MURIEL MIDDLE
TON (Contralto)
HERBERT SIM MONDS (Baritone) THE WIRELESS
MILITARY BAND
Conducted by B. WALTON
O'DONNELL
BELONGING to La Gioconda, the opera from which everybody knows the ballet, The Dance of the Hours, this one aria seems likely also to survive the neglect into which the opera as a whole has fallen. Produced in Milan in 1876, it was first heard in London, at Covent Garden, seven years later. It is full of fine melody in the Italian style, and it is difficult to understand why its popularity did not last. The story is of that bloodthirsty, melodramatic order on which many successful operas are built, and the principal people in the caste come to untimely and unpleasant ends. The libretto is a good one, the work of Boito, known better by the similar work ho did for Verdi more than once than for his own fine music, so that the opera, one would have thought, had every chance of enduring success.