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Noisy at the Wrong Times
'Hugely entertaining and inspiring' The Sunday Times
One of The Sunday Times' 100 biographies to love
The inspirational and colourful memoir of Michael Volpe, the general manager of Opera Holland Park. The son of Italian immigrants, he and his brothers were raised by his mother on a council estate in West London, before he attended Woolverstone Hall, a prestigious state boarding school designed to give bright inner city boys the opportunity of a public school education. Set against a backdrop of nuns, hit men, ice cream vans, rugby, gangsters, strict school masters and music, Noisy at the Wrong Times is the vibrant, funny, inspiring story of a boy who was given a chance - though whether he took it or not is another question...
AS SEEN ON BBC ARTS' HIP HOP 2 OPERA
One of The Sunday Times' 100 biographies to love
The inspirational and colourful memoir of Michael Volpe, the general manager of Opera Holland Park. The son of Italian immigrants, he and his brothers were raised by his mother on a council estate in West London, before he attended Woolverstone Hall, a prestigious state boarding school designed to give bright inner city boys the opportunity of a public school education. Set against a backdrop of nuns, hit men, ice cream vans, rugby, gangsters, strict school masters and music, Noisy at the Wrong Times is the vibrant, funny, inspiring story of a boy who was given a chance - though whether he took it or not is another question...
AS SEEN ON BBC ARTS' HIP HOP 2 OPERA
320 pages, Paperback
First published September 17, 2015
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Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review
September 4, 2019
I greatly enjoyed Michael Volpe’s biography ‘Noisy at the wrong Times’. His story is that of a first-generation Italian immigrant family with an absent father and Michael is the youngest of four brothers. His mother Lidia works herself into the ground to support and protect her boys from the temptations and pitfalls of a Fulham estate.
Despite her best efforts Michael has an inbuilt self-destruct gene that underpins he gregarious and voluminous personality. Having excelled at the 11+ exam he like he older brother serge, is offered a place at the ‘poor man’s Eaton’, Woolverstone Hall. Woolverstone is (was) a one-off institution that offered underprivileged, yet gifted, intercity boys the chance to develop their natural talents hopefully lead to greater life opportunities than they may have otherwise been exposed to.
At Woolevrstone Michael is offered schooling from some of the best teachers of their generation in everything from maths, English and sports though to art, drama and pottery! Despite being capable of achieving great things with relative ease, Michael’s inner self-destruct button keeps being pressed with little regard of consequence of the effect on others.
Michael leaves Woolverstone with little in the way of academic qualifications but his personality has none the less been shaped and lots of the teaching has actually sunk in. After floating round the job market for several years Michael ends up at the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and falls into setting up the Opera Holland Park company which goes onto be one of the best in the country, using all the skills he learned at Woolverstone combines with his innate, belligerent personality.
Maybe half the reason I like the book so much is I felt there was quite a few similarities in our upbringings. We grew up a mile apart (though separated by 8 years) and I recognised many of the land marks he refenced. We both had absentee fathers and mothers that fought and worked hard to give us any chance in life and protected us from the first foot steps down the paths that would lead us into very dark territories.
Where we did differ is in our schooling as I was never offered a place at an institution at somewhere like Woolverstone and have overachieved despite my very crappy comprehensive education.
I feel Michael’s dismay that an experiment like Woolverstone, rather than used as a template across the country for how quality education should not be the sole domain of the rich elite and how the brightest among us should be given opportunities to flourish, should be closed due to political ill will and considered to the dustbin of history. Michael doesn’t say it in the book, but I feel it’s another case of the elite keeping the ‘lower classes’ from getting above their station.
Politics aside, Michael is very self-aware of how his teenage self wasted a great opportunity to gain a first class education, seemingly throwing teachers good will back in their faces (despite it all being attributed to his eventual success). He pulls no punches in damming his own actions and marvelling at the idiot he was. This means it’s a very honest book and you feel you can trust Michael’s ‘voice’.
Very entertaining and uplifting.
Despite her best efforts Michael has an inbuilt self-destruct gene that underpins he gregarious and voluminous personality. Having excelled at the 11+ exam he like he older brother serge, is offered a place at the ‘poor man’s Eaton’, Woolverstone Hall. Woolverstone is (was) a one-off institution that offered underprivileged, yet gifted, intercity boys the chance to develop their natural talents hopefully lead to greater life opportunities than they may have otherwise been exposed to.
At Woolevrstone Michael is offered schooling from some of the best teachers of their generation in everything from maths, English and sports though to art, drama and pottery! Despite being capable of achieving great things with relative ease, Michael’s inner self-destruct button keeps being pressed with little regard of consequence of the effect on others.
Michael leaves Woolverstone with little in the way of academic qualifications but his personality has none the less been shaped and lots of the teaching has actually sunk in. After floating round the job market for several years Michael ends up at the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and falls into setting up the Opera Holland Park company which goes onto be one of the best in the country, using all the skills he learned at Woolverstone combines with his innate, belligerent personality.
Maybe half the reason I like the book so much is I felt there was quite a few similarities in our upbringings. We grew up a mile apart (though separated by 8 years) and I recognised many of the land marks he refenced. We both had absentee fathers and mothers that fought and worked hard to give us any chance in life and protected us from the first foot steps down the paths that would lead us into very dark territories.
Where we did differ is in our schooling as I was never offered a place at an institution at somewhere like Woolverstone and have overachieved despite my very crappy comprehensive education.
I feel Michael’s dismay that an experiment like Woolverstone, rather than used as a template across the country for how quality education should not be the sole domain of the rich elite and how the brightest among us should be given opportunities to flourish, should be closed due to political ill will and considered to the dustbin of history. Michael doesn’t say it in the book, but I feel it’s another case of the elite keeping the ‘lower classes’ from getting above their station.
Politics aside, Michael is very self-aware of how his teenage self wasted a great opportunity to gain a first class education, seemingly throwing teachers good will back in their faces (despite it all being attributed to his eventual success). He pulls no punches in damming his own actions and marvelling at the idiot he was. This means it’s a very honest book and you feel you can trust Michael’s ‘voice’.
Very entertaining and uplifting.
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review