STAGE AND SCREEN • Opera
The Coming Season IN three weeks' time Covent Garden Theatre will open its doors for the season of opera, which will no doubt be described, him its nine predecessors, as the most brilliant since the War. It has been heralded, again as usual, by the grumbling, public and private, of patrons whose individual wishes have not been respected. Some of these complaints display an absurd ignorance of the conditions under which opera is produced at Covent Garden, and so have allowed the management to ride away from others that have real substance.
The letter to The Times—badly drafted though it was, like most letters composed by several hands—in which more than 150 Members of Parliament complained of the absence of English singers from the preliminary announcements, had this justification that the management persists in regarding the English members of the company as of little account for purposes of publicity. It is possible that the names of singers who are constantly before the public, for instance, at Sadler's Wells have not the same attraction as those of their foreign colleagues, who may or may not sing as well. It is for the Covent Garden management to eradicate this kind of snobbery, which is but one symptom of their preferment of the social aspect of the season over its artistic quality. Until the management shows its confidence in English singers by placing their names beside those of their colleagues from Germany and Italy, the public will continue to undervalue the merits of native artists, unless they come to Covent Garden with reputations gained abroad.
We are to have, this year, a "Rossini-Wagner Festival," a nice study in contrasts, followed by a selection of French, Russian and Italian operas. The only novelty is Rossini's L'Italiana in Algeri, which is likely to consolidate the revived reputation of the composer more successfully than Cenerentola did last year. But it will have to stand comparison with It Barbiere, which public opinion has decided to regard as Rossini's masterpiece, and in the long run public opinion is seldom wrong. Prince Igor, to be sung presumably in French or German, since English would be beneath the dignity of a " grand " season, is the only remaining work to excite a flutter of interest in the hardened opera-goer.
One hears the question : If Rossini, why not Mozart ? " and to that there are several answers. The one I shall give is that we should be thankful that those great and subtle master- pieces are to be preserved once more this year from the mis-hand- ling to which they have been subjected in the past by a mixed Polyglot cast, in a theatre too vast for them and without the weeks of concentrated rehearsal that alone could secure adequate performances. Moreover, there is to be another Mozart Festival at Glyndebourne, where Mr. Christie, in the Manner of an eighteenth-century nobleman, has established a theatre, ideal in size, and has collected singers, polyglot indeed, who are sufficiently rehearsed to give co-ordinated performances of the operas in their original languages. Four operas, two German and two Italian, are to be given this year and Glyndeboume will be a centre of attraction to all who care for opera at its greatest.
In the meantime, Sadler's Wells carries on its good work. This week it has added, too late for notice, Stanford's The Travelling Companion to its repertory. I hope that any faintness of interest displayed by the public in this curious medley of mysticism and comedy, elevated by the genius of a great composer, will not dissuade Miss Baylis from keeping it on the stage next year and adding to it more of its kind. It seems to have taken something like five years for the public to appreciate Otello for the masterpiece it is, and the once thin house has filled up for its performance. So may it be with English Opera, if a similar perseverance is applied. And only so can English Opera be established as a living art. Then, perhaps, even Covent Garden may deign to notice its
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