Opera Broadcasts for 1950

New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 541, 4 November 1949, Page 9

Opera Broadcasts for 1950

ROFESSIONAL grand opera companies which have appeared on the stage in New Zealand have not ventured far from the familiar ground represented by the Faust, Carmen, Madame Butterfly group of operas, and there are still scores of operatic works yet to be heard in this country. Several of the lesser known operas, or excerpts from them, have already been broadcast from time to time by the NZBS. and the

rota for 1950 will contain recordings of complete operas which are expected to provide for a wide range of tastes. Some of them are not even included in the repertoires of well-known opera houses. Many were recorded in Italy, and a few in France, and they will bring to New Zealand radio listeners the voices of Continental stars whose names are new to this part of the-world. Among the works for broadcast in 1950 will be Bastien and Bastienne, Mozart’s

operetta which was first presented in the private theatre of Dr. Mesmer (presumably the _ hypnotist). Monteverdi’s Orfeo, which was given with decisive success in the Royal Palace at Mantua, will be another. This opera, in a prologue and five acts, is the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. Others will be Massenet’s Werther, a_ lyric drama in three acts after Goethe, and Giordano’s Fedora, based on Sardou’s famous drama which was written specially for Sarah Bernhardt. L’amico Fritz, by Mascagni, and A Village Romeo and Juliet (Delius), will also be among the rareties. In the Delius work, listeners will hear, in a leading role, the voice of Denis Dowling, the New Zealand bari-

tone, who made a favourable impression as Junius in Benjamin Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia. Included among the other operas to be broadcast will be Samson and Delilah by Saint-Saens; La Gioconda, the only opera by Ponchielli to establish itself outside Italy; and Pelleas and Melisande (Debussy) in which the libretto. by Maurice Maeterlinck is nearly identical with. that of the play of the same title.

The Medium, a miniature opeta by Gian-Carlo Menotti, the Italian-American composer (a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music, Philadelphia) will be heard here for the first time in 1950. Also scheduled for next year is Verdi’s A Masked Ball which, apart from the great merits of the music, acquired adventitious fame by the circumstances of its production (the authorities would not tolerate it in its original form of Gustavus the Third, and the people of Naples

to a man _ supported Verdi, whom they identified with the cause of Italian Independence). Mozart’s The Abduction from the Seraglio, which entranced Vienna in 1782, is to be broadcast too, Among the conductors featured in these recorded operas will be Toscanini, Molajoli, Tullio. Serafin, Mascagni, Elie Cohen, Louis Fourestier and Louis Beydts. The broadcasts will be heard at 8.5 p.m. on the first Sunday in each month from 3YA, on the second Sunday from 2YA, on the third from 4YA and on the fourth from 1YA. Before each broadcast the names of the principal soloists and the conductor will be announced over the air.