BRITISH OPERA

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 9, 10 July 1935, Page 3

BRITISH OPERA

"PICKWICK" TO MUSIC

MR. ALBERT COATES'S WORK

EEADY THIS YEAR

This summer Mr. Albert Coates hopes to put the last touches to his opera "Pickwick," on which he has been at work intermittently for the past ten years, says the London correspondent of the "Manchester Guardian." In the music-room of his house in Kensington recently he spent two and a half hours going over the opera with me, scene by scene, in a pianoforte version. No plans have been made for the production in England of this Englishman's opera on the best-known of English novels, though several cities abroad, notable among them Leipzig, have already shown themselves anxious to have the honour of the first performance. Mr. Coates, not unnaturally, would prefer to see the first performance in England, but, unfortunately, as is well known, whenever opera is mentioned English impresarios and "backers" have a way of flitting into the nearest background and wringing their hands. Mr. Coates has been lightly described as being not so much a man as a monument, a notable monolith as well as a notable musician. Born in Russia fifty-three years ago, of English parents, he is more Russian at times than the Russians. And, odd paradox, in his intense love and understanding of Dickens and Tennyson he is. often more English than the English^ In his talk he .will switch from' English to Russian, from Russian to German, and from German to Italian in his search for the only word that will give "the full and exact shade of his meaning. That is characteristic of the man who a few weeks ago—and at his own expense and suggestion—made a ten days' pilgrimage to Berlin and Leipzig to clear his mind of a few small doubts concerning the tempi of the "Matthew passion" of Backhand to, sit at the feet of his old professors once again, like the student of thirty years ago—all ior the sake of a single performance in London of a work which he had canducted many times before. A NEW OPERATIC FORM. Albert Coates is a curious mixture of the nervous, tightly-strung musician, vigorously impatient of the casual and slipshod, for whom perfection is to be found only among those overtones and undertones imperceptible to the ordinary ear, and what the more sentimental ladies in the American films call, "Jest a great big boy." He has the completely unassuming confidence, of a child. He will turn from the piano, his face' glistening, after hammering out with enormous vitality a page or so of "Pickwick," and demand, "Isn't that grand? . . ." and then, for a moment overcome by the emotion his music has evoked, shake his head and say, "Terrible . . . terrible," for he is thinking of those wretched debtors in the Fleet Prison as if they were men he had known and friends of his own. Or he will jump from the stool, grip you by the forearm and shout, "Fine! Fine! Don't you want to dance?" Of course you want to dance: only you are tonguetied and foot-tied. And so the performance goes qn, with Coates now singing soprano in falsetto, now growling and roaring the bass, his large nimble hands flittering up and down the keyboard. "Pickwick," whatever the . critics may have to say of the- tunes and orchestration when the time comes, will be*' something new in operatic form. Mr. Coates has himself written the libretto and done it in an unusual way. "I have, to a large extent," he told me, "used the words put by Dickens into the mouth of his characters. That was only right and natural. In many of the long speeches, for instance, it has occurred to me that' the core of the meaning lay in one short phrase or sentence, which I have taken from its context to represent the whole long speech. Also, on occasion, I have transposed Dickens's third-person reflections into the first person and put them into the mouths of the characters concerned. THE COURT SCENE. "What kept me back for many years was the court scene. It would, of course, be absolutely impossible to put this scene on the stage as part of an opera. There is so much in it that is irrelevant and yet relevant in an inescapable way if you are writing'the libretto of an opera. Then one morning the solution of the difH-, culty came to me in a flash —don't go inside the court at all! The scene is laid outside the court. You see' them all arriving—Mr. Pickwick, Mr. Snodgrass, inquiring what the foreman of the jury Jiad for breakfast, Perker Sam Weller,Mr. Justice Starleigh, Sergeant Buzfuz, and, last of all, Mrs. Bardell, ■ accompanied, of course, by Messrs. Dodson and Fogg. Their actual coaches come on to the stage and you see the characters go inside. Then a black-out. 'Silence!' someone shouts. Then suddenly the stage lights up again—this time with the contemporary Dickens illustrations by 'Phiz' thrown on a large screen, while in the orchestra you have in musical form a condensed version of what took place at the trial—the evidence of Mrs. Bardell and Mr. Winkle, the bullying of Sergeant Buzfuz, and so on. This, however, occupies only a few .minutes. Then the words are heard, 'Gentlemen of the jury, are you all agreed upon .your verdict?' The lights go up again, and we see the people come out of the court, discussing the verdict, and the curtain goes down on the words of old Mr. Weller, 'Oh, Sammy, Sammy, vy worn't there a alleybi!'" TRANSITION MUSIC. Mr. Coates has got over several difficulties of the action by- introducing what he describes 'as "transition music," an orchestral interlude describing events in musical form, again against the background of contemporary illustrations flashed on the screen. The cricket match, for instance, is described by a riotously jolly fugue and the famous chase by a thundering scherzo, which has already been performed on the concert platform. The most moving scene of the opera is probably that in the Fleel Prison, where ■ the stage is divided into several separate floors and sections which are lit up only when the action calls for it. Here Mr. Coates, if one may judge from the pianoforte version, has made music to match the grim humour of a Hogarth or a Rowlandson —the humour of ravens flapping their wings above a gallows. Each of the characters has, of course, characteristic music to sing.