Brilliant pomp for Royal gala

Press, 1 June 1977, Page 8

Brilliant pomp for Royal gala

NZPA - Reuter London The Queen, surrounded by most of the members of the Royal Family, on Monday night attended an opera and ballet gala at the Royal Opera House, the first major London event of the Silver Jubilee celebrations. The performance, which was televised to Europe and the United States, was a glittering social occasion enhanced by Royal pomp such as had not been seen at Covent Garden for many years. Beefeaters in their picturesque Elizabethan costumes mounted guard on the grand staircase, the auditorium was garlanded with pink and white carnations, and a fanfare of trumpets on the stage saluted the Royals’ entrance before the playing of “God Save the Queen.” Diamonds sparkled in the Royal Box where the Queen sat in the first row, with Prince Philip, the Queen Mother, Princess Margaret. Princess Anne, and the Prince of Wales. The performance started appropriately with the great chorus “Hail, Ail Hail to the Queen,” in a spectacular scene from Berlioz’s “The Trojans at Carthage,” with the role of Queen Dido sung by Josephine Veasey. The novelties came in the ballet part of the programme, one of them, probably the hit of the evening, was a pas-de-deux by Sir Frederick Ashton for Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev entitled “Hamlet Prelude.” Set to music by Liszt, it showed once more Dame Margot’s ageless grace as Ophelia in a dream sequence which also gave Nureyev many opportunities to display his own dramatic magnetism and brilliant technique.