The Cenci

1959

Coke had begun an opera on Shelley's The Cenci in 1940 and worked at it, on and off, for twenty years. In 1959 he decided to stage it himself.

He booked the Scala Theatre in London, engaged professional soloists and the London Symphony Orchestra, persuaded Eugene Goossens to conduct, and paid for the whole thing out of the contents of his house. "Of course there wasn't enough money to pay for the performance," Griselda Brook wrote, "so Roger sold much of the best furniture and pictures to pay for it… And should you wonder was it worth it? No, The Cenci was a critical disaster!"

It was given once, on the evening of 5 November 1959. Donald Mitchell wrote that "of melody, of vocal melody least of all, there was scarcely a trace in this opera from beginning to end." The Times found that "it merely meandered on in a Wagner-inspired style of unendliche Melodie for the voices, against a substantial but nondescript orchestral background." Eric Mason opened his notice in the Daily Mail: "I never knew what dreary subjects incest, murder, and execution could be until last night's first performance at the Scala Theatre." The Stage ran its review under the headline "New 'Cenci' Opera Lacks Everything".

There was one dissenting voice. "P. B." in the London Star thought it "well worthwhile", and reported a few days later that "the dogged Derbyshire composer is far from that opinion. He is already looking for another opportunity of putting it on."

Privately the damage was worse than the reviews, and it had begun a fortnight before the curtain went up. On 22 October Coke's solicitor, John Ballachey, drove over to Brookhill with the copyist and wrote to Goossens the same day: they had "managed to 'get it across' to Roger Coke that the Opera was going on and that he was not to worry." The music was collected and sent to London. Goossens opened it and found that the first and third acts were complete and the second was not. "The orchestral score and unfinished parts of Act 2 presented a frightening spectacle," he wrote back. "It took all my expertness to piece the unfinished fragment of this act together before I could get any true conception of how much there remained to be done." Then, "literally, days and nights of orchestrating, recopying, and piecing together Scenes 3, 4 and 5". He asked that Coke's sister be told. "There is no room for sentiment in such an emergency."

So the last act of The Cenci as London heard it was scored by Eugene Goossens in six days and nights, in the week before the performance. He charged ninety-two pounds seventeen shillings for it, on top of his agreed fee of a hundred guineas, and added: "had Roger Coke not been a personal friend of mine, I would have been compelled to claim a much higher remuneration."

Writing to Coke later that month, he was blunt: "you will realise how utterly useless your manuscript is for any practical purposes… I don't want to rub this point in too much and I am being cruel in order to be kind."

A recording was wanted and could not be had. Ballachey asked whether, since a proper session with Goossens and the London Symphony Orchestra was out of the question, the conductor would accept a recording taken from one of the boxes on the night. Whether one was made is not known. If it was, it would be the only recording of any orchestral music by Coke from his lifetime, and nobody has found it.

Coke wrote to Goossens again in 1960 proposing a whole concert of his orchestral works at the Royal Festival Hall. He had already sent him the Third Piano Concerto, The Lotos Eaters, the Poem and the First Vocal Concerto, with a question that gives away how he understood his own position: "What classical work shall we have to off set these, and bring in the public at our concert in the Spring at Festival Hall?" Goossens was willing but careful. "So much as I would like to do all I can to help the Coke Cause, I know you will understand that I must have some idea of which and how many of your works you want to programme." Coke replied that he would know soon about the financial backing, which was to come from the sale of trees. It never happened.

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© Simon Callaghan 2026. This account was written from my own research archive on Roger Sacheverell Coke, with AI assistance in drafting. Every statement in it rests on a document listed on the sources page.