MUSIC
An Old Opera and a New Ballet
Tim two latest productions at Sadler's Wells are Nicholas Gatty's opera, Greysteel and Jean Frangaix's ballet, Le Ra Nu. The opera was written more than thirty years ago and, although it has since been revised and enlarged from one act to two, it remains a product of 19°6. Operatic fashions, like fashions in other arts, have changed enormously since that date, possibly more than in any other generation since i600. Greysteel had, therefore, to undergo a peculiarly severe test in being given for the first time when its style had already become old- fashioned. Even in that style its libretto seemed too ill- constructed and its characters too scantily drawn to make a good opera.
It is a pity, for the work contains some fine music which, though Wagnerian in its general style (as nearly all operatic music was at that date), is never really imitative, but has a freshness and individuality of its own. Even the funeral- march of Afi, which is developed into a splendid choral climax that seemed much too grand an honour for a stupid and unpleasant character, soon allows us to forget, after reminding us of it with its initial ominous drum-taps, that there was once a hero named Siegfried. There are many other admirable passages in the work, but it cannot be said that it is effective enough as a whole to earn a place in the repertory. Yet even so it is astonishing that there are still so few people sufficiently interested in opera. The theatre was very empty at the excellent performance, which, I understand, was much better than that on the first night when two of the singers were ill. Until the public is willing to take a sporting chance with new works, the lot of the English operatic composer will remain hard and uncertain.
Had Jean Francaix's ballet had to wait thirty years for its first performance, what would have been said of its music ? The question is, perhaps, not a fair one, for this kind of work is no more designed with an eye upon posterity than were the operas of Cimarosa or Rossini. It is, in fact, engaging light music, up-to-date without being wilfully silly like so much of the Parisian music of fifteen years ago. It indulges in no obvious chinoiseries to decorate the story, from Hans Andersen, of " The Emperor's New Clothes," unless the fanfares that announce that deluded monarch's appearance are intended to be chinesey.
Mr. Hedley Briggs, on the other hand, has gone the whole hog in the " Chinese taste " of his scenery, which is very beautiful with its red lacquer fore-scene and delicate rococo pavilions. It. may not reach quite so high an artistic level as Derain's lovely setting for L'Epreuve d'Amour, but it thoroughly supports one's opinion that the general standard of decor in the Sadler's Wells ballets is far superior to that of other companies since the heyday of Diaghilev. The costumes are likewise, with one exception, admirable in design and colour. The exception is Miss Pearl Argyle's skimpy dress which belongs neither to the Louis XIV style of the Emperor's court nor to the Chinese style of his subjects. It looks rather as if it had been taken over from Les Biches and dyed the wrong colours. For it has touches of a horrid raw pink that screams against the lacquer-red and its greenish yellow looks miserable beside the pure Chinese yellow of the Empress's attendants.
The story is a good one for ballet and is amusingly worked out. But ballet depends, more than other forms of dramatic art, upon decorative details. The elements of the plot must necessarily be simple and straightforward, if the result is not to be too complex for easy understanding. But the decorations, necessary to fill out the composition, must con- tribute to the development of the story, and enhance its dramatic effect. In this ballet there is rather too much that is irrelevant. The whole part of the Empress seems to have been put in simply in order to provide a part for a ballerina and she has a lover to support her because she must have a' dancing-partner. Having performed this service amusingly with a chair tied to his person, Mr. Harold Turner disappears from the plot, to reappear as a peasant with Miss Mary Honer in a very delightful, but hardly more relevant, pas de deux. Apart from this fault, for which M. Lifar, who arranged the story for ballet, rather than Miss de Valois, the choreographer of this version, is to blame, the dances are admirably contrived.
DYNELEY HussEy.
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