POWER POLITICS AND AN OPERA

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 69, 18 October 1940, Page 9

POWER POLITICS AND AN OPERA

The Legend Behind Switzerland

HE Swiss are not a rich people. There are four million of them living in a country whose 16,000-odd square miles of area is one-quarter totally unproductive. Although their worldly riches are comparatively well distri-buted-tthere are 200,000 peasant pro-prietors-their individual incomes are not large and depend almost entirely on their own hard work. In spite of their industry in making textiles, dairy products, machinery, and clocks for export, their foreign financial transactions are those of a debtor nation, and much of their overseas exchange depends on the fluctuating tourist industry. But in other matters the Swiss are better endowed than almost any other people in the world. Their freedom, their independence, their national spirit, their communal political organisations, make-or until a month ago madeSwitzerland a stronghold of democracy; stubbornly, almost miraculously, surviving, although quite surrounded by totalitarianism. Germany locks it in to the north and east, France to the west and south, Italy to the south. And yet Switzerland survives as the home of the International Red Cross, as the sanctuary of refugees, as the home of the late League of Nations, and as a world example of people with different languages and diverse racial origins living in co-opera-tion without futile talk of minorities or the quackery of schoolboy ethnology.

How does it come about that all these people, speaking four main different languages, are able to live with the motto "each for all and all for each’? One of the answers will be heard from 4YA Dunedin on Sunday, October 20, in the " Music from the Theatre" series which features Rossini’s opera " William Tell." Fight for Independence Before the Birth of Christ the country that later became Switzerland was populated by the Celtic Helvetians and by the Rhaetii. In 15 B.C. their lands were incorporated in the Roman Empire under Augustus. By the seventh century they had been conquered again by Burgundians and Germans and were under the domination of the Frank kings. As part of the Holy Roman Empire, Switzerland came under Rudolph of Habsburg, and it was after his death in 1291 that the first bases of the Swiss confederacy were established. The inhabitants of three districts took advantage of disorder in the Empire ‘to unite for independence. Their efforts were directed mainly against the Habsburg bailiffs and their success paved the way for a series of uprisings, and internal dissensions, which ended finally in 1874, with the acceptance of the constitution in existence at present, whereby local government is performed by communes which work under a system of federated cantons. Legend of William Tell It was in the thirteenth century that the risings took place which produced

the legend of William Tell. Schiller’s "William Tell" is founded on the legend. Rossini’s opera relates the story too. Tell is such a popular figure that we have almost adopted his story into our own mythology, in the fine company of Robin Hood, Sir Launcelot, and King Arthur. The story of Tell’s arrow and the apple on his son’s head is as well known to us as the tale of the cakes that Alfred burned, and that unforgettable date, 1066. But probably few know that the actual incident when Tell shoots the arrow to win freedom for himself and his son from the tyrant bailiff, Gesler, is incorporated in Rossini’s opera.

Tell is recognised as a man of revoe lutionary spirit. Gesler takes him captive but promises him freedom if he hits the apple. Tell succeeds in a test of skill which every man and boy who has ever pulled a bow recognises as just about as severe as anything Gesler could have devised. It is then discovered that Tell had another arrow ready for Gesler in case the first killed his son. He is imprisoned, but escapes and wins freedom for his people by shoot ing Gesler. Listeners will find that Rossini’s music suits his theme, whether it is the spirit of the independent Swiss he is describing or the beauty of their country. He provides a sort of theme song for our own times.