revision. The alterations concern solely the manner of interpretation.
Rimsky-Korsakoff completed The Golden Cockerel (given in New York in its French form as Le Coq d'Or) in 1907. The censor, justifiably regarding the book as a satire directed at royalty, at first refused to sanction its Russian production, and it did not reach the stage before the composer's death in 1908. Later, however, it was performed with success in Russia. Some time before the summer of 1914, Serge de Diaghileff, the director of the Russian Ballet, searching for novelties suitable for production by that organization in London and Paris, hit upon this quaintest and most beautiful of Rimsky-Korsakoff's many operas and, with the assistance of Fokine, invented a novel presentation of it. This was a performance involving two casts, one to sing and the other to act.[1] The singing cast,
- ↑ If this idea had occurred to Planché all the original difficulties in regard to Oberon might have been brushed aside. It was not a new idea even in Planché's day. In Lumley's Reminiscences of the Opera, I find the following: "On the English stage, where the double qualities of acting and singing were in those days not to be found combined in one person, a tenor-lover was introduced to sing the music of Gustavus (in Auber's Gustave III), whilst the part itself was acted by Mr. Warde, a tragedian of considerable merit. A similar arrangement of an operatic work had long before distinguished
ten as a ballet and the composer's program for this symphony differs in every respect from that of Fokine.
