Latest news with #BuxtonInternationalFestival
The Guardian
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Michael Harper obituary
My husband, Michael Harper, who has died aged 61 after health problems including sarcoidosis and a collapsed lung, was an accomplished countertenor with an exceptionally beautiful voice. After a stage career in Europe and Asia, in 2019 he became professor of singing at the Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM) in Manchester. Michael was born in Petersburg, Virginia, the son of Ruth (nee Williams) and Robert Harper, who separated when he was a child. Michael was brought up by his mother, a hospital care assistant, and he studied at Virginia Commonwealth University before completing postgraduate and doctoral studies at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. In 1994 he moved to Britain, partly motivated by its reputation for a varied music scene, and studied at the Mayer-Lismann Opera Centre. It was a perfect destination for a young countertenor to grow and hone his craft, and his roles went on to include the Waiter in The Waiter's Revenge (Jigsaw Music Theatre, London, 1998); Flavio in Handel's opera of the same name for Neue Opernbühne Berlin (2001); and the Angel in Jonathan Dove's Tobias and the Angel with Highbury Opera Theatre at the Union Chapel, London, in 2012. Michael became involved in many other areas of the music world, working extensively as a vocal coach and teacher. He served as a trustee for the Buxton International festival, was a patron of the National Opera Studio's Diverse Voices programme to widen participation in opera, and featured in the 2022 Sky Arts television series Anyone Can Sing. Michael lent his talent and intellect to organisations including British Youth Opera, Den Norske Opera in Norway, the Pegasus Opera Company, English National Opera, the Royal Opera Studio and the WaterAid charity. As a teacher, he mentored and inspired students of all ages with an exacting and detailed approach coupled with great kindness. He was dedicated to promoting diversity in opera performance, and created the Williams-Howard prize in 2021 to promote the study and performance of arts songs by African-heritage composers. The prize – named after his grandfather, Chester Ambrose Williams, and his teacher, Helen Palmer Howard – was the culmination of his life's work. He worked to establish a repository of these songs in the RNCM library and fundraised to support the prize in perpetuity. Michael managed to retain the courtesy and bearing of an American southern gentleman, while becoming entirely and proudly British, combining a fierce intellect and erudition, strongly expressed political opinions and a great sense of fun. Above all he had an extraordinary ability to make connections with people in all parts of his life. People who met Michael found out quickly that he took a genuine and enduring interest in them and had a remarkable capacity to create friendships wherever he went. His happiest times were spent gardening, cooking and spending time at our home in Brittany. He is survived by me, his life partner since 1996 (we married in 2007), two brothers, Larry and Pierre, and a sister, Felicia.
Times
22-07-2025
- Automotive
- Times
Hunt looks a big figure now he's out of office
A surprise hit at the Buxton International Festival this year has been Jeremy Hunt. I was among a huge audience for an interview not only about the former chancellor's new book (Can We Be Great Again? — dubbed by one wag Can We Be a Bit Better Again?) but also about his life in politics. Modest, experienced, obviously capable, gently funny and courteous even about Liz Truss, whose economic mess he rescued us from, we may forget that though still quite young, Hunt has been culture secretary and health secretary, as well as foreign secretary and chancellor. When (he told us) he was on holiday abroad as a backbencher, and Downing Street telephoned to say the embattled Truss wanted to speak urgently to him, he assumed it was a hoax call and hung up. Literally everyone I've spoken to at Buxton who heard him was singing his praises. It made me think. Hunt, Hague, Balls, Osborne, Cameron, Milburn, Sunak, Blair, Major … these seem like big figures now that (as it were) they've gone. Were they really big — or did politics just get small? Being 75 and no Jeremy Clarkson I was bemused to be invited to drive a Polestar 2 for a fortnight — especially when they said I didn't need to write about it. But what the heck. So, for the record, it was fun. With a range of more than 300 miles I've been driving it all over the place; we already have an EV Fiat 500 which we love; and this latest experience convinces me that EVs are here to stay: solid, quiet, easy to drive, giddying acceleration … having now tried both a small electric runabout and a serene electric family saloon, there's no way now I'll ever go back to petrol engines. But (and it's a big but) please, please, Polestar, Tesla, all of you EV designers, stop asking us to use a tablet screen for our controls. If we want to play computer games we can do that in a lay-by, not at 70mph in the fast lane. It took both of us about 20 minutes to work out the in-car climate controls. Away with screens! Buttons, levers, knobs, things you push, pull, slide or twist while keeping your eyes on the road are so much more intuitive. Using smartphones when driving was criminalised for a reason. My favourite musical experience so far at Buxton has been the 'Shorts' evening: first performances of four 20-minute operas from young composers. And of these my favourite was the last, from Thanda Gumede: Tears Are Not Meant to Stay Inside, sung mostly in Zulu. I could even understand bits of the libretto without the surtitles. This was brilliant: African-influenced classical music, beautifully sung. A young black woman, isolated and lonely in the city, seeks help from what we once called a witchdoctor but now more accurately call a traditional healer who, helped by a bag of bones and relics, connects her with the world of spirits and ancestors. Connecting out, she also connects within, and is liberated. Moved as I was, I disagreed with the moral of the story. I believe that in tribal African cultures the chain of authority, the links between authority and the supernatural, the hierarchy mediating any individual's relations with the supernatural, and the fear, the cursing as well as the blessing that glues the system together, crushes the individual and incubates a collective cringe that goes with the grain of the Big Man politics poisoning Africa. But that's just my opinion; Gumede's opera, and the wonderful voices of Roberta Philip, Danielle Mahailet and Themba Mvula made me think — and, perhaps more important — made us feel. At Buxton I enjoyed too a work by a young Leonard Bernstein, Trouble in Tahiti, set around 1950. I all but detected an early draft of There's a Place for Us from West Side Story. But a thought on the visual scene. Formica table; two-piece grey suit and tie, short-back-and-sides for the husband; colourful frock for the wife. You could time-travel that scene to 2025 and the dislocation would be noticeable only at the margins. Over what other leap in our history (1875 to 1950? 1815 to 1890?) could you, with so little adjustment, update a scene by three quarters of a century?
