Edward Geoffrey Toye (17 February 1889 – 11 June 1942), known asGeoffrey Toye, was an Englishconductor,composer andopera producer.
He is best remembered as a musical director of theD'Oyly Carte Opera Company and for his association withSadler's Wells Theatre. One of his ballets,The Haunted Ballroom (1934), became popular and was revived several times, and the new overture that he prepared forGilbert and Sullivan'sRuddigore in 1919 became the standard version.
Born inWinchester,Hampshire, Toye was the younger son of Arlingham James Toye and his wife Alice Fayrernée Coates.[1] Toye's father was ahousemaster atWinchester College, who for many years ran a music society for the boys.[2] His elder brotherFrancis Toye was also a composer and musician.[3]
Toye studied at theRoyal College of Music, concentrating on composition and conducting. He also displayed such skill as a pianist that he was engaged "when little more than a boy" to accompany the celebratedsopranoLuisa Tetrazzini.[4] As early as 1906 he deputised forAndré Messager as conductor at performances of Messager's operaMirette atCambridge.[5] Together with his brother Francis he composedincidental music forThe Well in the Wood, a "pastoral masque" by C. M. A. Peake;[6] and was sole creator of the scenario and music for a short ballet,The Fairy Cap, first given atHis Majesty's Theatre in 1911, revived for charity performance the following year.[7]
By 1913 Toye was conducting in major London theatres – forMaurice Maeterlinck'sBlue Bird at theHaymarket Theatre,Marie Brema's opera season at theSavoy Theatre, and for the première ofBernard Shaw'sAndrocles and the Lion.[8] In 1914, he was entrusted byRalph Vaughan Williams with conducting the première of hisLondon Symphony at theQueen's Hall.[4] When the manuscript was lost (having been sent toFritz Busch in Germany just before the outbreak of the First World War) Toye, together withGeorge Butterworth and the criticEdward J. Dent, helped Vaughan Williams reconstruct the work.[9] Also in 1914, Toye introduced Butterworth's rhapsodiesA Shropshire Lad andThe Banks of Green Willow to London audiences.[10] The night before the première ofThe Planets, Toye dined with its composer,Gustav Holst, and the conductorAdrian Boult. Boult later recalled that Toye took exception to one bar in "Neptune", where the brass play chords of E minor and G♯ minor together: "I'm sorry, Gustav, but I can't help thinking that's going to sound frightful." Holst agreed, and said it had made him shudder when he wrote it down, but he insisted that it must be that way: "What are you to do when they come like that?"[11]
Toye joined the Army in 1914, first as aprivate in theDuke of Cornwall's Light Infantry, and later in theRoyal Flying Corps, in which he served in France as a photographic specialist. He retired with the rank ofmajor.[4] For a time after the war he was a member of the insurersLloyd's of London, where he organised many amateur musical activities and founded the Lloyd's Choir.[12] He was engaged as assistant conductor of the Beecham Opera Company and also conducted concerts for theRoyal Philharmonic Society in 1918 and 1919.[13]
Rupert D'Oyly Carte, a fellowWykehamist, appointed Toye asmusical director for threeD'Oyly Carte Opera Company seasons at thePrince's Theatre in London: 1919–20, 1921–22, and 1924.[14] In his first season there, Toye revised the score ofGilbert and Sullivan'sRuddigore, cutting some music and writing a new and more dramatic overture that did not use themes from numbers that Toye had cut.[13][15] Thereafter, Toye's overture was always used by the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, even when the cut numbers were restored in the 1970s, and it became the standard performance version. He also arranged a new overture forThe Pirates of Penzance, but that did not remain in use, and no copy of the score is known to have survived.[16] As D'Oyly Carte's musical director, Toye impressed the critics;The Musical Times wrote, "Mr. Geoffrey Toye is doing his work as conductor conspicuously well. He has made many of us realise afresh how beautifully the operas are scored. He has never-failing vivacity and the right sense of musical humour."[17] In 1925 and again in 1927 theBBC broadcastThe Red Pen, "a sort of opera", with words byA. P. Herbert and music by Toye.[18] In 1927 Toye was joint musical director of a benefit performance for the old D'Oyly Carte leading man,Courtice Pounds, in which Toye was joined by stars from many branches of theatre, includingSeymour Hicks,Evelyn Laye,Walter Passmore,Gertrude Lawrence andDerek Oldham.[19]
