Friday 16 May 2014

great Hanoverian celebration

Hannover has put together a year of celebration of the Anglo-German house of Hanover, which embraced the Throne of Great Britain & Ireland in 1714... entitled:

ALS DIE ROYALS AUS HANNOVER KAMEN

As part of the grand opening of the five exhibitions on the subject in the Museums of Hannover, there was an entertainment at Hannover Staatsoper.

There were speeches from the Lower Saxony leader - Stephan Weil & from Her Majesty's Ambassador, Simon MacDonald; and much of the excellent Handel's Water Music was played by the Niedersächsische Stattorchester Hannover, wonderfully conducted by Anja Bihlmaier.

Then it was our turn; the script was written and performed by opera singer & writer Uwe Tobias Hieronimi, who ended up also playing William IV; of course we played Georges I, II, III & IV... (Mike, Steve, Richard, Mark - if you're interested! - yes, I am the fattest).
Quite the whole shooting match; crowns, capes and a throne on which we took turns!
We sang:
Song of the Weather (Flanders & Swan) in the excellent German translation we have from Maggie Forsythe; The Lambeth Walk (George I - Mike - finding English as if people were speaking backwards!; Our marvellous tea-making National Anthem - wonderful German words by Rainer Wallraf; In an English Country Garden - with splendid German text by the Forsyths...
...and then, joined by the orchestra, Horrible Histories terrific Born To Rule (Four Georges Song) & to cap it all:- Rule Britannia (with Tobias singing with us too!)

All glorious and fun... a delight as it always is to be accompanied by an orchestra - Anja was great too! Not to forget our Hannoverian guest pianist, Siegmund Weinmeister, who accompanied the weather and garden songs excellently.

Exhibitions and other events are here all summer... in fact we hear that a coach arrived at Buckingham Palace today, which echoed the journey of 16 days of George I those 300 years ago... (only this one had an actor in it!)

All organised splendidly - thank you especially Nicola and Ursula - and for Peter Martin Jacob for getting us here...

A privilege to part of it all...

No comments: