'
The recent performances of English composers in the field of grand opera
have not been very encouraging. Few indeed are the opportunities offered
to our native musicians of winning distinction on the lyric stage, and
of late we have been regaled with the curious spectacle of English
composers setting French or German libretti in the hope of finding in
foreign theatres the hearing that is denied them in their own. Miss
Ethel Smyth is the most prominent and successful of the composers whose
reputation has been made abroad. Her 'Fantasio' has not been given in
England, but 'Der Wald,' an opera in one act, after having been produced
in Germany was given at Covent Garden in 1902 with conspicuous success.
The libretto, which is the work of the composer herself, is concise and
dramatic. Heinrich the forester loves Roeschen, the woodman's daughter,
but on the eve of their marriage he has the misfortune to attract the
notice of Iolanthe, the mistress of his liege lord the Landgrave Rudolf.
He rejects her advances, and in revenge she has him stabbed by her
followers. This is the bare outline of the story, but the value of the
work lies in the highly poetical and imaginative framework in which it
is set. Behind the puny passions of man looms the vast presence of the
eternal forest, the mighty background against which the children of
earth fret their brief hour and pass into oblivion.
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