The Bear (1993)

"When Walton's one-act farce The Bear premiered in 1967, many saw it as a return to the parodistically referential style that the composer had formed years earlier in Façade. Walton protested, because in this highly stylized comedy, evocations of compositional styles -- observers hear moments of Rossini, Debussy, Fauré and Strauss -- stand not as merely musical in-jokes but as calculated and exaggerated dramatic gestures. The love story taking place on stage between a mourning widow and her husband's creditor develops at an improbably breakneck speed, and their intermittent juxtapositions of mutual scorn and rapture might be highlighted by a burst of chromatic ardor á la Pelléas et Mélisande or Tristan dovetailing with a boisterous Rossinian ostinato. Being a Chekhov adaptation, it draws upon a stage tradition that utilized stock characters and boilerplated situational humor similar to those of the Italian commedia dell'arte. Walton's sense of humor plays perfectly into this style." (J. Grimshaw, Allmusic)

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