TWISTING THE TAIL OF A GOETHE STORY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 68, 11 October 1940, Page 12

TWISTING THE TAIL OF A GOETHE STORY

"Mignon" Was Given A Happy Ending LISTENERS who follow the story of "Mignon" when the opera is broadcast by 2YA on Sunday next, October 13, will find it hard to believe that the story originated in one of Goethe’s most unhappy novels. The opera is gay and sentimental and everybody lives happily ever after in the approved fashion. But Goethe’s novel was a complicated tragedy. He took nearly twenty years in the writing of it, and seems to have added a new complication to the plot every year. When he does sort out all the characters and plots and counterplots, Goethe despatches his heroine with a broken heart, leaves one of the main characters with his throat cut, and leaves his hero with no character at all. For the opera, Ambroise Thomas wrote the music to a story which carries the characters safely through no more than the usual number of reversals and (Continued on next page)

(Continued from previous page) leaves the right people to the right lovers’ arms. This was not the only story with which Thomas took liberties for his own good purpose. In "Le Songe d’une Nuit d’Ete," he had Queen Elizabeth in love with Shakespeare. However, success justified him. "Mignon" played for no fewer than one thousand performances at the Opera Comique, and Thomas was elected to the Institute over the heads of Niedermayer, Batton, and Berlioz, who received no votes at all when these names were put to the ballot. "Mignon’s" long run began on November 17, 1866. As listeners will learn next Sunday, it is still going strong. One of its songs, a vocal Polonaise written for Philina, is so difficult that the directions make provision for cutting should it be found beyond the singer’s ability.