MU S IC Edinburgh. THE Edinburgh Figaro was mainly interesting, to me
at any rate, for the appearance of a new Cherubino: not simply a singer I had not heard before in the role, but a new solution of what is a perma- nent problem in all productions of Figaro—or, indeed, of any opera in which there is a travesti part. Our grandfathers found that a woman—even the most "womanly " woman—dressed in boy's clothes extremely interesting and exciting : and they were quite prepared to forgo dramatic verisimilitude, which they rightly did not expect in opera anyhow, for the piquancy of the rare spectacle. To us, biases with what are often so ill-named " slacks " and the generously filled boiler-suits of the war, the piquancy is indeed gone, and we are left only with the dramatic anomaly of the whole situation. In the case of Cherubino, of course, we have a woman dressed as a boy and then pretending to be a woman: and it is apt to be simply ludicrous and forgiven simply for the sake of Non so phi and Voi che sapete. How was it, then, that I found the Edinburgh Cherubino, Giulietia Simionato, an enchantment from the first moment of her appearance on the stage ?
She was not, thank Heaven, one of your " boyish " Cherubinos, physical disasters who never deceive anyone for a moment and generally cannot sing : nor, at the other extreme, a figure in which specifically feminine shapes are exaggerated to excess. She was, in fact, neither epicene nor steatopygous, but a young and well-built woman. Her art was all in her characterisation, which seemed to me perfect in gesture and movement as well as vocally. What, after all, is the fundamental trait of Mozart's Cherubino ? Surely amaze- ment, sometimes wide-eyed and sometimes deliberately exploited, at the power and potentialities for enjoyment of his newly discovered sex. Giulietta Simionato is blessed with an exceedingly pert and piquant facial expression: neither the naive emotion nor the malice of Cherubino escaped her. Her movements were natural and grace- ful, and the difficult moment of her discovery in the chair was a triumph of acting—she contrived to look frightened and uncomfort- able as a boy, without losing her dignity and attractiveness as a woman. Her stance while she sang Non so piti was another happy stroke—not the shifty embarrassment of so many actresses, but easy and natural, a little tremulous with real coltish feeling, but enjoying the limelight of Susanna's attention to the full.
The rest of the cast were rather put into the shade by such acting. halo Tajo was more Rossini's Figaro than Mozart's, too flamboyant in gesture and too insolent in manner, though he has a beautiful voice and a good sense of phrase. Tatiana Menotti was hardly soubrette enough for Susanna, and though she sang well in the later scenes—the letter scene with the Countess (Eleanor Steber) was extremely good—she never had Susanna's irrepressible gaiety nor her instinctive coquetry. The Count (John Brownlee) and the Countess "were a wooden couple compared with their Italian servants: but that is the price you often pay for mixing Anglo-Saxons with Italians in your operatic casts.
* * * Firebird is always worth reviving, if only to hear Stravinsky's music and to watch the girls dancing their Chorevod and missing their catches to that enchanting combination of sounds and rhythms. The Covent Garden production is not very distinguished, and the big crowd scene is disgracefully ragged and unfinished. I checked this general impression by following an individual member of the corps de ballet for some time, with astonishing results. As for the latest version of Graduation Ball, it has amply confirmed my original contention that the whole affair—excellent in its way—is more high- class American revue than anything else. I find it very embarrassing,
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