Series of shows on opera stage
LAST week’s Memory Lane feature looked back at Crawshawbooth Amateur Operatic Society and this week we shine a spotlight on another amateur operatic group.
Our regular Memory Lane contributor, Peter Fisher, has sent us three shots from his collection of old images of Rawtenstall Amateur Operatic Society.
The first picture (above) shows the dancing troupe in the society’s production of Summer Song in 1962.
Summer Song tells the story of famous composer Anton Dvorak, who after a tour conducting in concert halls, ends up in a remote Illinois town dominated by an Irish woman, Ma Flanagan.
Dvorak plays in Flanagan’s saloon, and offers advice and kindly wisdom, regaining his own inspiration.
The show is full of lively musical chorus numbers, in which the company appear as lumbermen and their girls, saloon customers, hostesses and staff, wedding guests and concert hall staff.
The second picture (above right) shows Rawtenstall Amateur Operatic Society’s 1952 production of Rose Marie.
Pictured are principals (standing) John Stansfield, Granville Cheetham, Gladys Cheetham, John Landless and Rowland Cunliffe, and (seated) Alice Jordan, Stanley Collings, Winifred Kelly, Frank Haythornthwaite and Jean Hart.
Rose Marie is an operetta-style musical. The story takes place in the Canadian Rockies and concerns Rose-Marie La Flemme, a French Canadian girl who loves miner Jim Kenyon.
When Jim falls under suspicion for murder, her brother Emile plans for Rose-Marie to marry city man Edward Hawley.
The final picture of the week (bottom right), shows the cast of South Pacific in 1958, in which Joan Hartley played Nellie Forbush.
The musical centres on an American nurse stationed on a South Pacific island during the Second World War, who falls in love with a middle-aged expatriate French plantation owner but struggles to accept his mixed-race children.
If these pictures bring back memories, please get in touch with the newsdesk. Many thanks to all our regular nostalgia contributors.