Quartet by Robert Harwood
Quartet was inspired by a television documentary Robert Harwood, the author, saw about 25 years ago, about the composer Verdi, who bequeathed a house in Milan as a home for ageing opera singers. 'Every year on his birthday they gave a gala and these old people would sing, sometimes appallingly, sometimes touchingly,” Harwood remembers. “It was a wonderful documentary, and it haunted me. Last year it came flooding back.' The play was born.
The play is set in England, in an old age home for musicians. There are four opera singers there who were once well-known, especially for the quartet of Rigoletto, and when the fourth one arrives, it's decided that on the 10th of October, which is Verdi's birthday, they should recreate his famous quartet. Then at the end, but I won't tell you how, they sing the quartet - that's the theatrical trick to the play. It's about old age, and triumphing over it. One of the characters in the play says, 'We're artists, aren't we, we're supposed to celebrate life'. And that's really what it's about.'