Customer Reviews

Happy Alchemy: On the Pleasures of Music and the Theatre

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This is a delightful collection of Davies's thoughts on the theater in all its myriad forms, including opera, melodrama, tragedy, and comedy. Davies has a perfect mix of wit, erudition, and curmudgeonly attitude, and in addition to being a terrific writer, he is an ardent devotee of the stage.

This comes forth in all the pieces, and is further emphasized by excerpts from his "Theater Diary," provided by the editors, his wife and daughter. While some of the pieces are there just for amusement (e.g., a libretto Davies wrote for a children's opera), others are very thought-provoking (such as his "Opera and Humour" talk), and still others are a melding of the two extremese (for instance, his talk on "Lewis Carroll and the Theater").

Some of the pieces repeat themselves, as they are based on talks he gave and pieces he wrote throughout his life, and obviously certain comments which are redundant to the reader would no doubt have been fresh to the audience.

All in all, I recommend this book very highly, for anyone with an interest in theater, or a love of Davies. I would have liked more of his thoughts about theater and less of things like his libretto (though I did find that amusing), as it felt more like that was included to meet some page count demanded by the publisher. However, this may not have been possible given the material at hand.

Although I'm not a big theatre fan, I do enjoy reading Robertson Davies. He is one of two writers whose work I will read even when the subject is not up my alley; so when C.S. Lewis writes about Medieval English Literature or Robertson Davies writes about the theatre, I still read them. It brings me great pleasure to experience their writers' craftsmanship and I know I will learn something. (I also know I'm going to enjoy their humor.) Happy Alchemy's subtitle reads, "On the Pleasures of Music and the Theatre", and this work present 33 Davies pieces, including "Lewis Carroll in the Theatre", "Opera for the Man Who Reads Hamlet", "Dickens and Music", "How I Write a Book", and the humorously self-depreciating "My Musical Career." Happy Alchemy shares many fine insights about humanity while also providing many historical and literary lessons for the reader. To read Davies (or Lewis) is to expand one's view of the world.