(Ballad Opera) Vaughan Williams - Hugh the Drover (van Allan, Atkinson, Bottone, Coote, Gooding - Corydon Singers & Orchestra, Best) - 2003, APE (image+.cue) lossless

1. Buy, buy, buy! Who'll buy?
2. Who'll buy my sweet primroses?
3. Cold blows the wind on Cotsall
4. Ballads! Buy my ballads, pretty ballads!
5. As I was a-walking one morning in spring
6. Bless me! What's this?
7. Show me a richer man in all this town
8. Clear the way. Clear the way. Clear the way for the hobby-horse
9. They're gone!... My husband that's to be!
10. Sweetheart, life must be full of care
11. Alone? Alone I would be as the wind and as free
12. Hey day! She will obey
13. Sweet little linnet that longs to be free
14. Horse hoofs, horse hoofs, thunder down the valleys
15. Mary, Mary, come back, come back, come back I say!
16. In the night-time I have seen you riding, riding
17. Mary! Mary!
18. Who'll fight? Who'll fight! A fight! Who's for a fight?
19. Brave English lads, lovers of manly sport
20. Down, down with John the butcher!
21. Alone and friendless, on this foreign ground I am to die
22. Are you ready? Go!
23. Hugh the drover!
24. Oh, the devil and Bonyparty

1. Past four o'clock, and dawn is coming
2. Gaily I go to die
3. Hugh! My dear one!
4. Rise up, my Mary; come away
5. Dear sun, I crave a boon
6. O I've been rambling all this night
7. Here, queen uncrowned, in this most royal place
8. The soldiers!
9. Dropped from the ranks on a winter night
10. Now you are mine!
11. Halloo! Halloo! Mary and Hugh!

Exact Audio Copy V1.0 beta 3 from 29. August 2011
EAC extraction logfile from 14. January 2015, 15:54
Vaughan Williams / Hugh the Drover, Best CD1
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Exact Audio Copy V1.0 beta 3 from 29. August 2011
EAC extraction logfile from 14. January 2015, 16:07
Vaughan Williams / Hugh the Drover, Best CD2
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REM GENRE Opera
REM DATE 1994
REM DISCID 600C3F18
REM COMMENT "ExactAudioCopy v1.0b3"
PERFORMER "Vaughan Williams"
TITLE "Hugh the Drover, Best CD1"
FILE "Vaughan Williams - Hugh the Drover, Best CD1.ape" WAVE
TRACK 01 AUDIO
TITLE "Act I//Buy, buy, buy! Who'll buy? (Cheap-Jack)"
PERFORMER "Vaughan Williams"
ISRC GBAJY9490101
INDEX 01 00:00:00
TRACK 02 AUDIO
TITLE "Act I//Who'll buy my sweet primroses? (Primrose Seller)"
PERFORMER "Vaughan Williams"
ISRC GBAJY9490102
INDEX 01 02:24:15
TRACK 03 AUDIO
TITLE "Act I//Cold blows the wind on Cotsall (Showman)"
PERFORMER "Vaughan Williams"
ISRC GBAJY9490103
INDEX 01 04:16:50
TRACK 04 AUDIO
TITLE "Act I//Ballads! Buy my ballads, pretty ballads! (Ballad Seller)"
PERFORMER "Vaughan Williams"
ISRC GBAJY9490104
INDEX 01 06:06:17
TRACK 05 AUDIO
TITLE "Act I//As I was a-walking one morning in spring (Ballad Seller)"
PERFORMER "Vaughan Williams"
ISRC GBAJY9490105
INDEX 01 08:03:72
TRACK 06 AUDIO
TITLE "Act I//Bless me! What's this? (Aunt Jane)"
PERFORMER "Vaughan Williams"
ISRC GBAJY9490106
INDEX 01 09:42:32
TRACK 07 AUDIO
TITLE "Act I//Show me a richer man in all this town (John the Butcher)"
PERFORMER "Vaughan Williams"
ISRC GBAJY9490107
INDEX 01 11:50:02
TRACK 08 AUDIO
TITLE "Act I//See, see, here they come! Way for the morris men! (Crowd)"
PERFORMER "Vaughan Williams"
ISRC GBAJY9490108
INDEX 01 14:08:15
TRACK 09 AUDIO
TITLE "Act I//They're gone!... My husband that's to be! (Aunt Jane, Mary)"
PERFORMER "Vaughan Williams"
ISRC GBAJY9490109
INDEX 01 15:32:60
TRACK 10 AUDIO
TITLE "Act I//Sweetheart life must be full of care (Aunt Jane)"
PERFORMER "Vaughan Williams"
ISRC GBAJY9490110
INDEX 01 16:27:17
TRACK 11 AUDIO
TITLE "Act I//Alone I would be as the wind and as free (Mary)"
PERFORMER "Vaughan Williams"
