Grand Opera In Modern Dress

Radio Record, 19 August 1938, Page 22

Grand Opera In Modern Dress

"FAUST" in modern dress may sound fantastic, but it ran a week in Birmingham in 1926, as a bold experiment on the part of the local Grand Opera Society. ' One critic tells us that "Faust" sang his serenade leaning against a garden table and clad in a lounge suit. Margaret did what looked like crochetwork during the passage when normally she spins. Siebel wore plus-fours. Mephistopheles might have been a stockbroker. In the Kermesse scene, his Satanic Majesty paid for drinks all round with a "fiver"; for all we know, it might have been a forged note. These diversions apart, the production had points deserving the attention of professional producers. The rejuvenation episode of the first act did away with the usual retreat into a dark corner to change a wig and get rid of a cloak. The curtain fell on a "Faust" still looking like a, learned doctor, but obviously feeling new life in his body. By his changed appearancé in the Kermesse scene, one surmised that, during the interim, he had been to his hairdresser and his tailor. He had dressed for the part of youth, which was a natural thing for a man to do, Of course, any judgment on such 4 production is bound to be more or less biased through contact with the unusual. The older hands probably feit some incongruity between. the dressing . of the opera and the style of the. mnsic | Not that there is anything mediaeval. in the idiom of Gounod’s musi¢, But. "Faust" belongs to the land of makebelieve, and those who listen to broad. easts of this and other operas would not be happy if they saw people in the studio in modern, often slovenly, dress ~ throwing themselves about in the effort to reach something in alt,