CONTEMPORARY ARTS
OPERA AND BALLET
Orpheus. (Royal Opera House.) Tins is the last of the revivals of the 1952-3 season at Covent Garden, and the opera company now goes on tour. Gluck's Orpheus is always revived for an individual singer ; and since Glyndebourne had shown Kathleen Ferrier's quality in the role, and she is almost certainly the most popular of all our English singers, the choice for Covent Garden was easy.
Orpheus is not an entirely happy role for any woman singer, though experience has shown that to give the part to a tenor, as Gluck him- self did when he transported the opera from Vienna to Paris, is even less successful. The role was written for a castrato, and perhaps only an unsexed voice could make Orpheus that something more (or, if you insist, less) than a human husband—the Power of Music, Incarnate melody. No ordinary, human bereavement would prompt the famous Che fare, which, whether you admire it or no, is a dramatic anomaly as an expression of human grief. These, however, are academic reflections.
Miss Ferrier sang the part with a noble generosity of voice and much well-considered pathos, and in Veronica Dunne (she had an admirable Eurydice, with a clear, firm tone and a suitably gracious delivery. Adele Leigh's Amor was a little tame, and did not provide - quite the tonal contrast needed to relieve the prolonged elegiac atmosphere, although she sang with taste. The choral singing - was firm and expressive. Sir John Barbirolli took what seemed some hlwrfies with tempi, and, for me at least, spoiled the effect of the infernal chorus, which at first refuses Orpheus entry to its domains, by taking it quite unusually fast. The orchestral playing, at any rate on the second night, was less polished, phrasing less careful and style more questionable than in the other operas which he has conducted at Covent Garden. On the whole, however, the musical side of the whole production was thoroughly praiseworthy, and the only serious adverse criticism was aroused by the production. MARTIN COOPER.
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