MURRAY BROWN (Tenor)
JOSEPH FARRINGTON (Bass)
THE WIRELESS ORCHESTRA, conducted by JOHN ANSELL
No better introduction to a concert of dance music could be found than Sullivan's Overture to the Ball, for although it is not written for dancing it brings the spirit of the Dance before us in many of its familiar forms, like the preamble to a Carnival ball. It is spirited music, written when Sullivan was twenty-eight - before he dreamt of winning fame as a Composer of Comic Operas.
THERE is nothing in the fragments of dance music which Gounod wrote in his Opera The Queen of Sheba to suggest an improper approach to sacred matters. Yet this Opera was banned in England as being too Biblical. All that London was allowed to know of it in the 'sixties (it came out in 1862) was learnt from a concert performance at the Crystal Palace, under the title of Irene, with all the Biblical references removed.
COPPELIA is perhaps the most famous of the pre-Russian ballets. It was produced at the Paris Grand Opera in 1870, and has never lost its place in the repertory. Many of to-night's listeners will remember the glories of Adeline Genee's dancing when Coppelia was running at the Empire, London; and many will find that the tunes in this selection have, in some way or other, already become familiar.
IN the Opera of Henry VIII, the King holds a fete in the gardens of his palace at Richmond, a circumstance so unhistorical that the fete, and with it this Gipsy Dance, had to be omitted when the Opera was performed at Covent Garden Theatre.
'FIRE'
A short Play written specially for Broadcasting by A.J. Alan
Cast
(Two Smart Modern Sisters who are house-hunting)
ON the front-door steps of an empty house, 88, Lansdowne Crescent, Albert Buckle is standing. He and his wife, the caretakers-in-charge, are just starting out to get a few things from the neighbouring shops before they close.
IN Moore's Lalla Rookh Feramorz (as it is there spelt) is the name of the wandering Kashmiri minstrel (really a Prince in disguise).
The 'Ballet Music' consists of Interludes played between the Acts of the Opera.
