St. George and Sir Arthur

New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 515, 6 May 1949, Page 11

St. George and Sir Arthur

\ HETHER justice can be dape The Golden Legend in a quarter-of-an-hour is a question I leave for the NZBS to settle with Sir Arthur Sullivanthose whose first hearing of ‘the oratorio was the 15-minute programme from 2YA on St. George’s Day may pos‘sibly feel that even that was too long. Chief barrier tq enjoyment I felt was the extreme artificiality of the spoken dialogue that replaced recitative, and audiences recently indulged by haying the banalities of operatic dialogue decently shrouded in both recitative and Italian may well have boggled at St. George’s discussion of maidens and forty-foot dragons, The second part of the St. George’s Day programme seemed to me more in keeping with the spirit of a ‘day which has turned its back on romanticism without exiling sentiment. It was a BBC programme called "This England-the English Character as Illustrated in English Literature" and apart from a_ slight sense of wonder that "To a Snowflake" could be’ regarded as illustrative of the English character I thoroughly enjoyed the readings. The programme began with "This royal throne of kings" (which might have been expected) and ended with "Shall I compare thee to a sum- mer’s day?" both read by a gentleman whose voice breathed mellow fruitfulness. The other three readers had a more austere modern note, and I enjoyed renewing acquaintance with poems I had once known and never forgotten and others I wished I had known better, The method of moving from poem to poem

eee ae eee ae we ING with sere of to indicate the break was well justified on grounds of melody, but time taken out to give title and author would not,. I thought, have ruined the mood of the performance and would have saved me much baffled hunting through anthologies,