The Norfolk Record Office are delighted to have accessioned ten folders of costume designs by celebrated textile specialist Helen Hoyte MBE. Mrs Hoyte designed and dressed eighteen stage productions for the Claxton Opera, founded by the late Richard White.
Mr. White originally set up the opera company in a ruined Methodist chapel and adjoining cottage in Claxton; the resulting small theatre held approximately one hundred people. Restoration continued alongside a long run of operas, some held in Claxton and others in Norwich, such as Mozart’s ‘The Magic Flute’ held at the Theatre Royal and Orff’s ‘Carmina Burana’ in St Andrew’s Hall.
Mr. White’s infamous production of Mendelssohn’s oratorio ‘Elijah’ was held forty years ago this year in Norwich Cathedral.
Despite the decades that have elapsed since its debut, the show remains a memorably profound experience for many and received critical acclaim. Mrs Hoyte describes it as a religious experience,
“There was stunned silence as the great west window came alight during the final hymn of praise.”
Mrs Hoyte says that her involvement with the Claxton Opera fulfilled a lifetime’s ambition of designing for the stage,
“First of all Richard would discuss his basic ideas with me. I would then realise them as sketches which he would come to view. So often he would skip around the room saying, “You’ve got it!””
The bespoke costumes were so effective that they set the style of each production, contributing to the astonishing success of the company as a whole and earning them the informal title of ‘La Scala of East Anglia’.
A team of workers assisted Mrs Hoyte in producing the costumes, often using damaged old sheets from Fakenham Laundry to meet the company’s shoe-string budget. Supporters of the group would donate any spare fabrics they could offer.
A former art and textiles teacher, Mrs Hoyte’s passion for costume is evident in her talks on the history of the Norwich shawl and in her involvement with the Costume &Textile’s Association (C&TA)’s ‘Norwich Textiles Trail.’ Mrs Hoyte is Honorary President of the C&TA and has been involved since its foundation
Her book ‘The Story of the Norwich Shawl’ was published in 2010 and contributed to her award of an MBE for services to textile heritage in 2015. The Norwich Shawl enjoyed great popularity in the late 18th and 19th centuries, and became famous as a ‘must-have’ fashion item. Mrs Hoyte spoke to the Eastern Daily Press,
“Those made in Norwich are some of the finest in the world and people should be enormously proud of them.”
As Mrs Hoyte reaches her one hundredth birthday, we offer her our grateful thanks for sharing with us and the public her diverse and unique portfolio of costume designs; something that we hope she, too is enormously proud of.
Researched and written by L Spirit
Additional sources:
Eastern Daily Press, Obituary of Richard White
Norfolk Record Office 