PeterMoores2

Up until then, Sir Peter says, he “wasn’t very keen on Wagner, but then [I] was suddenly hit by this load of fantastic stuff, and I said, you know this has to live; this has to be kept; we’ve got to do something about it. So I went and knocked on Lord Harewood’s door - he was running the opera house – that is, English National Opera - and [after a little selling] he pushed it to happen and it happened, and we then made them live.”
Recording the full Ring Cycle, was a tiring and intensive undertaking, he recalls, noting that it almost ended as an incomplete project when Goodall said he wanted to quit altogether. “And when it came to the last one Goodall said, ‘I don’t want to do it’. I put my hand on his knee and I said, “Reggie, do it for me” and he said, ‘Oh, alright, I’ll do them for you, then.’”
And that’s how the Reginald Goodall Ring Cycle was completed.
Sixteen years later in 1994, convinced that opera could be introduced to a wider audience if it were only sung in English, Sir Peter approached EMI and asked if they would be interested in braking with tradition and giving Opera in English a try. EMI, he says, “was not very keen” on the idea and “had politely said no.”
If he was discouraged by the rejection, he doesn’t admit it. “I had some spare energy and I went and found myself Chandos.” Its been a good marriage, too, he says. To date over forty operas have been recorded in English, giving Chandos the largest catalogue of its kind in the world. When it comes to translating opera he says, one has to be discerning. It’s not just a matter of taking an opera in German or Italian and saying to someone fluent in two languages, translate it. There are as many bad translations, he notes, as good ones, and you have to be selective in choosing and, in some cases, editing what you get. “Sometimes you have to get rid of rude things people say.” Perhaps the best summary of why he chose this project is summed up on the Foundation’s web site: “Tosca is not better in English than it is in Italian; it is simply that it’s in your own language so you can understand it.”
It all goes back to wanting to share what he has discovered with others, only now he can use the Foundation’s money to make it happen.

The Opera in English series was a major undertaking with the Foundation, a gamble for the Chandos label, and a personal project with Sir Peter. From the day the project began with Chandos in 1995, to today, little has changed in how a CD is brought to market. It begins with a small staff at PMF talking about an opera and discussing who would be ideal to sing it. Sir Peter’s description of the process provides a pretty good description of how deeply involved the Foundation gets in the projects it funds. “We look at the cast we like and we talk with Chandos about orchestras, because they have views about orchestras because of the people they usually work with and the people they like and don’t like. Then we talk about halls and the availability of halls, and the availability of who we want to conduct it. That’s very important. And we have to choose which translation. And then there’s the question of tying the date and everything down, and then off we go – or sometimes don’t go.”
As for the public’s response to the English opera series, Steve Wehmhoff, Director of Classic/Adult Genres at KOCH Entertainment Distributors, distributors of the Chandos label in the United States, reports that sales are going well. "Opera in English has been very successful for us and retail has embraced the series,” he said in an e-interview with OperaOnline.us. “Sir Peter Moores has been able to get big names like Jane Eaglen to make these recordings artistically excellent. Chandos prices these recordings at the mid-price level ($13.98 per CD in a set) to keep them affordable. We at KOCH Entertainment Distribution are big fans and supporters of this series.”

But even if you market it in an affordable range, the question still remains, are the translations any good? Does English fit harmonically, say, with music written for an Italian or German libretto?”
Sir Peter offers an obviously well-thought out but clearly extemporaneous answer in five parts: “Some composers don’t bother fitting the words into the music anyway; some composers [try but] don’t succeed in doing it. Some composers do it absolutely, like Janacek. Second, some people listen a lot more to the music than the words. Some people, like my mother did, listen to the words. So each person has a different perception. Thirdly, some translations are better than others, some are much worse than others. Fourthly; it depends on how well you know the opera. If you happen to know the opera really well it’s hard to get it away from the language you originally learned it in, which might be English to start with. So you get stuck into the language you know. For example, Fidelio, I happen to know it in one particular English translation. But it doesn’t worry me personally because I speak good Italian and good German. Lastly, half the people singing are not singing in the proper Italian to start with.” He pauses, then asks: “Does that answer you in five different ways?”
It does, indeed.

Interestingly, spurred on by a childhood memory, Sir Peter had the Foundation support an under capitalized company specializing in long forgotten 19th century operas, Opera Rara. “I found a company that had just started recording that stuff. Patric Schmid (noting that there is no “t” at the end of either name) who is an American . . . who was in England at the time, and his friend Don White were keen on doing opera concerts of these old operas you never heard of. They had done a couple recordings of concerts, but other people were issuing them. So they started Opera Rara and I went to them and said with an astonished face: ‘Why don’t you do more and do it quicker’ and they said, ‘because we don’t have the money’, and I said ‘Let me give you some money’, and Opera Rara now has produced some 28 complete recordings for the PMF. And that’s the way it is, which is about as fair an explanation of why the Foundation wants visitors to its web site to know in so many words: Don’t call us, we’ll call you. The fact is, if a project has to do with opera and you’re out there promoting what you do, the Peter Moores Foundation is out there too, looking, promoting, subsidizing, encouraging, cajoling and, in general, pushing opera to a wider audience in whatever ways it can.
“I don’t make money at this,” Sir Peter says, regarding the personal effort he puts into making those he supports, adding “I’m trying not to lose money. But it’s no good having a CD sit on a shelf not selling. The shop is not having fun, the record store is not having fun, and because of that they’re not going to try to sell it for you. That’s why I go and talk to them (store managers) when I go inside. I was in one store yesterday and in another the day before.”
That, by the way, is not Sir Peter Moores, the philanthropist talking, but rather Peter Moores, the pretty savvy businessman.

THE MUSEUM
In 1993 the Foundation acquired Compton Verney, an 18th century mansion in Warwickshire. The Compton Verney Trust, an independent charity funded by the Foundation was established to transform the dilapidated mansion into an art gallery of international standard, designed particularly to encourage newcomers to discover art in a welcoming environment. The gallery was opened by HRH the Prince of Wales in March of 2004. It has since been awarded Museum status and in June of 2004 it received the RIBA Award for its reconstruction and restoration.