What would you do if you inherited a stately home? Bamber Gascoigne had an opera house built in the garden. Jane McGowan finds the West Horsley project in half-dress rehearsal
Grange Park Opera House under construction
Back in 2014, former University Challenge presenter Bamber Gascoigne was given the sad news that his great aunt Mary, Duchess of Roxburghe, had passed away. So when, the following week, he was summoned to his solicitor’s office, the 82-year-old author and broadcaster presumed that he was about to become executor of her will.
Not so. In fact, he had just inherited her house. And not some old soulless semi either. On the contrary, West Horsley Place is an enchanting though crumbling pile, set in 300 acres of stunning Surrey countryside between Leatherhead and Guildford.
It was a bolt from the blue. At that stage, admits Gascoigne, he had never even been upstairs in the 50-room manor house that his great-aunt affectionately termed ‘the cottage’.
And the surprises didn’t end there. In March 2015, the new owner was approached by a small group of trustees from the Grange Park Opera Company (GPO) – a theatrical enterprise famed for its summer opera seasons at Grange Park, another stately pile in Hampshire.
Over coffee and biscuits, the trustees told Gascoigne about the imminent closure of their venue, before politely enquiring if he would consider allowing them to build an opera house in what was effectively his new back garden. It took Gascoigne and his wife Christina at least a second before replying with a resounding ‘yes’.
What followed was a frantic scramble to create a fully-fledged, 700-seater opera house that would be ready by June of this year, forestalling the need for the company to miss a summer season. And, of course, there was the small matter of raising £10m to fund it.
Leading the charge was Wasfi Kani OBE, the straight-talking, no-nonsense founding director of GPO. Once they had the okay from the Gascoigne family, she tells me, she never doubted that the future Theatre in the Woods would evolve from a dream into reality.
Robert Workman Robert Workman Photographer
Wasfi Kani
Wasfi Kani
“We have a great team,” she declares, guiding me across the dry mounds of mud that surround the drum-shaped structure. It is less than 12 months since the transformation from woodland to theatre began, and although it’s already late April – just over a month to opening night – Kani is thrilled with the progress thus far.
“This time last year, this was all trees,” she says, as the diggers roll past. “We’ve done remarkably well.”
But will it really be ready on time?
“Have you ever built a house?” asks Kani in swift reply.
Truth to tell, I had not.
But Kani had, the first time when she was just 27. People who haven’t been through the process, she informs me, often struggle to understand how quickly a butterfly can emerge from the chrysalis of a virtual shell.
And the 61-year-old accomplished conductor knew immediately whom she wanted for the job. Top of her list was builder Martin Smith, who had worked on the old Hampshire theatre. Kani trusts his taste completely, she says, “even down to letting him choose the colour of the paint”. Embarking upon this project without him would have been unthinkable.
“I stood on the stage at one of our final performances in Hampshire, looked out at the audience and said: ‘Somewhere here is the man who is going to build our new theatre.’ Martin’s answer came out of the darkness: ‘In my head, it’s already built.’ Which was just what I needed to hear.”
Thanks to the expertise of Smith and veteran architect David Lloyd Jones, the Theatre in the Woods really will be a wonder to behold. Set just beyond West Horsley Place’s ancient orchard, it is modelled on La Scala in Milan, complete with four-tiered, horseshoe auditorium.
The orchestra pit has been developed in consultation with several conductors to achieve the ultimate in sound quality. Curiously, however, it also serves as the final resting place for the late duchess, whose ashes have been buried in the foundations directly below the spot reserved on stage for the first violin.
Eeking out the £10m budget has, of course, been a challenge, but Kani has done all she can to curb the spend. In the auditorium, for example, most of the seats have come from the Hampshire venue, but on finding that they were several hundred short, Kani put out an all-friends call. Step forward Sir Cameron Mackintosh, legendary theatrical impresario, to donate 200 seats from the Victoria Palace Theatre, London, also in the process of refurbishment.
“We’ve saved money anywhere we could. That way we can have some of the things we really want, like gold leaf above the doors. I mean, you have to ask yourself: ‘How often do you build a theatre?’”
At the same time, the team has been at pains to ensure that the theatre will not detract from the main house, which is now in the care of the charitable Mary Roxburghe Trust, established by the Gascoignes to preserve and care for the estate.
The new venue will be accessed via the ramshackle, yet romantic-looking gates that pepper the perimeter of the walled garden. Visitors can make the most of the summer evenings by enjoying a picnic in the orchard or on the croquet lawn before curtain up. And, this being opera, there are several interval opportunities to pop out for fizz at the White Wisteria Champagne Bar on the west side of the house.
West Horsley Place
What about the music itself? Kani, who introduced the patrons down in Hampshire to the delights of musical theatre with two acclaimed productions – Oliver! and Fiddler on the Roof – has chosen to open her Surrey season with the much-loved Tosca, by Puccini. Star bass-baritone and GPO patron Sir Bryn Terfel CBE is also appearing, for an evening of opera and dance with ballerina Zenaida Yanowsky. Ticket sales should abound.
“We had to find £10m,” says Kani, “of which £1.75m had to come from ticket sales. So far we have sold £1.6m worth, so we’re nearly there.”
Those tickets are not cheap, but Kani is determined that the GPO will make opera exciting to Surrey residents.
“People are far too uptight about opera,” she says. “This site is so unusual; so romantic. I want people to stand in the sun, enjoy a picnic and then come in, sit down and just listen. There is no right or wrong to opera. Whatever you feel it is, that’s what it is.
“Life is more than just good food and clothes. It’s about what we experience. Opera is a way of feeling something; of getting in touch with our culture and humanity.”
All of which is a little hard to imagine on this April morning, as we stand amid the rubble, pipes and dust.
“We always knew that it wouldn’t be wholly finished by first night,” admits Kani. “But we’ll have all we need to put on a show. We may not have the back walls plastered, but now people will be able to say: ‘I came here when it was just a block wall.’ It’s interesting to see it like that.”
Not so much an unfinished symphony as an unfinished aria in brick.
- Tosca, from Grange Park Opera, runs from June 8 – July 2; Jenufa, June 11 – July 8; Bryn Terfel, June 16; Die Walküre, June 29 – July 15. Tickets from £70; grangeparkopera.co.uk
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