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Once in place, Thomson sagely recruited other composer-critics to assist him, among them Lou Harrison, Arthur Berger and Peggy Glanville-Hicks.

Glanville-Hicks: Sappho – review 12 songs of Christmas: P.I.F.

The centenary of the birth of Peggy Glanville-Hicks falls next week, and this recording of her final opera, at its first ever performance, marks not only that anniversary but also the centenary this year of Lawrence Durrell, whose 1950 verse play forms the basis of the libretto.

Born in Melbourne, Glanville-Hicks had studied in London with Vaughan Williams and in Paris with Nadia Boulanger before moving to the US, where she became a music critic for the New York Herald Tribune.

It had been commissioned by San Francisco Opera, in the hope that Maria Callas would sing the title role, but the company rejected the score and none of it was performed before Glanville-Hicks's death in 1990.