Raymond Gubbay is a hard man to avoid. Especially at Christmas. Last year Raymond Gubbay Ltd presented roughly 600 concerts, of which 180 were part of his annual Christmas Festival and he lived up to his festive catchphrase: ‘You want carols? We’ve got carols.’
Gubbay’s packaging of live classical music has been amazingly successful. He came up with the idea of Vivaldi by candlelight played by men in wigs. His regular Johann Strauss galas are a big hit, as is Strictly Gershwin, and his own-brand laser-lit Classical Spectaculars. The genial man with the Midas touch is famous, too, for his operas at the Albert Hall, where Madam Butterfly is about to return. It comes complete with a 60,000-litre pond, which turns the place into a giant Japanese garden centre.
First seen in 1998, this is its fifth outing at the majestic venue Gubbay adores. It’s also one of his rare opera productions to which critics (amusingly allergic to mass entertainment) have given unanimous approval. Two extra dates have already been added owing to popular demand, putting even more bums on the plush — Gubbay’s great uncontested talent. David Freeman’s production is staged in-the-round to 5,000 people and sung in English. Ticket prices range from £21.50 to £65, comparable to a West End musical. When you think that the heavily subsidised ENO will hit £90 for a top-whack ticket this year, you can see the appeal.
Madam Butterfly is Gubbay’s passion, as he explains from his London offices (off Chancery Lane), which were once Charles Dickens’s residence. ‘It’s curiously intimate, there’s no long stand-up-and-sing bits that you get in Verdi. Much as I love Verdi, Puccini really knows how to move things on. In this show, Butterfly makes an entrance through the audience. The night of their wedding, candles are floating on the water and it looks just amazing. In the second act, things go from bad to worse for her and everyone gets their hankies out! This show really seems to grip people, and it appeals to an audience perhaps inhibited by the idea of the opera house. The Albert Hall is a friendly old place — and that’s the message we like to send out.’
For 45 years, Gubbay has tried not to frighten the horses with anything difficult or unhummable. He puts on the music he himself loves. ‘I play to middle England. I am not ashamed of that. There is an audience out there that wants to be entertained. People like humming tunes and I believe people who come to our shows know the kind of experience they are going to get and they enjoy it. I don’t have pretensions about high art. I believe that what I do is done to a high level — we don’t compromise on quality, and I am immensely proud of productions like Butterfly.’
Raymond was born in 1946 and grew up in Cricklewood. His parents were keen amateur musicians and he was taken to the Golders Green Hippodrome as a small boy when sweets were still rationed. ‘Going to the Hippodrome was a release into a fantastic world. It was the last venue before London — so I saw masses of stuff there. Pantomime, D’Oyly Carte. I saw Nureyev dance Giselle, Marlene Dietrich, Vanessa Redgrave — everybody!’
Having left school at 16, he worked with the great importer of Russian music and dance, Victor Hochhauser; a ghastly experience which lasted, as he is fond of reciting, 10 months, 28 days and 12 hours. ‘It was a dead end. There was no chance of promotion. I took the mickey as you do at that age, but I learnt a lot.’
His first concert was in Bury St Edmunds in 1966, on the day of the Aberfan disaster. But it was the start of a totally unplanned career in concert promotion. He and Harvey Goldsmith became (with Hochhauser) what he once called ‘the kosher nostra’ of music impresarios. Gubbay is undisputed king of the popular classics. His Classical Spectaculars involve musicians, choirs, guardsmen, lasers, pyrotechnics, canons, and goodness knows what. Naff? Maybe. But people the world over love them.
Ten years ago he got so fed up with the entrenched non-commercialism of the Royal Opera House that he applied, rather tongue-in-cheek, to run it, sending in a 12-point plan and prompting one wag to say that putting him in charge of the place would be ‘like asking the Grim Reaper to run an old people’s home’. He didn’t get the job. He is a fan of the ROH boss Tony Hall, though one suspects the House’s first-night crowd of there-to-be-seen corporate slickers makes him retch.
His business is, he says, all about coming up with ideas. In June he is putting the Royal Ballet into the O2 Arena. The company is moving in lock, stock and barrel for four massive shows of Romeo and Juliet with Carlos Acosta and Tamara Rojo in the line-up. There will be live relay screens, end-on staging and all the atmosphere of a Led Zeppelin reunion gig. ‘They [the Royal Ballet] have embraced the idea with an incredible will. At our suggestion 2,000 tickets per show are going for £10. Those seats have all sold for the four shows but it has meant an average family can get in for £40. That will, I think, have attracted a totally new audience.’
It’s a good way to bow out. Gubbay is about to be 65 and has recently completed the sale of his business to a German company. The deal has netted him a fortune. As hefty as, say, Sir Cameron Mackintosh’s? ‘God, no! I couldn’t touch the hem of his garment. But it’s a good sum and the offer came out of the blue.’
From April he will do one day a week in the office as chairman and divide his time between his sumptuous Covent Garden house, his Paris apartment and his place in the South of France, where he buys expensive southern Rhône wines — ‘to drink, not to keep’. Mrs Gubbay went west years ago as a result of his work addiction. But he enjoys amusing his six grandchildren, and his future retirement — quietly adding to his art collection — sounds enviably agreeable.
‘I’ve never been in this business purely for financial gain,’ he insists. ‘I am lucky to have worked in a music business I love. To have it bought out is a bonus I never expected. The time is right. I can stay with the company that bears my name, and leave my colleagues to do the hard work. It’s the best of all worlds.’
Madam Butterfly is at the Albert Hall from 24 February to 13 March.