Audio Play - Emily Butter - Deryck Guyler - Marjorie Westbury - Hugh Burden - Frank Duncan

Описание: Audio Play - Emily Butter - Deryck Guyler - Marjorie Westbury - Hugh Burden - Frank Duncan

Hilda Tablet is a fictitious "twelve-tone composeress" created by Henry Reed in a series of radio comedy plays for the British Broadcasting Corporation's Third Programme. Hilda is the inventor of musique concrète renforcée (literally, "reinforced concrete music"), and the composer of the all-female opera Emily Butter set in a department store.

She first appeared in the play A Very Great Man Indeed where the central character and narrator is the scholar, Herbert Reeve, played by Hugh Burden. Reeve plans to write a biography of the novelist Richard Shewin, and interviews various friends and relatives of the deceased author.

Reed became intrigued by the character of Hilda and subsequently wrote a sequel The Private Life of Hilda Tablet in which Reeve is bullied into undertaking the biography in "not more than twelve volumes" of Hilda. Five further episodes followed. Hilda Tablet was played by Mary O'Farrell.

The principal models for Hilda were Dame Ethel Smyth (from whom Hilda took her lesbianism and rural heartiness together with the endlessness of her proposed memoirs), and Elisabeth Lutyens, with whom Reed was acquainted, from whom Hilda took her interest in the macabre and obsession with architecture.
An Occasion Recalled

The occasion is the first performance of Hilda Tablet 's opera at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden

The music realised by Donald Swann

Orchestrations realised by Max Saunders

The words realised by Henry Reed and Characters in the Opera:

A section of the London Symphony Orchestra Conduct of the orchestra by Patrick Savill

The production suddenly realised by Douglas Cleverdon

Hilda Tablet, a composeress: Mary O'Farrell
Herbert Reeve, a scholar: Hugh Burden
Harold Reith, a librettist: Frank Duncan
Elsa Strauss, a singer: Marjorie Westbury
Gabriel Hall-Pollock, a critic: Deryck Guyler
Male Commentator: Leonard Sachs
Female Commentator: Betty Hardy
The Narrator of the Plot: Michael Flanders
The Duke and Duchess of Mulset: Frank Duncan
The Duke and Duchess of Mulset: Diana Maddox
Emily Butter: Marjorie Westbury
Clara Taggart: Anna Pollak
Helen Sparge: Marion Studholme
Elizabeth Thwaite: Rose Hill
Catharine Slot: Scott Joynt
Mrs Wetherall: Lily Kettlewell
Marilyn: Diana Maddox
Dorothy: Glenice Halliday

And included (among others): Denis Quilley, Leonard Sachs, Michael Flanders, Norman Shelley and Rose Hill.

First broadcast: Tue 14th Dec 1954, 21:15 on Third Programme


The other Hilda Tablet plays are:
A Very Great Man Indeed (7 September 1953)
The Private Life of Hilda Tablet (24 May 1954)
Emily Butter (14 November 1954)
A Hedge, Backwards (29 February 1956)
The Primal Scene, As It Were (11 March 1958)
Not a Drum Was Heard (6 May 1959)
Musique Discrète (27 October 1959)

Regular Casts
Hugh Burden as Herbert Reeve
Mary O'Farrell as Hilda Tablet
Marjorie Westbury as Elsa Strauss
Carleton Hobbs as Stephen Shewin
Deryck Guyler as General Gland
And included (among others): Denis Quilley, Leonard Sachs, Michael Flanders, Norman Shelley and Rose Hill.

Hilda's music, and the pop-songs of Owen Shewin, were created for the series by Donald Swann.

All seven plays were produced by Douglas Cleverdon.