No 41 -- Spring 1994 Edited by Michael Walters
Dear Michael, Most readers of GG will have, at some point in the year 1993, taken the trouble to catch the current tour of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, Birmingham. This fact, together with my views that GG should not be primarily a vehicle for reviews of productions, go to prevent me from committing myself to telling your readers what they mostly already know at first hand. However, I am moved to write more by the programme notes than by what happened on stage.
What is interesting and exciting about the programme notes is the prospect held out of an exploration of the links between Offenbach and the Savoy tradition. Much is told of Richard D'Oyly Carte's promotion of oper bouff in London, together with Gilbert's translations and adaptations of French originals and adaptations of French originals and his plundering for inspiration. One is moved to contemplate the prospect of a D'Oyly Carte Birmingham team soaking up the Offenbach experience and using it to inform their presentation of early G&S. One is reminded of the clich that Francophone and Anglophone art cannot travel across the Channel is simply not true. Feydeau farces adapted by Patrick Cargill for BBC TV in the late 1960s are brought to mind, with their recreation of fin de sicle style and comedy from Paris.
Some G&S traditionalists may abhor or adore this Anglo-French cross fertilisation concept as propounded in the programme notes. But there's absolutely no point in debating it, since it bore no realisation on stage! Perhaps I bought the wrong programme.
Best wishes, Colin ENGEL
[I received only one review of these productions, and am therefore sorry that Colin did not put his impressions of the productions on paper, particularly as many GG readers live abroad, and could not possibly have seen them. It is a range of other people's opinions that is interesting. There was, however, a series of correspondence in the STAGE and the GRAMOPHONE just prior to this tour. I intend to reproduce this in GG, but at present I am unable to locate the papers. They will appear in due course, when I find them. Ed.]
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