MUSIC
THE new production of Mozart's Seraglio—I wish a proper English title could be found for it—will have some surprises for experienced opera-goers, but it will wholly delight those who come fresh to this freshest of all operas. Edward Dent has introduced into his new translation of the libretto a note of contemporary hilarity which made an immediate hit with the audience, and only occasionally departed so far from the original as to raise the connoisseur's eye- brows. Two of the characters are given an entirely new colouring it is true, but this was due less to Mr. Dent's lines than to thg producer. The Pasha Selim, originally the type of the benevolent despot beloved of the eighteenth century, and as full of noble sentiments as Metastasio's own Emperor Titus, raised some of the loudest laughs of the evening, surely not by mischance, for Gavin Gordon played the part with an undignified stiffness which, coupled with his gaudy clothes, suggested the peacock rather than the " beautifid soul " in the barbarian envelope. Osmin represented the other main breach with tradition ; and here the absence from the company of any singer with the rich buffo bass associated with the part probably explains the change. Stanley Clarkson, in default of the full range and quality necessary for the part, made an exceedingly musical and amusing study of Osmin—an older, less fleshy Osmin, whose passion for Blonda was not so much comic as tragic, if it was not slightly repellent.
Whatever can be changed or adapted in Seraglio, the part of Constanza remains unalterable in the enormous demands it makes upon the singer. Jennifer Vyvyan's singing was extraordinarily accomplished. Her Traurigkeit ! was beautifully phrased, and com- bined refinement of tone with strong dramatic feeling ; and the evenness and flexibility of her roulades and scales in Martern alter Arten were admirable. A voice of this range and quality is indeed a precious possession, and it is to be hoped that she will resist all temptations to over-use it, and so rink spoiling what, with care, may become a unique voice in this country. Marion Studholme's Blonda was a finished piece of comic acting, and, apart from occasional harshness, her voice was charming. Ereach Riley, a newcomer to Sadler's Wells, quickly won the sympathy of the audience by his comic acting and pleasant voice in the part of Pedrillo, and Rowland Jones sang his tenor's heart out—as he should—as Belmonte. But that hat of his, that abenteuerlicher Hut !
Poor Pedrillo himself was hung with a kind of lowered baldrick of ribbons, which must surely have interfered as much with his slave's work as with his freeman's pleasures ; and Blonda's colour- scheme would certainly have kept up the Englishwoman's unenviable reputation in the matter of dress. There were some strange stuffed birds in the Pasha's garden, too, half Sitwell and half Dali, which may conceivably have been Turkishly correct but did not suggest Mozart's Turkey at all. Under James Robertson the orchestra played with vigour and often with considerable grace, though there were some bad lapses in the opening ritornello of Martern (tiler Arten, as though the strings were suffering from vicarious nervousness before
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