Let's Make an Opera
URING the run of Puccini’s Madam Butterfly, the New Zealand Opera Company presented two afternoons for schoolchildren, showing the opera broken down into its component parts; and one of these, in an edited version, was broadcast last week on the National Programme. The head of each section spoke on his responsibilities: the secretary, faced with every kind of administrative crisis ("Is the composer sufficiently dead to avoid paying royalties? How will we uplift those 30 wigs?"), the conductor breaking the opera down: musically, the producer on his problems, the designer, the stage director, the electrician, the singers themselves. One thing emerged, wholly valuable no doubt to people who imagine that such occasions get themselves together: the tremendous amount of varied energy willingly pooled to field an opera. But is this really our:concern? I recall one very distinguished gentleman’s speech after a professional opening some years ago: "We were sewing Miss-into her dress three minutes before she went on!" None of our business, I felt, and an invincibly amateur approach. Despite the intrinsic interest of this account of the Madam Butterfly jigsaw, it is the whole assembly we are concerned with, and that for which we buy our tickets.
B.E.G.
M.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19591023.2.35.6
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 41, Issue 1052, 23 October 1959, Page 21
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204Let's Make an Opera New Zealand Listener, Volume 41, Issue 1052, 23 October 1959, Page 21
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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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