ISRC GBAJY9490111
INDEX 01 18:33:52
TRACK 12 AUDIO
TITLE "Act I//Hey day! She will obey (Hugh)"
PERFORMER "Vaughan Williams"
ISRC GBAJY9490112
INDEX 01 19:50:32
TRACK 13 AUDIO
TITLE "Act I//Sweet little linnet that longs to be free (Hugh)"
PERFORMER "Vaughan Williams"
ISRC GBAJY9490113
INDEX 01 20:19:60
TRACK 14 AUDIO
TITLE "Act I//Horse hoofs, horse hoofs, thunder down the valleys (Hugh)"
PERFORMER "Vaughan Williams"
ISRC GBAJY9490114
INDEX 01 23:09:47
TRACK 15 AUDIO
TITLE "Act I//Mary, Mary, come back, come back I say! (Aunt Jane)"
PERFORMER "Vaughan Williams"
ISRC GBAJY9490115
INDEX 01 26:52:00
TRACK 16 AUDIO
TITLE "Act I//In the night-time I have seen you riding, riding (Mary)"
PERFORMER "Vaughan Williams"
ISRC GBAJY9490116
INDEX 01 29:15:15
TRACK 17 AUDIO
TITLE "Act I//Mary! Mary! (The Constable)"
PERFORMER "Vaughan Williams"
ISRC GBAJY9490116
INDEX 01 33:15:27
TRACK 18 AUDIO
TITLE "Act I//Who'll fight? Who'll fight? A fight! Who's for a fight? (Showman)"
PERFORMER "Vaughan Williams"
ISRC GBAJY9490118
INDEX 01 33:57:07
TRACK 19 AUDIO
TITLE "Act I//Brave English lads, lovers of manly sport (Showman)"
PERFORMER "Vaughan Williams"
ISRC GBAJY9490119
INDEX 01 35:40:10
TRACK 20 AUDIO
TITLE "Act I//Down, down with John the butcher! (Crowd)"
PERFORMER "Vaughan Williams"
ISRC GBAJY9490120
INDEX 01 38:00:70
TRACK 21 AUDIO
TITLE "Act I//Alone and friendless, on this foreign ground I am to die (Hugh)"
PERFORMER "Vaughan Williams"
ISRC GBAJY9490121
INDEX 01 40:46:65
TRACK 22 AUDIO
TITLE "Act I//Are you ready? Go! (The Fight Scene)"
PERFORMER "Vaughan Williams"
ISRC GBAJY9490122
INDEX 01 44:52:62
TRACK 23 AUDIO
TITLE "Act I//Hugh the Drover! (Crowd)"
PERFORMER "Vaughan Williams"
ISRC GBAJY9490123
INDEX 01 48:00:67
TRACK 24 AUDIO
TITLE "Act I//Oh, the devil and Bonyparty (The turnkey, showman and crowd)"
PERFORMER "Vaughan Williams"
ISRC GBAJY9490124
INDEX 01 50:25:55

REM GENRE Opera
REM DATE 1994
REM DISCID 810BA40B
REM COMMENT "ExactAudioCopy v1.0b3"
PERFORMER "Vaughan Williams"
TITLE "Hugh the Drover, Best CD2"
FILE "Vaughan Williams - Hugh the Drover, Best CD2.ape" WAVE
TRACK 01 AUDIO
TITLE "Act 2//Past four o'clock, and dawn is coming (Ballad Seller)"
PERFORMER "Vaughan Williams"
ISRC GBAJY9490201
INDEX 01 00:00:00
TRACK 02 AUDIO
TITLE "Act 2//Gaily I go to die (Hugh)"
PERFORMER "Vaughan Williams"
ISRC GBAJY9490202
INDEX 01 04:06:45
TRACK 03 AUDIO
TITLE "Act 2//Hugh! My dear one! (Mary)"
PERFORMER "Vaughan Williams"
ISRC GBAJY9490203
INDEX 01 08:18:47
TRACK 04 AUDIO
TITLE "Act 2//Rise up, my Mary, come away (Hugh)"
PERFORMER "Vaughan Williams"
ISRC GBAJY9490204
INDEX 01 12:31:20
TRACK 05 AUDIO
TITLE "Act 2//Dear sun, I crave a boon (Mary)"
PERFORMER "Vaughan Williams"
ISRC GBAJY9490205
INDEX 01 16:55:70
TRACK 06 AUDIO
TITLE "Act 2//O I've been rambling all this night (John the Butcher)"
PERFORMER "Vaughan Williams"
ISRC GBAJY9490206
INDEX 01 19:32:47
TRACK 07 AUDIO
TITLE "Act 2//Here, queen uncrowned, in this most royal place (Mary)"
PERFORMER "Vaughan Williams"
ISRC GBAJY9490207
INDEX 01 23:21:35
TRACK 08 AUDIO
TITLE "Act 2//The soldiers! (John the Butcher)"
PERFORMER "Vaughan Williams"
ISRC GBAJY9490208
INDEX 01 31:15:52
TRACK 09 AUDIO
TITLE "Act 2//Dropped from the ranks on a winter night (Sergeant)"
PERFORMER "Vaughan Williams"
ISRC GBAJY9490209
INDEX 01 33:52:55
TRACK 10 AUDIO
TITLE "Act 2//Now you are mine! (Hugh)"
PERFORMER "Vaughan Williams"
ISRC GBAJY9490210
INDEX 01 37:44:30
TRACK 11 AUDIO
TITLE "Act 2//Halloo! Halloo, Mary and Hugh (Crowd)"
PERFORMER "Vaughan Williams"
ISRC GBAJY9490210
INDEX 01 44:01:72

This remark by Ralph Vaughan Williams to Bruce Richmond, editor of The Times Literary Supplement, in 1909 or 1910, was the beginning of Hugh the Drover.
