Welsh National Opera brings life of pioneering suffragette Lady Rhondda, Margaret Haig Thomas to the stage this summer in all-female music hall style production Rhondda Rips It Up!
- Original music hall style show goes on tour for WNO’s summer season
- New commission composed by Elena Langer with libretto by Emma Jenkins and featuring an all-female cast and creative team led by director Caroline Clegg and music director Nicola Rose
- Lesley Garrett stars as Master of Ceremonies (Emcee) and Madeleine Shaw as Lady Rhondda
- The show will premiere in Margaret Haig Thomas’s home town of Newport before touring Wales and England
- WNO will host a symposium in Newport on the challenges faced by women in the classical music world
- Tour will be accompanied by extensive programme of free community and youth projects on protest, rebellion and human rights and an ambitious digital project bringing Lady Rhondda to life through a Mixed Reality (MR) installation
The life of pioneering suffragette and business woman Margaret Haig Thomas comes to the stage this summer in a new all-female production from Welsh National Opera.
Rhondda Rips It Up! is unlike anything previously presented by WNO. Performed in a classic music hall style, with original songs inspired by the suffragette slogans, this tongue-in-cheek production takes audiences on a whirlwind tour of the inspiring activist’s mission.
Lady Rhondda, as she was known, was a suffragette who ran the Newport branch of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) – the militant organisation campaigning for women’s suffrage in the UK founded and run by Emmeline Pankhurst.
She was a pioneering business woman and sat on the boards of several international companies in the 1920s. The founder and editor of the influential feminist magazine Time and Tide, she campaigned tirelessly for equal rights for women. She was the first female Honorary President of The Institute of Directors and was posthumously responsible for the admission of women to the House of Lords.
With 2018 the 100th anniversary of the first wave of women being legally allowed to vote, WNO’s fascinating depiction of Lady Rhondda’s life has been created by an all-female team with original score composed by Elena Langer, who worked on WNO’s premiere of Figaro Gets A Divorce and libretto by Emma Jenkins who co-wrote the libretto for WNO’s 2016 world premiere In Parenthesis and it will be performed entirely by women.
Leading the creative team are director Caroline Clegg, who has previously worked with WNO on Janáček’s From The House of the Dead; musical director Nicola Rose (who has worked with WNO as a pianist for many years) and designer Lara Booth.
Madeleine Shaw (most recently seen in Der Rosenkavalier and Carmen for WNO) plays Lady Rhondda, and soprano Lesley Garrett will guide the audience through the story as Master of Ceremonies in a character based on real-life pioneering music hall entertainer Vesta Tilley, a female compere impersonating a male. Lesley returns to WNO after delighting audiences in The Merry Widow and in 2015’s spectacular Chorus!.
Lesley and the members of WNO’s Ladies Chorus will perform all the other roles – including male politicians Winston Churchill, Herbert Henry Asquith, and David Lloyd George as well as Margaret’s father David Alfred Thomas, first Viscount Rhondda, and her husband Sir Humphrey Mackworth (whom she divorced before entering a relationship with journalist Helen Archdale).
In a departure from WNO’s usual main scale summer season, Rhondda Rips It Up! will receive its world premiere at the Riverfront in Newport before touring Wales and England throughout June, and again in the autumn. The show will take in smaller venues in towns and cities that will enable WNO to reach many more people, including performances in Brecon, Treorchy and Newtown. It will also be performed at London’s Hackney Empire for two nights, a prestigious venue that elegantly and authentically represents the era in which the show is set.
The production will be accompanied by a full programme of free events for everyone to join in with and activities underpinned by the suffragette slogan ‘Deeds not Words’ as WNO works with schools and other community groups to celebrate the life of Margaret Haig Thomas, whose actions paved the way for women’s rights in the personal, professional and political worlds, through music, humour and song.
Young people will work with WNO’s creative team to develop their own music hall style pieces on the themes of protest, rebellion and human rights; and community choruses of amateur singers will perform at some of the venues, with an opportunity for the audience to join in and sing along with WNO. There will also be a series of workshops and talks throughout the tour for groups across England and Wales; audiences may also see a few suffragettes popping up calling on them to ‘Vote for Women’.
On the day of the premiere, WNO will also host a symposium in Newport on the challenges faced by women in the classical music world involving a range of high profile speakers and delegates from across the UK and Europe sharing experiences, challenges and exploring ways to make a difference for the future.
An online documentary series, curated by librettist Emma Jenkins, will explore the story and adventures of Newport suffragette Margaret Haig Thomas and will raise the curtain on what it takes to get a very modern musical comedy from page to stage.
WNO will continue its innovative and creative use of digital technology as seen in WNO Field and Magic Butterfly with the Company’s most ambitious and experimental project to date featuring a site specific, Mixed Reality (MR) installation. This is a first for WNO, blending together music, theatre and performance. Audiences will be transported from the physical space to an augmented environment via an iPad allowing audiences to access the world of Lady Rhondda in a highly engaging and unique way.
The Augmented Reality Exhibition will allow audiences to explore The Session House in Usk – where Margaret Haig Thomas was tried and sentenced for blowing up a Newport post box with a home-made bomb – through virtual images and technology.
