MUSIC
WHAT do they know of England who don't know their Gilbert and Sullivan and have not -watched an English audience at The Mikado ? It was after the lapse of very nearly the quarter of a century that I renewed my acquaintance with music which was the delight of my early youth by attending the first night of the D'Oyly Carte season at Sadler's Wells on May 22nd. Many evil things have been said of the dead hand which keeps the production of the Savoy operas very little changed from year to year, but I suspect that the actual singing—and possibly even the playing—of Sullivan's music would compare favourably with that accorded to the favourite national operettas in Paris or Vienna.
Theophile Gautier complained that the performers of the French opera comique in his day excused their poor voices on the ground that they were really actors, and their poor acting by claiming musicians' status. There is, of course, something in their claim ; but the acting must be as good as Martyn Green's Koko to excuse such a wisp of a voice as he brought to the part, and Margaret Mitchell's clear and pretty voice was hardly sufficient excuse for the simpering gentility of her Yum-Yum. Or is that the true tradi- tion, the Yum-Yum of 1885 virtually unchanged ?
Certainly the foreign spectator can glimpse in The Mikado not only new facets of the British character sub specie aeternitatis, but a good deal of the British character in 1885. First of all the pace, which seems in 1950 very slow. Is it America that has made British audiences so much more alert and removed the need for elaborating and rubbing in each joke as it occurs ? Or the more meagre diet ? The humour itself is striking for its blamelessness, the absence of even an allusion to an allusion which could bring a blush to the cheeks of the large middle-class families who formed the backbone of the Savoy public. Very literally in revenge, the psycho-analysts would no doubt tell us, a strong sadistic element is noticeable in the humour of The Mikado, chiefly in the title-role (played with great gusto by Darrell Fancourt), but recurring throughout all the discussions of Nanki-Poo's marriage and/or decapitation. The whole idea of parodying an alien but contemporary civilisation and holding up its most sacred institution to ridicule strikes us now as being bold (we have learned that the Japanese can wield other instruments besides fans) and in doubtful taste ; but our grand- fathers did not need to be so sensitive, and such a criticism might well have earned a gag in Patience for the critic.
Boris Christoffs recital at the Wigmore Hall was a great dis- appointment. He had no conception of how to sing Western European music, Italian or German, substituting for a vocal line alternately a whisper and a bellow ; nor did he really know the music which he sang ; lie was copy-bound even in the, Ed-King. In his Russian songs, especially the folk-song of the Siberian prisoner, all his dramatic powers and the real beauty of his voice showed to their full extent.
Kathleen Ferrier was not in her best form when she sang Mahler's Kindertotenlieder with the L.P.O. on May 18th. Her voice was not so smooth nor her tone so rich as on other occasions, though her interpretation remains masterly in its authenticity. The orchestra under van Beinum played Debussy's Prelude a l'apres- midi d'un Faune with great delicacy and a cool charm which even conquered the unsympathetic echoes of the Albert Hall.
I hope next week to discuss the revival of Massenet's Manon at Covent Garden, where Elizabeth Schwarzkopf sings the title-role and Walter Midgley des Grieux. MARTIN COOPER.
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