MUSIC, THE GOLDEN' COCKEREL.
ONE of the points made clear on Monday night was the fact that a farcical opera such as Rimsky-Korsakoff's Le Coq d'Or is one of the few instances where an English _translation is thoroughly acceptable. A flat, prosaic sentence is an intoler- able vexation in Wagner or Debussy, but where the effect desired is one of caricature, it produces that effect most admirably.. When we are in a continuous state of amused excitement, what could be better than : " Come and put my pillow straight ! " loudly and clearly enunciated by King Dodon.
Another virtue of this opera lies in the fact that it gives free play to the producer's imagination. Being a fairy- story there is no question of " period " or of the realities in any form. The more stilted the acting the better the effect, as was shown us before the War, when the Russian Ballet, with Adolf Bohm as King Dodon, mimed the play, while the singers sat immobile at the back of the stage. That was a triumph that will not soon be forgotten, and though the B.N.O.C. have possessed themselves of Mme. Gontcharova's brilliant dresses and decor, such a scene as the fascination of the King by the Queen of Shemahkan lost much of its fascinating effect upon us. In other ways, too, this scene, one of the best in the opera, seemed not quite to " come off." Miss Sylvia Nelis, who has a pure and charming, though essentially small, voice, did not give us the impression of a vicious, designing woman we had expected. Her gestures and bearing were cold, and calculated to frighten away rather than to seduce. The singing part is one of extreme difficulty, and vie must not cavil too much at her phrasing of the arabesques in the " Hymn to the Sun," which were rather too heavily marked to pass unnoticed. No doubt, as time goes on, Miss Nelis will remedy these defects, for she is in many ways admirably adapted to the role.
It is in this scene, more than any other, that the marvellous quality of Rimsky-KorsakoWs orchestration shows itself. The music is extremely ingenious, as well as delightful to listen to, and anything more delicate than the way in which the composer has handled his gossamer-spun fabric of notes can hardly be imagined. It would have been so easy to treat this scene in a heavily operatic manner, with rhetorical phrases, sudden ecstatic outbursts, and all the paraphernalia of romantic opera. Imagine how Massenet would have done it : to begin with he would have labelled it Seine de la Seduction, and after that there would have been no holding him I But Rimsky-Korsakoff never for a moment -forgot
that he was writing a fantasy—something in the nature of a Batik design. And so the 'elaborate texture of the music, which remains as clear and limpid throughout as a many faceted crystal, gives a fascinating character of oddness to the multiple cadenza that is the Queen's song, making us think that her idea of love must have been something out of the ordinary, if not very strange indeed.
Op the whole the performance was good, though there was nothing outstanding about it. Mr. Radford (as King Dodon) acted admirably, 'but seemed not to be in very good voice and was occasionally almost inaudible, even when the orchestra was not playing loud ; but it is a pity that his laMent at the beginning of Act IL was curtailed. This opera is quite short enough to be given in its entirety. Of the ballet it can only be said that they presumably did their best, which would have sufficed had they succeeded in keeping in time with the beat. Mr. Norman Allin, as Polkan, made the most of a small part, as did also Miss Edna Thornton as the Chief llousekeeper. EDWARD SACKVILLE WEST.
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