Music
Scenes from Provincial Life
By DAVID CAIRNS
IT is not only Musica Viva that has lately de- monstrated Liverpool's fertility in the devising of new ideas. The other day, at its own concert hall, the Liverpool Phil- harmonic came up with a clever experimental solution to the problem of provincial opera. Bizet's one-act Doctor Miracle, preceded by Facade, was performed on several evenings in the series of Merseyside Industrial Concerts. By means of a gay box set, designed by Peter Rice, and topped by its own miniature proscenium arch, the platform of the Philharmonic Hall was transmogrified into a stage, with orchestra and conductor tucked away to one side, in darkness, playing from lighted music stands, as in an opera pit. One was, to a remarkable extent, in the theatre; the concert-hall environment only made that magic square of light and artifice and ani- mation more magnetic and compelling. Adroitly played by Alexander Young, Anna Pollak, Jacqueline Delman and less Walters, the whole thing sparkled with atmosphere, and the Liver- pudlians lapped it up.
It may be argued that Dr. Miracle makes things easy for a non-operatic audience, too easy to be a good test, since it belongs to that dubious genre (of which A inner Engagement is the latest and unlovelie example) whose humour chiefly consists in la mg none too subtly up its sleeve at the conventions of opera itself—a genre which, as in this work, splits its sides at the very notion of an interminable ensemble on the cooking of Omelettes. But what is in doubt is not the potential appetite of provincial audiences—in Liverpool or anywhere else—for opera, but the means of beginning to satisfy it. The provinces leap at the chance of opera when- ever they get it. This is proved by the successful tours of the Sadler's Wells twin companies, which spend about half of their time outside London (sometimes in theatres of nightmare imprac- ticability), also by the impressive increase in the demand for the Arts Council's 'Opera for All,' an organisation which now comprises two separate, independent companies, each with its own stage manager, cast of singers, pianist, props and pantechnicon. 'Opera for All' gave a taste of what it can do at a demonstration in London recently. Two scenes from Cinderella, somewhat gingerly played, just failed to inject theatrical life and illusion into the shallow stage and plain drapes of Westminster Technical College; but the performance of 11 Tabarro was a revelation of the dramatic force that can be generated by a talented cast drilled into an en- semble and using a skilful but rudimetitary set, the minimum lighting and a single piano.
Besides giving a glimpse of opera to people whose acquaintance with the medium had ended
where it began, at Merrie England, 'Opera for All' fulfils in a small way a vital need in our musical life: it offers an early training ground for young singers; several respected names in London opera--Patricia Kern and Josephine Vcasey, for instance— cut their teeth on Figaros and Barbers in remote village halls.
One way and another, much of England is covered by touring. But touring is not enough. It is a temporary, superficial experiment. What the provinces are crying out for—and public taste, as so often, is ahead of its gross municipal embodiment—are permanent regional centres shared between a number of large towns. A week of touring opera creates a buzz of excitement, but no permanent interest. An established opera company is the ideal focus and generator of local musical energy. A handful of them set up in different parts of England would make all the difference to the dog's life of our few provincial orchestras, which are forced into the ludicrous situation of aiming at a higher and higher num- ber of engagements in order to survive as economic institutions even while destroying them- selves as artistic organisms. In 1959-60 the Halld gave 244 concerts, an average of five a week. The Northern Sinfonia Orchestra, a group of youth- ful players who have just made a vigorous ddbut at the Festival Hall, have a schedule of only sixty concerts in the present season, and the bloom of enthusiasm-- if not always of refinement—is strong on their playing. It may not be quite fair to compare the zest of their performance of Beethoven's Second Symphony—a zest which was partly vitiated by Mr. Michael Hall's frenziedly fast tempi--with the weary routine of the Hand's performance of the Fourth in London this week. But it is the artistic result which counts, and though the Hand made amends later in the same concert with a glowing and sumptuous account of the Enigma Variations, the difference between the two Beethoven performances was a clear re- flection of the difference between sixty and 244.
With a guarantee of regular operatic work and a more settled existence (nothing saps morale and erodes artistic standards so much as incessant touring) the prospect of provincial orchestral music would be transformed. So would the state of English singing. I am convinced that its rela- tive poverty has nothing to do with climate, little to do with 'national temperament,' quite a lot to do with the amateurish, not totally committed attitude towards the artistic profession learnt at our academies and the ineptitude of much of the voice training purveyed there, but most of all to do with the vast dearth of opportunity for steady continuous experience between the teacher's studio and the stage at Sadler's Wells and Covent Garden. A system of provincial opera houses would produce the singers to operate it. Mean- while, until our pipe-dreams body forth the forms of things unknown (in England, if not in Ger- many), the venture at Liverpool is most instruc- tive. Of the same orchestra's Musica Viva pioneering in London, more anon.
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