And Yet You Incessantly Stand on Your Head

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 385, 8 November 1946, Page 22

And Yet You Incessantly Stand on Your Head

F you would experience the emotions aroused by tragedy as defined by Aris-totle-if you would behold the sudden descent of a great man into misery and indignity and feel your spirit purged by

terror and pity-you would not expect your’ desires to be satisfied by a recording announced as "Vive L’amour" sung by Lauritz Melchior, But if you listened closely you would drain the tragic experience to its dregs. For Herr Melchior is a Wagnerian tenor of credit and renown, and "Vive L’/amour" is an ultrahearty, uncompromisingly English drink-ing-song. So Herr Melchior, whose English accent is not above reproach or even the jeers of the vulgar, sings this ditty with chorus and solemnly ploughs through "Let ever’ goo-ood fellow now feel op his glass" and the rest of it; which operation being carried out the chorus starts vive l’amouring in a hearty bawl, and away above the clamour, as brazen as trumpets from the topmost keep of a mist-enwrapped castle above the Rhine, and as out of place as Leviathan taking his pastime among a drove of performing penguins, goes the tremendous Wagnerian tenor. It is an awesome business, and a peculiarly painful one. I hasten to add that I have nothing against Herr Melchior’s inability to speak English in the native garb; but there is a subtle yet immeasurable difference between the drinking-songs popular in the Hall of the Nibelungen and those favoured in The Old Bull and Bush, which this exploit does nothing to mend. My film-going friends tell me he appeared recently in a Hollywood success singing "Pleast Don’t Say No." And when he next doth ride abroad, may I be there to see.