Vaughan Williams: The Poisoned Kiss.(Sound Recording Review)

[] J. Watson, Stephen, Collins; Gilchrist, Williams, Davies; Adrian Partington Singers, BBC National Orch. of Wales, Hickox. English text. Chandos CHAN 10120 (2)

Many a fine composer has felt a hankering toward light comic opera and attempted to write an example, only to discover that it's one of the hardest genres to bring off convincingly. Richard Strauss's attempts at operetta lightness kept turning into massive-scaled operas; Britten's Paul Bunyan is a rarely performed curiosity; and The Poisoned Kiss remains the least-heard of the six operas by Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958). Its first recording has now appeared, preceded by multiple recordings of Vaughan Williams's other operas.

The Poisoned Kiss mined the vein of English operetta of its time. Vaughan Williams's "romantic extravanganza" was composed in 1927-29, revised repeatedly in the mid-1930s before its 1936 Cambridge premiere, and revised again after librettist Evelyn Sharp's death, in the 1950s. Much as one would like to find a neglected treasure in this Kiss, the present recording suggests that Vaughan Williams ranks among the many estimable composers who lacked the proper lightness of touch for this genre. Most commentators (including the writer of the notes and synopsis for this recording) seek to blame librettist Sharp for poisoning Kiss. There are, admittedly, plenty of awkward rhymes and ideas in Sharp's work, but the composer must bear responsibility for not securing stronger situations and surer dramatic structure.

There dues not seem anything inherently wrong with the basic plot, indebted to stories by Richard Garnett and Nathaniel Hawthorne, about a maiden, raised in seclusion on a diet of poison, who falls in love with a prince fortunately raised on antidotes. But the action is strung out with inconsequential byplay among their respective servants, a subplot involving their parents, and interludes for three galumphing (their word) ...