its own, yet half a century earlier, the town could have
considered itself musically to be on almost equal terms with other larger
provincial towns, before a combination of circumstances hastened its
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