William Bridges-Adams (1 March 1889 – 17 August 1965) was an English theatre director and designer, associated closely with the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, from 1919 until 1934.
William Bridges-Adams (1 March 1889 – 17 August 1965) was an English theatre director and designer, associated closely with the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, from 1919 until 1934.
William Bridges-Adams was born in Harrow, England, the only son of Walter Bridges Adams, tutor, and his wife, Mary Jane née Daltry (1854–1939) [1] and grandson of the author and inventor William Bridges Adams. He was educated at Bedales School and Worcester College, Oxford. [2]
At Oxford, Bridges-Adams joined the Oxford University Dramatic Society and played the leading roles of Leontes in The Winter's Tale and Prospero in The Tempest , but his talent for direction and design was already leading him from acting to a backstage role. He staged two operas for Sir Hugh Allen, and directed the Oxford millenary pageant. [1] His design was influenced by the Post-Impressionists and by personal contacts with Charles Ricketts and Charles Shannon. [1]
After Oxford, Bridges-Adams began working in the professional theatre in 1911 under the managements of Laurence Irving, William Poel, Nugent Monck, Harley Granville-Barker and George Alexander. During this period Bridges-Adams occasionally worked as an actor, but more usually as a director and as a designer for other directors' productions. His first London production was in 1912 (a play called Job, for the Norwich Players), [3] a company he continued to work with alongside Monck for several years. He became producer for the Bristol Old Vic repertory seasons, 1914–1915, and the Playhouse Theatre, Liverpool, 1916–1917. [4] His designs for stage scenery included The Loving Heart at the New Theatre in 1918 ("Quite the happiest feature of the production is Mr Bridges-Adams's scenery," said The Times ) [5] and no fewer than nine Gilbert and Sullivan operas for the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, beginning with The Gondoliers (second act), Patience , Iolanthe , The Sorcerer, The Pirates of Penzance, Princess Ida, The Mikado, The Yeomen of the Guard , and all in 1919, [6] and Ruddigore (1921). [7]
In 1919, Bridges-Adams was appointed director of the Stratford-on-Avon Festival in succession to Sir Frank Benson. There were doubts about the continuing viability of the festival, and Bridges-Adams realised that changes and new ideas would be necessary. He threw himself into the task with great enthusiasm. [2] His ambition was to win for Stratford an international status on a par with that of the Salzburg Festival. He secured the services of Theodore Komisarjevsky to direct The Merchant of Venice and Macbeth , and he himself produced 29 of Shakespeare's plays between 1919 and his retirement in 1934. [2] Unusually for the times, in which the production of Shakespeare's plays was heavily cut in the style of William Poel and Nugent Monck, he presented the plays without cuts in the text, thereby earning the nickname 'Mr Unabridges-Adams'. [1]
The original Memorial Theatre at Stratford was gutted by a disastrous fire in March 1926. Bridges-Adams' design for the stage layout of the replacement theatre (now the Royal Shakespeare Theatre) was followed by architect Elisabeth Scott when the new theatre was built in 1932. [8]
In 1934 he resigned as director of the festival. The Times, in its obituary notice states, possibly tactfully, that he felt new blood was needed, but the Dictionary of National Biography states that he was frustrated by the governors' failure to back him in his attempts to gain an international status for the theatre with more guest directors of international repute. [1] [2]
In 1936 Bridges-Adams directed Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex at Covent Garden, and he was appointed to the council of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and to the building advisory committee for the National Theatre. From 1937 to 1944 he worked as dramatic adviser to the British Council, promoting foreign tours of British works by British stage companies. [2]
His publications include: The Shakespeare Country, 1932; The British Theatre, 1944; Looking at a Play, 1947; The Lost Leader, 1954; The Irresistible Theatre, 1957; To Charlotte While Shaving (verse), 1957; and, posthumously, a collection of his letters edited by Robert Speaight, 1971. [1]
William Bridges-Adams died at his home in Bantry, Ireland, aged 76, and was buried in the Abbey cemetery at Bantry.
Iolanthe; or, The Peer and the Peri is a comic opera with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert, first performed in 1882. It is one of the Savoy operas and is the seventh of fourteen operatic collaborations by Gilbert and Sullivan. In the opera, the fairy Iolanthe has been banished from fairyland because she married a mortal; this is forbidden by fairy law. Her son, Strephon, is an Arcadian shepherd who wants to marry Phyllis, a Ward of Chancery. All the members of the House of Peers also want to marry Phyllis. When Phyllis sees Strephon hugging a young woman, she assumes the worst and sets off a climactic confrontation between the peers and the fairies. The opera satirises many aspects of British government, law and society. The confrontation between the fairies and the peers is a version of one of Gilbert's favourite themes: a tranquil civilisation of women is disrupted by a male-dominated world through the discovery of mortal love.
