Interrupted Opera

New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 462, 30 April 1948, Page 12

Interrupted Opera

| CANNOT see the point of beginning a new series of programmes based on Opera, unles they are either better than the operas we now hear on the air, or else present some new aspect of the theme. Certainly opera, as now given us, is by no means perfect. Operas are not given complete, most of them being severely cut to fit the time-tables, From 4YA, at least, the Sunday night operas are interrupted for over half-an-hour, during which we hear talks and news, which, however ‘interesting, completely break the. continuity of the opera. And, of course, the arrangement whereby the narrator’s voice telling us the plot is° superimposed on the actual music is, te musical ears, completely impossible, Nevertheless, these presentations do give us a great deal more than the new Highlights from Opera from 4YA, of which Rigoletto was the first to be heard. This programme is described as "a series introducing favourite arias and choruses from well-known operas," a description which admits a limitation; and since it does not attempt to perform a whole opera one can scarcely criticise it for being too curtailed a presentation, But, after all, the music is the most important thing in an opera, and when a bare half-hour includes both plot and music in a presentation which on the stage would occupy a couple of hours the opera-lover may well complain of

insufficient music. This is a popular session, in that it will be popular with those who like hearing the "high spots" of the operas without bothering about continuity, but I cannot see the point of yet another session of operatic excerpts,