'Hugh the Drover'
- 6d
- 9 min read
After a brief hiatus, I had intended my next Blog to be a return to Michael Raucheisen’s ‘Lied der Welt’ project, and a consideration of the songs of Max Reger. Before I do that however, I must allow freedom to a few bees in my bonnet concerning Ralph Vaughan Williams ‘ opera ‘Hugh the Drover’. This seems to me to be an appallingly, and unfairly, neglected work. I hope my brief words below will encourage you to give it a hearing. As is so often the case, I am initially beholden to Wikipedia for the following:
Hugh the Drover (or Love in the Stocks) is an opera in two acts by Ralph Vaughan Williams to an original English libretto by Harold Child. The work has set numbers with recitatives. It has been described as a modern example of a ballad opera.[1] Contemporary comment noted the use of humour and the role of the chorus in the work, in the context of developing English opera.[2]
According to Michael Kennedy, the composer took first inspiration for the opera from this question to Bruce Richmond, editor of The Times Literary Supplement, around 1909–1910:
"I want to set a prize fight to music. Can you find someone to make a libretto for me?"
Vaughan Williams worked on the opera for a number of years, before and after World War I. The work did not receive its first performance until 4 July 1924 at the Royal College of Music, London, in performances described as "private dress rehearsals". The "professional premiere" was at His Majesty's Theatre, London, on 14 July 1924. On 26 and 27 March 1926, a condensed version of the opera was performed by pupils at Caterham School, and Vaughan Williams was in attendance. The Times reported that "that the sincerity of the whole performance had shown him the points at which the music itself lacked sincerity." The opera's first performance in the United States took place on 21 February 1928 under the auspices of the Washington National Opera, a semi-professional company not related to its present namesake. Tudor Davies created the role of Hugh in both these productions.
The opera was performed by the professional Canadian Opera Company in Toronto in November 1929, at the Royal Alexandra Theatre in Toronto, with a live radio broadcast from the Royal York Hotel on 13 November 1929. In the broadcast, hockey broadcaster Foster Hewitt provided narrative for the fight sequence. These Toronto performances were conducted by Sir Ernest MacMillan, music director of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra from 1931 to 1955 and featured American tenor Allan Jones in the title role of Hugh. Jones would soon become a Hollywood star. Vaughan Williams continued to revise the libretto and the opera over the remainder of his life. The final version was performed in 1956 and published in 1959.
A few interesting facts emerge here. Who would have though RVW would have had any interest in prize fighting?! The performance at Caterham School would have been interesting. The music of ‘Hugh the Drover’ is not particularly taxing for competent professionals, but it would have been a stretch for schoolboys, particularly as they sang the female roles as well, with the exception of Aunt Jane, who was sung by the School nurse. It is also fascinating to think of Allan Jones singing Hugh, but he had a conventional classical career (recording the Evangelist in Bach’s ‘Matthew Passion’ for example) before going on to Hollywood and international stardom.
It is a source of frustration to me that English National Opera have performed three RVW operas, but not ‘Hugh’. At first glance it seems highly suitable. It has a large cast, including some rewarding principal roles, and there is a lot of chorus work. A good deal of the music is immediately attractive and displays many contrasting moods. It is true that RVW’s inspiration is not entirely consistent, but given how good most of the music is, it is strange that our national opera company has ignored a major work by a major British composer particularly as some of the themes are distinctly modern. Mary, the heroine, is expected to marry John the Butcher but she is afraid of him: he is rough and violent. As for Hugh, he is part of the alternative society, living perpetually ‘off grid’ if you like, an ecologist and lover of nature. He has a spiritual side that John lacks and this is one of the things that attracts Mary.
Before going any further, here is a brief synopsis:
The action of the opera takes place during the period of the Napoleonic Wars, in a small village community in the Cotswolds in Gloucestershire - the part of the country where the composer grew up.
