Very much on song

The reimagined gardens at Nevill Holt, Leicestershire, have stepped into the limelight to offer a powerful overture to the summer opera festival, explains Kendra Wilson

- Kendra Wilson

NEVILL HOLT feels like a place that is, after 700 years of ups and downs, finally entering its prime. Closeted on a hill in a quiet part of Leicestershire, the ironstone hall at Holt was home for four centuries to the recusant Nevill family, who added their name and many extensions. By 1877, when the shipping heir Sir Bache Cunard took possession of the house, its centuries of layering made for a look that was much in vogue, ready for the neo-Gothic detailing Cunard added with enthusiasm.

A golden age almost began with the arrival of opera-loving Lady Cunard (later known as Emerald), a gregarious Californian heiress. If only Sir Bache himself had been musical. When he was away fishing, his wife’s friends would take over the house, singing Wagnerian arias out of bedroom windows in the middle of the night. Lady Cunard’s departure for London (together with her daughter, Nancy, a style icon and agitator) was Nevill Holt’s loss.

As Lady Cunard was establishing herself as an influential hostess and great supporter of the opera at Covent Garden (‘There was no limit to the number of boxes she could fill,’ noted Osbert Sitwell), her former home went into hibernation as a prep school. When it closed and, in 1999, was put up for sale as one dwelling, it was a threadbare proposition. But David Ross—businessman and now chair of the Royal Opera House—saw the potential. He resolved to turn his home into a setting for music, partly as a pragmatic way of opening the gates to like-minded people, as well as former pupils. Nevill Holt Opera eventually came into being and the garden, teased back to life by designer Rupert Golby, has a starring role.