Richmond found Harold Child, a Times leader-writer, and some weeks later Vaughan Williams wrote him a long letter† warning him that, ‘if our scheme ever comes to anything I see hardly any chance of an opera by an English composer ever being produced, at all events in our lifetime’, a forecast that happily proved incorrect – though in 1910 it must have seemed likely enough.
He told Child that he wanted to try his hand at ‘an opera on more or less accepted lines, and preferably a comedy, to be full of tunes, and lively, and one tune that will really come off …
This fitted in with another idea of mine which was to write a musical, what the Germans call Bauer Comedie – only applied to English country life (real as far as possible – not sham) – something on the lines of Smetana’s Verkaufte Braut ( https://rutr.life/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4567653 ) – for I have an idea an opera written to real English words, with a certain amount of real English music and also a real English subject, might just hit the right nail on the head … the whole thing might be folk-song-y in character, with a certain amount of real ballad stuff thrown in’.
He then outlined, as a suggestion, the essence of a plot which became Hugh the Drover and which shows that even at this early stage certain musical situations were very clear in Vaughan Williams’s mind – the fair scene, with the salesmen’s cries and the Ballad-Seller’s song, the fight, and the dawn return of the mayers after the love duet, one of the most poetic moments in the opera and based on a real-life incident told him by a Cambridgeshire folksinger.
The reference to Richard Strauss’s Feuersnot ( https://rutr.life/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4918433 ) is interesting.
Presumably he had seen the Beecham performances in London in July 1910, just when he was beginning to think about Hugh the Drover.
Strauss made liberal use of Bavarian folksongs in his delightful one-act opera, and at one point the hero, a sorcerer’s apprentice named Kunrad, sings an aria in which he rejects literature and magic in favour of nature and life. Vaughan Williams was still worrying over the ending of their opera in July 1913 when he wrote to Child from Innsbruck.
The last series of letters dates from December 1913 when Vaughan Williams and his wife were on the Italian Riviera.
By then he was cutting and revising, patching together bits of his own dialogue with Child’s, and asking for a second verse for Mary’s lovely ‘In the night-time’ song in Act I.
Over the years Hugh the Drover remained fairly regularly in the Sadler’s Wells repertory and in June 1933 there was a remarkable RCM production, conducted with zest and acumen by Sir Thomas Beecham, in which the original RCM Hugh, Trefor Jones, returned to the role.
For this production Child and Vaughan Williams added an extra scene at the start of Act II.
They had been told that the opera was too short and did not give the public their money’s worth.
But the composer was never happy with the new scene.
He regarded it as poor dramatically and musically and made the valid point that it ‘entirely spoils the dramatic effect of the sudden hush at the old beginning of Act II coming sharpest after the noisy finish of Act I. So I never want to hear it or see it again’. (The curious will find it in the 1959 revision of the vocal score.)
Never entirely happy with Child’s libretto, Vaughan Williams regularly tinkered with it.
An early casualty was Hugh’s Feuersnot harangue on life in the open, which was replaced with some recitative and the duet ‘Lord of my life’ for Mary and Hugh.
