This CD, part of Naxos Records' nostalgia line and more easily available in England than in the United States, showcases two late-era Ivor Novello stage successes, The Dancing Years from 1939 and King's Rhapsody from 1950. Neither one could have found a more appropriate label for their re-release, as both evoke -- albeit with great beauty -- a brand of theatrical entertainment that was already decades out-of-date at the time of their original productions. Mary Ellis, Dunstan Hart, Roma Beaumont, and Olive Gilbert are the singers in The Dancing Years, which was originally released as a 78 rpm album on the HMV label in 1939. The songs are pleasant and even memorable, as are the waltzes that open and close the piece, but basically this is the sort of entertainment that Jerome Kern's Showboat helped to eclipse and bury, operetta-style theater in the Viennese manner with soaring ballads and disposable romantic plots -- Ellis is appealing enough on the ballads and Beaumont does well with one light-textured novelty tune, both (as with almost every other number here) accompanied by Novello's piano as well as the Drury Lane Orchestra. The bulk of the CD, however, is devoted to King's Rhapsody, Novello's last success before his death in 1951 -- recorded on tape rather than on wax lacquers, its songs and set-pieces run longer and more fully represent the content of the actual show. The featured players are Vanessa Lee, Olive Gilbert, Dennis Martin, Phyllis Dare, and Larry Mandon, with Novello present here vocally, as in the earlier show, as narrator on one track. As this show ran nearly 900 performances, it was still on the boards when Novello passed away in 1951, and his role was taken over by no less a figure than Jack Buchanan, who was soon to emerge belatedly to enduring international screen stardom in The Band Wagon. King's Rhapsody is a little less dated than The Dancing Years, though not by much; the ballads are still in an old operetta form, though there are some ambitious extended pieces for orchestra and narrator that indicate that Novello was aware of the changes that had been wrought in theatrical entertaining in the preceding decade. By this time, the London stage, like its Broadway counterpart, had been swept by the successes of Oklahoma! and Carousel -- but Novello's gift for melody and way with the kind of Ruritanian romance embodied in the plot gave him enough of an audience to keep this show running for 899 performances. The digital restoration here is impressive, particularly on the material from The Dancing Years, derived as it is from 78 rpm sources, though you'd hardly know it from this CD -- indeed, the producers have gotten the two shows' material, recorded a decade and a generation of technology apart, to sound astonishingly similar. Coupled with the thorough annotation provided, this CD is a bargain and is certain to be appreciated by those of a nostalgic or scholarly musical bent.
© Bruce Eder /TiVo