Gustav Holst's The Perfect Fool has been all but shelved since its premiere in 1923, save for the opening ballet music, which has been performed and recorded fairly often alongside other, more popular works in the composer's catalog. The Lyrita label, known for producing recordings of rare and obscure works, provides a recording of the complete opera from a BBC broadcast on May 7, 1967 with Charles Groves conducting the BBC Northern Symphony Orchestra. In a note to accompany this broadcast by the composer's daughter Imogen ...
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Gustav Holst's The Perfect Fool has been all but shelved since its premiere in 1923, save for the opening ballet music, which has been performed and recorded fairly often alongside other, more popular works in the composer's catalog. The Lyrita label, known for producing recordings of rare and obscure works, provides a recording of the complete opera from a BBC broadcast on May 7, 1967 with Charles Groves conducting the BBC Northern Symphony Orchestra. In a note to accompany this broadcast by the composer's daughter Imogen Holst, the premiere audience was not provided program notes and were perplexed as to "whether they ought to laugh, or whether they were supposed to recognize some deep, symbolic meaning in the story." Thankfully, Lyrita provides the listener with those notes; those with the physical version are also provided the libretto with staging directions, which will further help set the scene. The humor is clear, at least in the present day, as the listener hears the cartoonish yawning and...
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