No 5 -- June 1976 Edited by Michael Walters
"OPERA " MAGAZINE ON G & S.
The Feb. 1976 edition of Opera carried a caustic review by Harold Rosenthal on the opening night of the D'Oyly Carte's winter season, December 15, 1975. I reproduce the relevant paragraph of Mr. Rosenthal's report:
"I never cease to be amazed at the G & S mystique, and wondered, as I looked round at the audience who were on hand to greet their favourite numbers, mouth the words, and demand those inevitable encores, just how many of them had seen the English National Opera's "Iolanthe" or "Patience" the Kent Opera's "Pinafore" or "Ruddigore", or those wonderful Tyrone Guthrie productions of some few years ago. If they had, I am sure they would not tolerate the unchanged bad traditions (it was Mahler after all who said that "tradition is slovenliness"), and stage business that seem to me exactly what I remember from my schoolday visits to see the Company at the old Streatham Hill Theatre in the early 1930s. More important, they would certainly not accept the often poor musical standards." Irritated by the destructive cattiness of this criticism (criticism should be constructive) I wrote to Harold Rosenthal as follows:
Dear Mr. Rosenthal, I was interested to see your review of the opening night of the D'Oyly Carte's winter season. I did not attend the performance in question but nevertheless I feel that there are one or two things which require to be said about the more general points you make in your notice. It appears to be fashionable these days for music critics to throw mud at the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company; it is unfortunately true that most of the criticism is, at least at face value, justifiable, but there are other things which ought to be taken into consideration to put the picture into perspective. I will not dwell on the fact that the D'Oyly Carte is, of course, without grants of any kind, and therefore, presumably, cannot afford to engage the same standard of musician that the E.N.O. is in a position to do; nor on the question as to whether, in this day and age, the D'Oyly Carte should be expected to carry on without funds. These points have already been made by others. The most important point, as I see it, is that (although it appears to have escaped the notice of erudite music critics) the vast majority of those who attend Gilbert & Sullivan, performances by the D'Oyly Carte are neither musically critical, nor even, in a good many cases, musically aware. [NOTE. I am not of course referring to readers of this Journal in that statement MPW] I have spoken with D'Oyly Carte fans who have been blissfully unaware that a singer was singing out of time and/or out of tune. It may also surprise you to know that there are people who have attended the E.N.O. productions and who do not like them, considering them to be vile travesties of Gilbert & Sullivan's original intentions. I do not agree with this view, I consider them to be very fine productions indeed, though the Iolanthe production is now becoming very frayed and tired and is surely shewing its age. As it is still younger (after 15 years) than the majority of D'Oyly Carte productions, this begs the question as to whether it is financially practical for a Company on a shoestring to attempt to put on an adventurous production which runs the risk of dating very quickly, and when it can see no likelihood of dropping or replacing this production for a very long time to come, should it prove to be unsuccessful. The E.N.O. after all, can afford to experiment, and some of its productions are dropped after a very short space of time. I regret very much that I have been unable to see the Kent Opera productions, nor did I see Tyrone Guthrie's productions on stage but I saw a television transmission of H.M.S. Pinafore and regarded it as the epitome of bad taste, Sullivan may have had justice done him, but the same could not be said for Gilbert.
I will not attempt to deny that the musical standards of the D'Oyly Carte frequently leave a great deal to be desired, but the question is whether one is justified in demanding this. During the Centenary Celebrations last year I spoke to a gentleman from Canada [Charles Hayter] who is studying Gilbert as an English Literary figure, and who expressed amazement and horror that in London Gilbert & Sullivan productions were reviewed by music critics when they should so obviously be reviewed by drama critics. (The fact that drama critics would probably find as much fault with them as music critics currently do is beside the point). In the early 1930s Lady Gilbert remarked to the press that the musical standards then were infinitely superior to what they were in Gilbert' s day. May it not be that Gilbert & Sullivan regarded their operas as sophisticated plays with music and would be appalled to know the way in which their plays are being criticised today. After all, you do not feel obliged to comment on the musical standards of (say) Showboat. May it not be that the musical standards which you demand are a luxury not required, or even expected, by the majority of those who habitually attend D'Oyly Carte performances. What they ask is tradition, which, incidentally, is not entirely unchanged, and is not necessarily bad, as the traditional performances of the Japanese Noh Theatre would demonstrate. As the Fairy Queen in Iolanthe might have said " I see no objection to tradition, in moderation."
Mr. Rosenthal replied briefly, thanking me for my letter, and adding "I am not so sure that drama critics, nearly all of whom are now regular attenders of opera performances, would be any less critical of G & S's present musical standards." As I had already made this point, Mr. Rosenthal obviously cannot have read my letter very carefully, at any rate he did not print it, and evidently replied in haste, as he even managed to mis-type the spelling of his own name!
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