1928-05-11 — Page 10

10

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and at:- WHITEAWAY, LAIDLAW. & CO., LTD.

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Bookbinders.

THE "CHINA MAIL," Book.

binders,

No. Ba, Wyndham Street.

Dentist.

HARRY FONG, Dentist,

lat floor, No. 74, Queen's Road Central. Tel. Central No. 1256.

Electrical Supplies.

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ELECTRICAL SUPPLY CO., LTD: 72, Queen's Road, Central.

Tel. C. 8270.

Engineers &

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Call Flog "L" Sola Agente for Kelvin Motors.

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Booksellers.

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Ladies and Gentlemen's

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and Booksellera. No. 12, 'Aguilar Street, (opposite Queen's Theatre)

Hair Dressing Saloon.

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THE HONG KONG OPTICAL CO.

'Phone 2232.

53, Queen's Road Central,

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Chandlers, Managing Director-

THE CHINA MAIL,

•

MUSIC DRAMA FILMS.

ONLY ONE IN 40.

MI. W. BOOSEY AND THE 6d.

GRAMOPHONE RECORD. ·

SONG SUCCESSES.

1

phone manufacturing companies, melt, and so on, to singing its and mechanised musical industries, he said that probably only one song

in 40 turned out to be А диссека..

Publishers, therefore, took a big risk and deserved as much profit as they could get.

found irrational, as so many others continually faced with the choice have found it since, was the fact of cutting down expenses, which that the characters in opera sang means poor performances, or of their words instead of speaking losing still more money, Thia them. It is odd that the people state of affairs cannot continue, who produced a Shakespeare and a since bad performances lose Congreve, and have always taken a patrons, delight in the poetry of the one At this juncture, Sir Thomas Mr. William, Boosey, managing and in the highly artificial prose Beecham, grown wise through his director of Messrs. Chappell and, of the other-neither of which own experiences of opera-produc- bears a close relation to the ordin- tion, has come forward with an Co., Ltd., music publishers, gave evidence at the Inquiry into the rate ary speech of everyday life offer to the British public. If you of royalty to be paid to the owners should be unable to accept the con- cure sufficiently for opera,' he says, of copyright in. musical works, invention of a sung drama: for it is you can have it really well done, respect of the making of records. only a step from saying, instead provided that a hundred and fifty. In reply to Mr. R. Moritz, K.C., of "I wish I were dead?' 'O! that thousand of you will subscribe ten this too, too solid flesh would shillings a year towards the cost.' appearing for the various gramo.

The demand of so small a sum from equivalent in lyrie verac. Yet the so small a percentage of the popu refusal to take this step-which to lation of England should have met the majority of Italiane, Germane, with a ready response. English- and Frenchmen seems to present no men seem, however, to be incor- difficulty on the score of unreason rigibly slow to put their hands in ableness has proved a continual their pockets when a small amount He thought the sixpenny record stumbling-block in the way of is asked of them for a plan which will not materialise at once. Yet, trade was carried on at the pub- opera in England.

The revulsion against lishers' expense. If it could not,

the Ita of all the schemes for the 'estab. be carried on without fair

lians at the end of the first quar- lishment of opera in England, this muneration to composers and pub-ter of the 18th century produced most deserves support, because it lishers it should be stopped.

that gay and irresponsible form of la entirely practical, and because Mr. Moritz asked about Mig entertainment, the ballad-opera, of it spreads the expense of a sub- souri waltz of American origin of which "The Beggar's Opera' is the sidy over a large number of people which Chappell's acquired the

familiar prototype. In this burles who may be presumed to take an rights. It failed as printed music, que, set to popular tunes, not only interest in music. It lays a bur but was produced by a gramophone were the conventions of Italian den upon nobody.

and made

opera derided and the social status company

Let us suppose that Sir Thomas lar hit. Chappell's re-acquired of its characters deliberately re- Beecham will get what he is ask- the rights and claimed the royalty versed, but the recitatives were ing for, and examine the possible rights from the gramophone com-supplanted by the more 'rational' effect upon English opera. The

spoken dialogue; for while we have establishment

permanent been willing to accept the lyric opera-company giving perform- portions of an opera for the sake ances in the native longue le the of the beauty of the music and of first step towards fostering a real the ainging, the connecting pass- School of. English Opern. The ages of recitative have always brief 'grand' seasons are well stuck in our throats.

enough for their particular pur- Either pose, and one hopes that they will

pany.

