MUSIC Some Selected Prejudices

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31161, 10 September 1966, Page 4

MUSIC Some Selected Prejudices

(Reviewed by G.R L.)

The Ring At Beyreuth: and Some Thoughts on Operatic Production. By Victor Gollancz. Gollancz 212 pp. Illustrated. Index.

This book will come as a surprise to those who have always regarded Victor Gollancz as something of a rebel. If a person’s artistic tastes are in any way indicative of his true nature, it appears that Sir Victor Gollancz has been hoodwinking us for years, and is, at heart, a very conventional fellow indeed.

One can respect the author as a writer, a progressive and a do-it-yourself-world welfare worker, but once he steps into the stalls of an opera house, he steps back in time, and he should not be surprised to find he has stepped down in estimation in the process.

This is the book of an aging man with very fixed

ideas on operatic production. He is, of course, entitled to his opinions, but it is clear, both from this book and his recent “Journey Towards Music” that receptiveness to new production ideas has been crowded out by the memories of the performances he witnessed in his youth. Sir Victor Gollancz thinks opera producers are getting in the way of the music. This view is not held by him alone—opera and theatre-goers are notoriously conventional in their tastes —but sometimes Sir Victor Gollancz goes oeyond the bounds of fair criticism. One can accept that ne is a dedicated critic, even if an old-fashioned one, but nis suggestion that men like Zeffirelli are anything less than equally dedicated in their vocations is prejudiced and unjustified. Unless every production detail is completely is harmony with the musical-dramatic intention, the producer is attacked. It is Sir Victor Gollancz who determines what harmonises and what does not and one cannot help but conclude that his more limited theatrical imagination has restricted his outlook. As might be anticipated, the boldest directors receive the biggest blast, and it is significant that those whom he fixes first in his sights, are those who have arguably made some of the greatest contributions to operatic production in recent years—Wieland Wagner, Zeffirelli and Peter Hall.

What is more objectionable is that the author’s views on a producer’s success depend essentially on his estimate of the music. Writing of the Zeffirelli production of Don Giovanni, he says: “The music must never be sacrificed to the stage.” When he deals with Cav and Pag he is less dogmatic and enjoys the decor while, what is for him, fourth rate music, can drift by unobtrusively. The flexibility of Sir Victor Gollancz’s rules allows of no exceptions but his own.

Fussy decor and obtrusive production are easy criticisms to make. The New Zealand Players’ productions received their fair share of them some years ago, most of them, needless to say, unjustified. It may be that

in the present argument the fault is less that of Mr Zeffirelli than that of the conductor—or of the singers. Sometimes performances fail to measure up to a producer’s abilities. Is a producer to subordinate his talents to the limitations imposed on the opera by singers and conductor? Sir Victor Gollancz would surely agree that a Callas, a Caruso or a Toscanini could dominate the most elegant of Zeffirelli sets or the most tortuous of Sean Kenny’s. Sir Victor Gollancz, it appears, may have the wrong end of the musical stick, and in saying that many of today’s opera directors rely for a general acceptance of their trieks on the musical inexperience of those in the audience, he goes too far. In fact it could be suggested, with no lack of respect, that the younger generation of opera goers is much more knowledgeable than his own. One cannot help but feel that the author will dislike most opera productions. “Music first” is the doctrine he propounds and it is a good one as far as it goes. Tyrone Guthrie pointed out in his autobiography that it does not go all the way. He was used to the Gollancz approach and dealt with it once and for all: If operatic composers had Intended their Interpreters to concentrate their full energy on the music, they would not have planned their work for the stage. That being so, it is the duty of those of us who are concerned with the staging of opera to press our claim with all the fervour we can muster. 1 hope I have made it clear that 1 entirely appreciate that the conductor, who takes final responsibility, must have the final sayso; but neither he nor the singers must be permitted .ndefinitely to hold what stiiili is current operatic dogma: that opera is a musical performance to which is appended, at a late state of the preparation, like a frill round the bone of a cutlet, a perfunctory and almost meaningless stage routine. We would have a better chance of making our point if opera were ever reviewed by dramatic, rather than solely musical, critics. It was once—,n London in the nineties*—by a young Irishman with a red beard who called himself Como di Bassetto. He beat the hell out of the whole business.

This is a provocative book of selected prejudices. Readers can decide for themselves whether or not they share them.