I note that in his review of the Lyrita release of the 1967 Groves broadcast of The Perfect Fool, John Quinn made reference to the later Handley 1995 broadcast. I must admit to being surprised that the latter has not yet found its way onto CD, more particularly since it avoids some of the elements - cut dialogue, intrusive narration and yawning sound effects - which John found troublesome in the Groves performance. I would also say that the Handley broadcast, by virtue of giving us the score exactly as Holst wrote it, makes a better case for the music as well, including one or two short sections which Groves omitted. I knew and owned a cassette copy of the Groves broadcast for many years (and I am sure that the Itter transfer is far superior in quality), but even so I found the Handley superior in nearly every way - as I pointed out in two reviews of Davis/Chandos recordings of Holst scores for this site in 2013 and 2018. So perhaps we might hope that this might not be "the only chance you'll ever have to hear The Perfect Fool" on CD?
In the meantime let us nonetheless express our thanks to Lyrita for making the opera available on CD at all.
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