OPERA OLD AND NEW

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 125, 23 November 1923, Page 10

OPERA OLD AND NEW

WHEN ENGLISH MUSIC WAS IN

FLOWER

SOME VIEWS OF A CONDUCTOR.

Wait a minute; I'll show you something." The conductor then rummaged among personal effects, as the Customs call them, for the something he wished to show. He found it, in a velvet-lined morocco leather case. It was a heavy gold jewel. The fashion of it was "a galloping horse, and the rider on the horse was a girl, with her hair streaming wildly to the wind. On the jewel was an inscription, showing that it was presented to Gustave Slapoffski, as conductor, and from hia orchestra on the occasion of the first performance of Wagner's "Die Walkure," in Melbourne, in 1902. "Now," he said, "what a contrast between that great and, one may truly say, modern opera and the next that I am to conduct in Wellington—Gay's 'Beggar's Opera.' And, strange to say, Gay's work, performed in 1728, nearly 200 years ago, is being performed to quite modern audiences m London, and has just been successfully played in Sydney and Melbourne. Why has it exercised such a potent charm in these days? I think the explanation is to be found in the charm of its music as in its rollicking fun. Purcell and Arne, but mostly Purcell, wrote the music, and it is strictly in form, exceedingly beautiful, perfectly musicianly. Purcell, Arne, and other musicians of their day were absolute musicians, who knew their work, and here, in the 'Beggar's Opera,' we have it come down to us, as fresh, as beautiful, as full of fun and of serious moments, too, as of such was the music of the immortal Gilbert and Sullivan operas. In fact, I believe from what I know of the 'Beggar's Opera' that it may have influenced Gilbert, and possibly Sullivan; but of that I have no absolute knowledge. I do know • that the same kind of people who revel in filbert and Sullivan appreciate the Beggar's Opera.' They are the sort of people who.like old books, old piotures, old ■ furniture, who like to surround themselves with such things, feeling contented and at ease among them Shall I describe them as people of taste? r

The motives that inspired Gay to write this worE, the political atmosphere of his time, matter little to us now. It was an age of lampoons, and such were pungent, prolific to a degree, flam English was undoubtedly exceedingly plain in those days. There was nothing like our mincing modern suggestiveness. What they wanted to say in those days they said. If they had to call a spade a spade they did not call it anything else. Personally, I rega*T o?, 'Begßar> s Opera 1 the Gilbert and Sulhvan;of the early eighteenth century I would not have, the text altered to suit the times by one hair's breadth. Like Cromwell's portrait, I would havp it painted 'warts and all.' Why should the atmosphere'of the times be refined down to suit the squeamishness of our days? Bowdlerise it, and you weaken its essence and blunt its pointedness, making of it a sickly semblance of itself. We know that,in. say. Patience, both Gilbert and Sullivan were laughing at the follies and fashions and silly fads of their time: oo too, were they merrily sarcastic in 'The Gondoliers. As to that work, was it not in the nature of a prophecy? Read up the 'book' and see how much of what seemed farfetched and nonsensical at the time it was produced has come or _is coming. to pass, v 'lolanthe, 1 and pinafore, what were they but tilts at tne absurd conventions of their time? Lovely music, perfect in every respect as a musician sees perfection, of course, belonged to these works. So it was with the Beggar's Opera-wit, humour, satire sarcasm all i n musical setting, and that setting by musicians who were forerunners of some of the greatest composers of opera a century later. I think it would be right to describe them as examples, rather.

The only way to present the .'Beggars Opera'.,is the way it is now being presented in London and Australia. To bring it 'up-to-date' - would destroy its character. So the instrument in use at the time are included in the orchestra—with the exception of the harpsichord, -which it would not have been safe to bring over to New Zealand and expose to the risk of a Pf° Stl y r? Ugh PassaSe- The members of the orchestra are attired in the costumes that players in the theatre wore in the early part of the eighteenth century Nothing is left undone or omitted or introduced that will interfere'with its appropriate atmosphere. So strong is the work in its characteristics that the way rt is produced to-day is the only way to do it." J And from this work, so English, so original, with its old-fashioned music that has a vogue two centuries after its first performance, the talk passed to some forms of modern music in con-trast-with the music so popular in the early Victorian era, and its association with the changed outlook of young people of to-day as compared with that ° w e] r «ran£»athers and fathers when Woodman, Spare that Tree" and "A Life on the Ocean Wave" represented the level of musical taste and Mendelssohn and respectability were almost synonymous terms. After expressions of a few thoughts (in good set terms) on that subject M. Slapoffski made the present popularity of the "Beggar's Opera look like an emergence of musical good taste from the "Dark Ages" of the nineteenth century.