THE NATURALIZATION OF OPERA IN ENGLAND
IN Italy opera is a tree which has sprung from a seed and grown swiftly in the course of centuries to an exuberant, perhaps an over-exuberant, maturity. It has been fertilised from other countries, but its trunk has kept one firm straight line by its own perfectly natural development. In England that tree has not flourished. Various attempts have been made to naturalize it, but for the most part the English cultivators never produced more than stunted and distorted growths. Even when they seemed to do well for a time they bore curiously little resemblance to their original parent. Other gardeners, observing how meagrely the tree prospered in the open ground, transplanted opera full-grown from Italy, and did their best to provide it artificially with its own soil and its own climate. It was an expensive amusement, and the more expensive it was the more successful its promoters proclaimed it to be. But it could not be called naturalization. The only course which has shown any signs of being practicable was to graft the foreign shoot on to a sturdy native growth, if a suitable stock could be found. But it is a process requiring careful handling and careful watching, for the tree takes a long time to become thoroughly acclimatized.
It is pretty generally agreed that English opera must be preceded by opera in English. Our public—our real public, that is to say, not the handful of people who concentrate a special attention on opera, both English and foreign—will not be ready to take new native operas to their hearts until they have got thoroughly into the habit of enjoying those popular works which form the international repertory. Those operas—Faust, Carmen, Il Trovatore, and the rest—are popular in England already, it will be said. Yes, as operas go, they are indeed popular; but only among those people, in whatever section of society, who have developed the opera habit. For even in what are called the popular theatres, where they are played in English to cheap and crowded audiences, they are almost always exotic still. If it were not that a large majority of operas are called by the names of their principal characters, we should see more significance in the fact that we speak of the others in nearly every case by their native titles, and do not translate them. We have learnt to talk of The Magic Flute and The Flying Dutchman; but even at the "Old Vic." they keep the names of Il Trovatore, La Traviata, and Cavalleria Rusticana.
Wherever they are played by English singers in English theatres they remain, as it were, extra-territorial. To begin with, the translations of nearly all popular operas are abominable. This has been said many times before. But what has not been said so often is that, abominable as they are, there is hardly an opera-singer who is willing to learn a new translation, even when it is candidly admitted that the new translation is easier to sing than the old one. There are plenty of sound reasons for this apparent obstinacy. It is not due merely to laziness or to the vested interests of publishers. What is far more important is that a new translation, if it is really good, involves a new style of singing, a new style of acting, a new scheme for the entire production of the opera. The average opera-singer learns his parts in a spirit of routine. He cannot waste time over trying to find out the plot of the opera or to analyse the personalities of the characters. He learns the traditions and is ready to step into his part without rehearsal in any operatic company that may happen to engage him. It may sound very shocking to the reader that operas should be put on the stage without any rehearsal whatever; but it is nothing unusual in the world of actual fact. After all, it is not much more unreasonable that an opera company should sing Maritana without rehearsing than that an orchestra of professionals should give an unrehearsed performance of the overture to William Tell or the ballet music from Rosamunde.
The Function of the Audience
Sir Thomas Beecham, when he first formed his opera company, sought out youth, intelligence and enthusiasm. He began in a brave and gallant spirit, and in his company there is still something of that spirit left. At the beginning it was hardly expected that he would do much better than the well-known provincial companies which used occasionally to give a season in London. But he aimed at storming Covent Garden. Covent Garden was inaccessible during the war, partly because no foreign singers were available to fill it, and partly because it was already filled with furniture. The war ended, the old Covent Garden exotic opera reappeared. Sir Thomas, however, did not leave its territory inviolate, and he is now in complete possession. But Covent Garden has been too strong for the invaders. Like the barbarians who invaded Italy, they are becoming Romanised. At Covent Garden there are boxes and box-holders who adore Melba, Caruso, and the rest. There is a splendid orchestra, there are fine singers, there is magnificent scenery. But the longer the company stays there the less chance there seems to be of their preparing the way for the real English opera of the future.
What English opera wants is an audience. And the best audience that I have ever seen in any opera-house in Europe is the audience at the "Old Vic." Italian audiences are reputed to be appreciative; but they are interested primarily in singing and in little else. They are critical of this only, and they have a certain tendency to be cruel. The "Old Vic." audience, if it is bored, lets the actors know it; but it is never cruel, and it is ready to appreciate other things besides mere singing. Once its attention has been secured there is no audience to equal it for quick intelligence and responsiveness to both tragedy and comedy. But Covent Garden has no pit, and its gallery is too small and too distant to assert itself.
