Cupid and the Ogre
by Stanley C West and Chastey Hector

We have a pretty good idea of what this operetta is like.   As well as the contemporary reports in the local press, we hold a copy of the vocal score in our archive.   But we don't know much about its background.   As far as we are aware it is never performed nowadays.   Our latest (2012) search of the Net revealed six past productions apart from our own - and they took place between 1927 and 1936.   The societies who did them are (or were) in Calgary (Canada), Castlethorpe (near Milton Keynes), Derby, Downfield (Tayside), Southey (near Sheffield), and Peterborough.   The Calgary website gives a date of 1912 to the libretto.

Our knowledge of West and Hector is also patchy.   We found a reference to one other work which they did together, Phillida or Love on the Prairie, a 2-act operetta dating from 1920.   West wrote comic poems - here's one.   Chastey Hector (born 1876 or 1877 in Devon, died 1934) features in the the Biographical Dictionary of the Organ.   With Wallace H. King he composed The Lamb of God - A Lenten Cantata in 1930.   It sounds like the same sort of partnership that Gilbert and Sullivan had - a comic writer working with a composer of light opera who was also well acquainted with organ and sacred works.

When we celebrated our 50th Anniversary in 1980 one of our number sang a little bit from Cupid and the Ogre.   We're making no predictions about 2030!