BUNYAN'S PROGRESS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 482, 17 September 1948, Page 32

BUNYAN'S PROGRESS

(Special to

The Listener

August 11

HEN the present season of _. Promenade ‘Concerts (the fifty-fourth ) opened a few weeks -ago in the Albert Hall, sounds: of satisfaction came from the nether regions of the building-the. proprietor of the catering establishment there told one of the newspapers that he had full table bookings for weeks ahead. He may well have been pleased (in spite of the order that restricts the pricé he may charge for his meals), for catering to full tables is profitable-though he may haye been thinking rather of’ the profits that are permitted by the ‘clause renlusive! oe beverages." It was a different story when a stage version of Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Profress was put on in Covent Gafden Opera House, sponsored by the Daily Telegraph to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, and timed happily to coincide with the Lambeth Confer- —

ence. Reporters spoke to the catering people there, down among the red carpets and crimson wallpapers that have seen ‘such uninhibited splendour in their day; and came away. with the news that the bar takings were the lowest anyone could remember. Many of the audience wete clergymen and their families (200 bishops were present at the first night), and according to the catering ..people they drank "mostly coffee or . soft drinks." The production was the first in London since 52 years ago when someone put the allegory on the stage as a pantomime with Christian as the principal boy. The text had been prepared by Hugh Ross Williamson, and the music chosen and. directed by Sir Malcolm Sargent, who arranged for Christian to enter the Celestial City accompanied by the sounds of a piece cut from the Sanctus of the B Minor Mass joined to a piece cut from the Amen fugue in Messiah. Robert Speaight (Jesus, in "The Man Born to be King’) took the part of Christian. / There were some snares, traps, gins and pitfalls, of course. As W. McNaught

said in the Manchester Guardian, "If the stage is to be peopled by furies, incarnate vanities and delectable spirits, one myst needs call in a ballet company. But a ballet company, at short notice, can. draw upon its stock conven‘ions, and these may have been viewed by

many of the 200 bishops present-as an improbable feature of Bunyan’s world." Yet the text upon which the masque was based need not always have been out of place in Covent Garden, and the cuts which Hugh Ross Williamson had to make could have been judicious. Four consecu.ive words, for instance, are all that needed to be taken from the following: "Here ate to be seen too, and that for nothing, thefts, murders, adulteries, false swearers, and that of a blood-red colour." . a Fs rk Not for nothing. Opera is an expensive luxury and must either be supported by some form of patronage, or lower its costs by lowering its standards. The Government has decided that opera is not a luxury which the: rich can do without, but one which .the ordinary citizen has a right to-at any rate, the ordinary citizen of the metropolis, subsidised by the taxpayer outside it. Its decision to acquire the building by compulsory purchase under last year’s Town and Country Planning Act means that Britain will have a national opera house before it has a national theatre. When the present lease (held by Boosey and Hawkes, the mufic publishing and instrument firm) expires, the Ministry of Works will own the building, and will present a long-term lease to the Arts Council. The Arts Council (the Govern-ment-subsidised organisation which was

established to carry on permanently the work C.E.M.A. did in the war) is already subsidising opera at Covent Garden to the extent of more than £50,000 a year and no revolutionary change in the management will. come of the new decision. The building was owned by Covent Garden Properties Ltd:; it will now be owned by the Government. The present five-year lease was held by Boosey and Hawkes; the next lease will be held by the Arts Council. Opera has been presented there since the war by the Covent Garden Opera Trust (and ballet also); it will continue to be so. Opera and ballet in the theatre will go on being supported by public money, and it would not be consistent if the ownership of the building remained in private hands. The thing seems as clear as day-except to the hysterical Evening Standard which howled: "The people of Britain do not want subsidised opera" and asked what was wrong with the man who had been trying to acquire the next lease when the Government stepped in. "Does he run a chain of dance halls, or stage indifferent variety? Or does he import American musical .comedies for mammoth runs? Not at all. His name is Mr. Jay Pomeroy and he is the man behind the highly successful unsubsidised seasons of opera. recently produced at the Cambridge Theatre amid general critical acclaim." The news of the move was a scoop for the Sunday Dispatch, and the Dispatch has a columnist who answers questions that are in the public mindProfessor Joad. A week after the story came out, Joad said he did believe in "nationalised drama and opera" for "Since the public taste is not good enough to make high-class music if presented in an expensive form like opera commercially profitable-and the same is true of first rate drama--Covent Garden would go the way of many other theatres and become a cinema, if it were left to stand on its own feet."

Mr. Pomeroy has been left standing, while a social change marches ahead. The high quality of his Cambridge Theatre opera productions, which took a holiday recently after two years’ continuous and successful work, does assist the argument of his sympathisers, but if times change for opera and the boom on which the Cambridge Theatre run was thriving shou!d pass, he may be glad he was left standing; and it is for chang@ng times that the Arts Council is intended to provide, for good opeta has to be continuous, and not sporadic. It takes many years to work up the standard that is wanted, and this was recognised by Leslie Boosey, chairman of Boosey and Hawkes. when he said, "It would have been disastrous after all the work which has been done and all the money which has been put into Covent Garden, to find the Arts Council pushed out and somebody else installed." %* % * O much for Covent Garden Opera House. Back to Tke Pilgrim’s Progress, but another one this time. Dr. Vaughan Williams, who has written four operas (Hugh the Drover, Sir John in Love, The Poisoned Kiss, and Riders to the Sea), is said to have nearly finished a fifth, based on The Pilgrim’s Progress. The idea has been in his mind for many years, but he has put it aside to concentrate on symphonies, and has even used some of the proposed themes in his Fifth Symphony (1943) of which the last movement is prefaced with a quotation from the book. But one section of it is already complete-"The Shepherds of the Delectable Mountains," which has been performed in London-and this will presumably form a part of the whole. The composer is reticent about it, but says he is adapting the story pretty freely, leaving out Faithful and Hopeful, and joining together some scenes. When it will be finished, he says, "depends on how many other things I have |

got to do."

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