|
C W Cobbett's Wey DFAS is grateful for the support offered by The Farnham Herald. Please click on their logo below to visit their website. |
||
A
modern award and Cobbett’s Wey DFAS held its second AGM in June. Anne Vardon (Chairman) welcomed members and guests to the meeting; the business part of the meeting was conducted swiftly, with Kate Siebert, Area Chairman, officiating at the election of committee members. William Lewis from Farnham College was awarded a bursary by the Society to fund materials and equipment required when he starts his foundation arts course at SIAD in September. Veronica Poppe who was awarded the bursary last year displayed a piece of her work, from her first year at Portsmouth University, where she gained a first for the dress displayed, made from second hand garments. The lecture that accompanied the AGM was “Vermeer - his Musical Pictures”. Peter Medhurst beautifully illustrated the lecture with music of the era on his lavishly decorated modern replica of the virginals. He explained how the pictures, normally lit from the left, gave a portrayal of life in the 17century. The use of musical instruments in the pictures not only showed how a section of society occupied their days, but they also hinted at the hidden meaning of the pictures, often of a flirtatious nature. Peter Medhurst, who trained at the Royal College of Music and now adjudicates, gives master classes, and coaches serious amateur singers in early music, ended his uplifting lecture with Purcell’s ‘Lovesickness’ song which he sang while he accompanied himself on the virginals. The meeting concluded with some time to socialise with other members while enjoying a drink and ‘nibbles’. As the Society now breaks for the summer, the next meeting is “Ellen Terry and the Aesthetes” on 28th September. At this meeting bookings for a visit on 12th November to Glyndebourne to look behind the scenes will be taken. CWDFAS is a member of NADFAS |
Anne Vardon welcomed members to the Autumn season of lectures, and Frances Hughes who delivered the lecture. After 38 years in Education Frances now lectures at the Theatre Museum, National Portrait Gallery and the London Centre for Theatre Studies, and many related theatrical societies in Britain. Her subject of Ellen Terry and the Aesthetes was particularly apt, as members of the society had visited Watts Gallery during the summer, where a number of his pictures of Ellen Terry are hung. The lecture was lively and gave a great insight into the times that she lived in. George Bernard Shaw said that “Ellen Terry’s name rang like a chime through the last half of the Nineteenth century“. Born in 1847 and without any formal schooling she became Britain’s finest Shakespearean actress of her age. She numbered amongst her friends Tennyson, Shaw, Barrie who wrote plays for her, Wilde who wrote sonnets and George Fredrick Watts, and John Singer Sargent who painted her. She was on the stage from the tender age of 3 with her parents in a strolling troop. As photography was in its infancy there are a remarkable number of photos of her in costume. Charles Kean who directed many of the plays she was in, was keen on the new medium of photography, and so had the casts photographed. A number of these photographs helped to illustrate the talk, and showed the development of Ellen as a child to a mature beauty. Entwined in the lecture were Ellen Terry’s relationships married three times firstly to George Fredrick Watts, at the age of sixteen for less than a year, secondly to Charles Wardle, and thirdly to James Carew. Her children were the product of her 7 year relationship with E W Goodwin. Known as ‘the greatest aesthete of them all’. She also had a quarter of a century’s partnership with Henry Irving at the Lyceum theatre, which was a professional relationship, and great friendship. The next lecture on 26 October” Let’s talk of Graves of Worms and Epitaphs“, British Funeral Sculpture and the making of History. GO TO PRESS ARCHIVE APRIL 2005 & MAY 2005 GO TO PRESS ARCHIVE FEBRUARY 2005 & MARCH 2005 GO TO PRESS ARCHIVE NOVEMBER 2004 & JANUARY 2005
|
|
