English Opera

New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 350, 8 March 1946, Page 12

English Opera

WONDER what the reaction of a musical foreigner would be if he were to hear, gs his introduction to English music, Hassan and Koanga by Delius, and Rutland Boughton’s The Immortal Hour?

These were the works chosen for a 4YA programme entitled ""Music from the Theatre: English Opera." There is something atmospherically akin in all these works, an ethereal other-worldli-ness which could be transcribed into music by no other English composers. But I am afraid that our foreigner, after a lifetime of, say, Italian opera, would come to the conclusion that if these works represent English opera, then the English must be a peculiar race. He

would put the English down as imaginative, sensitive, unworldly, and musically spiritual; appreciating what he heard, possibly, as little as a lover of the Can-Can appreciates Debussy’s Pelleas and Melisande, he would wonder where are those qualities of strength and robust joviality upon which many Englishm like to pride themselves, Our foreigner must also hear The Begger’s Opera, The Boatswain's Mate, and The Wreckers, The Mikado and Pinafore, and Peter Grimes, and search these diverse works for those qualities which Delius and Boughton lack. Having heard all these and more, however, it is questionable still whether our foreigner will come any nearer to discovering what inspires a British composer. Only a British audience can hope to do that