Peter Goffin

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Peter Goffin, (c. 1906 - March 22, 1974) was an English set and costume designer and stage manager, known for his work with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company.

Goffin was born in Plymouth. As a young man, he was taken on by the local repertory theatre in Plymouth as a designer, going on in his thirties to Dartington Hall where he took over responsibility for staging, costumes and lighting of the Dance-Drama Group.

In 1936 he went to the Westminster Theatre in London, working with Harley Granville Barker and Michael MacOwan on a range of productions, from classics such as Volpone, Uncle Vanya and Troilus and Cressida to modern works including Mourning Becomes Electra, Heartbreak House, and T. S. Eliot's The Family Reunion.

During his Dartington days, he met Bridget D'Oyly Carte who introduced him to her father, Rupert, who commissioned him to redesign The Yeomen of the Guard in 1938. Goffin’s new set caused dissent among traditionalists because it did not depict the familiar backdrop of the White Tower. Martyn Green, the reigning principal comedian, was far from happy with his new costume, and he implies in his memoirs that it was one of the reasons why he later left the company.[1]

For Rupert and later Bridget D'Oyly Carte, he designed new sets and costumes for Ruddigore (1948), Patience (1957), The Mikado (1958 – sets only, most of the celebrated Charles Ricketts costumes being retained), The Gondoliers (1958), Trial by Jury (1959), HMS Pinafore (1961), and Iolanthe (1961). He also created a unit set – a framework on which the sets for each opera could easily be interchanged, which, as Frederic Lloyd, the D’Oyly Carte Company’s manager said, "saved the management an enormous amount of expense and facilitated taking more operas to more theatres." In addition, Goffin designed a number of posters and other graphic art for the D'Oyly Carte organisation.

Goffin wrote a number of books, including The Realm of Art (1946), Stage Lighting For Amateurs (1947), and The art and science of stage management (1953).

Goffin died in Buckinghamshire at the age of 68.

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[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Martyn Green, Here’s a How-De-Do, London, Max Reinhardt, 1952