A Tale of Two Cities
FOUND Dennis Arundell’s introductory talk on Arthur Benjamin’s opera immensely helpful, but I was unprepared to find on first hearing a new opera so moving and exciting. The main characters are all there, Sidney Carton, Lucie and Dr. Manette, and Charles Darnay, but they are all subsidiary to Madame Defarge, who is the chief character. Marjorie Westbury gave a _ marvellously vulpine performance of an enormously difficult score. The prologue wonderfully conveys the smouldering tensions of the period immediately before the Revolution; oboes and bassoons pursue aimless but most artful cadenzas, over which Madame Defarge sings in a voice of piercing satisfaction: "Our Time Will Come." Come it does, and the final scene around the guillotine is quite remarkably horrifying. As an aristo prepares to go under the knife, the chorus sings in tones of the utmost tenderness a kind of litany to the guillotine; then the orchestra, by some ingenious orchestration exactly reproduces the sound of the knife falling, and the air is rent with exultant yells.
B.E.
G.M.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19550325.2.19.4
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 817, 25 March 1955, Page 11
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174A Tale of Two Cities New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 817, 25 March 1955, Page 11
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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