Pons Asinorum

New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 890, 24 August 1956, Page 21

Pons Asinorum

VERYONE has one, I suppose. I never found the real one any difficulty. Though an unusually stolid geometrician, that the angles at the base of an isosceles triangle are equal fell into my lap without effort, even if after this early triumph my talent languished. But in music, my bridge of asses has somehow always been The Magic Flute. For years, I looked up at it, as to a mountain peak, which once scaled would afford a vista over the whole world of music. It was, therefore, with feverish intensity that I sat rigid in the back row of the gallery at Covent Garden in 1950, my knees against my chest, awaiting music’s sublime chair-lift. I found it a shattering disappointment, and at the end of the first act slunk away, unable to stand another note. It seemed a colossal absurdity, an idiotic overblown farrago, on which Mozart had wilfully squandered his fabulous gift.

Further, not being a mason, except in restricted, private sense, I was impervious to its allegorical undertones, Yet my pons asinorum has at last been crossed, and the pontifex I have to thank is Herbert von Karajan, the Vienna Philharmonic and an illustrious cast, of whom Sena Juriac and Irmgard Seefried are only two. It was magnificent, music verily of the spheres, transporting and intoxicating, and I no longer care what it means, outside its own sublime terms, Mozart, incomparable Mozart, can conquer any third-rate litterateur like Schickaneder, reach anyone who will open his mind to the inexhaustible riches of his world of sound. It is unlikely that we will ever hear in this country a sublime performance of this opera. Still, we have this recording and I hope the NZBS will let us hear it many times. This old gss has crossed his bridge, and is more than content.

B.E.G.

M.