THE LIFE OF JOHN THOMSON OF DUDDINGSTON. By R. W. Napier, F.R.S.A. Oliver & Boyd. Price 42s.
This is a vast book. Besides the usual foreword and introduction there are six chapters in which Mr. Napier most anxiously assures us that Thomson's evangelical labours and lack of artistic training in no way interfere with the exercise of his genius. This seems a little unnecessary; for we are quite ready to take him on his merits. Then comes the biography proper, and there are also five indices, a three-part appendix, and six separate catalogues of his work, besides numerous illustrations, etc. All this immense labour and care over an artist who I think was not a very significant figure among British painters. Perhaps he was overshadowed by his contemporaries Turner and Constable. He was not free, it appears, from the landscape tradition of Claude and Poussin, which he applied to his own Scottish scenery, and there would also seem to be a strong influence of Richard Wilson in his work. For all this, I think we may call him a "great little man," and Mr. Napier's book will be most valuable to the student of the history of British art.
JOHN NASH
MUSIC
THE BEECHAM OPERA
THE season of opera in English at Covent Garden, which opened at the beginning of November, offers a programme of unusual interest. Tristan and Prince Igor are its oldest classics; Mozart, so it is rumoured, is being held in reserve for a special season of his own. The list contains hardly a single work that is not either a masterpiece or at least a novelty. Wagner is represented only by Tristan and Parsifal, Verdi by Otello and Falstaff. Except for a few Puccini operas on Saturdays, the commonplace popular operas that are obliged to form the backbone of every continental opera-house's repertory have been struck out altogether. It is certainly to London's credit that for so uncompromising a choice the response of the public has been enthusiastic.
As long as Sir Thomas Beecham was fighting the battle of English opera with dogged persistence and unstinted expenditure of material in the face of apathy and indifference, and possibly the hostility of vested interests as well, there was a very general feeling that his courage and high idealism should not be hampered by a too searching criticism of his performances. The Beecham opera has by now become an established institution, and it is inevitable, now that it has taken possession of Covent Garden, that it should be considered in a more impartial spirit. It need not fear comparison with the imported opera of the summer season. It has made its own high standards; but it follows that its performances must be judged in general by the standards of its highest individual achievements.
The present season has so far been something of a disappointment. Several of the operas to be seen have been given over and over again in the provinces if not in London. In the case of an absolutely new opera insufficiency of rehearsal may be pardoned; but it is not a sign of good management when the performance of stock classics is allowed to become slack and indifferent. Sir Thomas has not been seen very often at the conductor's desk, and this is the more to be regretted, since he has a most remarkable genius for pulling through a performance which in other hands would be always trembling on the verge of disintegration. He has very little sympathy with singers, it seems. He always tends to regard the orchestra as the main thing, and the singers as mere adjuncts to it, so that an opera under his beat might easily become a symphony with voices ad libitum unless, as, for instance, in Trovatore, the composer has understood voices and written for them in such a way that nothing could ever dominate them. Mr. Goossens follows in the steps of his master, but with less genius. The performance of Falstaff was instructive on this problem. Compared with that in the other Verdi operas, the treatment of the orchestra is so complex as to make it almost symphonic in character. None the less, it is an opera in which the voices must lead and the band accompany, for if this is not done the work at once becomes patchy and formless. It requires, in fact, that the singers should have a strong symphonic sense, should feel themselves all parts of a continuous vocal ensemble which must be kept going not by the conductor but by their own co-operative efforts. The orchestra can then accompany, and it must also play its part with a sense of vocal expression and individual personality. This is the real difficulty of Falstaff. As it was, the singers had little or no feeling for ensemble. I use the word in a large sense, meaning not merely the passages where several voices are singing simultaneously, but all those in which the phrase of one voice is answered directly, or even at some bars' distance, by another. Mr. Goossens did his best to hold the singers to a steady beat, but he allowed the orchestra to get very much out of hand. Mr. Percy Pitt has probably suffered too much from the old conventional Covent Garden routine. He lets the singers do more or less what they like, and allows the orchestra to play Wagner and Rimsky-Korsakov as if their music were no more interesting than that of Bellini and Donizetti. The one salvation of the opera season will be Mr. Albert Coates, who, even considered merely as a concert conductor, is in a different category from any of our English conductors. He adds to this a real knowledge and understanding of the stage, and a personality which has the quality of being able to get the best possible work out of every single person under his control. That quality is as rare as it is important.