For Insomniacs Only

New Zealand Listener, Volume 12, Issue 295, 16 February 1945, Page 8

For Insomniacs Only

HAVE never been able to understand why the NBS reserves opera for persons of abnormal habits. Most people who work during the week and get out of doors at the week-end like to get to bed early on Sunday. They are therefore put to inconvenience if they want to hear an opera. The NBS has a fairly large repertoire of recorded operas, which go on tour of the main National stations in such a way that there is usually at least one opera in progress every Sunday night. But if it is 2YA’s turn, as for instances it is on February 11, with Boris Godounov, the work doesn’t even start until 9.50 p.m. If it has started straight after church it is subject to an "interval" lasting one hour and five minutes, starting at 8.45 p.m. The other YA’s have a shorter interval (a mere 37 minutes or so) in the case of operas that begin before nine, but 2YA happens to be my station. However, say I want to hear Mozart’s Don Giovanni from 3YA. The space between the church service and the National Service talk is occupied by a Rossini overture, a studio recital, and some music by Elgar, for which (as far as one can see) another night would have done. This leaves only the period from 9.22 p.m, until the 11.0 p.m. news for Act 1 of Don Giovanni, and some of it had been cut-evidently to prevent the disaster that occurred during the finale. when the opera was last heard (at 2YA). The rest is to follow a week later, again timed to start at 9.22 p.m. * * * 1 MYSELF will gladly forgo two early nights if that is the price I must pay. But others in the house complain, and worse, no one will join me, so that I am made to feel that listening to opera is a sort of vice to be indulged in solitude. Opera listeners ate probably more numerous in the cities, and sparse in the country. The NBS knows that this is true ‘of chamber music and uses the city-coverage auxiliary stations to broadcast the bulk of it. If operas were given , from 1¥X, 2YC, 3YL and 4YO, they could all be done in one night (not necessarily Sunday, either) and at a reasonable hour.