Checkmate is one of the only two ballets by Ninette de Valois to survive in the repertoire. It makes allegorical use of a chess game to represent a battle between love and death. Arthur Bliss, the...
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The composer Arthur Bliss
Arthur Bliss (1891-1975). British composer
Composer Arthur Bliss studied at Pembroke College, Cambridge, followed by further studies at the Royal College of Music under Charles Villiers Stanford. His musical education was interrupted in 1914 when he served in World War One. Returning, Bliss was keen to make up for his time away, and his friend Edward Elgar secured him a commission for The Three Choirs Festival, for which he wrote Colour Symphony. He developed his neo-romantic style, and his ballet Checkmate (1937), choreographed by Ninette de Valois and produced by the Vic-Wells Ballet, premiered at the Théâtre de Champs-Élysées in Paris. After a period of teaching at Berkeley in the United States of America, Bliss returned to Britain where he became director of Music at the BBC, and Master of the Queen’s Music. His 1949 Opera The Olympians was staged at Covent Garden, followed by his knighthood in 1950.
Timeline Event » 1944 – Premiere of Robert Helpmann’s Miracle in the Gorbals by Sadler’s Wells Ballet
Miracle in the Gorbals is a dramatic one-act ballet, choreographed in 1944 by Robert Helpmann to music by Arthur Bliss and designs by Edward Burra. It was first performed at Sadler’s Wells in...