Name:William R Servaes
Event Type:Birth Registration
Registration Quarter:Jul-Aug-Sep
Registration Year:1921
Registration District:Christchurch
County:Hampshire
Event Place:Christchurch, Hampshire, England
Mother's Maiden Name (not available before 1911 Q3):Johnson
Volume:2B
Page:1179
Line Number:33
Citing this Record:
"England and Wales, Birth Registration Index, 1837-2008", index, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/QV34-9KKH : accessed 19 Nov 2014), William R Servaes, 1921.
CATALOGUE OF THE CORRESPONDENCE AND PAPERS OF THE RT HON EDWARD CHARLES GURNEY BOYLE, BARON BOYLE OF HANDSWORTH, C H (1923 - 1981)
Servaes, William, manager Aldeburgh Festival: correspondence, 49658, 49660-1
FOR NEARLY 10 years Bill Servaes was general manager of the Aldeburgh Festival. When Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears interviewed him for the job, he confessed he was more used to running ships than music festivals but, as it turned out, he was particularly well suited to this new venture in his career. The years from 1971, when Servaes took up the position, to 1976, when Britten died, were among the most fruitful in the somewhat chequered history of the festival.
William Servaes, the son of a naval officer, and himself destined for the Navy, was educated at the Royal Naval College, Portsmouth. Aged 18 when the Second World War broke out, he served mainly in destroyers in the Atlantic, with an excursion into the Mediterranean for the Allied landings in Sicily. After the war, invalided out of the Navy and newly married, he had no employment and no home. After a temporary job, he went to work for a shipping company, the Orient Line, and set up house in Guildford. When the Orient Line merged with P&O he ran the business side of a firm of architects. In 1967, growing tired of commuting to London, he moved with his wife and family to Suffolk.
They found a house in Orford, not far from Aldeburgh, where Pat had lived as a child - in the Red House, where Britten himself now lived. They attended operas and concerts during the annual summer festival, but merely as members of the public. In 1971 there was a crisis in the festival management, and the general manager resigned. Colin Graham, the artistic director of the English Opera Group, and director of many first performances of Britten's operas at Aldeburgh, asked Servaes if he would like to be the new manager. Despite initial fears concerning his lack of musical knowledge, Servaes was an immediate success, with the artistic management, with the public and with the press.
By this time the festival, founded in 1948 by Britten, the tenor Peter Pears and the librettist Eric Crozier, had become almost a private club. First-time visitors were made to feel unwelcome by those who had attended every festival since the beginning (I know, it happened to me). Servaes changed all that, welcoming new visitors without upsetting the old guard. He got on particularly well with Britten and with most, if not quite all, of his co-directors; and he was adored by members of the press, whom he treated as human beings and entertained to splendid repasts at his house in Orford - he was a passionate and inspired cook.
This improvement in public relations was not achieved at the expense of artistic standards; on the contrary, the festivals of the early 1970s saw the introduction of several interesting new works by young composers, including Gordon Crosse's The Wheel of the World, an "entertainment" for young people adapted from three of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, and John Gardner's The Visitors, both in 1972. Thea Musgrave's The Voice of Ariadne scored a great success in 1974. Above all, there was the final flowering of Britten's own operatic genius: Death in Venice, which had its premiere at Snape Maltings, the concert hall-cum-opera house a few miles from Aldeburgh, in 1973.
Britten had always loved Venice, and in autumn 1975 he expressed his sorrow at the thought of never visiting the city again. Servaes responded by taking the composer and his entourage there in November. In Venice Britten finished his third string quartet, which was performed by the Amadeus Quartet at Snape in December. His early operetta Paul Bunyan, dating from 1941, which was played on BBC Radio in February 1976, was given its British stage premiere at the 1976 festival, when one of his very last works, the solo cantata Phaedra, a setting of Racine, was performed by Janet Baker.
Britten died in December 1976, and the Aldeburgh Festival was never quite the same again. The Russian cellist and conductor Mstislav Rostropovich became one of the artistic directors, and in 1979 conducted a fine production of Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin. Bill Servaes, rising 60, decided that he had done his best for the festival and resigned in 1980.
As four of his five children were now grown up, he moved from Orford to a smaller house in Southwold, and spent much of the time in the Algarve. His final years were passed in London, where, in spite of the cancer from which he later died, he continued to live life to the full, to visit the opera, the theatre and the ballet - and to cook, for his large family and his many friends.
