Music
The Dresden Opera Company AT last it has happened ! The permanent company from a famous foreign opera-house, with its singers, orchestra, con- ductor, producer and technical staff, for all I know, down to the call-boy, has come to Covent Garden. It says some- thing for the strength of the Dresden Opera that, while this company is in England, it has not been necessary to close the theatre in its own home. Our visitors are, presumably, the " first " team and a very good team it is. That is the point. In the two performances I have seen up to the time of writing, no singer of outstanding eminence has appeared—though there was one performance, Marta Rohs's Oktavian in Der Rosenkavalier, which has probably never been bettered. But the team-work has been of a kind that is unobtainable in the " grand " seasons when a number of singers from various sources are thrown together under strange conductors for a few performances and a bewildered producer has to make the best he can of them in the limited time at his disposal.
Production has, perhaps, become a' " blessed word, but that is only because those of us who have used it felt the crying need of its practical application to our operatic performances. Unfortunately the word has now acquired a pejorative meaning owing to the activities in the contemporary theatre of the dictatorial producer who has succeeded to the place once occupied by the actor-manager. Production does not mean overwhelming the character of the piece and the individuality of the performers with frippery decorations or a balletified stylisation. A recent presentation of Antony and Cleopatra and, in a lesser degree, that of The Country Wife, at the Old Vic, provide handy examples of this tendency of producers to go beyond their warrant. The good producer does not obtrude himself. His business is to make the action run smoothly and naturally, so that the spectator's attention is not distracted from it either by those absurdities that are apt to arise so often in opera, or by an excess of cleverness in the use of dramatic devices, lighting effects and so on, or by any extravagance of scenery and costume.
It is just because Herr Strohbach, the chief producer of the Dresden Opera, realises this limitation of his task that his productions are so excellent and their excellence may be overlooked. There is, indeed, less danger of the point being missed at Covent Garden, because the contrast with what we usually see there is all too obvious. The performance of Der Rosenkavalier differed in no marked detail from that which we have usually seen. The difference lay in the sharper definition of the details, achieved by exact timing and the skilful handling of the movements of the singers—in a word, in the acting. To take an obvious instance, the movements of the attendants at the Marschallin's levee were absolutely natural, and yet the right prominence was always given to the right person at the right moment. So also in the scene of Ochs's final exit the chief characters were not allowed to be obscured by the excited crowd. The credit for this and for the subtle acting of the principals must be given to the producer, because there is no reason to suppose that his singers are by nature any better than those we usually see. They are, in fact, better produced.
On the musical side Der Rosenkavalier was given a good, if not an outstanding, performance.
Dr. Bohm, the conductor, is thoroughly efficient, and his handling of Strauss's score was admirably clear. His defect, which is a lack of feeling for the underlying urge of the rhythms, was more obvious in Tristan, But he gets the orchestra, whose strings are excellent—there are some weak places in _the wind--to play well all the time and really to accompany the singers. ..The performance of Tristan was disappointing as a whole, despite the excellent acting ; for the Isolde sang all round, her notes and rarely on thew, while her hem's chief qualification was, like Sir Willoughby's, a leg. When Madre and Kurwenal carry off the vocal honours, it cannot be said that justice has been done to Wagner. For dramatic production, however good, is no substitute in opera for good vocal production ; it may enhance the singing voice, not supplant it.
DYNELEY HUSSEY.
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