The Lady of the First Night ; Helen Hamlyn Talks About Reviving Her Late Husband's Scheme to Make the Royal Opera House Affordable for First-Timers, Fixing Covent Garden's Plumbing and Why She has Given Up Donating to Political Parties

Evening Standard - London › October 08, 2009

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Summary

WHEN Lady Helen Hamlyn first sponsored a night at the Royal Opera House for people who had never before seen opera, let alone been to Covent Garden, she met an Afro-Caribbean woman whose gratitude both delighted and shocked her. "We were chatting afterwards and I remember it very well. She said she hadn't thought she was allowed to come into Covent Garden. And that was the word she used: 'allowed'. Well!" Lady Hamlyn leans back in her spotless taupe- coloured sofa and widens her eyes in astonishment. "It really hit me because I suppose I took the Opera House for granted, and I didn't think anyone could think they weren't allowed in."

That was back in 1986 -- the bad old days, pre-refurbishment, of desperate backstage conditions, an extraordinarily elitist image and incipient financial crisis. But the night itself was a celebration, a 60th birthday present from Lady Hamlyn to her husband Lord Paul Hamlyn, the multimillionaire publisher, philanthropist, opera-lover and, later, patron of New Labour. The tradition of heavily subsidised Paul Hamlyn Nights continued for the next 12 years, helping 250,000 people experience live opera for the first time, but ended in 1999 when "Paul was really desperately ill" with cancer and Parkinson's disease and spent much of his time in France.

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Extract

The Lady of the First Night ; Helen Hamlyn Talks About Reviving Her Late Husband's Scheme to Make the Royal Opera House Affordable for First-Timers, Fixing Covent Garden's Plumbing and Why She has Given Up Donating to Political Parties

Lord Hamlyn died in 2001 but this week, as those nights of affordable opera are revived in a muchmodernised ROH, Lady Hamlyn has "felt his spirit" in the auditorium once again. On Saturday, the opera season opened with Carmen, starring Roberto Alagna and Elina Garanca, before an audience who paid as little as Pounds 7.50 a ticket (with a top price of Pounds 30). Last night, the ballet season kicked off with Kenneth MacMillan's Mayerling ...

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