Reginald Somerville

Somerville received musical training under the Italian tenor and teacher Giulio Moretti.[1] He co-wrote music with A. McLean and G. W. Byng for the musical farce, A White Silk Dress, opening at London's Prince of Wales's Theatre on 3 October 1896.[2] In collaboration with the librettist Guy Eden he wrote The 'Prentice Pillar, a romantic opera in one act in 1899.[3] Somerville's "The Ballad of Thyra Lee", a dramatic scene, premiered in 1900, was given at a Royal Philharmonic Society concert in May 1903.[4] Also 1903, he played opposite Marie Studholme in The School Girl. In 1909, his opera The Mountaineers was premiered at the Savoy Theatre in London. It had a two-month run and a provincial tour in late 1910.[5]

After the First World War, Somerville wrote Antoine, an opera that he considered his best work,[6] which was produced at the Lyceum Theatre, London, by the Carl Rosa Opera Company. The plot of the opera featured a blind sailor who has his sight miraculously restored only to discover his wife eloping with a rich lover.[7] He also wrote both the music and lyrics for a three-act opera titled David Garrick, which was founded on T. W. Robertson's well-known comedy of the same name. It was premiered in 1920 by the Carl Rosa company and then presented under Somerville's management in the West End, substantially re-written to suit the light-music audience.[8] Critics were divided on the merit of Somerville's music. The Illustrated London News remarked that the score "halts between the methods of the lyric and the grand-opera stage, and would have been all the better for cutting out all the connections with the latter."[9] A week later, the critic continued, "He has no great gift of melody. ... Worse than the orchestration is the handling of the ensembles, if one may call them ensembles."[10] The work was revived in 1932. In 1924, he wrote The Love Doctor, a "musical show with a story", which was toured on the Moss' Empires circuit and played in London at the Chelsea Palace Theatre in 1925.

Somerville's work as a composer dried up with the advent of sound films in the mid-1920s, and he took to teaching, but he became ill, ran into debt and was declared bankrupt in 1934. The bankruptcy was discharged in 1937.[11]

He died on 8 July 1948 at St John's nursing home, Tankerton-on-Sea, in Kent.[12]

Somerville's published works for piano include: "Alpine Roses – Morceau" (1913); "Automobile waltz" (1912); "Carina – Morceau pizzicato pour Piano" (1911); "The Honey Bee – Humoresque for the piano" (1924); "Intermezzo" (1922); "The Mountaineers – Pianoforte Selection" (1913); "Three Dances" (1922); and "Three Light Pieces for Piano: Bagatelle, Melody, and Valse" (1911).[13] Among his orchestral works are "Four Fancies – Suite" (1925); "Funeral of a Flea" (1928); "Nucleus Themes, No. 1" (1927); "Razzle-Dazzle" (1928); and "Two Grotesque Recitations (1927)".[13]

Songs by Somerville include: "All the Way to Coventry" (1913);[13] "Call the yowes to the knowes" (1891);[14] "God Sends the Night" (1908);[15] "The Hour I love the best of all" (1924);[13] "The Lark and the Nightingale" (1900);[16] "The Laughing Waves" (1900);[17] "A Memory" (1891);[14] "The Song of Kent" (1921);[13] "Songs of Friendship" (1909);[18] "The Amber Necklace" (1917);[13] "When Dreams come true" (1913);[13] "Wherever I may be" (1913);[13] "Who Rides for the King" (1911);[19] and "Zaïda" (1914).[13]