FROM earliest Elizabethan times there had run a legend in the Yorkshire House of Lovel which told as follows:

‘Lovel’s line from sore distress
Rescued was by Royal BESS.
When its doom is written plain
BESS shall save the House again.’

How, in the romantic days when George the First was king, young Sir Harry, latest heir of Lovel’s line, found his fortunes suddenly imperilled by a kinsman’s malice; how his betrothed, the fair Bess Mannering, believing herself to be the ‘Bess’ foreshadowed by the prophecy, renounced her happiness to shield her lover; and how Destiny, in the guise of a chivalrous highwayman, intervened in the nick of time to ‘save the House’ – this is the central motif of the opera, through which the ‘Lovel Legend’ threads its way to a surprising, but at the same time literal, fulfilment.

Published by J Curwen

232 pages

Condition; A little worn, name on cover, otherwise in VERY GOOD clean condition