Composition:
THE HAUNTED BALLROOM
Edward Geoffrey Toye - 1934

Location:
THE BALLROOM, HERSTMONCEUX CASTLE

The Long Gallery (Ballroom) at Herstmonceux Castle, 1935. (Photo: Country Life)

Herstmonceux Castle has its own fair share of ghost stories. According to ghost-story.co.uk, there are at least three ghostly inhabitants of the Castle estate:

"Herstmonceux Castle is home to a number of ghosts, including a nine foot tall drummer. The giant ghost has been seen on the battlements of the castle and is thought to either be a soldier who was killed at Agincourt or Lord Dacre. Local legend says that the eccentric Lord hammered on a drum in order to keep lovers away from his young wife. She eventually became so annoyed with him that she locked him in a tiny room and left him to die. The sound of his drum could still be heard long after his death and kept her lovers away. A phantom horse rider is also presumed to be Lord Dacre his ghost has been seen galloping across nearby fields.

"During the eighteenth century, a young girl is said to have been imprisoned in the castle and was starved to death. Sounds of her sobbing are still heard in parts of the Castle and her ghost is seen usually at night, wandering the corridors.

"The grounds of the castle are also haunted by a lady in white. Legend says that she was lured to the castle by Sir Roger de Fienes, who promptly had his wicked way with her and then killed her. Her ghost has been seen walking around the grounds of the castle's moat in a very distressed state. The lady in white's ghost has also been witnessed inside the castle close to the gatehouse."

Given that impressive roster of ethereal inhabitants, it seems fitting to contemplate the Castle Ballroom in that context.

The Haunted Ballroom is a one-act ballet with music and libretto by Geoffrey Toye and choreography by Ninette de Valois. It was first produced in London in 1934. The ballet is a Gothic melodrama about a fatal family curse.

First staged by the Vic-Wells Ballet at Sadler's Wells Theatre on 3 April 1934, the plot is based on a story by Edgar Allan Poe. Set in a haunted ballroom, the ballet tells how the heads of the family of Treginnis are under a curse that leads to their deaths, dancing with ghostly partners.

Rupert D'Oyly Carte, a fellow Wykehamist, appointed Toye as musical director for three D'Oyly Carte Opera Company seasons at the Prince's Theatre in London. As D'Oyly Carte's musical director, Toye impressed the critics

Toye, who had already been made a governor of the Old Vic, became a governor of Sadler's Wells Theatre in 1931, where, as co-director with Lilian Baylis, he managed the opera and ballet until 1934.[20] For the Sadler's Wells Ballet company, he composed two ballets to his own scenarios: Douanes, in October 1932, a comedy set in a customs post[21] described by The Times as "delightful and amusing",[22] and, in 1934, The Haunted Ballroom, which portrays the Masters of Treginnis who are cursed to dance themselves to death in a gloomy ancestral ballroom by the ghosts of the women whom they had loved. The piece makes "imaginative... use of an eerie... chorus commentary". The Waltz from the score is probably Toye's best-known composition and has been recorded several times. It remained popular for many years as an orchestral piece.

From 1934 to 1936, Toye became Managing Director of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, working alongside the Artistic Director, Sir Thomas Beecham. Despite early successes, Toye and Beecham eventually fell out over Toye's insistence on bringing in a popular film star, Grace Moore, to sing Mimi in La bohème. The production was a box-office success, but an artistic failure. Beecham manoeuvred Toye out of the managing directorship in what Sir Adrian Boult described as an 'absolutely beastly' manner.

Toye obtained the film rights to the Gilbert and Sullivan operas. In 1938, he adapted, produced and conducted The Mikado, but the onset of war prevented further screen adaptations. Toye composed and arranged the music for two other British films of the 1930s: Men Are Not Gods and Rembrandt, both for Alexander Korda in 1936.

In 1940, Toye joined the staff of the BBC, in the American Liaison and Censorship Department. He was twice married, first in 1915 to the actress Doris Lytton, and later to Dorothy Fleitman, with whom he had one son, John, who was an actor and then a long-time news anchor for Scottish Television.

Toye died in London at the age of 53.

- Source: Wikipedia