Volume 1 — MUSIC

COVENT GARDEN

ONE success at least Covent Garden has achieved—Parsifal. It fills the house, and it deserves to do so, for it is by far the best performance that has been seen this season. The scenery and costumes, as far as could be seen from the topmost proscenium box, in which the London Mercury was accommodated, were those of the original Covent Garden production. The Temple of the Grail was dignified and beautiful, the magic flower-garden ridiculous. The flower-maidens, who sang extremely well and were in themselves quite competent to look their parts, wore dresses that might have been discarded by a travelling Gilbert-and-Sullivan company, half from Iolanthe and half from The Mikado. The swan was as ridiculous as ever. That worst trap of all for producers of Parsifal, the undressing and washing of the hero in the first scene of the third act, was painfully successful. It was a toss-up whether Kundry would not remove Parsifal's wig along with his helmet, and the struggles of the holy knight to pull his white draperies down from under his armour were comic in the extreme. There are many little hitches and absurdities in all operas which pass unnoticed, because something of greater importance happens at the same moment and distracts the attention. But these particular episodes are in themselves the most important things happening at their particular moments. It is on them that all attention must be concentrated by the audience, and if they are made ludicrous by careless handling the solemnity of the drama is very gravely impaired. It is not as if they depended upon elaborate machinery. What is required is forethought and common sense.

Miss Gladys Ancrum's Kundry was a very notable achievement. Her gestures would be the better for a little more restraint and a good deal more sense of definite design. Her singing was full of colour, and she showed great dramatic power in the use of different qualities of tone. It is a part which covers a very wide range of character-drawing; there are at least four distinct personalities in Kundry, and Miss Ancrum went a very considerable way towards distinguishing them and endowing them with life. Parsifal is one of the most ungrateful parts ever given to a hero. Pure fools may be quite attractive people in ordinary life, but on the operatic stage, especially when tenors, there is little to be done with them. Van Dyck, who was reputed the greatest of Parsifals, was corpulent, and sang out of tune. Mr. Walter Hyde did not look very boyish, but he at least sang well. Mr. Langley's melodramatic manner was well suited to the part of Klingsor. As Gurnemanz Mr. Norman Allin showed a fine voice and a dignified presence; but of all Wagnerian bores Gurnemanz is the most boring, surpassing even Wolfram in tediousness, and it is only a very ripe actor, with that quality of vocal style which may be called either unction or unctuousness according to taste, who can make the part really effective on the stage. The most sympathetic character in Parsifal is Amfortas, and Mr. Percy Heming being one of the most sympathetic actors and singers in the company, it was very poignantly realised.

When we read of a new opera by Mr. Delius, Fennimore and Gerda, having been produced recently at Frankfurt with great success, it was indeed a bitter disappointment that Covent Garden could not even resuscitate A Village Romeo and Juliet. The Beecham Company performed it in a previous season, so it cannot have presented all the difficulties of a new creation. It may well have been better to withdraw it altogether than to give it badly; but if more time was wanted for rehearsal it might well have taken the place of Nail, which reflects more credit on Sir Thomas Beecham's good nature than on his artistic judgment.

Moussorgsky's Khovantchina had an indifferent performance and an indifferent house. It is less popular than Boris Godunov, and less obviously dramatic, but it has more unity of purpose and contains much better music. Both operas, however, are invariably so much cut about that the difficulty of following the story is very much increased. Mr. Norman Allin had a magnificent opportunity in the part of Dositheus, but it is not sufficient to treat it as if Dositheus were one of the conventional operatic ministers of religion. It was one of Chaliapin's most overwhelming creations; but Mr. Allin, though undoubtedly a fine singer, has far to go before he can achieve the ease and perfection of Chaliapin's vocalisation. Our singers do not concentrate nearly enough attention on the pure art of singing. They may be divided roughly into two categories: the clever ones who think that the psychological understanding of a character and the vigorous declamation of words are enough to carry them through any part, and the stupid ones who think that fine singing consists in imitating the external mannerisms of Caruso or any other Milanese or Neapolitan star. The clever ones are quite right in realising that English singing can never be achieved by trying to make a bad copy of Italian tricks. Many of these tricks do not indeed belong to the fine art of singing at all; they are merely appeals to false emotion, which excite a vulgar Italian audience just as the well-worn ballad-concert mannerisms excite a vulgar audience in England. A training in the real Italian style is without doubt of the greatest possible value to an English singer, provided that it means a thorough training in Italian literature and conversation, for that involves a study of speech-rhythms and a purity of articulation, which are invaluable to any one who makes use of his voice either as a singer or as a speaker. Pure singing and pure speaking are essential requirements to any operatic artist, and the singer must grasp the principle that his vocal technique is to be the servant of his artistic idea and not a hindrance to its sincere expression.