ય

HOME OPERA.

PROSPERITY FOR ITS

· FUTURE.

Te-

popu-

The cause Is two-fold.

of a

Mr. Boosey replied that he had no recollection of the facts, but would inquire into the matter through his American manager.

Mr. Lawrence Wright, song com- poser and music publisher, said that the life of a song used to be about twelve months, whereas now it averages only four to alx menthaeign language and are, therefore, will provide a standard of compari- -"due apparently to the fact that unintelligible to most of the audi- son, at least for the performance people get tired of hearing it on ence, who are inevitably bored by of foreign works. But they do the gramophone,"

long passages devoid of musical in- little or nothing to assist the na- terest, the dramatic purport of tive composer. He has to rely which escapes them; or they are upon the occasional incentive of sung in translations, often illiter- some. chancé opportunity, such as ate and bald, which only turn the a performance at a girls', school, to drama into an absurdity, and in encourage him to venture upon the any case can rarely fit the music composition of an opera. He may intended for a very different kind now and again produce a work of of language. Purcell wrote recita- genius by an accident of this kind, [By Dyneley Hussey.]

tive which is the natural musical as Purcell did, but it will be, in the The past of It is odd enough. expression of the inflections of biological sense, a 'sport.' How. Our first opera-house was opened English speech, and which, there much even a little encouragement during the Commonwealth for thefore, sounds perfectly rational; can achieve may be seen in the in- surreptitious. presentation of and during the past fifty years creased, though still dismally stage-plays under the guise of Parry, Stanford, Sullivan, and small, operatie output of English operas; for, by some curious pro- their successors have re-establish- composers, since the B.N.0.C. cess of muddled reasoning, which ed English as a musical language, came into being. But these operas still persists in our refusal to per- But in the interval there was a de- have all shown that, whatever the mít Delila or Salome on the stage sert waste. Our composers, such musical talent of their composers unless they are accompanied with as they were, and in so far as they may be, they are sadly lacking in music, the Puritans regarded wrote for the theatre at all, paid theatrical craftsmanship, operas ឆន less noxious to the little attention to the genius of morals than pinys. Perhaps they their native tongue. Instead, they took the view that singing made used this or that foreign idiom the words and actions unintelli- gible (as it often does), or anti- cipated the lady who said of Der Rosenkavalier': 'Of course, the story's quite dreadfully shocking, but one can ignore that and just enjoy the music.'

the recitatives are sung in a for- not be discontinued, since they

which happened to be popular at the moment. Isolated, and sporadic attempts at English opera crop up out of this desert, but there was no chance for the roots of an Eng- sh school to flourish in such a Boil,

It is characteristic, too, that one of our few composera of outstand-] ing genius wrote his only opera for an amateur performance at a girls' school in Chelsea. It is, one of the tragedies of English musical his- tory that Henry Purcell died at the age of thirty-six, in the year 1695. Within fifteen years the Italian opera was firmly established in London, and Handel was entering upon his career of short-lived tri- umph at the Queen's Theatre, Haymarket. Had Purcell survived until that time, it can hardly be doubted that he would have seized eagerly upon the opportunity for being.

EJO DLX

FRIDAY, MAY 11, 1928.

DAILY CROSS-WORD PUZZLĘ.

(This cross-word puzzle has been made by an expert

but our readers are warned to look out for occasionár

phonetic spellings, such as harbor, plow, and altho.)

