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Arts feature

The promoter the critics love to hate: an interview with Raymond Gubbay

Richard Bratby talks to one of Britain’s most successful impresarios about his promoter’s nose, Arts Council spinelessness and ENO madness

19 June 2021

9:00 AM

19 June 2021

9:00 AM

When Raymond Gubbay left school, he was articled to an accountant’s firm. Fascinated by opera and depressed at the prospect of life as a Golders Green beancounter, he wriggled out of it in a matter of months, and into an assistant’s job at Pathé Newsreels. Sensing that newsreels had a looming expiry date, he asked Arnold Wesker (a family friend) to wangle him an interview with Victor Hochhauser, Britain’s leading promoter of mass-market classical concerts.

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Lowering the Tone & Raising the Roof, by Raymond Gubbay, is published by Quiller Press.

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