For Bizet's Djamileh Sir Thomas Beecham would no doubt have deserved sincere gratitude had it not been postponed until too late for inclusion in this notice. There was much that was laughable in the The Fair Maid of Perth, but Bizet even at his lowest has always charm and, what is more important, unexpected turns of originality.

There are historical reasons for thinking that the lighter forms of opera are those most suited to the English temperament in general. Attempts are constantly being made to re-establish light opera of a really artistic kind in this country, and although no one has yet succeeded in rivalling Sullivan in this field, Sir Thomas is certainly doing an excellent work in perpetually holding up Mozart and Bizet as working models for both the English composer and the English public to study and to enjoy.

CONCERTS

When Busoni next visits this country it is to be hoped that he will have better opportunities of being heard under appropriate conditions. The crowded and enthusiastic audiences which filled the Wigmore Hall for his two recitals showed that he might well have given half-a-dozen similar programmes instead of appearing as star turn at the Albert Hall on Sunday afternoons, and there is not the slightest doubt that the Wigmore Hall audiences were of the kind that he could play to with real pleasure. He appeared at one of the Queen's Hall Symphony Concerts as composer and conductor, and also played Mozart's Concerto in C minor. Here, too, it was impossible to separate Busoni the pianist from Busoni the composer, for the concerto was embellished by cadenzas of singular originality and loveliness. Those inserted in the slow movement were startlingly modern, but with a modernity that Mozart himself might well have achieved if he had lived to the age of his interpreter, for they were certainly designed on thoroughly Mozartian principles of composition. Two fragments from a Faust opera, on which Busoni is now engaged, gave the highest hopes of the complete work, for they were most noble and impressive musical pictures. At his farewell recital on December 6th he played Liszt's Sonata in B minor with a breadth and dignity that placed Liszt almost on a level with Beethoven. As a player of Chopin, Busoni has always been somewhat hard to accept; but the mellowing of style which the last five years have brought him was very apparent in his treatment of the Five Ballades, and still more in the Nocturne in C minor, which of all the Nocturnes is the most suited to Busoni's very monumental interpretation.

Of singers by far the most interesting has been Mme. Jane Bathori, who appeared at one of the Classical Concert Society's concerts. She has long been known as the finest exponent of modern French songs. She is also an excellent pianist, and often plays her own accompaniments, thus securing a perfect homogeneity of performance, which the best pair of partners can hardly ever realise.

The Royal Philharmonic Society, after passing through some trying moments during the war, has made energetic efforts to regain its ancient honourable traditions. With Mr. Coates, Mr. Geoffrey Toye, Mr. Adrian Boult, and Mr. Landon Ronald as conductors, it is quite clear that London has no scarcity of orchestral directors. A new departure has been made by the establishment of the Philharmonic Choir, under the management of Mr. Charles Kennedy Scott, the conductor of the Oriana Madrigal Society. The programmes of the concerts exhibit a judicious selection of classic and modern works, among which English music is prominent. The general verdict on the first two concerts was that some of the pieces chosen, both old and new, were not of first-rate importance. The compilers of the programmes were probably quite well aware of that fact. There are, in fact, plenty of works, such as Holbrooke's Ulalume and Meyerbeer's Struensee Overture, to name two examples only, which certainly are not immortal masterpieces, but are none the less quite interesting and well worth an occasional hearing. Even acknowledged masterpieces have been known to suffer from too frequent performance.

A new Italian composer, Francesco Malipiero, has been very prominent in recent programmes. M. Yves Tinayre sang his Chanson Morave, Mr. Mark Hambourg played his Barlumi for pianoforte; of his orchestral music, Impressioni dal Vero was heard at the Promenades, a Ditirambo Tragico at the Queen's Hall Symphony Concerts, and, lastly, at the second Philharmonic, Le Pause del Silenzio. No explanation has been offered of this curious title, but it may possibly bear some connection with an interesting passage in D'Annunzio's novel, Il Fuoco, in which Stelio Effrena maintains that the essence of music lies not in the sounds but in the silences that separate them. It is something of a compliment to Malipiero that his last work succeeded in rousing a Philharmonic audience to hostility. Such demonstrations are rare in this country, though their rarity is due less to broadminded receptivity than to courteous indifference. Malipiero will survive his hisses. His language is harsh and obscure, although a study of his scores shows that he has plenty of technical skill, for he is evidently dealing with emotions which he has not yet been able to express clearly, and which we have probably not been accustomed to hear expressed. Judging from the scores, it seemed that the performances, both under Mr. Toye at the Philharmonic and under Sir Henry Wood, were lacking in the singing sense. There is a temptation in these days to lay too much stress upon the strangeness of strange harmonies. They would become clearer if more attention was given to the elucidation and intensification of the strange melodies which are at the foundation of all modern music that is likely to last. There can be no doubt about the sincerity and depth of feeling in Malipiero's music, though it has not the more attractive qualities of Casella's facile ingenuity.

EDWARD J. DENT