Entering The Mainstream
In the years after the First World War the work lost popularity with opera-house directors, and it was seen less frequently. The Met did not repeat its 1916 production, though individual numbers from the work—most frequently the famous duet and Leila's "Comme autrefois"—were regularly sung at the Met's concert evenings. The 1930s saw a return of interest in the opera, with productions in new venues including Nuremberg and the Berlin State Opera. Some revivals were unconventional: one German production used a rewritten libretto based on a revised storyline in which Leila, transformed into a defiant Carmen-like heroine, commits suicide at the end of the final scene. Paris's Opéra-Comique staged a more traditional production in 1932, and again in 1938, Bizet's centenary year. From that time onward it has remained in the Opéra-Comique repertory.
After the Second World War, although the opera was shunned by Covent Garden, the Sadler's Wells company presented it in March 1954. The Times announced this production as the first known use in Britain of the opera's English libretto. The stage designs for this production, which was directed by Basil Coleman, were by John Piper.
In the early 1970s, Arthur Hammond orchestrated the sections of the neglected 1863 vocal score that had been cut out from the post-1886 scores. This led to a production in 1973, by Welsh National Opera, of a version close to Bizet's original, without Godard's trio and Zurga's violent death—the first modern performance to incorporate the original ending.
The Sadler's Wells production was revived several times, but it was not until September 1987 that the company, by then transformed into English National Opera, replaced it with a new staging directed by Philip Prowse. The Guardian's report on this production mentioned that the "Pearl Fishers Duet" had recently topped the list in a poll of the public's "best tunes", and described the opera as "one of the most sweetly tuneful in the French repertory". This production "... out its freshness, never letting it become sugary". Although the run was a sell-out, ENO's managing director Peter Jonas disliked the production, and refused to revive it. It did not reappear in ENO's repertory until 1994, after Jonas's departure.
Read more about this topic: Les Pêcheurs De Perles, Performance History and Reception
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