THE WIRELESS ORCHESTRA, conducted by JOHN ANSELL
APRIL PENDARVIS (Contralto)
SAMUEL SAUL (Baritone)
JULIUS UNGERSON (Violin)
MESSAGER (born 1853) was a pupil of Saint-Saens, and for some years was artistic director at Covent Garden and at the Paris Opera. He made a great success in light music-Operettas and Comic Operas. He is almost the last of a long line of French composers in this vein. Most listeners remember his Little Michus , and Veronique is still popular. He helped to make known a very different kind of music—Debussy's.
He has been fairly prolific, and has continued to produce musical works until late in life. Only two or three years ago, when lie was seventy, he brought out the opera Masked Love, from which we are to hear a selection.
STRADELLA was that seventeenth-century composer about whom there grew up a story (which may or may not be true) to the effect that he eloped with a lady and was followed by assassins, who were so moved by hearing some of his music that they repented of their evil intention, and spared his life. Stradella, however, was murdered later, so the tale goes.
On this exciting story Flotow wrote an Opera when he was twenty-five (in 1837). It was first brought out as a lyric drama, and then adapted as a Grand Opera, and as such produced at Hamburg and Drury Lane.
The Overture shows Flotow's best quality-the capacity to write flowing melody. There is a gentle moving Introduction, and then the main body of the Overture begins with a declamatory phrase, going on to a jovial, dancing theme. From this material the Overture is brightly built up, and a sonorous Coda brings it to a conclusion.