Toye, who had already been made a governor of theOld Vic, became a governor ofSadler's Wells Theatre in 1931, where, as co-director withLilian Baylis, he managed the opera and ballet until 1934.[20] For theSadler's Wells Ballet company, he composed two ballets to his own scenarios:Douanes, in October 1932, a comedy set in a customs post[21] described byThe Times as "delightful and amusing",[22] and, in 1934,The Haunted Ballroom, which portrays the Masters of Treginnis who are cursed to dance themselves to death in a gloomy ancestral ballroom by the ghosts of the women whom they had loved. As inRuddigore, the curse is passed to the heir of the accursed. The piece makes "imaginative... use of an eerie... chorus commentary".[23]The Haunted Ballroom wasMargot Fonteyn's first principal role and also starredRobert Helpmann.Ninette de Valois choreographed both works and revivedThe Haunted Ballroom several times after Toye's death.[24] Its last performance in Sadler's Wells's repertoire was on BBC television on 24 February 1957.[25] The original choreography of the piece now survives only in fragments. The Waltz from the score is probably Toye's best-known composition and has been recorded several times.[23] It remained popular for many years as an orchestral piece.[12]
From 1934 to 1936, Toye became Managing Director of theRoyal Opera House, Covent Garden, working alongside the Artistic Director,Sir Thomas Beecham. Despite early successes, Toye and Beecham eventually fell out over Toye's insistence on bringing in a popular film star,Grace Moore, to sing Mimi inLa bohème. The production was a box-office success, but an artistic failure.[26] Beecham manoeuvred Toye out of the managing directorship in whatSir Adrian Boult described as an 'absolutely beastly' manner.[27]
Toye obtained the film rights to theGilbert and Sullivan operas.[13] In 1938, he adapted, produced and conductedThe Mikado, starringMartyn Green,Sydney Granville and the American singersKenny Baker andJean Colin,[28] but the onset of war prevented further screen adaptations. Toye composed and arranged the music for two other British films of the 1930s:Men Are Not Gods andRembrandt, both forAlexander Korda in 1936.[29]
In 1940, Toye joined the staff of theBBC, in the American Liaison and Censorship Department.[4] He was twice married, first in 1915 to the actressDoris Lytton,[30] and later to Dorothy Fleitman, with whom he had one son,John, who was an actor and then a long-time news anchor forScottish Television; he took his own life in 1992.[31] Toye's elder brother,Francis, was a well-known critic andVerdi scholar. Their sister Eleanor's daughter became a principal soprano with D'Oyly Carte under the nameJennifer Toye.[32]
Toye died in 1942 in London at the age of 53.[3]
In addition to his ballets, Toye's compositions included several books of songs (including somesea chanties), a symphony, amasque,Day and Night, aradio opera:The Red Pen (1925, withA. P. Herbert), an opera:The Fairy Cup, and two short choral items:Henrichye's Death, with orchestra, andThe Keeper, with brass accompaniment.[12]
Toye made very few gramophone records. For HMV, in 1928, he conducted theLondon Symphony Orchestra in recordings ofDelius'sBrigg Fair,On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring, andIn a Summer Garden. The composer wrote, "All three... are excellent and I shall be glad to have them sold as authorised by me."[33] Toye also recordedThe Walk to the Paradise Garden in 1929.
Toye's overture toRuddigore has been recorded numerous times, conducted byHarry Norris,Isidore Godfrey, andSir Malcolm Sargent (who each recorded the complete opera) andSir Charles Mackerras, among others. Norris, Godfrey and Sargent all observe some or all of Toye's cuts and other minor alterations in the score.[34] Toye's only recording conducting a Gilbert and Sullivan work is the 1938 film ofThe Mikado referred to above. Of Toye's original music, the waltz fromThe Haunted Ballroom has been recorded several times,[35] including one in the 1990s by the Marco Polo record label.[12] A complete recording of the ballet was made in 2001 by the Royal Ballet Sinfonia.[23]
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