"I DREAMT THAT I DWELT.. /2 •
By OSBERT LANCASTER
0 F all the achievements of the late Serge Diaghileff none was more remarkable or widespread in its effects than his reintroduction of the painter to the theatre. Those privileged to see his earliest productions were immediately reminded of a long-forgotten truth, that the theatre generally, and the opera and ballet in particular, must appeal to the eye as well as the ear. -This truth, like many, others, was not immediately acceptable to the majority of opera-audiences ; the superstition that only against a traditionally realistic backcloth of old-world Nuremberg (more repellent, if possible, than the reality itself) could Hans Sachs give of his best died hard, and many felt that while it was possibly all right for Tsar Boris to shine in barbaric splendour King Mark had better keep to the familiar Viking outfit which had been run up by a little woman in Wardour Street some thirty years previously. Moreover, the more serious-minded feared, and given the con- temporary activities of Herr Reinhardt not altogether groundlessly, that sooner or later musical quality would be sacrificed to scenic effect.
Needless to say, while Diaghileff's example in time influenced almost every department of the theatre from Shakespeare to revue, Covent Garden long remained firmly opposed to all experiments, and it was not until after two wars that a policy of employing con- temporary painters to design scenery was adopted by the Royal Opera House. The intention was excellent, but for various reasons the results would generally seem to have been a little disappointing. Some of the selected artists, excellent in their own fields, were quite obviously those whose merits were least likely to survive translation to the stage, while the achievements of others showed every sign of having suffered severely at the hands of the electrician and the wardrobe mistress. So experienced a designer as Mr. Messel, whose sets for La Belle Helene way back in the 'thirties had set an entirely new standard for British stage-design, seemed to have been so overcome by the magnitude of the opportunity presented by The Magic Flute that Sarastro acquired many of the characteristics of the Great Barnum, and his troupe, singing away against back- grounds that paid almost too open a tribute to Piranesi, appeared to include careful realisations of almost every illustration in the two- volume edition of Hottenroth's Costume. The one completely successful opera-setting of the period was The Rape of Lucrece, but Covent Garden had nothing to do either with the selection of Mr. Piper or with the production.
The recent production of Figaro would seem to mark a change of policy ; the flirtation with modern painting is over, but Wardour Street has not resumed her sway. Instead, a compromise has been effected ; entirely new sets and costumes have been provided, but art is kept firmly in its place. So lamentable is the resulting muddle of fantasy and realism, and so dangerous are the implications, that the production would seem to merit a more detailed analysis from the visual angle than it has yet received.
On the rise of the curtain the audience is confronted with an apartment so gaunt and austere as to encourage the belief that we are back in the dear old " constructivist " 'twenties, and that the whole performance is to take place against naked walls and minus all props. This illusion, how- ever, does not survive a glance at the two figures in the foreground, who are at once recognisable as the shepherd and shepherdess from some old-fashioned dairyman's window come to life ; but no sooner have we reconciled ourselves to this late Victorian concep- tion of the eighteenth century than a further readjustment is made necessary by the appearance of Don Basilio, who might be a direct and successful realisation of a portrait by Allan Ramsay. The remaining characters in this act all conform to the sartorial stan- dards of the eighteenth century of Marcus Stone and Dendy Sadler.
The second act presents no problems of locale, and we know at once where we are—in the residents' lounge of a high-class but rather old-fashioned Bournemouth hotel which was completely redecorated somewhere around 1910. In the middle of this apart- ment is discovered a lady wearing a Louis Quinzr maternity gown ; with the costumes of the other characters we are already familiar, and the only other newcomer, a gardener, conforms exactly to the standards laid down for stage gardeners in the middle of the last century.
In the third act the action takes place in a strange patio which might well have been designed as a display window for Messrs. Lyons by someone with very vague recollections of the work of the late Lovat Fraser. It is not a very solidly constructed building and reacts violently to the frequent earth tremors which, at Covent Garden, seem as inevitable in Seville as in Memphis or on the banks of the Rhine. Half way through, the back wall is whisked, if that is the correct term to describe so laboured a progress, into the flies, revealing a vanishing perspective of fairly convincing yew-trees which for some reason the characters all persist in alluding to as cypresses. We can, however, tell that we are in a Southern clime, for Marcellina, very prudently at this late hour, has got into a mosquito-net. The newcomers include a familiar band of joyous peasantry, who appear to have looked in between performances of Trovatore and Hansel and Gretel, and a pair of Spanish dancers wearing costumes which a hundred posters for invalid port have rendered immediately recognisable. Finally, beneath a deep blue sky against which one momentarily expects to see a thin plume of smoke spell out the name of a popular brand of cigarettes, there rises a curious superstructure of steps and platforms in form much resembling the arrangement at the west end of Liverpool Street Station, but in detail more reminiscent of the garden section of the Ideal Home Exhibition.
The moral of the sad story of Figaro, 1949, is clear. It is far, far better to stick to straightforward, old-fashioned realism and eschew all whimsy or fantasy unless these are accompanied and con- trolled by a sense of style. Among current productions which bear witness to this truth is School for Scandal at the New Theatre. Mr. Cecil Beaton's sets and costumes may not invariably please all tastes, but the whole scene is kept together and justified by a sense of style which never plays him false, and which renders acceptable various flummeries, such as a super-abundance of footmen and exaggerated hair-styles, which in less skilled hands might well have proved a distracting nuisance. Above all it is consistent—a virtue which can justify almost any degree of fantasy. For while there is no aesthetic reason (although there may well be several dramatic ones) why Figaro should not be played in Victorian versions of eighteenth-century costume against sepia backcloths carefully copied from Marcus Stone or The Magic Flute in a setting of Batty Langley Gothick, such productions could only succeed were they completely consistent in every detail and the work of a designer with a sense of style amounting to genius. Until Covent Garden has found someone with this invaluable gift, and the patience to cultivate it— for a sense of style, though not to be acquired by much labour, demands infinite study for its finest expression—it had far better stick to those dear old marble halls which have for so long proved equally convenient for the agonies of Tosca and the amours of the Don.
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