MUSIC,
FROM POLE TO POLE.
IT is hard to believe that we have seen the last of Der Rosen- /cavalier for many a day : but it is true, for who will dare, in the present circumstances, to give it one of our perfunctory British performances after the exquisitely finished production we have just witnessed ? The orchestra was ours, but not the conductor nor the singers. How long will it be before' we have productions that equal our orchestral playing? But I fear that a permanent structure of good opera is (as -in the case of an aristocracy) a question of age-long tradition ; and we shall have to wait some time before the B.N.O.C., good as in many ways it already is, ceases to possess those attributes that remind one of a surprised• child. It labels itself, " British opera," "Opera in. F.nglish," &e. " German opera " is not " German opera" at all—it is simply " opera." It has long since ceased -to be tentative or surprised at itself. Whoever doubts this or holds an optimistic view as to a rapid increase of excellence on our part need only remember the Isolde of Pride Leider and the Marschallin of Lotte Lehmann, two performances which, as interpretations of music-drama, it would be hard to equal and all but impossible to excel. It is not that we have no good singers, no conductors, no ensemble : we have had all these things at one time or another in the past few years. But just as one cannot, though apparently possessing the ingredients, create a synthetic potato, so all those good things I have mentioned, when mixed together by us, do not produce real opera as we know it can be produced.
This unpleasant truth was thrust home to me at the British National Opera Company's new production of Debussy's Pelleas et Milisande. Now, it is no good pretending, at this time of day, that our language is suited to opera ; and -Maeterlinck's words, well enough translated by Mr. Edwin
• Evans (with occasional blushful lapses), were a continual ' annoyance to the listener. - Why sing this opera in English ? - The singers are perfectly capable of rendering it in the original language and nearly everybody would be happier, ' including those who have no knowledge of French.
Well, there it was, a very adequate performance of a lovely work. And yet--and yet—I came out worried, being unable clearly to define the dissatisfaction I felt. But I think I can state its origin : the whole opera was treated as if it were " very much the same sort of thing " as The Immortal Hour. The resemblance between the two works is superficially close, the difference being-that where Debussy succeeded in weaving his emotional thread with infinite delicacy and simplicity, Mr. Rutland Boughton merely succeeded in being jejune.
• The epithet Immortal-Nourish might indeed be used to describe the atmosphere of pretentious amateurishness which prevented Friday's performance from being the complete success it should have been, in view of the amount of care and talent engaged.
The spiritual content—the -artistic raison d'ilre of Pelleas et Milisande—lies in a complex emotion, the expression of - which has always beenune of the highest aims of art. -Wist- fulness, regret, -the -realization. of transience—all these go to make this emotion, yet it cannot be described as any one of these in itself ; it is rather a compound otall three, prepared with unascertainable quantities. of each, and, as it weee, scented with a graceful sentimentality purged of all grossness by the very tenuity of the whole. For this is a definitely emaciated emotion. It is occasionally to be seen on the faces of people who, in the midst of conversation as much as in solitude, seem suddenly to sink into a suspended state of spirit, their eyes very wide apart, gazing unblinkingly into space. Melisande, indeed, may be said to be always in this state ; she dies in it, for when Golaud, tormented by doubt, calls on her to confess to having sinned, her only answer is the vague " La verite, . . . la verite. . . ." And that is all : it is not even a question. No one will ever know her thoughts, and no doubt she did not know them herself ; they were of the stuff of that strange emotion I have tried to describe, to enjoy which is almost to know happiness.
It took a genius to interpret Maeterlinck's play in music according to the letter of its own law, and it took another to do the same for Hofmannsthal's ; but the views of life expressed in the one and the other are about as dissimilar as they could be. This is the more observable in that in Rosenkavalier it is definite wistfulness, regret and the realiza- tion of transience, not the compound of which I have been speaking, that forms the theme of the work. Strauss weaves an emotional fabric that is as thick and luxuriant in texture as the most expensive Wilton pile carpet. He conceived the Marschallin as a woman built on superb, clear, emotional lines, who gave up her lover out of the fullness of her nature, realizing all that her sacrifice implied both for herself and for Octavian. " Da steht der Bub und da stela 'ich und mit dem fremden Mcidel dort wird er so gliicklich sein, als vole halt Manner das Chick- lichsein versteh'n " ; these are the parting words of. a woman from whom life had withheld few secrets. Compare this with the living and dying words of Melisande, and the two ways of interpreting reality will stand revealed with a clarity such as only two music-dramas of genius could produce.
EDWARD SACKVILLE WEST.
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