Harlequin ballad ...

 

Act I

Scene II : …and continue at Eton.

 theo
When he was young, Brett was accused of histrionic tendencies. He was "just one of those kids who opened his mouth and everyone sort of fell over backward because the sound was so beautiful…3, and his voice of soprano developed in the Eton College's choral… his voice, his imagination and also his attraction to the stage : " I was constantly accused of overacting ; I'd act everything out, all the songs" he confided to Richard Comerford, in an interview published in June of 1992 in Art & Entertainment magazine. In an other, he gave to Christopher Kenworthy, in may 90, one can read : "I remember one evening a shaft of sunlight was

coming through the window of the chapel, and I was assumed it was for me, and stepped into it."…
In the same time, Brett was receiving his first fan's letters ("most consequent mail" said the actor). Colin Clark told, in his book Younger Brother, Younger Son (Harper Colins ed.), about his childhood spent at Eton. One can read in it all the souvenirs he kept from the young soprano : "In his white vestal robe, with his brown hair brushed until it glowed, his eyes gazing heavenward and his mouth open in pure song, he [Brett] could make his audience swoon away during the psalms".
While he was at Eton, Brett saw for the first time Ingrid Bergman in a movie and became one of her greatest's fans4. He couldn't imagine that he will perform with her some more years later, in 1965 in the play " A Month In The Country".

scene III soon...

Notes :

3 Art and Entertainment, June 1992. Interview done by Richard Comerford.
4 Evening News, 19/10/1965.