Love in Bath
Love in Bath is an orchestral suite, with one vocal number, arranged in 1945 from the music of George Frideric Handel by the conductor Sir Thomas Beecham for a projected ballet entitled "The Great Elopement". It was the last of six suites of Handel's music arranged by Beecham from 1924 onwards. It was first heard in a broadcast by the American Broadcasting Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Beecham, on 7 April 1945. The first concert performance followed five days later, by the Rochester Philharmonic under Beecham. He continued to include movements from the work in his programmes  for the rest of his life, and it featured in his final concert, in May 1960, less than a year before he died. The music has been recorded, but the projected ballet was never staged. The scenario, conceived and written by Beecham, is loosely based on real events. Set in 18th-century Bath, it depicts the love affair and elopement of the playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan and Elizabeth Linley (daughter of the composer Thomas Linley), in the elite society of Bath, presided over by the dandy Beau Nash. The music is mostly taken from Handel's operas, which in Beecham 's day were rarely staged and were widely considered unstageable. Beecham researched the scores of many of them and for this ballet he exhumed forgotten numbers from operas including "Ariodante", "Il pastor fido", "Parnasso in festa" and "Rodrigo", adding at the climax the only well-known number in the score, the "Largo" – "Ombra mai fu" – from "Serse", transcribed for the full orchestra. Source: EMI. Plot and scenes. The movements of the ballet, and the action as described by Beecham in the score, are as follows: 1. The Pump Room. 2. Beau Nash 3. The Linleys 4. Hunting Dance 5. Love  Scene 6. The Quarrel 7. The Pump Room 8. The Plot 9. The Weary Flunkeys 10. The Exquisites (Madrigal) 11. Second Love Scene 12. March 13. Sarabande 14. Minuet 15. Hornpipe 16. Rondeau 17. Gigue 18. March 19. Interlude 20. Serenade 21. The Elopement. 22. Discovery—Finale Recordings and concert performances. Beecham conducted a recording of twelve excerpts from the suite, under the title "The Great Elopement", with the London Philharmonic Orchestra in 1945. They comprise numbers I, II, III, IV, V, VIII, IX, XI, XIII, XV, XVII and XIX. The discs were issued by HMV in Britain and RCA  Victor in the US. A CD transfer of the set was issued in 1996 by Dutton Vocalion coupled with music from other Beecham-Handel works, "The Origin of Design", "The Gods Go a'Begging", "The Faithful Shepherd" and "Amaryllis". In 1951 Beecham recorded excerpts from the score with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Like the LPO set, it was issued under the title "The Great Elopement", on mono, 78 r.p.m discs by HMV. In both the LPO and RPO sets of excerpts the Serenade is performed in a solely orchestral arrangement. Beecham recorded the complete score with the RPO in stereo at  sessions between November 1956 and November 1959 at Studio 1, EMI, Abbey Road, and Kingsway Hall, London. The set was issued under the title "Love in Bath" on LP in 1960 by HMV in Britain and Angel in the US the following year. The soprano soloist in the Serenade was Ilse Hollweg, one of the conductor's favourite singers. The recording has been reissued on EMI CD (1990) and (2005), and by Naxos and Beulah on CD and as a download. When the recording was first released, William Mann wrote in "The Times": A concert in 1957 by Beecham and  the RPO at the Palestra delle scuole in Ascona, which included an eighteen-minute selection from the suite was recorded, and was released on CD in 1994. In April 1960, at a concert in Toronto, Beecham conducted the CBC Symphony Orchestra in ten movements from the suite. They were given in a different order from the ballet score. A recording of the concert was released on CD in 2011 on the Music & Arts label. After Beecham's death in 1961, John Pritchard included "Love in Bath" in a concert with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall  in November 1962, and in another with the LPO in June 1963. Since then the suite has dropped out of regular concert schedules.