Around The Nationals

New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 153, 29 May 1942, Page 20

Around The Nationals

HE Dunedin Community Sing started its 12th season on Friday, May 22, in the Strand Theatre. The programmes are being broadcast, as in previous years, by 4YA. In 1941, these efforts produced nearly £900, and the organisers expect that the new season will again enable generous contributions to be made to patriotic funds. H. P., Desmoulins is the leader, and Alf. Pettitt the pianist, and on these two, with J. F. Himburg, the secretary, much of the success of these efforts necessarily depends. It is for Dunedin to show what it can do. ¢ tk * LY the overture of Rossini’s opera Semiramide tiow survives. After failing in Venice it had a successful run at the King’s Theatre, London, in 1824. Semiramide was of course a Queen of Babylon who murdered her husband King Ninus. In this she was helped by Prince Assur, who hoped to mount the throne himself. The Queen, however, was in love with the youthful warrior Arsaces-she did not know that he was her own son — and the ghost of King Ninus having announced that Arsaces would be his successor, Assur decided on a murder. He also achieved one, but it was the Queen he killed and not Arsaces, since she threw herself dramatically between Assur and his intended victim. Then Arsaces in turn kills Assur, and nobody lives happily ever afterwards. The Semiramide Overture may be heard from 4YA on Thursday, June 4, at 7.30 p.m. ™ * * BEFORE that "strange, half-crazy genius" Scriabin abandoned his wife for Tatyana Schlozer, he had begun to interest himself in theosophy. With Tatyana he went to the Riviera, and the great orchestral work "Poem of Ecstasy," which may be heard from 1YA on Friday, June 5, at 9.45 p.m. vividly reflects the semi-mystical, semi-erotic current of his thoughts at that time. Like Scriabin’s other orchestral works, the "Poem of Ecstasy" was first sketched out as a Piano composition. Unfortunately the only piano available for him to work upon was a decrepit out-of-tune instrument hired from a cafe near by, and as Scriabin was never a quick worker, the poem was not finished till three or four years late. Now, after nearly forty years, it is almost a classic. * ee LUCK’S opera Alceste is based on a famous play by Euripides. King Admetus having been given the choice on his death-bed of finding a substitute to die for him, the Queen Alcestis offers herself; and although to an Athenian audience this would have been a very right and proper sacrifice, Euripides scandalised his contemporaries by showing the wife as the nobler character and invoking for her more respect and sympathy than he asked for the king. It would be interesting to know what the reaction would be to-day of an audience in Tokio. The overture from Alceste will be heard from 2YA on Sunday, Mav 31, at 8.5 p.m,