The Starlight Express - Legacy

Legacy

• The Starlight Express was not the only collaboration of Blackwood and Pearn. Note

Karma: A Re-Incarnation Play in Prologue, Epilogue & Three Acts. London: Macmillan, 1918 and New York: E.P. Dutton, 1918. "A love story re-enacted through four existences."

Through The Crack (an adaptation of The Education of Uncle Paul by Blackwood). London and New York: Samuel French. Produced at Christmas 1920, then in 1925.

• On 22 May 1918, Lance Corporal Charles James Mott, the successful singer in that first production of The Starlight Express was in the London Regiment (Artists' Rifles) when he was mortally wounded by a German shell-burst. He was 37. Elgar, writing to a friend, said "It is difficult to believe that Charles Mott is dead; dead of wounds in France. I am overwhelmed: a simple, honest GOOD soul."

• In 1933 the conductor Joseph Lewis constructed from the score a 40-minute selection from The Starlight Express which he conducted in several BBC radio broadcasts. But his score and other valuable BBC material was destroyed in an air-raid in 1940.

• In September 1940 the Kingsway Theatre was damaged by fire in an air raid. All The Starlight Express stage props and music (conductor's score and orchestra parts) was destroyed. However, Elgar had left his manuscript full score of the music with the publishers, Messrs Elkin & Co., and apart from memories and reviews, this became the only surviving remnant. Fortunately this score also contained many of his own written notes on the performance. The score is signed "Edward Elgar, Finis, A.E. December 1915" - A. E. was his wife's initials, and Elgar, typically doubled the pun with the inscription "AE 15" (abbreviated Latin "AETATIS 15", English "Age 15"): he was a child again!

• In 1984 Richard Adams provided a 'performing narrative' to accompany a performance of Elgar's score in Holland. The narrator for the occasion was composer Michael Berkeley.