Keith Chegwin’s role in a Birtwistle opera
mainThe composer Michael Nyman remembers seeing the TV entertainer, who died yesterday, play a small role as a boy in appeared in Harrison Birtwistle’s ‘Down by the Greenwood Side’ at the Brighton Festival, circa 1969.
Nyman was the librettist.
The uncompromising opera, a ‘dramatic pastoral’, has nine silent roles, which must have been a challenge for poor, irrepressible Cheggers.
I saw Keith introduce the Grimethorpe Band playing Henze for a kids concert.
That performance was recorded and broadcast on ITV, I think, in the early seventies. It was repeated during the early days of Channel 4 when I saw it again and was amused to see his name in the credits.