1933-01-11 — Page 3

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WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 11, 1933.

Art and Drama

200 YEARS OF OPERA.

Covent Garden's Play Bills.

A bicentenary commemoration of the the original opening of Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, on December 7, 1782, began recently at the Victoria and Albert Museum. All the exhibits were connected with one or other of the theatres which have stood upon the same site. There was for instance, print of John Rich, the builder of the first Theatre Royal, driving up In state to his new theatre, which was a handsome building with a severe Doric colonnade.

Д

he

Entertaining Made A Real Art

Modern House Party Proof Of Change

OLD ORDER OUTGROWN

(By G. CORNWALLIS-WEST).

each

THE CHINA MAIL.

MAN CAN BE GOD-LIKE

But Never Can

Be God.

POETRY EXPLAINED. ·

[By St. John Ervine in the London "Observer."]

he likes is what everybody must! like. Anybody who differs from him is indecent or wicked. In a neo-democracy we must all read the same newspaper listen to the same broadcast. programme, and| see the same moving-picture. The neo-democratic likes to think that what he is hearing in London is I must, as Bottom said, grow to being heard everywhere. The ac- a point. My argument is that the cents of Lambeth are to be the ac- common man may, like Caliban, cents of Lurgan, and what is said: turn to Miranda or to Trinculo; on Primrose Hill must also be he may worship God, and so be said on the Paps of Jura. The ap come godlike, or adore the Devil prentice is as good as the crafts- and become damnable. But he man... cannot be God or the Devil. That what Matthew. Arnold is not means when he declares that:-

The seeds of godlike power are

in us still;

t

Gods are we, barda, saints,

heroes, if we will

Transfiguration.

At this point, impatiently you Inquire what all this tirade has to do with the cinema and the theatre. This. If there is anything wrong with the playhouse, it is because there is something, wrong with_the

Matthew I think

Most of us will admit that, of answer would be: "No-and what pleasure is ex-about the Smith-Robinsons?" That the two, more perienced in entertaining than in it was common knowledge that the de V's and the S-R's were not on Rich had made a fortune out of being entertained.

How much nicer it is to invite speaking terms did not worry the the "Beggar's Opern," and

at one's particular friends to one's compulsory entertainers. often afterwards put it on

in. They had to get through a cer- What he means is that if we main-playgoers. It is useless to produce Covent Garden, as the play-bills own house to dine, talk and

dulgo in a mild rubber than to tain number of people every tell us.

a bitter cold season, with the result that at each tain our standards high, we can fine spectacles for blind men or to The history of the theatre was have to go out on covered fully down to the present night, try to get a taxi in pouring of the three banquets which they bring out of ourselves something play symphonies to the deaf. Yet year. In the. aineteenth century rain, only to find oneself, on ar-gave, thirty people armed the operatic traditions of the riving wet and shivering at the other in to dinner, ate and drank Theatre Royal, which ultimately house, planted next to a complete, hugely, and were, as often as not, became the Royal Opera, are shown and possibly dull, stranger, or, intensely bored afterwards,

Dinner parties nowadays are by engravings and photographs of worse still, someone who le de

rauch more intimate, and therefore the leading singers and by many finitely antipathetic.

Herein lies the art of entertain more amusing form of entertain One of these, for a performance ing. Perfect is the best or hostess ment. Stern necessity has cut of "Lucrezia Borgia" in 1847, has who knows, exactly which of their down the number of guests to eight some marginal notes. "Not a nice friends will mix well together, who or twelve, and each one generally opera, choruses splendid," is writ- remembers the particular idiosyn-knows the other.

Men no longer seem to desire to ten next to the title. Mme. Grisil erasy, of each, whether mental,

drawn dull cure In the dining-room. excited no comment, but against physical or gastronomie.

Being myself one of the for Ten minutes instead of half Mlle. Albani's name is the state) ment, "drinking song beautiful, tunate ones who have received hour is now the usual time spent much hospitality in life, my im-over the port before rejoining the Signor Mario, this unknown pression is that nowadays hosts Indies. critic declares, was "disfigured and hostesses take infinitely more! with beard." "Bad, stupid," are pains to make their guests content- the epithets applied to the Divered than they used to. tissement as the ballet was call-

programmes,

double encore."

Iar."

BISHOP WHO WAS A FAMOUS CHEMIST.

No Tact.