Savoy opera was a style of comic opera that developed in Victorian England in the late 19th century, with W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan as the original and most successful practitioners. The name is derived from the Savoy Theatre, which impresario Richard D'Oyly Carte built to house the Gilbert and Sullivan pieces, and later those by other composer–librettist teams. The great bulk of the non-G&S Savoy Operas either failed to achieve a foothold in the standard repertory, or have faded over the years, leaving the term "Savoy Opera" as practically synonymous with Gilbert and Sullivan. The Savoy operas were seminal influences on the creation of the modern musical.
The Savoy Theatre is a West End theatre in the Strand in the City of Westminster, London, England. The theatre was designed by C. J. Phipps for Richard D'Oyly Carte and opened on 10 October 1881 on a site previously occupied by the Savoy Palace. Its intended purpose was to showcase the popular series of comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan, which became known as the Savoy operas.
Sir William Tyrone Guthrie was an English theatrical director instrumental in the founding of the Stratford Festival of Canada, the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and the Tyrone Guthrie Centre at his family's ancestral home, Annaghmakerrig, near Newbliss in County Monaghan, Ireland. He is famous for his original approach to Shakespearean and modern drama.
Peter Pratt was an English actor and singer. He was best known for his comic roles in the Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas.
Walter Nugent Monck CBE (1878–1958) was an English theatre director and founder of Maddermarket Theatre, Norwich.
Alfred Cellier was an English composer, orchestrator and conductor.
The D'Oyly Carte Opera Company is a professional British light opera company that, from the 1870s until 1982, staged Gilbert and Sullivan's Savoy operas nearly year-round in the UK and sometimes toured in Europe, North America and elsewhere. The company was revived for short seasons and tours from 1988 to 2003, and since 2013 it has co-produced four of the operas with Scottish Opera.
Richard Barker Cobb Temple was an English opera singer, actor and stage director, best known for his performances in the bass-baritone roles in the famous series of Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas.
Kenneth Sandford was an English singer and actor, best known for his performances in baritone roles of the Savoy Operas of Gilbert and Sullivan.
Charles Herbert Workman was a singer and actor best known as a successor to George Grossmith in the comic baritone roles in Gilbert and Sullivan operas. He was variously credited as Charles H. Workman, C. Herbert Workman and C. H. Workman.
Charles Donald Adams was an English opera singer and actor, best known for his performances in bass-baritone roles of the Savoy operas with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company and his own company, Gilbert and Sullivan for All.
Thomas Round was an English opera singer and actor, best known for his performances in the leading tenor roles of the Savoy Operas and grand opera.
John Ayldon was an English opera singer and comic actor, best known for his performances in bass-baritone roles of the Savoy Operas with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company.
Grahame Clifford, was an English singer and actor, known for comic parts in the Gilbert and Sullivan operas and in character roles for the Royal Opera Company, Covent Garden.
Charles Eric Goulding was a British operatic tenor and actor best known for his performances with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company in the Gilbert and Sullivan repertory.
Julia Gwynne was an English opera singer and actress best remembered for her performances with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company from 1879 to 1883. She married producer George Edwardes.
Gilbert and Sullivan for All was a touring concert and opera company, formed in 1963 by D'Oyly Carte Opera Company performers Thomas Round and Donald Adams and former director Norman Meadmore, and which exclusively performed the works of Gilbert and Sullivan, usually in concert, but sometimes giving full productions. They also recorded most of the Savoy operas both on video and audio. They continued to tour into the 1980s, occasionally reuniting for performances thereafter.
Michael Heyland is an actor and retired director, and an arts and events consultant in England. He was Director of Productions of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company from 1969 to 1978. Later, he was an arts and events consultant for many organizations and managed the Royal Choral Society for sixteen years, among other projects. As an actor and voice actor, he has appeared on radio, TV and in films.
Joseph William Herbert was a British-born American director, silent-film actor, singer and dramatist notable for being the first person to play Ko-Ko in America in a pirate production of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado (1885) before joining D'Oyly Carte Opera Company touring companies across America (1885–1890).
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