ORCHESTRAS AND OPERA

New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 339, 21 December 1945, Page 5

ORCHESTRAS AND OPERA

Sir-I was very interested in some comments in a recent issue dealing with the poor quality of the local Y.A. Orchestras. As was pointed out, to gloss over their performances in silence or mistaken politeness is hardly playing fair with the public. Surely we have better talent in the country, or if we haven’t, let us go outside our own borders. Obviously we need a high-grade conductor who could weld our players into a team, as was done in a very short time by Dr. Malcolm Sargent some years ago in Wellington. With the huge reserves at our disposal we should be in a position to offer quite attractive terms to the right man, and we should not be asked to tolerate the present pitiful state of affairs any longer. Is it not time that we re-introduced the -Wagner Operas into our operatic sessions? I freely admit that there were some valid reasons for these being

dropped in war-time, but I don’t think we should deprive ourselves of such masterpieces any longer. Occasionally we have a few excerpts, but in general our fare has come from the operatic catacombs, On the subject of Opera, could we not have more frequent sessions? For some years each local station has given us one a month and a half-hour every Friday night. I would like to see one a week, or as a compromise say a whole act per week. In any event, more attention should be paid to operatic periods. But for heaven’s sake let us have done with the intrusive voice of the commentator who merely succeeds in ruiningonly too fregjuently-several vital bars of music; as for a typical instance the brief but lovely funeral march in Tosca is reduced to a mere murmur for narra‘tive purposes. I would also like to see the childish and unnecessary applause at the end of every act scrapped, as surely no one is deceived, or has its appreciation héightened thereby. .

TRISTAN

(Christchurch), ~