THE curtain was raised on Hatherop Castle School’s new Performing Arts Centre.

Semi-professional and amateur artists performed in the new building equipped with state-of-the-art lighting, sound systems, and raked seating on September 24.

The new building will continue to enhance the school’s musical and dramatic performances in the coming years.

Lydia Holt, former pupil and ballet dancer, performed an excerpt from Sleeping Beauty.

Musical items included the school senior chapel choir and Sophie Iles, the school’s Senor Chorister whose I could have danced all night was delightful. Semi-professional ex-pupil Hugh Phillips wowed the audience with his solo performance and Gabrielle De Saumerez Taylor another ex-pupil and semi-professional gave her own composition of Papertown.

Annabelle Rigg, a Cheltenham College pupil and ex-Hatherop Castle pupil performed two songs: Make You Feel My Love and I Dreamed a Dream.

Kathryn Tapley ex-pupil and graduate of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama played an oboe concerto and Tiger Wang who is now at Abingdon School, wowed the audience at just 13 years of age with the Chopin Etudes.

The audience enjoyed two very different drama performances with a trio of talented boys from Hatherop Castle and a recent leaver Max Thomas who acted extracts from Richard II and Look Back in Anger. Harry and Laurence Archard together with Saul French.