Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1910-09-18

Girl Of the Golden West
say 'incongruity," because, Of course.
the opera is going to be sung In the
Italian language, uncoiled with the bra
vura and coloratura emotionalism of
Italian singers.
You will search In vain for pat and
plausible answer to this problem, viz,
just why 1t is that a grand opera, with
Americans any Engiish-speaking peo-
pie as the characters therein, Is more or
less bound TO appear incongruous to Eng
disappearing people Such, however, is
the case. There are, for example, in
Lakme'-an opera rarely done in this
country nowadays-a lot of relocated
British officers of the Indian army who
tenoriZe and baritoniZe and roll their
cute eyeballs around as they sing roun-
delays and things to the rose-petaled
mouths of their various lady loves; and,
despite the haunting beauty of parts of
The Delibes score, the mere fact that the
singing persons doing these things are
Anglo-Saxon persons is bound to affect
i'll greater or less degree, the risibles
OF the Anglo-Saxon persons listening to
and watching the unspooling of that
opera.
The effect, of course, is not the same
upon foreign persons who watch that
opera or any other grand opera that has
English-speaking persons for leading
characters: they take it for granted. not
knowing us, that we're just as likely to
break into meloaous Hits upon the slight
est provocation as folks from any other
land: but we know different: we know
that, even under the storm and stress of
any old emotion were not sudden on
even deliberate filters: so that the thing
is bound 10 look odd TO US.
There's bit OF psychology beneath
this problem. of course. Now, we don't
lind any incongruity in Puccini's La
BoheIne, for example. That opera, as
everybody knows. is based upon Henri
Murger's comparatively modern book and
the characters in it dress in compare
lively modern clothes and dine in Paris
Sarrets and fit about on modern pave
ments. But il seems all right that French
persons in modern clothes should be
bursting into flower pots of lovely sound,
so TO speak, upon any OF no proyOcation
whatever: IL is, as we'd say in Pittsburg
their meter, part of their temperament;
and Mimi dies melodiously in her garnet,
and the three busted students sing en-
trancingly over the fact that they're
broke and starving in their attic. without
in the least causing us to feel that were
in the presence, as 1t were. of an unravel-
ed solecsm.
Madame BUTTERFLY the finest thing
Puccini has yet offered the world, is
modern opera, too. the time of ii being
more or less right up to the minute; and
yet we don't find it incongruous. even
though we know that the Japanese are
not only a reserved but even decidedly
suspicious people, and that they'd look
upon the person who broke into song in
the JOY of emotion fit or even a little
filter for the BOBBY hatch than for any
other place Yet. in way Of speaking.
the composer gets away with it,: his
opera of Japan (Which of truth is one of
the most sordidly commercial and unin-
spired countries YOU ever saw or heard of
is wonderfully subdued rhapsody of
sifting-drifting cherry blossoms or gar
dens haunted by the music of plashy
fountains, of the monotone OF a maZarine
sea Whereas the seas around Japan real
1y are somberly gray, or a sort of swirl
ing tropic light and life. And we don't
find anything homogeneous in 1t. except
perhaps the activities, songful and other,
of the caddish pup of a naval lieutenant
hero when he Tolls around drinking
whisky -and-sodas and tries to figure out
some plan TO sidetrack his sad little
japanese doll.
But 1.-The Girl of the Golden West is
going to be different, and one can't help
but wonder how on earth or the waters