Grand Opera From 4YA

Radio Record, Volume III, Issue 42, 2 May 1930, Page 6

Grand Opera From 4YA

Programme Planned

UNDER the direction of Mr. Alfred Walmsley, grand operas are to be broadcast regularly from 4YA. These radio presentations will be a delight to the music lovers of Dunedin and to all listeners throughout New Zealand who tune in to 4YA. Mr. Walmsley, who is ‘an admirable tenor singer, has but recently returned to Dunedin from England after an exceptionally successful experience with the Carl Rosa Opera Company. Besides becoming. familiar with all the grand operas being produced in ‘Britain, Mr. Walmsley came into personal touch with such leading musicians as Dr. Malcolm Sargeant, Sir Thomas Beecham, Sir Landon Ronald, and Sir. Henry Wood. The first operas to be arranged by Mr. Walmsley for radio presentation at 4YA are "Cavalleria Rusticana" and "T Pagliacci," and these will be broadcast on Monday, May 5. Vocalists to assist in the studio production will be: Mrs. Eric Ewart, LA.B., Miss Betty Hamilton, Mr. William Ruffell, and Mr. William Bathgate. There wiil be full choruses by villagers and peasants. We are to hear "Cavalleria Rusticana" from Covent Garden on Thursday, June 21. For the benefit of those who may not be familiar with this story of "rustic chivalry" (and they must be few, for no opera is more 4

often given in England), I will briefly outline the plot. The scene is Sicily, second only to Corsica as a setting for ‘passionate melodrama. A soldier returns from the wars to find that during his absence his sweetheart has married a stay-at-home neighbour. He attempts to make love to another village. girl, but his ardour gives out and he turns back to Sweetheart Number 1. There is a scandal, a fight, and the soldier is killed. ‘The opera falls into two scenes, the interval between which is filled by the celebrated intermezzo. Mascagni, the composer, wrote "‘Cavalleria Rusticana" for a competition organised by a firm of music publishers. It won the prize. Aso full of well known airs is "I Pagliacci," which opens with the famous "Prologue," which explains that the play is taken from life, and that the sentiments expressed by the actors and singers, while sometimes noble and sometimes bad, are always human, and that actors and strolling players have their own joys and sorrows and tragedies in real life. The prologue over, the curtain rises and the scene of the play is laid in the village of Culabria. The main characters are Cania, his wife (Nedda), and two rival lovers (Silvio and Tonio). There are some very beautiful solos and duets, notably the beautiful "Bird Song," in which Nedda, yearning for love and freedom, pours

out. In the famous aria "On With the Motley," Canio, the broken-hearted husband, sobs his grief at being, not a man, but a jester, a toy to amuse the mob while his heart is breaking. Act 2 is the play, taken from life, as Tonio explains in the prologue. Harlequin serenades Columbine (Nedda), and Tonio has a comic love scene with her. Harlequin interrupts the scene by leaping into the room through the window, and after Tonio has given them a mock blessing, Nedda and Harlequin sing and dance a dainty little gavotte. The play, curiously enough, parallels the real tragedy of the first act so closely, that Canio, coming on as Punchinello, overhearing Columbine’s parting words to Harlequin-To-night and for ever, I am thine, Love," the same as in the first act to Silviocompletely loses his self control, and demands that Nedda tell him the name of her lover. This is probably one of the finest and most dramatic arias in this class of opera. The audience of villagers think his emotion is greut acting, and applaud him, but Nedda knows he is no longer acting. She vainly tried to calm him by singing a few bars of the gavotte, but Canio refuses to listen. Nedda realises the impossibility of further acting, and openly defies him, whereupon Canio draws his dagger and plunges it im her breast. As Nedda dies, she calls for Silvio, who has been in the audience. He rushes forward and receives the dagger in his heart. Canio, like a man in a dream, looks at the havoc about him, sees the horrified audience, and drawing the curtain, explains-"The comedy is ended,’ .