Enster To Amuse,

an

аге

better than ourselves. Every a stone-deaf man, if he be a Beeth acorn does not become an oak, nor oven, may compose a great sym-

or Something has been! Homer

a. Milton, make of its seed. is the oak merely an exaggeration phony, and a blind man, if he be a apectacles through added to the acorn, from the earth magnificent

was right, 08 and the air and the sky, nor has his imagination. If the acorn willed that these addi- Arnold tlons should be made to it. They he was, anyone of us may be have been bestowed upon the transfigured in a moment, as Saul! it obtained them, and is probably vision on the road to Damascus, as Acorn, which does, not know how was turned into Paul by a dazzling unaware that it cannot germinate Edith Cavell, a plain, unimposing without them. The neo-democrat woman, was, in a time of trial, belioves that he has no need of transformed into a figure to fire addition, that all power is in him the pride of her countrymmen. Would self, that he can aprout as well as anyone have said of Captain Oates, anybody, and that no one is entitl had they met him before he went ed to any more authority or con-into the Arctic blizzard and laid alderation than is given to him. himself down in the snow and died, He must get the standards. What that his was the stuff of which heroes are made? A man issue- tained by the belief that he may find the field-marshal's baton in his knapsack, although he knows very well that scarcely one man in a million finds it. How will he sus tain himself when he is assured that there is no baton to find, and that if there were, it would not be worth the trouble of discovery? "A.E", in "The Earth Breath," as- aerts that:

ART

EXHIBITION.

First Of Its Kind In England.

TAKES PLACE, IN MAY.

. the restless ploughman' pauses,

On the other hand, guesta far easier to amuse than they used to be. Unless suffering from

INDUSTRIAL that Benile decay, they nearly all play The huge dinner parties. ed and Mme. Elssler, the famous ballerina, was "nothing particu-were given in Edwardian days some sort of game; there is always country were more in the nature of com- a tennis court, and few pulsory entertainments. A lady houses are without a golf course would say to her husband: "My within motoring distance.

Guests at week-end parties in dear, we've never asked the de Veres to dinner this season. The the summer were hardly ever, in my young days, given the chance At. ed that he had destroyed all his of entertaining themselves. Portrait By Reynolds. chemical manuscripts as a "sacrimany large houses certain things fice to other people's notions," but were done at certain hours, and

An exhibition of British Indus- Bishops have often so much to his very practical discoveries could one had duly to parade for them,

turns and, wondering, say about science that it is it not be thus deleted, and his sug-There were the gardens and green-trial Art, the first of its kind is

Deep beneath his rustic habit teresting to be reminded that Dr. gestion, after careful experimente, houses to be visited in the morn- to be held in England, is to take

finds himself a king.. Richard Watson (whom Reynolds that volatile products from coke fag, the stables in the afternoon, place in May.

Domestic planning and equip Well, that can happen, even if tou painted in 1769) was not only ovens could be condensed, led to and so on,

Times have altered; for daylightment, interior decoration, furn-often we are sorely disappointed Bishop of Llandaff but was also a the foundation of a great industry.

The portrait was one of Watson amusement the wise hostess makes ture, lighting and heating, pottery, to discover that the restless Irish Professor of Chemistry at. Cam-

alert chemist not as

glass, metal ware, furniture, and ploughman turns and, without won- bridge and a distinguished Fellow as an

a suggestions according of the Royal Society. Reynolds's thoughtful theologian. He is posed amenities which the place offers, dress fabrics, leather-work, luxury dering very much, finds himself a portrait of the bishop is appeared standing in his laboratory and lec-and leaves it to her guests to fall articles and economical goods, turing to students in his black gown in with her suggestions or not, as printing and the allied trades, will and long white powdered hair. The they feel inclined. At night there be represented, with a proportion one of the is always the Bridge table or back-of decorative sculpture and paint- portrait was sent by

ing. bishop's descendants, Capt. Godfrey gammon, and most people play both Charles Knight Watson, R.A. In nowadays. the same sale there was a lively panel picture of a morzy couple, by Frans Hals, the property of Lt. Comdr. Russell Tucker.

at Sotheby's recently.

Indeed, in 1787, when Dr. Wat- son had been a bishop for five years. the Government asked his advice on improvements in gun- powder, and the result was a sav ing of £100,000 a year in muni- tions. "

The year before he had announc-

NEW STOCK

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to the

If they do not, there is either The Exhibition is planned to fit the wireless or the gramophone; in with the recommendations of the Board of for, young or old, who does not the Report of the Art and Indus-

try Committee of dance nowadays?

Trade, and while it is privately organised and controlled, it will be watched sympathetically by the Government.

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