The Pearl Fishers. (Sadler's Wells.)
Delilah or The Pearl Fishers, Sadler's Wells's two last choices. Gounod's Mireille, Delibes's Lakme, Bizet's Djamileh and Mas- senet's Jongkur de Notre Dame could all be a success at Sadler's Wells; and 1 am con• vinced that Louise at Covent Garden would sell out nightly. The story of The Pearl Fishers is weak, though no weaker than that of other operas which we accept for their music; and it is Bizet's music that fails to hold one's interest. There are many flashes of charm and promise, particularly in the choruses and ballet-music; but the dialogue is unusually dull and unconvincing and the ghosts of Gounod, Mendelssohn and Meyer- beer, who jostle each other in all the big solo 'numbers' and ducts, allow the young Bizet a very small place in his own opera. He himself was aware of it even at the time —especially of his debt to Gounod—and later Thought very little of the opera as a whole. To revive such a work except for a special occasion (as 1 saw it revived in 1938 for the Bizet centenary in Paris), seems pointless. The principals—Patricia Howard, Robert Thomas and John Hargreaves—sang pleasantly, but none of them is a gifted actor
and without the French dramatic style the blemishes, creaks and gasps in the work were painfully noticeable. John Piper's sets for the first two acts were simple and pretty, but less happy in the two scenes of Act 3.
Walter Goetz's costumes were an extra- ordinary hotch-potch, but this may be based on Sinhalese historical fact. Vilem Tausky conducted and the orchestral playing was
always vivid and vigorous, though lacking in delicacy on occasion. The andante of the
short Prelude was, for some reason, taken at not much more than half its normal speed, which imposed a burden of meaning on Bizet's innocent phrases which they were quite unable to bear.
MARTIN COOPER
Previous page
