Shorter Notice
Nights at the Opera. By Barbara McFadyean and Spilce Hughes. (Pilot Press. 12s. 6d.)
DEDICATED " to the men who served in the C.M.F.", this is a guide- book to fourteen of the most popular operas in the repertory, with Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor included because many of the potential public for whom the book is written may have heard it in Italy. The enthusiasm of the authors is infectious and only finds a major obstacle in Faust, one of the three non-Italian works con- sidered (the other two being The Marriage of Figaro and Carmen). Musical examples are used to illustrate the great moments and not to make scholarly points, though there is no " writing down" as for a musically uneducated public, and points of orchestration and beauties of vocal writing are frequently made. The manner of presentation, on the other hand, is sometimes almost grotesquely colloquial and not always in quite the right vein. Do ex-members of the C.M.F. really feel more at home, for example, because a sentence starts, " If the authors may let their hair down for a moment " ? Apart from this, the book is excellently done and should appeal to a wide public. There is a short list of gramophone records (or a discography as Americans call it) for each opera, and this will be useful for those whose chances of hearing live opera are still remote.
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