“How will the public react to it?” is a question that arises when an opera is about to have its first performance in a foreign country

Arthur Benjamin's opera Primadonna does not seem a difficult one to “export,” mainly because of its subject-matter. One might expect the action of a British opera to take place in some remote part of Old England (as in Peter Grimes, the most famous of English operas with us French) whose ways are so unfamiliar as to risk leaving the general public quite untouched. Here, however, there is no such risk: we are in Venice, the courtly Venice of the 18th century, and the characters, the déecor, the whole atmosphere belong to the cultural heritage of all Europe.