Descriptive Notes

Radio Record, Volume II, Issue 34, 8 March 1929, Page 15

Descriptive Notes

[tz is a little curious that almost ail composers of opera have ignored, the gayest of Shakespeare’s comedies, "The Merry Wives of Windsor." Twa, however, the Italian Verdi and the German Nicolai, both nineteenth-century composers, have treated the subject with conspicuous success. Nicolai’s comic opera was produced in 1849, only a couple of months before his death at the age of thirty-nine. He had lived in Italy, and we can hear in this work, which is to be played by 2YA Orchestra on Monday evening, how well he assimilated and infused into his music the southern vivacity and lightness. The great meteor crater of Arizona, as it were a giant shell-hole made by gunfire from another world, will he the subject of the Rev. B. Dudley’s astronomical talk on Wednesday evening. This erater in the Arizona desert is four-fifths of a mile in diameter and 570 feet deep. Millions and millions of tons of soil and rock were thrown out. But what hit the old earth so hard? Scientists have endeavoured to find out. They have bored down 1300 feet, where some impenetrable substance has barred the way. Concerning the discovery of the crater and the subsequent investigations, Mr. Dudley will have a very interesting story to tell.