For 40 years this Brighton apartment, set on an elm-shaded, stucco-fronted square in the city’s upper reaches, was the home of opera director John Cox, who used it as a bolthole while he was working at Glyndebourne. A creative crowd, including David Hockney, (his boldly graphic designs for The Rake’s Progress are a Glyndebourne perennial) mingled in the garden, screened by a heady curtain of white wisteria. When the season ended, Hockney’s parting gift to Cox was the art deco fireplace, which brings a dramatic flourish to the sitting room.
Today, the ground-floor apartment has a suitably theatrical new owner. Gary McCann, a rising star of opera design (he has productions opening in Venice, Bologna and Bilbao) bought the apartment from Cox in 2016. It has remained “pretty much unchanged” since then, says the historically minded set and costume designer, who describes the architecture as a “Frankenstein’s monster” of eras. “It was converted in the 1920s. There are elements of early Victoriana mixed with the 1980s.”
There is also no central heating and sea gales make the sash windows rattle. “But I like all those layers of the past; that sense of continuity,” says McCann cutting a vintage dash in his trademark, three-piece tweed suit and pocket watch, moustache waxed and twirled. “When I go to the barber’s I ask for a Nicholas II. I describe my style as a cross between an Edwardian gentleman and a World War II dispatch rider,” he continues, gesturing to the swirling 1940s motorcyclist’s coat hanging next to his collection of bowler hats, displayed like props in a period drama.
In another neat twist, it was Cox who gave McCann his first operatic break. “I’d had a steady but tortoise-like career working in theatre. But in the mid-2000s, I needed work so I wrote to Cox who I’d met when we lived near each other in Greenwich. He offered me a job on Fidelio at Garsington. We became friends after that. When he decided to sell this place he asked if I’d be interested in buying it.”
There is a stage set feel to the eccentric layout. From the tiny, angled hallway, the rooms fan out ahead, offering tantalising glimpses. It was Cox who installed the saloon doors, which open with a swagger on to the narrow bathroom with its faded, chequerboard Lino floor. The kitchen opposite has the original electric cooker and rustic surfaces. The large bedroom overlooks the pear tree in the garden; at the front, the sitting room, illuminated by three bay windows, still has the plush brown 1980s carpet: “It’s the one thing I don’t like.”
Over time, McCann has tweaked the colour schemes – from dark greys to soft maritime blues and greens. There is not a stick of new furniture or art here. “Everything came from junk shops,” he says, pointing out the 1930s pottery and midcentury sideboard and the peach-tinted art deco mirror that complements Hockney’s fire surround. Cox bequeathed the early Anglepoise lamp and the elaborate fire screen, with its orange tree motif: “It’s Arts and Crafts, but the mix works well,” says McCann.
Combining antique and modern “with a dramatic twist” is what McCann excels at. “I’ve always liked mixing references to classical architecture with contemporary elements – it adds an edge without alienating audiences.” One broadsheet critic described a recent production of the comic opera Der Rosenkavalier as a “swirling, gargantuan” feast of baroque plasterwork, as the “best production in 50 years”.
His 1980s childhood, growing up on a council estate near Belfast during the height of the Troubles against a backdrop of “crude but scenic” protest murals and bomb explosions, has also seeped in to his productions. “Quite often there will be images of destruction in my sets; things have been damaged or compromised. I like to convey the sense that beauty is fragile.”
Like characters from one of his productions, a cast of military types gazes down from the sitting room walls. McCann found the gilt-framed portraits at markets in Berlin and Vienna, where he has designed productions for the State Opera: “All these people had extraordinary lives. So you could say I’ve created my own ancestors – even if I do feel they’re judging me sometimes.”
One RAF officer is by AR Thompson, a war artist who painted the murals on the Queen Mary. There are two versions of the same aristocrat: confident and youthful in 1904; corpulent and time-worn after the First World War. “Telling stories is my job, so I was intrigued by the narrative behind the paintings.”
In the bedroom is a dark landscape is of Ashington, Northumberland. The mining village, with its slagheap and terraces, was the birthplace of the 1930s Ashington Group of self-taught painters, most of whom were miners. In 2007, McCann designed the “pared-back Brechtian” setting for Lee Hall’s stage version of their story. The Pitmen Painters transferred from sell-out runs at the National to Broadway.
Nearby, the low, chrome-framed bed is another Coxian legacy. McCann thinks that the headboard – made from an old panelled door – may have come from a Glyndebourne set.
One day McCann will redo the apartment and make it “more coherent”. But he will tread lightly. “It will take me a long time to plan because there’s so much character here. You can’t just rip it out and put in a bog-standard kitchen. I need to conserve its atmosphere of something that will last forever.” One element will never change. The Hockney fireplace is, as he says, “embedded in the DNA of this place”.