As late as 1955, when he was 83, Vaughan Williams was still improving this finale and he now inserted a new song for Aunt Jane after the duet.
Child had died in 1945 and RVW felt free to make extensive revisions to the dialogue and to tighten the action.
This definitive version was performed at Sadler’s Wells in February 1956 and incorporated in the 1959 edition of the score.

ACT I
It is Fair Day in a small Cotswolds town during the Napoleonic wars.
The climax of the fun has come with the appearance of the impresario of the proceedings, a Showman, who rouses the assembled crowd to a fury of spy mania.
They are ready to suspect anyone and everyone.
Mary, the Constable’s daughter, with her elderly Aunt Jane, have come to see the show.
Unfortunately, as she arrives a ballad-singer is singing an old song about being married on Tuesday morning.
This is just Mary’s case, and to a man she hates, the brutal rich bully John the Butcher who, with the Constable, has also decided to visit the fair.
John wants Mary to promenade the show with him, and roughly seizes her arm.
This angers the crowd and a general scrimmage is only prevented by the entry of the morris men on their way to perform in the town square.
Everyone’s attention is diverted and all troop off in the wake of the dancers, dragging John and the Constable unwillingly along with them.
So Mary is left alone with Aunt Jane who tells her of the joys of domesticity.
This has no attraction for Mary who longs to leave the stuffy town for the roving life.
Her longing is hardly uttered when it is satisfied; there appears from nowhere a handsome young rover whose profession is rounding up wild ponies for the army.
His name is Hugh the Drover and he sings to her of the joys of the open road.
Her heart is at once captured and the scene ends according to all the rules of romance with an impassioned love dialogue and an embrace.
This is interrupted first by Mary’s father, who threatens the vengeance of John the butcher, and secondly by the Showman who is promoting a fight.
John has challenged all comers for a stake of £20.
Hugh accepts the challenge but stipulates that the prize shall be nothing less than Mary herself.
Hugh wins the fight amidst the enthusiastic applause of his supporters.
John, however, has one shot left in his locker.
Who is this homeless vagabond who dares to make love to his girl?
He is probably a French spy, bribed by French gold.
The fickle crowd, already inflamed by the Showman’s rhetoric, veer round and proclaim Hugh a spy.
He is seized and dragged off to the stocks while a messenger is hurriedly sent to Gloucester for a squad of soldiers to arrest the spy and march him off to the gallows.
ACT II
The scene is the market place in the town.
It is still dark.
The church clock strikes four.
Hugh sits in the stocks alone.
All is quiet except for an occasional drunken chorus from the inn.
Suddenly the door of the inn bursts open and out reels John with his rowdy companions on the way to gather the may for their sweethearts.
After taunting Hugh they stagger off on their errand.
Hugh is once more left alone.
But not for long. Mary has stolen her father’s keys and sets Hugh free to escape to the open road once more, with his Mary.
But they had forgotten one thing; suddenly they hear the distant sound of the may horns, first on one side of the town and then on the other.
They are trapped! But Mary has a plan. ‘Back to the stocks’, she says. ‘Both of us, then we shall be discovered together and disowned as a pair of vagabonds.’
In her hurry, Mary drops a shoe.
Too late to retrieve it now; already John’s voice is heard approaching.
He is gradually joined by the whole town who serenade Mary with the traditional may song.
No answer! Mary has disappeared.
‘Let’s ask the spy’, says the Turnkey.
At that minute John stumbles over Mary’s shoe.
All is discovered.
Mary throws back Hugh’s cloak and declares herself the drover’s queen.
Here’s a pretty state of things, the Constable’s daughter found in the stocks at dawn.
Her father disowns her and John refuses to marry her, and further insults her, offering her a temporary situation as his doxy.
This is too much.
John is about to be roughly handled when once again the scrimmage is interrupted, this time by a distant bugle call.
The soldiers! John is all eagerness to point out the spy.
But the Sergeant quickly sizes up the Butcher and going up to Hugh tears off the cloak with which he has covered his face.
He starts back. ‘This is no spy; this is my old friend Hugh, who saved my life.
Well, we won’t go back empty-handed; we’ll enlist that butcher as a soldier.’ So John is marched off to Gloucester, the whole town following him singing a jeering song.
Mary and Hugh are left alone.
When it comes to the point she is frightened of going out into the wilds with a complete stranger.
But love wins the day, and the lovers ecstatically pledge themselves to a free life under heaven, though the villagers and Aunt Jane plead vainly with them to stay.
Then, as the rising sun gilds the church weathercock, they start out on their journey while the crowd murmurs a soft farewell.