With Net and Score
SIR,—Your music critic, who was invited to listen to the broadcast of Parsifal from the Royal Albert Hall on the stereo wavelength, complains that he 'loyally tried to imagine a richness of sound that wasn't there.' But apparently it was in the third act which he heard from the Hall itself that he was doing the imagining. Shuard's voice was one of the beneficiaries: phrases shapely and eloquent; tone rounded as well as "white"; hardly any of the old occasional stridency.' Not surprisingly. Miss Shuard's contribution to Act Three is confined to the one word 'dienen,' uttered twice brokenly in the lower part of her voice. Perhaps Mr Reid needs a new score after all.
JULIAN BUDDEN Assistant to Head of Opera The British Broadcasting Corporation Broadcasting House, London, WI
[Charles Reid writes: As was clear from my notice, in a generally unsatisfactory transmission (Act 2), Miss Shuard's voice came over well: so well, indeed, that, by an associative slip, I credited the impact of her performance to 'live' RAH acoustics which (Act 3) were good all round.]
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