Stiles Allen (Soprano)
The B.B.C. Orchestra (Section D) (Led by Marie Wilson)
Conducted by Edward Clark.

More than twenty years ago, "The Secret of Susannah", a charming little one-act opera, was put on at Covent Garden and gave a great deal of pleasure. The music, although modern in tone, had in some places quite a Mozartian touch, and there seemed nothing to prevent the dainty thing from becoming permanently popular. But a plot that turns on a wife smoking a cigarette in secret and being discovered by a shocked but forgiving husband strikes the present age as too silly to be either funny or fantastic, and the ingenuous little opera is now heard no more. But Wolf-Ferrari's next opera was altogether different. It dealt with the dreaded Camorra, Italian "toughs," and brutal emotions - kind of operatic "On the Spot."' The music, passionate and picturesque, made of the lurid drama a riot of colour, and for a few years "The Jewels of the Madonna" was heard in this country, hut now, like "The Secret of Susannah", it is heard no more. Can it be that modern opera dates more readily than it used to do?