A Christmas Tale

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 394, 10 January 1947, Page 11

A Christmas Tale

HE one-act opera A Christmas Tale, which I listened to from 2YA on Christmas evening sounded much like, any other opera, an indication. that our local artists are not as far below overseas standards as some of our corresponjents would have us. believe. The operetta could be described as a onewoman show-there are four singing parts, but all are subordinate to that uf the mezzo-contralto, Jacqueline, imposingly played by Molly Atkinson. But though the production itself was excellent, the material, the opera itself, seemed to me a little thin. There were, I think, only two duets, and most of the 40 minutes were devoted to aria and recitative by female voices, which made for monotony. And though the story of the opera has human interest, and indeed has a 20th Century, rather than a 15th Century ring (anxious wife waits home on Christmas Eve for convivial husband, child’s sabots forlornly empty by the bed because convivial husband has forgotten to buy child’s presents), the dialogue itself, clearly heard because of the technical excellence of the production, is banal to the point of burlesque. (This perhaps explains why English operas are seldom successful in England). Moreover the husband’s reformation, though brought about by gentle means, seemed to me to strike a note alien to the Christmas spirit (the only false note jn the production). Christmas is nothing if not the season of good cheer, ,and Christmas night listeners might have felt happier if Jacqueline could have been weaned from her virtuous abstinence rather than Pierre from his wine-bibbing.