Alien Corn
ANOTHER birthday to be celebrated : this time the English Opera Group's, which has reached the age of ten, having done valiant work and proved itself truly English by concentrating on team work. The captain of the team, of course, is Britten, and in ten years the Group has chalked up five successes from his pen. The last of these was The Turn of the Screw, his most successful essay in the form and, as could be seen at the birthday season at the Scala Theatre, the Group's most lasting claim to fame—a splendid production of a master- piece. I saw it four times in ten days and became more and more fascinated by the work every time; and increasingly impressed by the superb playing of Jennifer Vyvyan as the Governor and that of the band under the direction of Benjamin Britten himself.
The chief repertory problem facing the Group is: what to do during the years in between new Britten operas? (7'1►e Screw was new to London last year and each perfor- mance was a sell-out; but this year it did not pull so strongly.) Something old? Hoist's S'avitri )was very well done, with Arda Mandikian magnificent in the name-part. though Blow's Venus and Adonis was a badly produced flop. But the English operatic repertory scarcely exists, so new composers must be found. Those who have so far come forward have not produced winners (remem- ber Brian Easdale's The Sleeping Children?). What happens this year? Lennox Berkeley's Ruth.
This new opera is la long one-act pastoral in three scenes with a libretto by Eric Crozier adapted from the Bible story. Mr. Crozier, quite understandably, does not go into the knotty question of levirate marriages but, un- fortunately, does not put Ruth's behaviour and actions into a sufficiently sympathetic light for us to take the story too seriously. There is not much drama or plot development, but then Nelson rather showed that action was not Berkeley's strong suit; here there are separate numbers, parts for three women—Naomi. Orpah, Ruth—two men—Boaz, the Head Reaper—and chorus. The result is a scenic cantata, good to look at because of Ceri Richards's colourful decor, his first stage work, but not, I hope, his last, and a clever production by Peter Potter which has the maximum of movement and the minimum of fuss.
What is really wrong with Ruth, alas, is the music. It begins well, is often charming and engaging, is a distinct technical advance on Nelson and has life in some of the harvest festival choral numbers—the biblical hoe- down, in particular. Then there is some pleasure in hearing a piece of this nature written by an English compo,ser that does not smack of folky-modally-Shropshire-or-Dork- ing-laddery. But the actual quality of most of Ruth is undistinguished, 'metrically monoton- ous (those interminable four-bar phrases that modulate in bar three only to creep back to thi dominant in bar four), too soft harmoni- cally and with lyrical passages that rarely take wing. Sometimes the opera sounds like musical comedy gone sacred; the ensemble 'Behold this maid,' towards the end of scene thregi seems to me the nadir (Boulanger?) c banality. No one minds the occasional reminiscences of the Eglise de Stravinsky, Les Six and Le Maitre d'Aldeburgh, but what makes Ruth sag is the lack of vital impulse and imagination.
The performers in the new opera did the composer proud: Anna Pollak in the name part, Una Hale as Naomi, Peter Pears as Boa; Thomas Hemsley the Head Reaper, with Charles Mackcrras a lively and sympathetic conductor. JOHN AMIS
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