Grace Williams - The Parlour (Bryan Balkwill)

Information

Composer: Grace Williams

• The Parlour

Edith Coates; Edward Byles; Noreen Berry

Anne Pashley; Janet Hughes; Jean Allister

David Lennox; John Gibbs; Marian Evans

Welsh National Opera Chorus

City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra

Bryan Balkwill, conductor

Date: 1966 / 2025

Label: Lyrita

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In 1959, Grace Williams was commissioned by the Arts Council’s Welsh Committee to compose a one-act opera, fulfilling a long-held ambition. She based the libretto on Guy de Maupassant’s satirical short story En Famille, adapting and expanding it herself for the stage. Retitled The Parlour, the opera shifts the setting from the banks of the Seine to the living room of a house in a Victorian seaside town. The plot humorously exposes family greed after the apparent death of a difficult matriarch. Structured in two scenes with a short interlude and set during a summer day in 1870, the work demonstrates Williams’s natural theatrical instincts and skill in vivid character portrayal.

Grace Williams (1906–1977) was a prominent Welsh composer known for her significant contributions to orchestral, vocal, and stage music. Born in Barry near Cardiff, she showed early musical talent, studying piano and violin before receiving the Morfydd Owen scholarship to Cardiff University in 1923. She later continued her training at the Royal College of Music in London under Gordon Jacob and Ralph Vaughan Williams. Widely regarded as one of Wales’s finest composers, Williams wrote two symphonies—including the first symphony by a Welsh composer—a mass, an opera, chamber and orchestral works, and notable vocal music. In 1949 she became the first British woman to score a feature film, with Blue Scar. Her music often reflects the landscapes and changing moods of the Welsh coast.

Bryan Balkwill (1922–2007) was an English orchestral and opera conductor. Born in London, he studied piano from an early age, attended Merchant Taylors’ School, and later won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music. After serving in Italy during the Second World War, he began his career as répétiteur and assistant conductor with the New London Opera Company. Balkwill later held important roles at Glyndebourne Festival Opera, the London Festival Ballet, and the Arts Council’s Opera for All programme. He served as resident conductor at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and music director of Welsh National Opera. In a later freelance career he conducted major orchestras internationally and taught at Indiana University, while collaborating with renowned singers such as Joan Sutherland and Peter Pears.

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