Lord Harewood favourites

His university education at King’s College Cambridge was interrupted by World War Two, during which he was wounded and captured in Italy and imprisoned in Colditz Castle, where he learned about music by reading through Grove’s Dictionary of Music and had reached the letter S when he was released.

After the war, he founded and edited the magazine Opera before David Webster offered him a job on the staff of Covent Garden Opera and contact with great singers and conductors who performed there during the 1950s. At the end of the decade, he was also Director of the Leeds Festival, before becoming Director of the Edinburgh International Festival for a golden period from 1961 to 1965. After acting as an artistic adviser to the Philharmonia Orchestra in the later 1960s, he spent 14 productive years as General Director of English National Opera at the London Coliseum between 1972 and 1985. In the later 1970s, he was also the driving force behind the foundation of Opera North, later becoming its invaluable Vice-Chairman, as well as taking on the role of President of English National Opera. He died at Harewood House on 11 July 2011.

Throughout his life, Harewood collected recordings, including tapes of unique live performances which, in later life, he donated to Music Preserved. He was a connoisseur of voices but also an enthusiastic explorer of all classical and contemporary and Indian music.

His collection is eclectic and contains more than 1,000 tapes, from which we will be choosing to highlight some favourite singers and conductors whom he especially admired as colleagues and friends.

Nicholas Payne