The local people have congregated for a fair, at which various hucksters and tradesmen offer their wares. John, the prosperous local butcher, is engaged to Mary, who views the prospect with dread. Hugh arrives, a stranger to the area, who has brought animals to the fair. He falls for Mary immediately, and she finds him attractive. A prize-fight contest is to be held, with John, the local champion, challenging all-comers. The prize on offer is £20. None of the men shows any enthusiasm for this until Hugh volunteers to take up the challenge. To everyone's surprise, he wins, but John immediately suggests he must be a French spy. He is arrested and put in the stocks pending further investigation.
As dawn breaks, Mary comes to release Hugh, having purloined her father's keys. They are unable to leave before other villagers arrive, fresh from Mayday celebrations. Hugh hides her under his cloak and accepts the likelihood that he will be executed. By the time her father and aunt arrive - her absence having been discovered - she has locked herself in the stocks next to Hugh, and refuses to be released. She is disowned by her father and by John. When the troop of soldiers arrive to arrest Hugh, he is recognized by the sergeant as an old friend who is most certainly not a French spy. The tables are turned on John, who is now pressed into the army. Mary decides to join Hugh for a life on the road, and they leave the village
Both commercial recordings of the work have admirable elements, which I shall detail below, but they both suffer from the same crucial defect: the Hugh is to varying extents miscast. Robert Tear, for Sir Charles Groves on EMI, sounds too cerebral, too refined, although his performance is always committed and serious. Bonaventura Bottone for Matthew Best on Hyperion has entirely the wrong voice and sounds seriously underpowered, beautiful though some of his lyrical singing can be. Tudor Davies on what is described as the ‘original cast’ recording of 1924 sounds far more robust and rugged – his portrayal has real character. Also characterful, and even better sung, is James Johnson in his 1949 account of ‘Hugh’s Song of the Road’. This really is a fantastic bit of singing and it is very sad he did not record more of the role. He sang the part at Sadler’s Wells in 1950 so maybe a pirate recording will surface one day. Jon Vickers is another tenor who only recorded this single aria. His version, recorded at a live recital with piano accompaniment, is a tantalising hint at what might have been if he had recorded the whole role. The heroic build of Vicker’s voice is telling but he also lightens his tone in the lyrical passage beginning ‘Heart beats, heart beats, all the world is sleeping…’. This is a unique and wonderful performance. John Mitchinson had what the Germans would describe as ‘heldentenortendiert’ (heroic tenor tendency) and his recording of the complete opera from 1970 (broadcast by the BBC in 1972) is generally more successful than Tear’s or Bottone’s. He is rugged, but can also be refined, even if his vibrato can be obtrusive. I have this valuable performance in a recording distributed by the Oriel Music Trust and it is well worth seeking out.
As I have implied. ‘Hugh’s Song of the Road’ is the best known part of the opera, and is worth considering in some detail. The tempo marking is Allegro moderato and RVW adds the direction ‘at a trotting tempo’. This would suggest something fairly brisk but controlled, although the text is rather more dynamic: ‘Horse-hoofs, horse-hoofs, thunder down the valleys/Foaming manes and tossing tails/Strength and speed and fire.’ This leads Vickers to adopt a tempo closer to Allegro molto, which is exciting but a touch frenetic. It is better to keep a controlled tempo and let clear, well coloured diction add the extra verve. As the aria progresses, Hugh’s celebration of life on the road, becomes more directed at Mary: ‘Horse-hoofs, horse-hoofs, coming passing by/Do they call you in the noonday when the blood runs high?’. The language becomes more passionate, more sensual
Campfires, campfires, now the west is glowing,
Send the ruddy smoke up to greet the brightening moon.
Not a roof to shield your head from free winds blowing,
Not a wall to deaden the waters lulling tune.
Cooking around the campfires, busy sounds and cheery,
Meat and drink for belly, and the clinging turf for side.
Oh! to stretch your length when your back and bones a weary.
Dewy sleep on closing eyes from heavens open wide.
