Harold FRASER SIMSON
The Maid of the Mountains
Janis Kelly, Christopher Maltman,
Michael George, Richard Suart, The New London Light Opera Chorus and Orchestra
Ronald Corp.
Hyperion CDA67190 80m
DDD.
AmazonUK
Crotchet
The cause of light music, especially British light music, is indebted to
Hyperion and Ronald Corp for their superb recent discs of British Light Music
Classics (3), American ditto, European ditto and Sidney Jones' operetta The
Geisha. Now they follow The Geisha with The Maid of the Mountains
which in the Great War established a record London run (1352 performances),
one admittedly soon eclipsed by Chu Chin Chow (music by Frederic Norton,
mostly orchestrated by Arthur Wood: is this next for the Hyperion-Corp
treatment?). The Maid has been forgotten for too long; Fraser-Simson's music
is attractively tuneful, if not often outstandingly memorable - two of the
show's three "hits", "A Paradise For Two" and "A Bachelor Gay" were
interpolations for the London run by James W. Tate. Fraser-Simson's one hit,
"Love Will Find a Way", is strongly redolent of Lehar's The Merry Widow,
which had taken the London stage a decade before The Maid; other numbers,
notably the Tonio/Governor Act II duet, look further back, to G&S. This
CD is splendid: excellent orchestral and choral work, very good recording
and presentation (the booklet contains a perceptive note by Andrew Lamb and
all the sung words) and fine soloists. Janis Kelly is charming in the title
role, as is Sally Burgess as Vittoria. Of the men, Baldassare (Michael George),
perhaps the hero, is virtually a non-singing role, brilliant characterisations
come from that Savoy stalwart Richard Suart, a subtly understated Tonio,
Donald Maxwell, gorgeously bombastic as the Governor and the admirable
Christopher Maltman, richly lyrical as Beppo, the "bachelor gay" (the nearest
thing to a tenor in the show, he does not, unusually, "get the girl"). I
have had a lot of pleasure listening to this generously filled CD and strongly
urge you to follow my example.
Philip Scowcroft
See also review by Gerald
Fenech
