But he was also capable of great concern and compassion for others."One of his works that still regularly gets an airing is the musical Blondel, on which he collaborated with Tim Rice Had he lived, they might well have done another. Rice remembers their collaboration with warmth and gratitude: "The joy was that he was so funny. He'd come down to Oxfordshire to discuss the plans for Blondel and simply have one in stitches But he was also extraordinarily literate. We'd go on long walks together and he'd be holding forth passionately about Dickens and Shakespeare and so on. He was just great fun to work with."It was perhaps disappointing Blondel didn't do even better, although it did pretty well: it had a great cast, and Stephen's music was super. There were a couple of songs like 'The Least of my Troubles' and 'Running Back for More', which Elaine Paige later recorded, that were just gorgeous.

It triumphed at its opening in Bath, and was a huge success at the Old Vic (which it reopened in October l983). My children, who were still small when we were writing it, are forever playing the CD."Oliver's legacy is vast. As Jonathan Dove, whose talents among contemporary composers come perhaps closest to Oliver's, pointed out at the time of Timon, that he had a rare, inspired gift for word-setting: scrupulously respectful of the nuances and cadences of natural speech: "His singers are not canaries, but actors who speak the music.

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" You can hear it in Timon; you can hear it in Mario and Il Giardino. What's more, he had the dramatic gift too: as Dove point out, "An actor's sense of timing informs his dramatic pacing."All these qualities came together in his last masterpiece. That Timon, with its angst and foreboding - Oliver knew as he composed it that his time was almost up - is not yet performed worldwide only reflects the dilatoriness of operahouses in cottoning on to recent work.The Stephen Oliver Opera Prize does live on as his legacy.

But that the rest of the bawdy, riotous, pithy, satirical, dazzling Oliver canon - Blondel apart - remains unrecorded, and receives only periodic performances, is not just a pathetic oversight It's a dire loss.. In the 30 years that Frederica von Stade has been singing, she has earned the reputation as one of the music world's most loved figures. In a profession more noted for monstrous egos than genuinely nice people with decent value systems, Miss von Stade is definitely a one off Not that she would thank you for such formality. This most un diva-ish of divas, with a delicious sense of humour, is known simply as Flicka. In the 30 years that Frederica von Stade has been singing, she has earned the reputation as one of the music world's most loved figures. In a profession more noted for monstrous egos than genuinely nice people with decent value systems, Miss von Stade is definitely a one off Not that she would thank you for such formality.