34^ 



The 



Review 



OF Reviews. 



MUSIC AND DRAMA. 



THE OPERA QUESTION. 

 Wanted — A New Policy. 

 Wanted — a policy ! " With these words Mr. 



Hermann Klein begins a short article in the Musical 

 Times for August on Mr. Hammerstein and the 

 London Opera House. 



WHAT DOES THE PUBLIC WANT } 



According to Mr. Klein, the trouble with Mr. Ham- 

 merstein is that^ while his intentions are excellent, 

 he does not know his own mind. His fighting instincts 

 are so strong that he cannot refrain from challenging 

 Covent Garden on its own ground. That is to say, 

 with or without the right artists or the right repertoire, 

 he persists in putting forward " grand opera " in 

 Italian or French at high prices, only to discover in 

 the second, as in the first season, that the public do 

 not want it. In June he thought he had had enough 

 of it ; on July 13 he decided to try again in November ; 

 and on July 22 he could not say whether he would 

 go on. The question of real interest is. Will 

 Mr. Hammerstein at last bow to the inevitable, and 

 realise that his only chance of genuine and lasting 

 success in the British metropolis is to give opera in 

 the language understanded of the people ? Seriously, 

 Mr. Klein considers opera in English not merely his 

 best, but his only chance. The experiment of " The 

 Children of Don " was not a true criterion of success. 



Mr 



THE RIGHT POLICY. 



Klein then tells Mr. Hammerstein how to do it :- 



The cause is not lo be won by a hurried produclion of exotic 

 compositions, interpreted without the smallest sense of ensemble 

 by artists unknown to each other, trained by foreigners un- 

 acquainted Willi the laws of English diction, and uttering a text 

 that could not be comprehended even if it could be heard. 



If opera in English is to have a fair trial, it must be under 

 conditions that are fair in every sense. The works, whether 

 old or new, must be such as the public can listen to with 

 pleasure. Th_e same may be said of the singers' voices, and of 

 the lines they are called upon to deliver either vocally or in 

 spoken dialogue. The bad old translations must go by the 

 board and the new ones must be first-rate. The enunciation of 

 every word must be clear, refined, accurate, and free from 

 dialect or provincialism. 



In sum, the English must be as good .as is tlie French at the 

 Opera Comiquc or the German at the Hofobcrn. With all this 

 there must be conducting and artistic direction in complete 

 sympathy with English-speaking artists and the English 

 language. A representative reptrioire and adequate time for 

 stage and scenic rehearsals will do the rest. 



A Practical Scheme. 



In the Forlnifihlly Revieiv for August Mr. E. A. 

 IJiu^dian iilso discusses the Opera Question, and in 

 the main bears out Mr. Klein in his views. No operatic 

 enterprise, except that of (,"o\ent Garden, has been 

 properly prepared or well managed, he writes. Though 

 Covent Garden has prat-ticully ;i subsidy in its sub- 

 scription list, great care has to be taken to give the 

 subscribers and the public what they want. No 



scheme that comes into competition with Covent 

 Garden can hope to succeed. ,A popular opera house 

 must give its performances in the autumn, winter, 

 and early spring, that is from about mid-October to 

 soon after Easter. As far as possible the performances 

 should be in English, and the repertoire should be 

 framed to attract the special Wagner and Strauss 

 public as well as. those who like melodious light music. 

 Mr. Baughan believes there are rich men who would 

 come forward to help a practical scheme. He con- 

 siders Mr. Hammerstein's Opera House too big. 



But the theatre itself is the least of the difficulties. 

 An operatic company would have to be trained almost 

 from the very first principles. Though there is 

 plenty of dramatic talent among our singers, it 

 requires the most drastic shaping. The artists would 

 have to learn clear enunciation. As an adjunct to a 

 Repertory Opera House a national school of opera 

 must be established. There should be three distinct 

 companies to run an opera house. All the translations 

 of operas would have to be revised or completely 

 re-written. After a year of preparation it might be 

 possible to make a start. The permanent opera 

 houses of the Continent are the result of years of 

 practical work. Here we have to begin almost at the 

 beginning. Unbending will and patient care could 

 overcome all difficulties, but so far that will and 

 that care have been absent, and this, rather than the 

 indifference of the public, is responsible for our failures. 



THE SECRET OF MUSIC. 



In an article on Music's Revelation, which the Rev. 

 F. W. Orde Ward has contributed to the .Vugust 

 number of the Westminster Review, the writer refers to 

 the dominant characteristic of music — namelv, its 

 elusiveness. He writes ; — 



The secret of music resides in its otherness, the inrlircction, 

 the ineffable, the fugitive !*r.ace, the eternal, at once lixecl and 

 fleeting, which, ere we grasp it, is gone and yet remains— mystic, 

 wonderful. To be acquainted with ourselves, according to 

 Malcbranche, we must be acquainted with God. And so, to un- 

 derstaml music, we go outside and beyond it into the hcavenliesand 

 the everlastingnesses, where faith and sight, thought and feeling 

 and will, are all one in the divine verities and certitudes, Ihe 

 innermost centralitics of life. .Music has most inadequately been 

 called "thinking in sound.s," though it belongs rather to the 

 instincts and intuitions, and associates not unequally a sort 

 of fatality ^nd freedom. For, in the spaciousness of its autlientic 

 spontaneity, it lies above and beyond the very sounds by which 

 it manifests itself in a spiritual world of its own. When -.fe 

 seem to have discovered its home with a view to definition, we 

 have lost it, because it refuses to be defined and moves to a logic 

 not of the schools. . . We demand in vain the meaning of 

 music, when its essence is, the indefinable, the unspeakable, the 

 final mystery that perishes when we would subject it to our quali- 

 tative and quantitative analysis. The artist sees and feels ami 

 knows, and that he finds enough. We may, in considering 

 music as a science, talk of the beginning and the end, but in a 

 very real sense it cm have neither, because it comes from, and 

 runs out into the eternal and the infinite. 



