Tantivy Towers is a three-act light opera, written by A. P. Herbert

A. P. Herbert

Sir Alan Patrick Herbert, CH was an English humorist, novelist, playwright and law reform activist...

 and with music composed by Thomas Frederick Dunhill.

It premiered on 16 January 1931 at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, and later transferred to the New Theatre. The play ran for six months, later touring England and being staged in Australia and America. Some critics rated it among the best of the interwar period. The music was originally intended to be composed by Alfred Reynolds

Alfred Reynolds (composer)

Alfred Reynolds was a composer of light music for the theatre.He was born in Liverpool and educated at Merchant Taylors' School and later in France. He studied with Engelbert Humperdinck in Berlin....

, who would later collaborate with Herbert on Derby Day

Derby Day (light opera)

Derby Day is a 1932 three-act light opera, with music composed by Alfred Reynolds to a libretto by A. P. Herbert. Herbert wrote his text between March and May 1931, whilst on a trip to Australia, during the first run of his successful Tantivy Towers....

, but Dunhill was chosen as the preferred composer after Reynolds had begun work.

It is set in the present day (the early 1930s), and plays on the contrasts and conflicts between the rural aristocracy and urban bohemians, between the hunting set and the artists - as one song describes it, "between Orpheus

Orpheus

Orpheus was a legendary musician, poet, and prophet in ancient Greek religion and myth. The major stories about him are centered on his ability to charm all living things and even stones with his music; his attempt to retrieve his wife from the underworld; and his death at the hands of those who...

 and Hercules

Hercules

Hercules is the Roman name for Greek demigod Heracles, son of Zeus , and the mortal Alcmene...

".

The work is unusual in that it has no prose speech; all speech is written in verse and intended to be sung.