The Magic Flute: Auden-Kallman v. Cross

Extract

”It is not easy,” writes Miss Joan Cross in her review* of our translation of The Magic Flute, ”to be scrupulously fair to a new translation.” For a singer who has studied and performed one version and neither studied nor heard the other, it may well be impossible. It is natural and proper that, out of personal affection for and loyalty to the Grand Old Man of Opera in English, Miss Cross should wish to defend the late Professor Dent against two American upstarts, but it might have occurred to her that, under the circumstances, a review were better left to a less partial judge.