Ronald Crichton

Ronald Crichton (28 December 1913 – 16 November 2005) was a music critic for the Financial Times in the 1960s and 1970s. He was a scion of the Earls of Erne. In his Times obituary he was described as "one of the last of the school of those cultured mandarins who were able to write and talk about all matters concerning the arts." Education and early career He was born in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, the son of Colonel Charles William Harry Crichton, DSO (1872-1958), by his wife Dorothy Maud (who died in 1959), daughter of the Hon. Eustace Henry Dawnay, scion of the Viscounts Downe. He was educated at Radley College and Christ Church, Oxford, where he read French, but also discovered opera through the University Opera Club, then in its earliest days. He persuaded the club to mount the first British performance of Castor et Pollux by Rameau in November 1934 at Magdalen College. After Oxford Crichton became secretary of the Anglo-French Art and Travel Society, through which he was able to organise the visits of French theatrical companies to the UK, most notably Comédie-Française's appearance at the Savoy Theatre in 1938. Ballet Crichton worked with the choreographer Andrée Howard on her best known ballet (1940), premiered by the London Ballet at the Arts Theatre, London. Although based on an episode in Alain-Fournier's novel , Crichton produced a significantly adapted libretto, and also chose the six piano pieces and songs by Fauré used in the score (which were orchestrated by Guy Warrack). It was taken up by the Royal Ballet in 1958 and has subsequently received hundreds of performances.