The Haunted Ballroom: concert waltz

Geoffrey Toye’s ballet The Haunted Ballroom – he wrote both the book and the music – is based on a ghost story of the same name by the master of scary fiction Edgar Allan Poe. First performed at Sadler’s Wells in 1934 with choreography by Ninette de Valois, it is set in a castle ballroom where generations of the ancient Tregennis family have met their death and where, indeed, the present Master of Tregennis is to be found dead before the end of the ballet. His death actually occurs in the middle of the night at the height of a waltz he is unwisely but irresistibly drawn to dance with a beautiful phantom in the ghostly company of his ancestors. Not quite as chilling in the concert hall, without the spooky accoutrements of the ballet, it is still an eerie experience and a highly effective waltz number by any standards. Certainly, it is the most successful piece that Toye, a conductor of the D’Oyle Carte Opera Company and Lilian Baylis’s co-director at Sadler’s Wells, ever wrote.