Half-way between the "Old Vic." and Covent Garden stands the new enterprise of Messrs. Miln and Fairbairn, at the Surrey. The Surrey has secured its audience. It has begun with the old familiar favourites, but it has also included in its repertory The Flying Dutchman and Don Giovanni, both of which have drawn full houses. Very wisely the management has not wasted its money on elaborate scenery, though it is in a position to stage the Flying Dutchman quite adequately, and that is no small matter. There is an orchestra which, if not large, is at least complete. It began by being rather rough, and even in Don Giovanni, for which it is just exactly balanced in proportion of wind and strings, it only too forcibly recalled the criticisms made by Mozart's contemporaries on his overpowering orchestration. It is in their singers that Messrs. Miln and Fairbairn have been peculiarly successful. Youth, intelligence, and enthusiasm are certainly well represented here.
The Surrey's Opportunity
Mr. Fairbairn, who is responsible for the production of the operas, has in this company a wonderful opportunity, if he will only seize it. Here is a splendid house that combines the dignity of an eighteenth-century design with the practical convenience of an interior recently remodelled; an audience with no critical and social pretensions to keep up, but unsophisticated, appreciative, and alert; and a company of young singers keen to learn and ready to throw themselves generously into their work. Starting on such a basis, the Surrey has every chance to develop into a great and flourishing school of English opera. But to develop such a school needs more than average courage, initiative, intelligence, and hard work. It means that gradually, one by one, the translations of all the standard operas must be thoroughly revised. Along with this revision there must be a thorough-going revision and reconsideration from the beginning of the system on which each opera is produced. Tradition must be abandoned if it cannot be justified by common sense. Each opera must be worked out afresh from the beginning, as if it had never been put on the stage before. And the director of such a school must be prepared to face possible hostility towards his revisions. There will always be some among his audience who prefer the old tradition, good or bad, simply because they like to hear what they have always heard. Such people have got to be convinced and converted. That is not impossible. Even operatic audiences have a certain amount of common sense, and it is to common sense that an operatic producer must not be afraid of appealing. The plots of most operas are generally admitted to be nonsense, but that is no reason why one should not make a vigorous effort to put sense into them. Few plots could be more absurd than that of Il Trovatore; but if Verdi succeeded in writing music that, by virtue of its persistent directness, its unswerving pursuit of its dramatic end, has made Il Trovatore one of the greatest operas ever composed, surely it is worth a producer's while to concentrate attention on making the libretto as clear and as sure of its dramatic intention as the music is. The translator of an opera must not rest satisfied with merely translating each line as singably and as reasonably as he can, just as it happens to come along. He must regard the libretto as a literary whole, must endeavour to attain some unity of style, and still more to achieve a cumulative dramatic effect by little touches, significant phrases to fit important musical phrases; he must in each recitative or aria see at once where the climax is and fit it with a telling point, to which the rest of the movement will lead up. He must differentiate his characters, giving each its own literary individuality. If his original text is a bad one he must improve upon it. There are many cases in which a librettist has had a good idea but has failed to express it adequately. Sometimes the composer has understood the idea and has clothed the wretched words with music that lifts them on to a higher plane. The translator here finds his opportunity, and must do his best to find English words which may express the poet's intention rather than his actual achievement.
The singer who meets with a good translation is no longer uncomfortable, nervous, and ashamed about his part. He finds that he can bring home his songs to his audience in a way that he never could before; he learns to realise his part as a personality, he may even get as far as beginning to imagine what the character in question might have said or done when he was not on the stage. In this way the double appeal to the audience can be made, the appeal that is irresistible, the appeal to their own common sense, coupled with the overwhelming appeal of real personality in the actor.
If all operatic directors insisted resolutely on good translations and insisted that their singers should sing them like real natural English, we might develop a really English school of opera. Our own poets and composers could watch and listen, and possibly learn something which would guide them in the construction of their own original librettos and music. They would gradually come to find out what even our song-writers have only very partially discovered, namely, what are the true dramatic possibilities of English voices singing English poetry.
EDWARD J. DENT