THE WIRELESS MILITARY BAND, conducted by B. WALTON O'DONNELL
SOPHIE ROWLANDS (Soprano) ; GLYN EASTMAN
(Baritone)
SIMON BOCCANEGRA is one of the few instances of an Opera's proving a failure. and being remodelled and rescored, and provided with a new libretto-rather like the knife that was ' the same knife, only for a new handle and a new blade.'
Boito, Verdi's friend (himself a composer of Opera), was the new librettist who laboured at refitting the work nearly a quarter of a century after its first production in 1857. In this air the unhappy father, whose daughter has been cruelly taken from him, begs her, in Heaven, to pray for him.
VAARLAM, in the Opera Boris Godounov , is a wandering, dissolute monk. In this song he tells of the glorious days ' Long ago at Kasan where I was fighting,' when Tsar Ivan harried the Tartars in that city, drove mines beneath it, and blew up forty thousand of the hated enemy —so Vaarlam says.
TF Tchaikovsky had not written a Sixth Symphony—the Pathetic—his Fifth would have been acknowledged as the most complete example of unrestricted musical romancing that was ever put together by the hand of a thorough musician. The First Movement contributes much of the evidence for this verdict. It has a slow and gloomy Introduction, and then the main business is set going with a jerky swinging tune in a pronounced rhythm. The movement contains some pages of glowing eloquence.
TULES MASSENET was one of those fortunate people who find their life-work quickly, and are able to apply their gifts to the very best advantage. His early successes at the Paris Conservatoire were repeated as soon as he began to write Operas. At the age of thirty-four he received the decoration of the Legion of Honour, and two years later he became a member of the Academy of Fine Arts-the youngest member ever elected. He always knew how to hit the Parisian taste. Not many of his works have survived in England, but the Opera Manon was long a favourite at Co vent Garden.
Massenet wrote incidental music' for a play by Leconte do Lisle, Les Erinnyes (The Furies), dealing with the tragedy of Orestes, who murdered his mother Klytemnestra to avenge her murder of his father. The Furies, as the instruments of vengeance, torment Orestes. !
We are to hear three pieces of Ballot
Music from The Furies—a Grecian Dance, The Trojan Maiden's Lament for her Country, and a Bacchanal.