Hinge and Bracket - Lives of The Ladies: Musical & Academic Credentials

Lives of The Ladies: Musical & Academic Credentials

According to their invented background, the ladies won their musical spurs touring with the "Rosa Charles Opera Company", where Hilda sang lead roles and Evadne joined in the capacity of assistant to the assistant musical director, quickly rising to the full directorship. Audiences in the 1970s at least, would have recognised in this invented name a respectful nod to Carl Rosa, founder of a real-life opera troupe in England in the late 19th Century. Carl Rosa did much to popularise opera across Victorian England, and the company flourished through into the mid-20th Century, touring with the standard operatic repertoire up until 1960 - all sung, of course, in the "natural language of the civilised world": English.

Accordingly, a recurring joke in their musical act was Dame Hilda's discomfiture whenever called upon to perform an aria in its original language. With an irritable flourish, Hilda would produce from her handbag the famous reading spectacles for (hungh!) polishing, and squint impatiently at the Italian (hungh!) libretto. Cue a bravura performance from Fyffe, singing as Hilda with a smell under her nose, but nevertheless demonstrating a knowledge of Italian which was a "little more than Asti Spumante" - at least in the context of operatic performance. Hilda's back-story in fact extended to a few glorious years spent in Italy in the run-up to World War 2, studying "the rhythm method" under the large Italian operatic impresario Signor Bonavoce.

Evadne's doctorate in music (awarded at the age of 16) and reputation as a pianist preceded her, but the convention of the act demanded that, because of Hilda's "limited attention span", Evadne was always denied the opportunity to perform full pieces on stage. Once in a while, however, the audience would be treated to a brief taste of Logan's Royal Scottish Academy standard piano skills - notably Tchaikovsky's Concerto No. 1 in B-flat minor (condensed to 2 minutes). Additionally, Evadne was reported to "have the advantage of French" - which she had "picked up many years ago from a wine list". Not to be outdone on this front, Hilda would attempt to compete by tossing in the odd French phrase with her customary "joie de vie" (sic) and invariably got it wrong.

The ladies' musical credentials were further supported by allusions to celebrity audience members attending their concerts - names from the world of opera and music with whom they claimed equal status. Some of these names were real figures, and actually present at their recordings - Dame Eva Turner and Olive Gilbert being two notable examples. Others were nebulous inventions, embraced by Dame Hilda's blanket welcome line to the distinguished audience: "you celebrities know who you are, so we'll say nothing".

Frequent collaborators from the world of light opera included baritones Michael Rayner and Ian Belsey.