MUSIC Samson and Delilah. • (Sadler's Wells.) SADLER'S WELLS'S decision
to revive Saint-Saens's Samson and Delilah is even more mysterious after the performance than it was when first announced. There are certain operas, like certain plays, that only deserve revival for unusually outstanding performers. We have had several of them in the-last few years—The Flying Dutchman and now Norma at Covent Garden—and Saint-Saons's opera is another. Even if there is, owing to the world-wide dearth of heroic tenors, no heaven-sent Samson, Delilah must at all costs be a singer with a richly dramatic and lyrically melting mezzo-soprano and an actress gifted with at least the average feminine ability to suggest the voluptuous siren, for whom national and religious leaders will forget their vows and their duties and be prepared to give their eyes and to lose their hair, if not their heads. Without such a singer, and at least a capable " supporting" Samson, the opera loses its point.
Much of the music of the first act is flat and academic, and almost all that of the third is hopelessly commonplace and inadequate. The crowd scenes, too, in these two acts need a large stage and chorus ; and elaborate scenery, costumes and ballet (for this is a French " grand " opera) will go a long way to disguise the poverty of the music. At Sadler's Wells the stage and chorus are small, and there is no money or opportunity for great scenic display. Samson (Thorsteinn Hannesson) was apparently chosen for his large frame rather than for his voice or his dramatic ability ; he was singing full out most of the time, and it was not a pleasant sound or a convincing representation of a part which offers many opportunities to a fine singer. Jean Watson, who has shown considerable potential qualities as Ulrica-Arvidson in The Masked Ball both at Edinburgh and Covent Garden, has not the commanding voice or presence, the range of dramatic expressiveness or the voluptuous allure as singer and actress, to qualify her for the part of Delilah. She sang with taste and feeling ; her voice was pleasing, and she uses it with skill and intelligence. But it is the wrong kind of voice, and she is the wrong person for the part. The little remnant of Jews and the handful of meagre-looking Philistines, which are all the Sadler's Wells stage will hold, gave no idea of a struggle between two opposed races and religions ; and the heady sensuality of Dagon's cult, as opposed to the austere worship of Jahveh, was represented in Act 1 by a ballet of quite laughable inadequacy, though this was remedied in Act 3, where the temple dances assumed a suitably orgiastic character. Sadler's Wells has few downright failures to its name, though it has often in recent years shown the ambition so conspicuously lacking at Covent Garden. The revival of Samson and Delilah was surely a mistake from the start. _ • Sir John Barbirolli has been the hero at Covent Garden this last week, inspiring the orchestra with an ardour and a delicacy, an alternating passion and sweetness of tone and a vigour and precision of rhythm which have made " his "Puccini performances Memorable. In 'La Boheme an Irish singer, Veronica Dunne, had not the size of voice for Covent Garden (how many singers have ?), but she sang with delightfully pure and pleasing tone, never forced her voice and on several occasions showed that in a smaller theatre she would make an attractive and unusually musical Mimi. Gertrude Grob- Prandl's Turandot is a thoroughly efficient, without being at all a great interpretation of the role. It might well be that, were she freed of her preoccupation with unfamiliar English words, her phrasing would gain in freedom and her whole interpretation in
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