Harry Norris (conductor)

Harry Norris (23 Nov 1887 - 22 June 1979) was a conductor best remembered as musical director of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company between 1919 and 1929.

Life and career

Norris was born in Invercargill, in the southernmost part of New Zealand. He studied in London at the Royal Academy of Music (where a fellow student was the future D'Oyly Carte star Darrell Fancourt) [Norris] .

In 1913 the conductor Landon Ronald, responding to a request from Rupert D'Oyly Carte, recommended Norris as a coach and principal violinist. [Norris] . His appointment was delayed by his active service in World War I, however, but he finally took up the D'Oyly Carte post in either 1918 (according to his own account) or 1919 (according to Rollins & Witts and the Who Was Who site), not as leader but as conductor, briefly with a D'Oyly Carte touring company, and in September 1919, he moved to the London company for the start of the London Season at the Princes Theatre as assistant musical director to Geoffrey Toye. [Rollins and Witts]

Norris became musical director in February 1920 and served in that capacity until May 1929, except for the London West End seasons in 1921-22 and 1924, when Toye again took charge, and 1926 when Malcolm Sargent took over. From January to June 1927, Norris toured Canada with the company, and from September 1928 to May 1929 they toured Canada and the U.S. Norris left the company at the end of that tour.

As musical director, Norris was responsible for a number of changes to Sullivan's scores. Prominent horn parts were added to the accompaniment to ‘A Lady Fair’ in "Princess Ida" (they were expunged by Sargent but subsequently restored by the D’Oyly Carte musical director Royston Nash in the 1970s) which are customarily referred to as the ‘Norris’ horn parts, though they may have been written by Toye. In addition, in 1921 Norris, in collaboration with J. M. Gordon, cut "Cox and Box" from its original one hour running time to play in about half an hour, so that it became suitable as a curtain raiser for "The Sorcerer" or other shorter full-length pieces. [Norris] This version remained in the company's repertoire until 1977. A D'Oyly Carte recording issued in 1978 restored a section of the original finale cut by Norris.

After leaving the company, Norris settled in Canada with his second wife, Doris (also a former D'Oyly Carte performer), taking up an academic appointment at McGill University, in Montreal. The Norrises were founding members of the Montreal West Operatic Society, with Doris serving as stage director and Harry as musical director, which post he held from 1939 to 1963. He also played the viola in the McGill Quartet with university colleagues. [ [http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=U1ARTU0002287 Canadian Encyclopedia] ]

Norris retired from teaching in the early 1960s and returned to England, living at Barton-on-Sea near Bournemouth. He died at the age of 91. [Who Was Who]

Recordings

For His Master's Voice, Norris conducted D'Oyly Carte recordings of:
*"Iolanthe" (1922, part)
*"H.M.S. Pinafore" (1923, part)
*"Ruddigore" (1924, part)
*"Princess Ida" (1925)
*"The Mikado" (1927)
*"The Gondoliers" (1927); and
*"Trial by Jury" (1928)

Through "Princess Ida", these were recorded by the old acoustic process. A photograph of Norris and D’Oyly Carte colleagues with the huge recording horn used in the acoustic process can be seen [http://www.cris.com/~oakapple/gasdisc/ida1924.htm here] . The other three were recorded by the new electrical technique, though it can be clearly heard that in the electrical recordings Norris retained some of the orchestral augmentations (e.g. low brass playing lines written for low strings) used for acoustic recordings.

Notes

References

* [http://pinafore.www3.50megs.com/recollections.html Norris, Harry: Recollections of the D'Oyly Carte] at the "Memories of D'Oyly Carte" site
* [http://math.boisestate.edu/GaS/whowaswho/N/NorrisHarry.htm Harry Norris] at the "Who Was Who in the D'Oyly Carte" site
*Rollins, C. and R. J. Witts. "The D’Oyly Carte Opera Company in Gilbert and Sullivan Operas". Michael Joseph, London, 1962

External links

* [http://www3.sympatico.ca/drrennie/chap8.html Article discussing Norris's later years]