THE B.B.C. ORCHESTRA
(Section C)
(Led by F. WEIST HILL)
Conducted by JOSEPH LEWIS
A NEGLECTED Education was produced in 1879, and was written while Chabrier was still trying to make a living out of the Law. Fortunately, it had enough success to determine Chabrier to push law out of the way behind the piano, or much of his delightful music might never have been written. Another operetta of this period was later adapted for the English stage and put on at the Savoy Theatre in 1899 as The Lucky Star. Very little of Chabrier's music was used, however; most of it was Ivan Caryll 's.
THIS is the centenary year of Alexandre Charles Lecocq, who was born in Paris in Juno, 1832, and died there within a few days of tho Armistice, in 1918. The eighty-six years of his life roughly covered that extraordinarily fertile period of Parisian operetta, opera-bouffe and burlesque, by means of which Offenbach and many other gifted jesters helped to keep the century gay, and of these Lecocq was as gay as any member of that lively company. It was a jealous company, however, and Lecocq did not find it easy to join their ranks as a young man, and even though he had secured first place (bracketed with Bizet) in an operetta competition promoted by Offenbach, theatre managers would not at first look at him or his work. He did get some works staged, however, and presently scored a real success with one of them. After that, his way was clear. For the next forty years his operettas with their light and sparkling melodies can never for long have been away from one or another of the Parisian theatres. In London, too, he was a. favourite. Many of his operettas were mounted here, the first at the Lyceum Theatre in 1871, and others at the old Gaiety, Criterion, St. James's, and at theatres long since pulled down and as forgotten as Lecocq himself.