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Please be assured that the staff of Martins Bank don’t spend ALL of their time going to extremes to be helpful at work! At play too, they really know how to
entertain and engage an audience, and under the auspices of Martins Bank
Society of the Arts, there are SIX operatic and/or dramatic societies to choose from. Martins really do know how to put on a
show, and from the 1940s until 1980, productions are staged that showcase the
talents of Martins Bank’s veritable army of theatrical types.
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Following the Merger with Barclays, Martins Operatic Society
manages to carry on, having (sadly) dropped the word “Bank” from its title,
and we remain indebted to Mike Ellis, Geoffrey Kelly and the late Beryl
Creer for making available a number of the programmes printed for some of
these post-merger productions. We now have copies of the original
programmes for all but one of the shows from 1970 to the winding up of the
Operatic Society in 1980, and these are featured at the bottom of this
page. We will try to add information for these productions as soon as we
can. There is so much material in
the archive relating to productions and performances staged over the years,
it has taken us a long time to be able to add them to this site. Menus are now available as shown below –
simply click on a leaflet – each of them takes you to a choice of
productions for you to explore!
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Whilst most good things come to and end too soon,
the singing and dancing did not in fact end for the staff of Martins Bank
as soon as they were merged into the workforce of Barclays in 1969. The
re-named Martins Operatic Society actually continued to stage ambitious
productions for a further eleven years. We have programmes for all but one
of these - the 1979 production, Die Fledermaus, (which the company staged
twice in that particular decade). If
you have a copy we could borrow for scanning, or one you can donate to the
Archive, please do get in touch with us at the usual address martinsbankarchive@btinternet.com.
In the meantime, we have made progress adding some
of the post-Martins era offerings, and you can currently choose from
SIX of the 1970s
productions - from “Bless the Bride” (1970) through to “The Gipsy Baron”
(1975). You will find them by clicking on the MARTINS BANK OPERATIC SOCIETY leaflet
above. We will add the remaining productions up to 1980 as and when we have
enough information and images.
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