Campfires, campfires, ruddy in the gloom.
Do they call you in the twilight from your sheltered room?
Mary joins in at this point: ‘O they call me in the twilight from my sheltered room.’
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The tempo relaxes and with a shift into the major the music becomes more intimate. The song of the road has become a song of love:
All the scented night breathes of beauty and of loving
 Heart beats answer with a broken cry,
Calling for a bride with courage to go roving;
To dare the world for love beneath the open sky.
Heartbeats, heartbeats throbbing for the bride.
Do they call you in the midnight to a strong man's side?
Mary’s response is clear and passionate:
O they call me in the midnight for a strong man’s bride
There now follows a love duet, which emotionally, if not musically, recalls ‘Tristan and Isolde’. In my experience, no other British composer has written such convincing and moving love music between a man and a woman.
Up to this point, RVW’s musical inspiration has been white hot, but with the prize-fight between Hugh and John the Butcher, the temperature drops and we are emotionally and socially akin to spectators at a public school rugger match which just happens to be called by another name. Following Hugh’s victory, his denunciation as a French spy seems perfunctory and the close of Act 1 is something of an anti-climax.
Act 2 is perhaps not as memorable as Act 1 but there is still much to admire. The ‘night music’ of the opening is suitably haunting and there is a poignant juxtaposition between the condemned Hugh’s noble heartbreak at the thought of leaving Mary to endure a life with John the Butcher and the latter’s callous mockery of Hugh in the stocks. Mary’s releasing of Hugh from the stocks is tenderly done and the Constable’s disowning of his daughter and John’s brutal reaction to this is genuinely shocking:
A trollop from the stocks is no fit wife for me.
My decency, it shocks, to think such trolls can be.
That would be a pretty thing, the baggage is so common.
To ask a wedding ring, like any honest woman.
But when this vagabond is rotting underground,
She will find me very fond, while a year or two go round.
So since she's lost her fame, I'll make a generous offer.
I’ll lend her my good name, until I'm tired of her.
The appearance of the Serjeant as deus ex machina has an element of farce as he reveals Hugh to be a loyal friend of his majesty, but there is no cloying happily ever after ending. Mary rejects her family and friends to go with Hugh, and her Aunt Jane is devastated and bereft. The final farewells of the villagers are muted and regretful.
Of the two commercial recordings, I find the 1978 Charles Groves’ recording far preferable. As I’ve mentioned, neither Hugh is ideal, but Robert Tear is more successful. There is little to choose between the two Johns. Michael Rippon’s darker baritone for Groves, suggests the violence of the butcher’s character rather better than Alan Opie’s more elegant voice for Matthew Best, but Rippon sometimes distorts the vocal line for dramatic effect, which can be wearing. Both Marys, Sheila Armstrong for Groves and Rebecca Evans for Best, are excellent and Aunt Jane receives a superb performance both from Helen Watts (Groves), and Sarah Walker (Best). The smaller roles are generally better done on the EMI recording (Terence Sharpe being especially fine as the Showman, singing the splendid folk song inspired ‘Cold blows the wind on Cotsall’). Chorus and orchestra are also superior. What finally clinches it for me is that Best’s comprimario singers often adopt a ‘mummerset’ style accent which is condescending, distracting, and precisely the reverse of what RVW wanted.
A final word regarding the libretto. Michael Kennedy, Elgar and RVW expert is rather dismissive of Harold Child’s efforts in his booklet notes for Hyperion, but I hope I have quoted enough to indicate that much of what Child writes is effective, and, at times, very moving. It is true that RVW seems to have had some reservations during the opera’s composition and he needed to write to placate Child who obviously took offence at some of the composer’s suggestions. This is a frustrating correspondence as only RVW’s part of it survives.
I hope that a more definitive recording of ‘Hugh’ might be made. The title role might very well suit Alan Clayton, Nicky Spence or John Findon. In the meantime, do listen to the opera if you don’t already know it; there are some lovely things to be discovered.
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