Home

The sixteenth Sullivan Festival took place in Portsmouth from 15-17 September 2006. The centrepiece was a concert with Charles Court Opera, the augmented Portsmouth Cathedral Choir and the Orchestra of H.M. Royal Marines Portsmouth. The programme included the world premieres of four recently rediscovered numbers from The Beauty Stone and The Rose of Persia, as well as the Boer War Te Deum, the overture In Memoriam, an extract from The Martyr of Antioch and only the third performance in living memory of the 1871 cantata On Shore and Sea. Other highlights included a four-handed piano recital by David Mackie and Hilary Morgan; a recital by Jill Pert; an organ recital in Portsmouth Cathedral and a special service of Evensong in Portsmouth Cathedral. Sullivan's music featured in the Cathedral's Sunday Eucharist. Roger Wild spoke about and played historic recordings of H.M.S. Pinafore, and Martin Yates gave a masterly exposition at the piano of the musical content of Ivanhoe.

There was a half-day excursion to the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard to view the historic ships there, including H.M.S. Victory (said to be Gilbert's model for H.M.S. Pinafore) and H.M.S. Warrior, the world's oldest iron battleship, on which H.M.S. Pinafore was actually performed in 1981.