Paul and Caroline Weiland

Many of us can often recall with great clarity certain cultural icons of our past; often films and music stand out in our memories. More remarkably, we have enormous nostalgia for theme tunes of popular (or even niche TV) programmes but one of the most powerful cultural idioms of the modern age are TV advertisements; slogans, musical jingles and the products they promote. It is astonishing quite how embedded in our psyche advertisements are and many of them are really to be considered as works of art in themselves.

If Opera are hosted at the magnificent Belcombe Court by Paul and Caroline Weiland, and film director Paul is responsible for some of the most iconic advertisements in British Television history.

The list is endless but includes most famously the Walker’s crisps series with Gary Lineker, but also Heineken ads (‘The water in Majorca’), Hamlet cigars (significantly, the one with the fellow using a telescope that runs out of money as a beach body is about to reveal all) and many other comedic ads that are all stuck in our minds. There was also the world’s first two minute advert with the strap-line ‘Fiat Strada – hand-built by Robots’, an advert accompanied by Figaro’s aria ‘Largo al factotum’ from The Barber of Seville which Paul chose after a period of trawling operatic records in order to find something suitable. It is safe to say that Paul is generally considered a legend in the advertising world. However, the most iconic ad of all was probably the Guardian’s thirty second black and white ad showing three points of view of a skinhead charging towards an elderly gentleman. This much decorated ad is often cited as one of the most influential of them all.

Paul’s love of the visual aesthetic is seen to great effect in the more than thirty-year restoration of Belcombe Court, a gorgeous estate above Bradford On Avon.   The grounds and house have been lovingly restored, every view carefully composed (like a film director perhaps?) and it is of course where If Opera are holding the 2022 festival after similar events in 2019 and 2021.  Paul and Caroline essentially enabled Iford Arts (as it was in 2019 and 2021) to continue after moving out of its established home at Iford Manor.

Patrons have grown to love the place already, but Paul never had ambitions to allow his home to be used in this way – and he isn’t (or wasn’t) an instinctive opera fan. So I am very curious to know why Paul reached out to Iford Arts when he heard they were leaving the Manor.

“Having been to Iford Manor a few times, I knew about the company but I am not a serious opera fan. I just felt that like all cultural endeavours these days, we ought to help it survive and flourish,” he says. “You know, I’m a caretaker here, we are passing through. I could close the gates and not let anybody in but we got to a point where we thought we should share this place a bit. People are really respectful too. I think I only ever found one wine bottle cork on the lawns and I realised it was mine!”

Paul shrinks a little from my strident insistence that he has quite literally facilitated the birth of an important new opera company, trying to reinvent ways of working, but he does acknowledge the company’s growing achievements. “I look at the team, and see Debbie working, and I completely recognise that there is a huge amount of dedication to the cause involved. Nobody is doing it for the money. And we are excited by what If Opera is trying to do.”

Caroline, who enjoyed a successful career as a TV producer and is now a therapist is stimulated by the transition she has seen from Iford Arts to If Opera. “I love the transition, and even in the short time we have been doing this, we have seen the audience changing and growing. And it is so important that you are giving opportunities to emerging talent,” she says.

Paul is always to be seen around the grounds, curious, talking to the team and the artists, making suggestions and I have shared many conversations about different, complementary kinds of events we might include in a season. His creative mind is never in neutral. Caroline is happy to be further in the background but enjoys coming out to see the rehearsals or enjoy performances. All of us at If Opera are acutely aware that we are using a private home and that Paul and Caroline are sacrificing privacy for two weeks of the year. Yet in very short order, Paul and Caroline have become aware of a growing sense of responsibility in areas that just hadn’t occurred to us before.

“A lady approached me recently and said ‘oh you will turn on the lights on the house won’t you? That is such a precious memory for me’. Suddenly I felt really guilty about not doing it. And it has been strange seeing hundreds of photographs of my house across social media!” It is true to say that because Belcombe has not been accessible to the public, Paul and Caroline’s hosting of If Opera has been like unveiling a newly mined, precious jewel to the world for the first time and its impact has been extraordinary.

There is something of a paradox at play here of course. Whilst Paul and Caroline remain entirely hospitable, it is not a given that If Opera’s presence will become regular or long-term. And nor, it may surprise you to know, do we wish it to become our expected ‘residence’. Our aims include the extending of the art form into a whole host of communities, in a variety of different environments. The glorious summer traditions of British opera and the picnicking passion will remain a part of what we do, but whilst the company develops, it would be ill-advised to encourage our audiences to think only of Belcombe- a private family home - as our automatic season’s venue. We need to remain flexible and inventive, building and creating performing spaces in wonderful new landscapes and locations. It is indubitably true, however, that whatever the future brings, and whether we continue at Belcombe or make it only an occassional treat, Paul and Caroline are now firmly etched into the history of the company.

Michael Volpe OBE

Executive Director

If Opera