WNO’s Artistic Director David Pountney said: ‘This summer WNO presents a music hall opera that through performance and digital and community experiences celebrates the life of suffragette Lady Rhondda, Margaret Haig Thomas, who truly ripped up the rule book for women of that time.’
‘We are proud to bring the life of one of Wales’s unsung heroines of the suffragette movement to the stage. Lady Rhondda was instrumental in the fight for women’s equality across 40 years of passionate campaigning and it is important that her life is celebrated. Our all-female team of talented performers and creatives have worked closely with Margaret’s biographer Angela John, and taken inspiration from songs and speeches of the suffragettes as well as the sounds of the Edwardian music hall, to create a highly original and bold new work which is a real departure for WNO.’
Rhondda Rips It Up!’s director Caroline Clegg said: ‘She was honoured to be bringing the life of Lady Rhondda to the stage: ‘Rhondda Rips It Up! is a real celebration of independent women. As well as campaigning for women’s suffrage, Margaret Haig Thomas was a pioneering business woman and a strong independent woman in her own right.’
‘We hope audiences will learn more about Lady Rhondda. It’s also a darn good show with lots of vibrant, fast-paced, funny songs and dialogue. The music captures the flavour of the Edwardian period but has a contemporary feel about it as well. The libretto is so sparkly and witty and the rhymes and Edwardian music are very poetic. Audiences are going to have a lot of fun.’
Librettist Emma Jenkins said: ‘It’s a merry romp – a thigh-slapping, ripping yarn. Rather than a traditional opera it is an Edwardian music hall style production; with lots of double entendres and risqué humour. The words of the songs are written in rhyme which gives them a great rhythm. The libretto was inspired by the words that Margaret Haig Thomas spoke. I have taken elements of her life and certain words she said and we have made it into something completely new.’
Composer Elena Langer said: ‘The music is a real hybrid of styles and not like anything I have done before. The music has been inspired by the music hall sound of the last century but I have redefined it in the context of my own music. I have especially loved writing for the women’s chorus in such a dynamic show. They are women; men; suffragettes; anti-suffragettes; husbands and lovers; politicians and police; so the music is also dynamic and fast-paced.’
Lesley Garrett said: ‘Rhondda Rips It Up! is a great celebration of a wonderful woman. She was a pioneer; Wales’s equivalent of Emmeline Pankhurst. All women in Britain should be grateful to her. It is an honour to be a part of a work that celebrates powerful women and their inspired quest for emancipation, liberation and respect.’
WNO is delighted that the Nicholas John Trust has given a generous donation in support of this new commission, in memory of Joan Moody. This continues the Trust’s tradition of supporting new work for the Company which included the commissioning of In Parenthesis in 2016.
The Company is grateful also to the Colwinston Charitable Trust for their support of the production and surrounding projects. In addition to their already generous contribution, the trust have pledged to match all donations made to Rhondda Rips It Up, to the sum of £25,000. WNO have since launched the ‘Rhondda Union’, for individual supporters to get involved and it is hoped audiences will channel ‘Deeds not words’ and get behind this rousing new venture with their donations.
The Company is also thrilled that two highly influential ambassadors will act as Patrons for the fundraising: Baroness Gale, of Blaenrhondda, the modern day Lady Rhondda and active campaigner for women’s rights, and Barbara Thomas, Lady Judge, CBE, the current Chair of the Institute of Directors.
Rhondda Rips It Up! was officially launched on Thursday 8 March at WNO’s home at Wales Millennium Centre prior to an event hosted by Ann Jones, Deputy Presiding Officer of the Welsh Assembly at the Senedd to mark International Women’s Day.
Director Caroline Clegg, composer Elena Langer and librettist Emma Jenkins talked about the production. Lesley Garrett and Madeleine Shaw also gave a short performance from the piece accompanied by the show’s musical director Nicola Rose on piano.
More information on WNO’s Rhondda Rips It Up! is available at wno.org.uk
Ends
Notes to Editors
- Welsh National Opera is the national opera company for Wales. WNO is funded by the Arts Councils of Wales and England to provide large scale opera across Wales and to major cities in the English regions.
- WNO images are available for download at http://www.wno.org.uk/press
- For more information, photos or interviews please contact Penny James and Branwen Jones, Press and Public Affairs Manager on 029 20635038 or penny.james@wno.org.uk / branwen.jones@wno.org.uk or Christina Blakeman, Press Officer 20635037 or christina.blakeman@wno.org.uk
- Rhondda Rips It Up! is supported by the following: Nicholas John Trust, in memory of Joan Moody, Colwinston Charitable Trust – for production and Youth and Community programme of activity in Wales, PRS Foundation, The Leche Trust, RVW Trust, Ambache Charitable Trust, John Coates Charitable Trust and WNO Rhondda Union.
- The group from the Newport Schools Project will perform at the Riverfront on the 7 June and the group from the Rhondda Schools Project will perform at the Park and Dare on the 27 June.
- WNO Come and Sing events at Riverfront, Theatr Brycheiniog (16 June) and Park and Dare (27 June).
- The Community Chorus will be performing at the Riverfront, Mac (9 June), New Theatre (14 June) and Park and Dare (27 June).