Geoffrey Toye

Edward Geoffrey Toye (17 February 1889 – 11 June 1942), known as Geoffrey Toye, was an English conductor, composer and opera producer.

He is best remembered as a musical director of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company and for his association with Sadler's Wells Theatre. One of his ballets, The Haunted Ballroom (1934), became popular and was revived several times, and the new overture that he prepared for Gilbert and Sullivan's Ruddigore in 1919 became the standard version.

Life and career

Born in Winchester, Hampshire, Toye was the younger son of Arlingham James Toye and his wife Alice Fayrer née Coates. Toye's father was a housemaster at Winchester College, who for many years ran a music society for the boys.

Early years

Toye studied at the Royal College of Music, concentrating on composition and conducting. He also displayed such skill as a pianist that he was engaged "when little more than a boy" to accompany the celebrated soprano Luisa Tetrazzini. As early as 1906 he deputised for André Messager as conductor at performances of Messager's opera Mirette at Cambridge. Together with his elder brother Francis he composed incidental music for The Well in the Wood, a "pastoral masque" by C. M. A. Peake; and was sole creator of the scenario and music for a short ballet, The Fairy Cap, first given at His Majesty's Theatre in 1911, revived for charity performance the following year.