Elizabeth Forbes
William Servaes, naval officer and arts administrator: born Bournemouth, Hampshire 30 June 1921; general manager, Aldeburgh Festival 1971-1980; married 1945 Patricia Vestey (three sons, two daughters); died London 28 January 1999.
The book mentions him a few times with regards to the music festival
Name:William R Servaes
Event Type:Immigration
Event Date:1953
Event Place:New York City, New York, United States
Gender:
Age:
Birthplace:Britain
Ship Name:Queen Elizabeth
Birth Year (Estimated):
Affiliate Publication Title:Passenger and Crew Lists of Vessels Arriving at New York, NY, 1897-1957
Affiliate Publication Number:T715
Affiliate Film Number:8377
GS Film number:002321823
Digital Folder Number:007264668
Image Number:00850
Name:William Reginald Servaes
Event Type:Death Registration
Registration Quarter:Jan-Feb-Mar
Registration Year:1999
Registration District:Westminster
County:London
Event Place:Westminster, London, England
Age (available after 1866):
Birth Date (available after June quarter 1969):30 Jun 1921
Birth Year (Estimated):
Volume:2581D
Page:D43C
Line Number:
Citing this Record:
"England and Wales, Death Registration Index 1837-2007", index, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/QVZX-BLN8 : accessed 17 Nov 2014), William Reginald Servaes, 1999.
Hij is getrouwd met Patricia Vestey.
Zij zijn getrouwd op 31 januari 1945, hij was toen 23 jaar oud.Bron 6
Name:William R ServaesZe zijn in de kerk getrouwd in het jaar 1945 te St Mark, North Audley Street, Middlesex, England, hij was toen 23 jaar oud.Bron 6
Event Type:Marriage Registration
Registration Quarter:Jan-Feb-Mar
Registration Year:1945
Registration District:Westminster St. Margaret
County:London
Event Place:Westminster St. Margaret, London, England
Spouse Name (available after 1911):Vestey
Volume:1A
Page:737
Line Number:111
Citing this Record:
"England and Wales, Marriage Registration Index, 1837-2005", index, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/QV81-3BZD : accessed 17 Nov 2014), William R Servaes and null, 1945.
Name:Patricia Vestey
Event Type:Marriage Registration
Registration Quarter:Jan-Feb-Mar
Registration Year:1945
Registration District:Westminster St. Margaret
County:London
Event Place:Westminster St. Margaret, London, England
Spouse Name (available after 1911):Servaes
Volume:1A
Page:737
Line Number:142
Citing this Record:
"England and Wales, Marriage Registration Index, 1837-2005", index, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/QV81-7WMR : accessed 17 Nov 2014), Patricia Vestey and null, 1945.
Name:William Reginald Servaes
Event Type:Marriage
Event Date:1945
Event Place:St Mark, North Audley Street, Middlesex, England
Age:23
Birth Year (Estimated):1922
Spouse's Name:Patricia Vestey
GS Film number:
Digital Folder Number:005502541
Image Number:00184
Citing this Record:
"England, Middlesex, Westminster, Parish Registers, 1538-1912," index and images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/KC8L-DPJ : accessed 17 Nov 2014), William Reginald Servaes and Patricia Vestey, 1945, Marriage; from "Parish registers 1539-1945," index and images, findmypast (www.findmypast.co.uk : DC Thomson, n.d.); St Mark, North Audley Street, Middlesex, England, City of Westminster Archives Centre, London; FHL microfilm .
The descendants of this marriage are over the Vestey-line on the Peerage, the legal system of traditionally hereditary titles in the United Kingdom, which is constituted by the ranks of British nobility and is part of the British honours system.
Kind(eren):
grootouders
ouders
broers/zussen
kinderen
William Reginald Servaes | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
1945 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Patricia Vestey | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
"England and Wales, Birth Registration Index, 1837-2008", index, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/QV34-9KKH : accessed 19 Nov 2014), William R Servaes, 1921.
UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS
Obituary Independent; 23-2-1999; https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/obituary-bill-servaes-1072626.html
"New York, New York Passenger and Crew Lists, 1909, 1925-1957", index and images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/2H7T-4J9 : accessed 11 Jul 2014), William R Servaes, 1953.
"England and Wales, Death Registration Index 1837-2007", index, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/QVZX-BLN8 : accessed 17 Nov 2014), William Reginald Servaes, 1999.
"England and Wales, Marriage Registration Index, 1837-2005", index, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/QV81-3BZD : accessed 17 Nov 2014), William R Servaes and null, 1945.