Charles Villiers Stanford and Charles Hallé, Venice 1882

Despite his reputation as an irascible teacher, Charles Villiers Stanford had a developed sense of humour. Coupled to this was an eye for journalistic detail. He penned three books of “memoirs”: Studies and Memories (1908), Pages from an Unwritten Diary (1914), and Interludes, Records and Reflections (1922).  This present anecdote is taken from the Unwritten Diary (p.206f).

Stanford explains that after the Birmingham Festival of 1882 he travelled with his wife to Switzerland. He wrote:

After the 1882 Festival we went to Monte Generoso and had experience of the worst floods I have ever seen. After a long spell of doubtful weather, three thunderstorms met over our devoted hotel, and over most of the rest of the range of mountains to the North of Italy and deluged the plains below. We got with difficulty to the station outside Verona, and made our entry into the town between two banks of mud standing three feet high on either side of the

streets. The only bridge left was the old Roman structure. The buildings on each side were mostly like dolls' houses with the front taken off. Two or three fell into the Adige as I watched.

Going on to Venice the next day, we were turned out at Padua and had to drive along an interminable road between two muddy lakes, which extended at least half-way to the sea-city, in a most rickety vehicle, drawn by a shying horse.

Venice made up for the risky journey, and the floods to an unusual extent counteracted the perfumes at low tide. There was a pleasing uncertainty as to our exit; so many were the broken bridges, and so dangerous the sunken and (far from) permanent way on the railways. But we contrived to escape from an unduly long imprisonment by way of Trieste and Vienna. I saw one sight in Venice which alone repaid the journey: Charles Hallé in a frockcoat and a white top hat reading the Daily Telegraph while seated in a gondola and floating under the Bridge of Sighs.

Monte Generoso is a mountain located on the Swiss-Italian border. At the time of Stanford’s visit, the mountain railway had not been built.

Charle Hallé (1819-95) was an Anglo-German pianist and conductor. He studied at Darmstadt and later in Paris. In 1848 he arrived in Manchester where he took on several conducting posts. Nine years later he founded the orchestra that bears his name.

It is interesting to recall that Stanford’s reference to the Roman bridge at Verona, being the only one left standing. Sixty-three years later the structure was blown up by the retreating German army. It was rebuilt in 1957, using rubble recovered from the River Adige.