Playing Bach to hippopotamuses

Michael Bullivant tells Petroc Trelawny how he became Bulawayo’s chief musical impresario

For an extraordinary month in 1953, Bulawayo became the epicentre of culture in the southern hemisphere. In celebration of the centenary of the colonialist and diamond magnate Cecil Rhodes, the Royal Opera House and Sadlers Wells Ballet took up residence. Sir John Gielgud staged and starred in a production of Richard II. The musical programme was left to the Hallé Orchestra, who flew in from Manchester with their music director Sir John Barbirolli and gave 14 concerts. A corrugated-iron aircraft hanger was temporarily named ‘The Theatre Royal’; it even boasted a royal box from where the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret witnessed an anniversary gala featuring more than 300 visiting performers.

Along with umpiring a cricket match and visiting Rhodes’s grave, Barbirolli was called upon to lay the foundation stone of the nascent Rhodesian Academy of Music. And somehow, after nearly six decades of political upheaval and economic crisis, the academy still functions as a place of musical learning.