... but .R,with little indication of physical action. This is where Mr SOderstrttm has been clever for he allows the arias to speak for themselves and has filled in the linking instrumental passages and recitatives with relevant business and movements which ...

... 'The Commission' IN A WEEK dominated, operati- cally speaking, by Siegfried and Don Pasquale, it would have been easy to overlook the first staged performance of Robert Nelson's The Commission, at the Cockpit on February 8. but a visit to the.. ...

... Fried's brilliant translation, cutting and con densing scenes and characters for his purpose, but retaining the Narrator as a speaking part and letting a good deal of wit and bawdry reach the audience's ears unhampered by an overweighty score. In fact, the ...

... Cake, and this year the knife was wielded by David Blair between the perform ances at Covent Garden on Saturday August 4. Speaking of Tradition Opinion or be lief or custom handed down he remarked that the Tag lioni seed cake signified the seed of change ...

... herself doesn't get very rich central opportunities, but Sarah Walker gave the role some colour in the later scenes, though her speaking voice was not strong and mortality hung I heavily upon her. Anne Collins gave a solid, semi-satirical portrayal of the Queen ...

... both the piano and the aug mented percussion section carry the weight of the scoring. Against this, Mr Douglas tend ed to speak rather than to sing until the second act; the dryness of his voice was effec tive enough, but not of a strength to indicate ...

... boy. His breaking point, when his mother begs him to spare Rome, is conveyed in a long silence with every inch of his face speaking his part. Matching his gestures of scorn and braying laugh. Mar garet Tyzack makes Volumnia as nasty a she-wolf as you could ...

... Bettany. in the make-up and costume so familiar from prints, punches out lines and action with relish and conviction and finally speaks quite movingly the famous words of farewell. Harlequin, however, is the dancing part and Ashton's choreography for mm, tull ...

... seriously, thereby diminishing the work's stature. Why, for example, should all the women apart from the vir ginal Micafela, speak with phoney stage-Latin accents, while the men retain their own, pretty varied as they are? Even Carmen has this inflicted ...

... inordinate amount of time to shift its furniture; and James M. Mason's direction gives a proper place to the words. All his cast speak very well, and carry conviction for the persons they portray Robert Benton as Rickie, Will Tacey as Ansell and David Robertson ...

... little as though Shaw had set one of his own plays, and the burden falls on the heroic tenor who sings Aron and on the bass who speaks Moses. The large choral forces appear almost as part of the orchestration we heard the BBC Singers and the Orpheus Boys' Choir ...

... Galey wood. Mr Crosse uses an ancient carol as preface to the work, and it ends with a modern but little known one, which speaks of the Christ-child coming in cold-as-workhouse weather, poor as a Salford child. Although the Cathedral setting was an ...