Unavoidable

New Zealand Listener, Volume 13, Issue 319, 3 August 1945, Page 10

Unavoidable

NE has to be full of sympathy for radio stations in the many difficulties presented to them in the course of fitting programmes in, one with another. At the conclusion of the Mozart opera The Marriage of Figaro, the 1YA announcer apologised with obvious sincerity: "We apologise for having had to cut the opera rather severely to-night, but owing to the time factor this was unavoidable." Indeed it must have been so. For although the times of starting and finishing were all accounted for in the printed programmes, printed nearly a fortnight ahead (in the case of a Sunday programme, which this was) is this enough time to remedy the matter? The, opera started at 8.15 p.m. and ran for less than 30 minutes. After an "interval" of 50 minutes or so it resumed and ran for another 90 minutes, until 11 p.m. And all these times were known long in advance, it seems. Yet, "owing to’ the time factor, this was unavoidable." May one be forgiven for suggesting that the calamity could have been avoided — namely by putting these operas on the auxiliary stations now and again, where they will be heard by those who wish to hear them-for the opera audience is in the cities, not the country — and at a reasonable hour, not a late hour on everybody’s early night. And since one hears the Mozart operas so rarely, it is irritating to find two of them on the same night, so that one is compelled to miss one or the other.