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The Starlight Express, Op. 78

by Sir Edward Elgar

In November 1915, one year into the Great War, Sir Edward Elgar was approached to write the music for the adaptation by Violet Pearn of Algernon Blackwood's novel A Prisoner in Fairyland.

The production was being mounted by the actress Lena Ashwell and was to provided escape from the horrors of the war.

In the words of Elgar scholar Jerrold Northrop Moore:

The play was to be called The Starlight Express. It had nothing to do with the war at all. But its central thesis was that grown-ups were 'wumbled' and that only children possessed the essential 'starlight' quality. Near the end of 1915 , that made an appeal that Elgar was not to be denied. He began by agreeing to adpt some of his Wand of Youth music for The Starlight Express. Enthusiasm grew with the score itself until there were a dozen songs shared between two of the characters, the Organ Grinder and the Laugher. It was to be Elgar's nearest approach to opera, and it became his Op.78. (Elgar on Record, 1974)

The Starlight Express, Op. 78

by Sir Edward Elgar

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