#2

13

35

15

46

48 49

150

52

53

SA

55

56

57

58

59

to

165

HORIZONTAL 1-Noah's boat A-Likely 7-A-poem

-Mechanical

contrivance 12-Vantura 14-Fragrance

15-A' stubborn animal 16-Barren

17-Covaring = futi

collection of - abjects 18-Small (Scat.) 19-Old na

name of Lake Geneve Switzerland 21-Obscure 24-To get rid of (colloq.)

.

•

29

THE INTERNATIONAL SYNDICATE,

HORIZONTAL (GUM) |45-What Inland aca in

Palestine is very rich in valuable chemicals?

46-0f age |・・ (Latin-abbr.) |48-Partaining to

punishment 62-Ending of superla.

tive adjectives 64-Artless girl

| 66–Sulfuric acid

67-Shortly

58-To dress with the

beak, as birde their feathers

89-A windstorm [60-Glet's name

61-A fatry

27-A famous Scottish-82-A color

American naval commander

[83-A ̧particular shade

30-A sunken hedge or

tenos

32-Long nack-hair of

como animal 23-A tilling Implement 34-East longitude

(abbr.)

35-A royal house of

England (Plantagenet) · 37-Tabular maks of

floating poter ico 39-A fingeretall 40-A Hebrow mateurs 43-To clothe 44-Combining form. A

bona

of a color

VERTICAL 1-Newspaper notiore

(abbr.) 2-Rodent (pl.). 3-What le the citadel

of a Russian town called?

B-To become insipid 6-Woody plant 7-A coast town of

-Honduras

8-To condemn 9-Formed like a cube 10-An astringent

mineral salt 11-Combining form.

Middle $18-An age

VERTICAL (Cont.) 15-Middle 20-A borough of

New York City 22-A doctrina 23-An island in the

Irish Ges, N. W. of England

26-An interjection 126-A volcano on the

Island of Martinique

27-A anowbird 28-Graek goddess of

the dawn

29-A bout at fighting |30-What king of Judon

died A. D. 47

|31-A∙ Hebrew minor

prophet

136-A kind of lettuce

37-8mali Nah

38-Who was president Mexico in 1920† 41-The Anointed One 42-Roads (abbr) / 48-Presently 47-A number 48-Third life-stage of a

butterfly 49-inspiring fear 60-To affirm 61-A string

152-A unit of work and

energy

65-A balsam produced

by a South American tree j54-isalah (abbr) 156-Shattered side

(The solution of the above cross-word puzzle will

appear in to-morrow's issue along with a new cross-word

puzzle.)

YESTERDAY'S SOLUTION,

ER

ONE

N

.

SWELTERED

ATKE INTERNATIONAL SINDICATE

|HONG KONG HEIGHTS

For the information of visitors the following list of some of the highest points on the Island ̧ and... Mainland is published:-

Island.

Victoría Penk

Feet.

1829

Signal Station

1774

MI. Parker ....

1734

Mountain Lodge

1726

The Eyrie ..

1726

Peak Hotel

1805

Taikoo Sanatorium

1000

Mt. Davia

877

Bowen Road (flterbeds) 297

Mainland.

Feet.

Taimoshan

9124

Kowloon Peak.......... 1971.

More than any other form of music, opera requires practical ex- perience, which can only be gain. ed in the theatre. Without such experience it is unthinkable that Wagner, Verdi, Mozart, Gluck, or Handel could have achieved their fame as operatic composers, and it is the lack of it that accounts for the amateurishness on the drama- During the latter part of the tic side of most of the English 19th century, and to some extent operas written during the last fifty until just before the war, opera years. And unless an opera is a was regarded in England as, to satisfactory blend of the two ele- quote one, authority, 'an expensive ments of drama and music, it must but not unprofitable way of de- fail in the theatre, since opera in monstrating financial prosperity.' something

