A passion for music

Henrietta Bredin talks to the Earl of Harewood about a life in opera

In his memoir, The Tongs and the Bones, the Earl of Harewood ruefully quotes his uncle, the Duke of Windsor, remarking, ‘It’s very odd about George and music. You know, his parents were quite normal — liked horses and dogs and the country.’ As it happens, George Harewood also likes horses and dogs and the country — and football and cricket and fishing — but in addition he has had, from an early age, an abiding passion for music.

At the start of the second world war, while he was still at school, he notched up as many performances by Sadler’s Wells Opera as he could and tuned into static-ridden radio broadcasts of operas from Italy, Germany and Hungary. Once he’d joined the army, at the age of 18, he still managed to catch a performance of Werther in Algiers, amass a collection of rare French vocal recordings and, when posted to Naples, become a regular at the San Carlo Opera House, all before eventually being wounded and taken prisoner in an attack on Monte Corneo, near Perugia.