MUSIC
Magic Flute." At The New- Theatre.
notorious that The Magic Flute is one of the most difficult peraS to produce, as difficult in its own especial way as Don wtni; so it says a great deal for the present production at the Theatre by the Sadler's Wells Opera Company that it is ccessful effort and one that can give even the most fanatical ers of this great work considerable pleasure. Mozart, like espeare, suffers from the greatness of his own genius since his miners must inevitably fall short of the ideal he sets before them. he Magic Flute cannot be said to be tmplayable quite in the that King Lear is often admitted to be unplayable, but Mozart peculiarly handicapped by the fact that he was not his own list, though he did put his hand to the libretto as well as to music and turned what threatened to be a farrago of nonsense, ed by Schickaneder only as a popular entertainment, into a ound work of art. Mr. Kurt Joos, the present producer, is to congratulated on preserving the right spirit throughout ; he has ented Papageno from collapsing into the farcical figure of the travesty of the character, which makes nonsense of Mozart's tation of him as Phomme moyene sertsuel—the ordinary man contrast with the superior man ; he has contrived to make the scenes follow one another swiftly and to avoid too many ; and, as a master of ballet, he has controlled the gestures e cast and chorus to obtain rhythm and dignity with a large ure of success.
Tamino of Arthur Servent, the Pamina of Rose Hill, the tro of Ronald Stear, and John Hargreaves' Papageno were all nably effective, while Miss Barbara Beaumont made a brave and altogether unsuccessful attempt to do justice to the Queen of the t—a role whicb has baffled most of the great coloratura singers
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