"

essentially different The attention of fashionable audi- both from a play and from a plece ences was engaged by the indivi- of music, and something more than dual singers rather than by the a combination of the two. 'It is opera itself, and even now, fifty as impossible to succeed in this years after Wagner's death, that complex form without an intimate interest is by no means dead at knowledge of the theatre, as it Covent Garden. In the meantime, would be. to write a symphony companies for the production of without a musical education, and opera in English have come into until composers realise this fact Their performances have there is no hope for English opera. the full exploitation of his drama- varied a good deal in merit, but But if a permanent opera is estab- tic genius an opportunity which the general standard has consist- lahed in our midst, composers will was never available during his life. ently improved, until at the pre- have the opportunity to acquire of these greatest, Mozart's "The surveyed, much less worked out. The next stage in the story is a sent time, despite the financial the experience, which has hitherto Magic Flute,' was created out of So it is that I suggest that our revulsion from the Italian opera, handicap under which they work, been denied them, and our un- a form no less crude than the composers are most likely to suc which again is typical of our atti-it is possible to hear the operas doubted genius for drama may well ballad-opera, ie, the German ceed in the higher forms of comic tude towards the form. English- of Wagner, Verdi, and Mozart as And a new and profitable outlet Singspiel, a popular comedy inter-opera, probably-but not necessari- men have always been inclined to well done, on the whole, as in any in the direction of opera. endorse Dr. Johnson's definition of average continental opera-house.

spersed with songs. There seems ly-with spoken dialogue, in view It will not be 'grand' opèra, at no reason why the spasmodic of our impatience of recitative. A it as an exotic and irrational en- But a financial crisis has arisen. any rate for some time. We must efforts of our composers should beginning has been made with tertainment.' Italian opera was, it Opera cannot be made to 'pay evolve our national style along not, given the opportunity, be con- 'Shamus O'Brien,'. The Immortal is true, quite literally exotic in Quite apart from the heavy ex- lines that are characteristically verted into a continuous English Hour, and Hugh the Drover, England, and it cannot be claimed penses of the singers and orches English. We possess in the ballad- tradition comparable with that which have won popularity by that the actions of its personages tra, the repertory system makes it opera the germ of such a style, which has flourished in Germany their employment of native ideas were often based upon reason. But far more costly than the spoken which has already been developed since Mozart's day. The German in their plots and native melodyTM one suspects that what Dr. Johnson drama, Our opera companies are. Into their own entertaining, form of opera may seen to be ex- in their music.

FOR SALE.

Chang Tso Lin's Commemorative Stamps

Surcharged Ki-hei.

FOR USE IN

MANCHURIA.

GRACA & CO.

Dealers in. Postage stamps, Post Cards, Garden Seeds; Toys, Picture Books, & etc.

No. 10, WYNDHAM STREET, F. O. Dox No. 620. HONG KONG.

|DON'T TALK BACK TO ME - I TOLD YOU THAT YOUVE GOT TO GET BETTER ACQUAINTED

WITH- DOCTOR· CUTTEM- 1’HAD-JAMES CALL HIM UP AND TOLD HIM TO CALL ON YOU NOW SEE THAT YOU TREAT HIM

NICE INVITE HIM TO STAY

FOR DINNER.

AH' MR.JIGAS-

BRINGING UP FATHER.

YES OF

HOW

YOU?

1925, by Jai' Forbara Berchets Inc

formulae by Gilbert and Sullivan.

hausted at the moment; but we Their comic operas are not to be possess a rich vein, the potentiali- set beside the greatest. Yet one ties of which have barely been

DON'T WORRY ABOUT ME - I'M TIP-TOP-UM LUNGS RATTLE- A LITTLE-HEART ACTION NOT |SO GOOD WHEEZE IN THE

THROAT MY MY; NOW TAKE A DEEP BREATH-

BUTT DOCTOR!

THAT'S A FINE SOCIAL VISIT

HE MADE : BEFORE ). COULD TALK: HE STARTED A

MEDICAL EXAMINATION ». HE PUT ME IN BED ON A DIET FOR TWO WEEKS-

3:31