President's Profile
In 1976
Malcolm Fraser moved from the Welsh Opera, where he had been a
Staff Director for eight years, to take a position as Senior
Lecturer at the Royal Northern College of Music. He and
his family visited Buxton, saw the abandoned Opera House and
felt that with the buildings of the Pavilion Gardens, it was a
perfect Festival environment. He proposed a restoration of
the building and an opening with an International Festival of
Opera and three years later the restored Opera House presented
the first Buxton Festival, of which he remained Artistic
Director for eight years.
Malcolm
was then offered the J. Ralph Corbett Distinguished Chair of
Opera at the University of Cincinnati and the family moved to
the United States.
He and his wife, the Stage Designer Fay Conway sold their
house in Buxton
and bought a small cottage in Church Street, Tideswell to
which they returned during the next 18 years for Christmases and
summer holidays. The family came to love Tideswell so on
his retirement they moved back there and Malcolm immediately
joined the Male Voice Choir, an outstanding body of men whom he
had admired for many years.
He
was absolutely delighted when Chairman Les Furness suggested
that he might become President.
Malcolm
and Fay have four sons. The eldest, Dominic is now
Production
Manager for Kevin Spacey at the Old Vic. The next,
Sam works as a Production Manager for various touring theatre
companies and is landlord of The Baker’s Vaults and Bull’s
Head in Stockport Market. Son Hal lives in New York and
works as a Stage Technician on Broadway, and Tim is a Materials
Engineer in Cincinnati. |
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