Opera Memories
TATION 4YA, in anticipation of coming opera, has given us a series of talks by Walter Hoffman under the title "Opera as Entertainment: An Opera Lover’s Reminiscences." Those of the talks which I have heard have scarcely lived up to the title, being less reminiscences of opera than résumés of plots with some favourite arias. thrown in for good measure. If Mr. Hoffman wishes to attract listeners who are so little aware of opera that they need to be told the plots of La Boheme, Madame Butterfly, and Rigoletto, then the: very
thing the speaker ought not to do is give a résumé of these plots-which, like most operatic plots, are so ridiculous when related in cold blood that unbiassed listeners must regard them as farcical examples of over-sensational melodrama. More music and less plot would, on the contrary, establish the fact in the mind of a prospective customer that what he will get. for his money will mainly be music, and that he can and should disregard the librettist if he wishes to appreciate the composer.
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 512, 14 April 1949, Page 9
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179Opera Memories New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 512, 14 April 1949, Page 9
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