The overture
The Bird Actors began simply as an overture for piano duet, written in 1925 and dedicated ‘To G M Gordon Brown’; this was his fellow-student Gavin Gordon, best known for his ballet
The Rake’s Progress that Lambert was to introduce with the Vic-Wells Company. The Overture was then incorporated as the finale to
Adam and Eve but withdrawn when Diaghilev changed the title to
Romeo and Juliet. So in 1927 it was rescored as
The Bird Actors overture, taking its title from an unpublished poem by Sacheverell Sitwell, and first performed on 6 July 1931 in a Camargo Society programme as an interlude preceding Lambert’s second ballet,
Pomona.
from notes by Stephen Lloyd © 2005
