Coleridge-Taylor

It's based upon a Norse legend – the alternative title is The Amulet – though the libretto, which Coleridge-Taylor wrote himself, is evidently problematic, and has been tactfully edited by the director Christopher Cowell for this production.

This week's new live music 2012

Written between 1907 and 1909, Thelma was never performed in its writer's lifetime but to mark this year's centenary of his death Surrey Opera is giving it a world premiere in Coleridge-Taylor's home town of Croydon.

This week's new live music 2012

Until it came to light in a box of manuscripts in the British Library, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's only opera was thought lost, possibly even destroyed by the composer himself.

This week's new live music 2012

I remember the stiff, young officer who came with credentials from Menelik of Abyssinia; I remember the bitter, black American who whispered how an army of the Soudan might some day cross the Alps; I remember Englishmen, like the Colensos, who sat and counseled with us; but above all, I remember Coleridge-Taylor.

DARKWATER W.E.B. DU BOIS 2004

Fortunate was Coleridge-Taylor to be born in Europe and to speak a universal tongue.

DARKWATER W.E.B. DU BOIS 2004

Deep as was the primal tragedy in the life of Coleridge-Taylor, there lay another still deeper.

DARKWATER W.E.B. DU BOIS 2004

IT IS NOW nineteen years since I first saw Coleridge-Taylor.

DARKWATER W.E.B. DU BOIS 2004

That evangelical faith in the transformative power of education that sustained Du Bois until the end was at open throttle in “The Immortal Child,” a sometimes lyrical evocation of the short, extraordinary career of his friend, the Afro-English composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor.

DARKWATER W.E.B. DU BOIS 2004

What is the real lesson of the life of Coleridge-Taylor?

DARKWATER W.E.B. DU BOIS 2004

And then at last, for it was the last, I saw Coleridge-Taylor in a mighty throng of people crowding the Crystal Palace.

DARKWATER W.E.B. DU BOIS 2004