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Salient. Victoria University Students' Paper. Vol. 26, No. 5. Monday, April 29, 1963

Welcome Recording of "The Pearl Fishers"

Welcome Recording of "The Pearl Fishers"

The Pearl Fishers: An Opera by Georges Bizet. Columbia SAXM 2442-3. Zurga, Ernest Blanc (b); Nadir, Niccolai Gedda (t); Leila, Janine Micheau (s); Nourabad, Jaques Mars (bass). Chorus and Orchestra of the Theatre National de L'Opera-Comique, Paris. Pierre Dervaux conducting.

The record buying public have been blessed with many recordings of Carmen, either as the complete opera, excerpts or as a suite. Of Bizet's other operatic works there is very little available, so this new recording of the Les Pechers De Perles is a very welcome addition to the catalogues. Previously, Les Pechers was only available as a series of full extracts on a Philips label with Simoneau and the Lamoureux Orchestra under Fournet. Unfortunately, this is now deleted.

Les Pechers was an early work of Bizet's. Performed at the Theatre Lyric in Paris in 1863. it was a great success. And one can understand why. Rich orchestration and many fine lyrical passages with an innate sense of drama in the music.

Bizet has a wonderful sense of orchestral colour and rhythm. Compare Les Pechers with Carmen. You will find similar approaches and techniques to the writing of dramatic music that was later to find its full fruition in Carmen.

Indeed, in Les Pechers the purely dramatic use of the orchestra is very important. Until recent productions of this opera a great amount of emphasis was put on the exotic Celonese mise-en-scene. Producers in more recent productions, especially the revival at the Metropolitan Opera in New York a few years ago, a more simple and direct approach has been adopted, allowing, as one critic put it, "the real hero of the opera to shine through the orchestra."

The performance on the whole is authoritative and competent. Dervaux keeps his orchestral forces well in hand, observing all the correct pp and ff and a fairly constant tempo, but it lacks any vigour and excitement.

His approach is rather staid. It seems he is giving just another performance of an operatic "war-horse."

Such a shame, too. The chorus and cast had obviously lavished a great deal of care on the production, vet somehow the opera remains inert, it never seems to come fully alive.

Janine Micheau gives a controlled and delicate performance as Leila. But it lacks any character. Leila comes across as a Victorian heroine in a melodrama.

Leila is certainly pure, she is a virgin-priestess of the temple, but when she recognises Nadir as her long lost love, there is no emotional change.

Hence, the passionate duet, "Leila Dieu puissant" is a very plain affair, almost like the wife welcoming hubby home from the office. This is unfortunate, for Niccolai Gedda (Nadirs succeeds to give a well-rounded performance.

Nadir is the most "alive" of the characters. But besides being a good dramatic performance, it is also musically satisfying.

The chorus is under-rehearsed.

Cues are often muffed and entrances are badly picked up. A shame, for they perform with a gusto and full-bloodedness and give the music some aliveness.

The disc is on the whole well recorded and reasonably vivid in stereo (I have not heard the mono yet), though I find the string tone dullish and an unnecessary highlighting of instruments in solo passages.—W.B.