"Hansel and Gretel " and "The Bartered Bride"
MUSIC
THE Sadler's Wells Opera Company, once more back at the New Theatre, haves added new productions of Hansel and Gretel and The Bartered Bride to their repertory. I confess to finding Humperdinck's opera less and less to my taste. The Sadler's Wells Company give a good performance within the limitations of an orchestra quite inadequate to the demands of the score, and of voices that rarely ring out into the auditorium. The "Dream Pantomime" was exceptionally well staged. It ought to look like a Christmas-card, and on this occasion was quite a pretty one.
What a gay and charming opera, by contrast, is The Bartered Bride! There is nothing puffed up here. From beginning to end the fount of fresh sweet melody bubbles freely up, and Smetana, more soiThisticated than the Russian Nationalists, knew how to use his material like a good craftsman. The technique of Italian opera buffa was at his service ; it never becomes his master, and therefore he does not lapse into the use of mere conventional formulas.
The new production by Mr. Eric Crozier, with decor by Mr. Reece Pemberton, has the advantage of Czech supervision. The dances have been arranged by Mr. Sasha Machov, who himself leads them with that grace at once virile and leisurely which makes Slavonic dancing so attractive to watch. The performance has, therefore, an unusual authenticity, and Mr. Laurance Collingwood secures from both singers and orchestra an admirable cohesion in the timing of the flexible rhythms.
But what a wretched theatre this is for opera! The chorus are cramped upon the stage, the orchestra are miserably cramped in the pit, and (though less important, this is not negligible) the audience are cramped in the long and devious narrow passages that lead to the auditorium. It is, moreover, a bad theatre for sound.
DYNELEY Hussy.
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