The story of Elgar's In the South (Alassio)

The story of Elgar's In the South (Alassio)

We share the story behind the opening work, Elgar's 'In the South' (Alassio)


By 1903, Edward Elgar was doing well enough to afford a winter holiday for his wife and himself. They went to fashionable Alassio on the Italian Riviera and walked in the hills enjoying streams and flowers against a backdrop both of snow-capped mountains and the blue Mediterranean.

He daydreamed of ancient civilisations and mused on the passage of time as he watched shepherds amongst the ruins. ‘Then I woke up,’ he said, ‘and found I’d composed an overture. The rest was merely writing it down.’ In the South (Alassio) was premiered in 1904 at Covent Garden.

It was a good year for Elgar. The King Knighted him, the Athenaeum accepted him and Birmingham University honoured him. A winter in the warm south was his due, dammit.

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