No 2 -- April 1975 Edited by Michael Walters
Joel Kasow, in the May edition of OPERA comments on the production of Donizetti's opera ""Torquato Tasso"" by Opera Rara at the Collegiate Theatre as follows: "An even greater obstacle was the production of William Chappell who refused to take the work seriously often giving the impression that he was staging amateur Gilbert & Sullivan."
For those who castigated Derek HammondStroud's performance as Jack Point (I did not see it so I cannot comment) Harold Rosenthal's comments on the production of RHINEGOLD may be of interest:
"Derek Hammond Stroud's Alberich is now world class. He may have stolen the gold, but when Wotan and Loge tricked him, one's sympathies were entirely with him; the curse was frightening in its intensity."
Rodney Milnes on the E.N.O's "Patience" said: "The ENO has certainly ended its not uneventful season with a bang, what with the superlative operetta revival and the remarkable RHINEGOLD. Common to both was Derek Hammond Stroud. It was hard to credit that his mincing poseur of a Bunthorne and the cringing, hectoring, malevolent, ultimately sympathetic Alberich were the work of the same artist."
All these comments seem to bear out (among other things) the pertinent point made by Sarah Lenton that outside D'Oyly Carte no producer of professional G & S seems prepared to take Gilbert seriously.
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