AT COVENT GARDEN.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 125, 28 May 1932, Page 1 (Supplement)

AT COVENT GARDEN.

DAYS IN THE QUEUE. DISCOMFORT AND DELIGHT.

(By DA CAPO.)

On a recent night the Royal Opera, Covent Garden, reopened its doors (if all went according to plan), and since then a few happy thousands have heard some of the greatest Wagnerian singere in the world. And how many an exile from opera will return in dream, just now, to that old grey theatre. For one it may be a rich and dignified dream—the slow progress in the crush of cars down Bow Street, the alighting beneath those pillars where Henry Higgins first met Shaw's "Pygmalion," the settling down in a red velvet box or stall But for another the eream Is of the gallery queue in Floral Street, and "the rigour of the game." We arrived as early as might be in the morning, which wae commonly wet or windy, but never in the least like Herrick's May morning: Spe how Aurora throws her faire ' Fresh-quilted colours through the aire: Get up, sweet Slug-a-bed, aud see The Dew bespangling Ilerbe and Tree. . . .

Then for sixpence one hired a stool, a little backless thing with weakly legs and a canvas seat, rather dangeroue to a Chestertonian figure. It might be left there, labelled with a name, while its master went off to work or play; but this was risky, for mysterious movements and closings-up of the queue took place as the day drew on, and untended stools were apt to lose their places or labels. Sometimes a pleasant fancy was shown in those labels. There were, for instance, the bright young pair from Cambridge, undergraduate and -ette, who declared themselves to be "Petronius Arbiter" and "Mrs. Felicia Hemans"; and the romantic young lady from the Slade School, who boldly painted on the canvas seat: Grane, mein ross! Sei mir gegrusst! —Brunnhilde's invocation to her magical steed. A Long Wait. But the true habitues sat on through the long hours, reading, smoking, talking, and only stealing away for a nice 'ot cup of tea at a neighbouring Lyons or Express Dairy, or a glass of something else at one of the unnumbered pubs that try to quench the thirsts of the market porters. The other side of Floral Street, facing the theatre, was devoted to warehouses, where groaning loads of West Indian bananas, Canary tomatoes

and Now Zealand tipples were drawn by snorting horses and .snarling, nioto'r lorries. The porters and drivers were a race of some with their greasy

cloth caps and neckerchiefs, their Cockney wit and their naive wonder at our heroic pursuit of pleasure —we thought them quaint, and they thought us completely mad, eo that honours were easy.

We had the "buskers," too, the street musicians and entertainers, who found their best harvest in this long and sedentary queue. Some of them were merely painful, and one tried not to see or hear. But others are held in affectionate memory —like the beery, broken-down acrobat, who spread out his little strip of carpet an<l went through some easy feate with what an air! and the old Irishman with the last threads of a pretty tenor voice and a pathetically funny excess of grace-notes and "expression." Not so agreeable were the men who came, each led by a. wife or child or decayed "off-sider," with hoarse and lamentable cries of "Blind, please! Remember the blind!". Rise of. the Curtain.

Somehow, thus, the day wore through, and the doore were opened at last, half an hour before the curtain rose. An eager rush up the severe stone stairs —a stay to breathe at the ticket-box (and to read the notice that prayed in four languages for correct change)—and we entered and flew to our chosen placet. Most of us, who wanted both to see and hear, even from a deadening distance would aim at the front rows of the gallery proper. But others deeiml the "slips," the two long rows on each side above the balcony, where one saw in an oblique and distorted manner but heard even better than the proudest box. holder. The slips were airy, too; the o-allery was quite unventilated, and its atmosphere grew mephitic on a warm night. These places were equally and sublimely comfortless —we sat on boaids covered only with the thinnest of threadbare 'carpet, and lean people envied the ingenious hero of ''Antic Hay," who invented a pair of. pneumatic trousers. . .'. Slowly, then quickly, the stalk and boxes had filled, and their occupants had, risen at the entrance of Princess Mary (who, dldne-o'f the Royal Family, cafes for German opera). The orchestra had been filtering in, and was now complete. The lights grew dim— miraculous moment! —and Bruno Walter, the conductor, took his seat in a sudden tempest of hand-claps. A sharp tap-tup of hie baton, then the first great chord of "Meistersinger," or the first ahrupt phrase of '"Rosenkavalier" . . . and we settled down with a concerted sigh of contentment.

It was not all joy, of course. For a chief complaint, the repertoire was absurdly limited. Most of us loved Wagner still, in spite of everything; and even if we didn't love Richard Strauss, "Rosenkavalier" was a superb entertainment. But we longed for more and better-done Mozart, and, at the opposite pole, for even a night or two of young and rebell'ous music. Then many of the stage settings were -uiK.k'iue. urchaii*iioiie of them in modern taste. And disgraceful accidents would happen (but

rarely) in the orchestra and the stage management. And sometimes a singer would be more than permissibly bad — like the young tenor who came across from Hamburg and almost wreoked an wtherwise-perfect "Tristan unci Isolde" by his nervousness and the native ugliness of his voice. Glorious Singers.

But how glorious they were, the best of those singers! The matchless, the divine Lotto . Lehmann, whose small faults of tone and phrasing were like the enchanting flaws in a beloved face. Frida Leider, the noblest and most believable of Brunnhildes, the most spiritual of Isoldes. The exquisite Viennese gaiety and eweetness of Elisabeth Schumann. Poor Me-ta Seinemeyer, untimely dead. The thrilling dramatic sense of Maria Olczewska. Delia Reinhardt, so perfect as the lovesick boy in "Rosenkavalier." Lauritz Melchior, too fat, and foolish at times, but having moments and minutes of, the pureet •inspiration. Oritz Wolff, whose Lohengrin and Pareifal were ideal knights of romance. Freidrich Schorr, whose Wotan eeemed to meditate aloud, unmindful of his hearers —to be overheard. Rudolf Bockelmann, who will be Schorr's successor when the years have done their worst. Herbert Janesen, incomparable as Wolfram and Kurwenal. The comic genius of Richard Mayr. The aiin-ust rotundity of Ivar Andresen. The two great conductors, the fire of Bruno Walter and the quieter fineness of Robert Heger . . . It is at once a pleasure and a pain to write these names, so far away, and with so little hope of'hearing such artists again. But never mind, my dear native land; at the least you. have a climate.