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Writer's pictureSteve Crowther

EDITH SITWELL (1887 – 1964): Behind the Façade by Liz Mucha


To describe Edith Sitwell’s life as colourful and dramatic would be an understatement.

Born into an aristocratic family in 1887, she shot to fame in the 1920s through her unique and inventive collaboration with composer William Walton on her poems Façade. She was a favourite subject for portraitists of the 1920s, including John Singer Sargent, Roger Fry, Wyndham Lewis, Pavel Tchelitchew, and was immortalised in photographs by society photographer Cecil Beaton. Together with her brothers, Osbert and Sacheverell, the Sitwell literary trio became trend setters in the 1920s and 30s, considered by some to rival the Bloomsbury set. Her address book read like a 20th century who’s who. She knew poets and writers such as Siegfried Sassoon, Dylan Thomas, W.B Yeats. T.S. Elliot, Aldous Huxley, D.H. Lawrence, Robert Graves, and Virginia Woolf, (to name just a few) and celebrities such as Noël Coward, Alec Guinness, and Marilyn Monroe. Descended from Plantagenet royalty she flaunted her unusual looks with her unique fashion sense. Her six-foot frame was encased in bohemian or medieval garb complete with feathery hats and colourful turbans. Her hands, considered by her to be her best feature, were laden with enormous rings. Her motto was:


“Why not be oneself? That is the whole secret of a successful appearance. If one is a greyhound, why try to look like a Pekingese?”

 

Edith’s early poems developed from fantastical, whimsical experiments with rhythm, texture, and sound during the Roaring ‘20s, through to more serious poetry of the 1940s coloured by World War II and the dropping of the atomic bomb such as ‘Still falls the Rain’ and ‘The Shadow of Cain’. In the latter part of her life, she wholeheartedly embraced a return to spiritual values, both in her poetry and by converting to Roman Catholicism. By the time she died in 1964 at the age of 77 she had been made a Dame, held five honorary literary degrees from Durham, Leeds, Oxford, Sheffield and Hull and was considered the high priestess of English poetry. In 1962, not only was a memorial concert held for her at the Festival Hall attended by 3000 people, but she appeared on the ITV programme, ‘This is your Life’. However, only a few years after her death, her reputation crashed. She had brawled with critics publicly for over five decades (whom she dubbed the ‘pipsqueakery’) and was now no longer around to defend herself as she had done so colourfully during her life.

 

Last year marked the centenary of the premier of Façade in 1923. This year, 2024, marks the 60th anniversary of Edith Sitwell’s death: a perfect opportunity to revive and celebrate her wonderfully fantastic brand of artistry. In collaboration with the London Song Festival we created Art Sung – Edith Sitwell, Behind the Façade, a semi-dramatised song recital which explores her unusual and eccentric life in her own words, both spoken and sung, beginning with her troubled childhood at Renishaw Hall in Derbyshire (where she fell in love with a peacock), leading to a life of celebrity and notoriety in London, Paris and America. It encompasses her encounters with various celebrities including Noël Coward, with whom she was on non-speaking terms for 40 years after he parodied her in a revue at the West End, and Marilyn Monroe with whom she got on famously much to everyone’s surprise. Woven through the narrative of the recital will be the story of Façade, the extraordinary musical entertainment which Sitwell created together with the then unknown composer William Walton. His jazz-inspired music accompanied her poems which she recited through a megaphone from behind a curtain backdrop designed for the private premiere in 1922 by English artist Frank Dobson. We are immensely grateful to film director Tony Palmer for loaning us this curtain, which was entrusted to him by Edith Sitwell’s nephew, Francis Sitwell.

A further three curtains were designed by different artists in Edith’s lifetime, of which the John Piper curtain, created in 1942, is now considered to be the iconic Façade curtain.

 

For Art Sung – Edith Sitwell, video artist James Symonds continues this tradition of reinventing the background to Façade with his own digital version of a curtain. James visually interprets Edith’s poetry by weaving in the experimental and abstract video work by photographer Etienne Gilfillan and creates a series of animated sketches to illustrate Edith’s reminiscences.

 

For full details and ticket information: Art Sung – Edith Sitwell, Behind the Façade

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