If he and Gerry Magee Pelléas can locate the opera’s rarefied lyricism while still singing as clearly this will develop into an important production

If he and Gerry Magee (Pelléas) can locate the opera’s rarefied lyricism, while still singing as clearly, this will develop into an important production.In a world chock-full of exciting baritones, Christopher Maltman ranks as promising without yet having scaled the heights, although that may well come. His Wigmore Hall programme last Monday showed the promise quite clearly, while also suggesting there’s more to achieve. In the first of Fauré’s “Five ‘Venetian’ Melodies”, the phrase “nos sens extasies” suggested rapture just barely held in check, and when “To Clymene” ended with the words “Ainsi soit-il!” (So be it!), Maltman’s note of resigned acceptance was just right. By contrast, he, like the singers at the Coliseum, had problems with Debussy’s prosody. While the range of colours at Maltman’s disposal in “Four Baudelaire Poems” was impressive, it was as if individual shades had not yet blended to the desired effect.After the interval, we got a clearer sense of his undoubted talent. Eight composers and four languages in 40 minutes should be a hodge-podge, but Maltman plans his recitals with care, and what he’d assembled was no random anthology but an evolving portrait of a soldier’s life, from Mahler’s “Reveille” (Des knaben Wunderhorn) through the pained nostalgia of Ivor Gurney’s “In Flanders” to Poulenc’s hopeless optimism in “April Moon”, in which “all the guns have been destroyed”.The theme played to Maltman’s strength, which is narrative drama, and he sounded quite at home in each of the languages (English, French, German, Russian). Pianist Malcolm Martineau hammered out the militaristic rhythms with joyful gusto, but neither he nor Maltman is a mere barnstormer and without falling prey to exaggeration they communicated a real sense of emotional trajectory.

It’s one thing to assemble an imaginative programme, quite another to make it work, but in his moving soldier’s tale Maltman managed both.There was yet more Debussy last Sunday when two Nocturnes opened Riccardo Chailly’s concert with the London Symphony Orchestra. In Nuages (Clouds), the strings played with superfine delicacy, as if reluctant to let the sounds escape into the air; Fêtes was a small miracle of tension and exuberance held in balance. From there it was a surprisingly small step to Edgard Varÿse, represented not by the usual vast orchestral machine but by three songs with accompaniment for small orchestra. The voice was not really Varÿse’s instrument, and Mireille Delunsch sometimes struggled with the punishing sounds demanded, but the LSO was again superb, notably in the brass and percussion mutterings that opened the second of the two Offrandes (Offerings).The LSO would make a hair-raising job of Varÿse at his most monumental, but Chailly opted instead for safer box-office with Mahler’s First Symphony.

Not that Chailly played it safe: the massive tread of the third movement’s marche macabre can rarely have been more chilling, while the climatic rush for the precipice was both cathartic and numbing. There are Mahler performances in which the solo contributions seem disembodied, as if picked out in the glare of a spotlight Here, Chailly’s sound perspective seemed utterly natural. Yes, we heard David Pratt’s horn or Kurt-Hans Goedicke’s timpani as solo instruments, but they emerged organically from the rich orchestral textures. The whole thrilling performance was greeted with the kind of jubilant adoration usually reserved for pop stars.Pelléas and Mélisande: Coliseum, WC2 (020 7632 8300) to 8 April. Film Studies

Film Studies
On 1 January 1927, Louis B Mayer had dinner with three pals – the actor Conrad Nagel, the director Fred Niblo, who made Ben-Hur, and Fred Beetson of the Association of Motion Picture Producers No records survive of their talk that evening.

But Louis broached the idea of setting up an academy to guard motion pictures. Maybe Niblo asked, “What’san academy, Louis?” Mayer told him: it was all about public relations.The other thing about PR is that it’s a high polish to conceal other motives And Mayer always had other motives. Only a month earlier, the Hollywood studios had been compelled to sign the studio basic agreement with stagehands, carpenters, painters and electricians The unions had gained their first foothold in the business. Mayer was worried, because he foresaw the same curse overtaking more prized job functions – writing, directing and acting.

He wanted to ward that off.And so he imagined an academy, drawn from all levels of movie-making, set up to promote the business and settle disputes. Once you had an aca- demy, who needed a union?There were other motives The movies had their greatest age in the 1920s. Proportionally, more people went then than at any time since; and there was dismay at the effects this craze was having on education and moral standards. That opposition, voiced by academics, churches and politicians, was sharpened by a series of scandals that befell the business – the Fatty Arbuckle “rape” in 1921; the strange death of director William Desmond Hurst, in 1922; the narcotics demise of Barbara La Marr in 1926, and the greatest scandal of all in a God-fearing, hard-working country – the ease with which some beautiful idiots were making fortunes. There was already a feeling that the movies needed control: the Hays Code of 1933 was one example of that, but the high-flown word “academy” was another.There was something more fundamental still. Mayer’s father was a poor, uneducated Russian rag-and-bone man. With that uncouth figure still living in the house, he was close to being the highest-paid man in America.