HUGHES MACKLIN (Tenor) THE WIRELESS ORCHESTRA
Conducted by JOHN ANSELL
THE YELLOW PRINCESS a one-act fantasy in which a Dutch scientist dreams that he visits Japan, was the first stage piece that Saint-Saens wrote. He was thirty-seven when it was produced. His collaboration with Louis Gallet (who wrote the story, in verse) was not a public success—only five performances being given. The Overture shows how charmingly the composer could suggest an atmosphere of romance and piquant strangeness.
THE Opera Mazeppa never became popular.
The gloomy subject and its badly constructed libretto were too heavy a handicap for the music ; some of which is excellent.
This Cossack Dance comes in the first Act.
The followers of two Cossack chieftains are holding a kind of contest of song and dance, and this is one of the brilliant pieces of dance music Tchaikovsky invented for that scene.