As some members may not have access to the information, here is Grove's entry for Goring Thomas -
Thomas, Arthur Goring (b Ratton Park, Sussex, 20 Nov 1850; d London, 20 March 1892).
English composer. His parents initially opposed a musical career, but in 1873 he went to Paris to study with Émile Duran for two years. In 1877 he entered the RAM and studied with Sullivan and Prout, twice gaining the Lucas medal for composition. Later he also studied orchestration with Max Bruch. From his early unfinished opera Don Braggadocio, he showed a strong inclination towards dramatic music and the theatre, confirmed with a second opera, The Light of the Harem, written while at the RAM and in part performed there in 1879. Its success along with performances of his anthem Out of the Deep (1878), his concert-scenas (including Hero and Leander, 1880) and the romantic cantata The Sun-Worshippers (1881) brought his name to prominence. He was commissioned by Carl Rosa to write an opera, and the resulting Esmeralda, after Hugo’s Notre-Dame de Paris, was produced in 1883 to great acclaim. It was later given in German in Cologne, Hamburg and Berlin, and was revived in 1890 in French at Covent Garden before being given again in its original English version by the Royal Carl Rosa Opera Company in 1908. Driven by its success, Rosa commissioned a second opera, Nadeshda, which was performed in April 1885 and afterwards, in a German version, at Breslau in 1890. Although it was recognized as a stronger and more robust work, Esmeralda nevertheless remained far more enduringly popular. Both works, however, established Thomas at the forefront of British opera.
Thomas’s incentive to compose subsequently declined. He wrote the Suite de ballet (1887) and several songs, and in the early 1890s was commissioned by Richard D’Oyly Carte for an operetta and from the Leeds Festival for a short choral work. Neither revived his creative interest. Poor health and a series of accidents gave rise to depression and his eventual suicide. A scholarship was established at the RAM in his memory, and his operetta The Golden Web was finished by S.P. Waddington and produced in Liverpool and London in 1893. The Swan and the Skylark, his cantata for Leeds, was completed and orchestrated from a piano score by Stanford for the Birmingham Festival in 1894.
Thomas’s training in France was intensely formative, and he was drawn to the works of Bizet, Ambroise Thomas, Delibes, Gounod and Massenet. This is evident from songs such as S’il est un charmant gazon, Le jeune pâtre and Les papillons which adopt the lyric manner of Gounod, while the charming orchestral miniatures of the Suite de ballet and the stylish ballet music of Esmeralda betray the influence of Bizet and Delibes. In his operatic works he had to reconcile his flair for poise and elegance to large-scale drama: Randegger’s bowdlerized libretto for Esmeralda, which deprived Hugo’s original story of its intrigue and ardour and replaced the tragic ending with a happy one, was consequently appropriate to Thomas’s powers of invention. For numbers such as Esmeralda’s ‘Swallow song’ and Phoebus’s aria ‘O vision entrancing’ he was able to achieve a degree of individuality, and his flexible recitatives were considered advanced for their realism. In the more complex and protracted scenes the pressure on his dramatic abilities invariably gave rise to his weakest music. Nadeshda was superior in orchestral colour and thematic material, but the traits of his French mentors remain; moreover, its scale and length far outweighed Thomas’s lyrical instincts. In spite of their common flaws, both operas are important for the part they played in Carl Rosa’s attempt to establish a vernacular opera by native British composers in the 1870s and 80s. Furthermore, the polish and refinement of Thomas’s work provides a compelling example of French influence in British music at a time when so much indigenous composition was dominated by Germany.
Jeremy Dibble
Works (selective list)
MSS in GB-Lbl, Lcm; all printed works published in London; see list in programme of memorial concert, St James’s Hall, 13 July 1892
Operas
Don Braggadocio (3, C.I. Thomas), unfinished
The Light of the Harem (3, C. Harrison, after T. Moore), London, RAM, 7 Nov 1879 (1913)
Esmeralda (4, T. Marzials and A. Randegger, after V. Hugo: Notre-Dame de Paris), London, Drury Lane, 26 March 1883 (1883), rev. Covent Garden, 12 July 1890
Nadeshda (4, J. Sturgis), London, Drury Lane, 16 April 1885 (1885)
The Golden Web (3, F. Corder and B.C. Stephenson), Liverpool, Royal Court, 15 Feb 1893 (1893), completed by S.P. Waddington
Choral and orchestral
Out of the Deep (anthem, Waddington, after Ps cxxx), S, 4vv, orch, London, 1878 (1878)
Hero and Leander (scena, G. Macfarren), London, 1880
The Sun-Worshippers (choral ode, C. Delavigne and C. Newton-Scott), Norwich Festival, 1881 (1881)
Suite de ballet, orch, Cambridge, University Musical Society, 10 March 1887 (1892)
The Swan and the Skylark (cant., Keats, Shelley and F. Hemans), Birmingham Festival, 1894 (1894), completed and orchd C.V. Stanford
3 other concert scenas
Songs and other works
Mélodies, 1v, pf acc. (c1885)
12 Lyrics (H. Boulton) (1889)
Album of 10 Songs, 1v, pf acc. (1893)
6 romances et 2 duos (C. Bingham) (1894)
Many separate songs and duets
Works for vn, pf, and for vc, pf
