Published: 3 November, 2011
by SEBASTIAN TAYLOR

Highly enterprising Hampstead Garden Opera is taking to the stage with its largest-ever cast of nearly three dozen next week at Highgate’s Upstairs at the Gatehouse.

It’s putting on Vaughan Williams’s neglected ballad opera Hugh the Drover written before the First World War and rarely performed these days, and then only by amateur groups.

The work is set in a bustling Cotswolds town on May Day, 1810, and calls for Morris Dancers, an effigy of Napoleon, a prize-fight and wooden stocks as well as a string of soloists and chorus.

It’s a love story.

Hugh turns up in a village to save the local constable’s daughter, Mary, from an unwelcome marriage by defeating his rival in a boxing match, only to be accused of being a French spy and placed in the stocks.

Hugh gets out of the stocks after he’s hailed as a patriot by English soldiers.

The sweethearts leave the village and take to the open road.

Production director Angela Hardcastle and set/costume designer Charlie Tymms have set out to reproduce an accurate picture of English rural life in late-Georgian times.

“With its festive setting, fickle crowd and bare-knuckle fight between hero and villain, the composer and lyricist paint a colourful picture worthy of Rowlandson or Gillray,” says Angela Hardcastle.

“Taking my cue from the sprinkling of traditional folk songs woven into the score, I have added a dancing thread winding through the May Day celebrations as it would naturally have done at the time.”

Heroine Mary is being sung by Elaine Tate who won plaudits for her “sexy and spirited” portrayal of Semele in HGO’s production of Handel’s oratorio in the spring.

Hugh the Drover is being sung by Zachary Devin who sang Jupiter in the oratorio.

Being played is a chamber version of the Vaughan Williams score arranged by music director Oliver-John Ruthven.

• Ten performances between November 11 and 20. Matinées November 11 and 12, tickets £18/cons £16. All other performances £20/cons £18. 020 8340 3488