Gilbert and Sullivan Return

New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 345, 1 February 1946, Page 8

Gilbert and Sullivan Return

HE best news of the radio new year was the announcement of Gilbert and Sullivan presentations, which were begun from 4YA with "The Sorcerer," The copyright arrangements regarding these operas are probably the toughest ever devised, and under the circumstances I suppose a bare half-hour was all that was allowed.. According to the programme and the announcer, the performance was limited to Act One. This would have left the company in a state of intoxicated bliss.as if they had imbibed a love-potion administered in the tea-pot during a church bun fight, a perilous situation for singers and listeners alike; and it was as well that the plot was not left in mid air, but rounded

off with a verbal commentary and the inclusion of a chorus from the end of the last act. It was scrappy but it did enable the best things of the opera to be heard, including the stately duet between the elderly lovers (in which Sullivan has dangerously entrusted a specimen of his famous "patter" to a contralto voice), and of course the ditty of the famous John Wellington Wells, the "resident djinn,’ No. 70, Simmery Axe." (Correspondents taking part in the English

place-names Pronunciation Controversy, please note.) Altogether it was a tantalising performance, and I felt afterwards as one who has been asked to dine on soup and fish, followed by a printed description of the rest of the meal. Better half a loaf, however, than to starve for Gilbert and Sullivan as we have done in the past. If all the operas are presented as well as this one (effortless singing by voices of quality with every word audible) then the Broadcasting service is to be congratulated on its venture in giving us the opera, even in a necessarily abridged form.