COVENT GARDEN
ONE success at least Covent Garden has achieved—Parsifal. It fills the house, and it deserves to do so, for it is by far the best performance that has been seen this season. The scenery and costumes, as far as could be seen from the topmost proscenium box, in which the London Mercury was accommodated, were those of the original Covent Garden production. The Temple of the Grail was dignified and beautiful, the magic flower-garden ridiculous. The flower-maidens, who sang extremely well and were in themselves quite competent to look their parts, wore dresses that might have been discarded by a travelling Gilbert-and-Sullivan company, half from Iolanthe and half from The Mikado. The swan was as ridiculous as ever. That worst trap of all for producers of Parsifal, the undressing and washing of the hero in the first scene of the third act, was painfully successful. It was a toss-up whether Kundry would not remove Parsifal's wig along with his helmet, and the struggles of the holy knight to pull his white draperies down from under his armour were comic in the extreme. There are many little hitches and absurdities in all operas which pass unnoticed, because something of greater importance happens at the same moment and distracts the attention. But these particular episodes are in themselves the most important things happening at their particular moments. It is on them that all attention must be concentrated by the audience, and if they are made ludicrous by careless handling the solemnity of the drama is very gravely impaired. It is not as if they depended upon elaborate machinery. What is required is forethought and common sense.
Miss Gladys Ancrum's Kundry was a very notable achievement. Her gestures would be the better for a little more restraint and a good deal more sense of definite design. Her singing was full of colour, and she showed great dramatic power in the use of different qualities of tone. It is a part which covers a very wide range of character-drawing; there are at least four distinct personalities in Kundry, and Miss Ancrum went a very considerable way towards distinguishing them and endowing them with life. Parsifal is one of the most ungrateful parts ever given to a hero. Pure fools may be quite attractive people in ordinary life, but on the operatic stage, especially when tenors, there is little to be done with them. Van Dyck, who was reputed the greatest of Parsifals, was corpulent, and sang out of tune. Mr. Walter Hyde did not look very boyish, but he at least sang well. Mr. Langley's melodramatic manner was well suited to the part of Klingsor. As Gurnemanz Mr. Norman Allin showed a fine voice and a dignified presence; but of all Wagnerian bores Gurnemanz is the most boring, surpassing even Wolfram in tediousness, and it is only a very ripe actor, with that quality of vocal style which may be called either unction or unctuousness according to taste, who can make the part really effective on the stage. The most sympathetic character in Parsifal is Amfortas, and Mr. Percy Heming being one of the most sympathetic actors and singers in the company, it was very poignantly realised.
When we read of a new opera by Mr. Delius, Fennimore and Gerda, having been produced recently at Frankfurt with great success, it was indeed a bitter disappointment that Covent Garden could not even resuscitate A Village Romeo and Juliet. The Beecham Company performed it in a previous season, so it cannot have presented all the difficulties of a new creation. It may well have been better to withdraw it altogether than to give it badly; but if more time was wanted for rehearsal it might well have taken the place of Nail, which reflects more credit on Sir Thomas Beecham's good nature than on his artistic judgment.
Moussorgsky's Khovantchina had an indifferent performance and an indifferent house. It is less popular than Boris Godunov, and less obviously dramatic, but it has more unity of purpose and contains much better music. Both operas, however, are invariably so much cut about that the difficulty of following the story is very much increased. Mr. Norman Allin had a magnificent opportunity in the part of Dositheus, but it is not sufficient to treat it as if Dositheus were one of the conventional operatic ministers of religion. It was one of Chaliapin's most overwhelming creations; but Mr. Allin, though undoubtedly a fine singer, has far to go before he can achieve the ease and perfection of Chaliapin's vocalisation. Our singers do not concentrate nearly enough attention on the pure art of singing. They may be divided roughly into two categories: the clever ones who think that the psychological understanding of a character and the vigorous declamation of words are enough to carry them through any part, and the stupid ones who think that fine singing consists in imitating the external mannerisms of Caruso or any other Milanese or Neapolitan star. The clever ones are quite right in realising that English singing can never be achieved by trying to make a bad copy of Italian tricks. Many of these tricks do not indeed belong to the fine art of singing at all; they are merely appeals to false emotion, which excite a vulgar Italian audience just as the well-worn ballad-concert mannerisms excite a vulgar audience in England. A training in the real Italian style is without doubt of the greatest possible value to an English singer, provided that it means a thorough training in Italian literature and conversation, for that involves a study of speech-rhythms and a purity of articulation, which are invaluable to any one who makes use of his voice either as a singer or as a speaker. Pure singing and pure speaking are essential requirements to any operatic artist, and the singer must grasp the principle that his vocal technique is to be the servant of his artistic idea and not a hindrance to its sincere expression.
For Bizet's Djamileh Sir Thomas Beecham would no doubt have deserved sincere gratitude had it not been postponed until too late for inclusion in this notice. There was much that was laughable in the The Fair Maid of Perth, but Bizet even at his lowest has always charm and, what is more important, unexpected turns of originality.
There are historical reasons for thinking that the lighter forms of opera are those most suited to the English temperament in general. Attempts are constantly being made to re-establish light opera of a really artistic kind in this country, and although no one has yet succeeded in rivalling Sullivan in this field, Sir Thomas is certainly doing an excellent work in perpetually holding up Mozart and Bizet as working models for both the English composer and the English public to study and to enjoy.