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Enough has been heard to demonstrate that Michael York has the range and flexibility to deliver the poem with conviction and no sentimentality or histrionics. It is a fine performance from an actor of wide experience, who has also written an introduction to the work and its recording, supplementing admirable liner notes by John Bell Young. Tennyson's last two lines have been much mocked [listen -- track 8, 4:24-5:05]. Presumably the funeral was financed by Philip, and Strauss would have been the last person to complain. Any scruples he may have had about Enoch Arden were soon overcome. He allowed its publication for 1000 Marks, graced it as Op 38, toured it far and wide with Possart, and went on to produce another melodrama to a poem by Uhland, translated in Longfellow's Hyperion as 'The Castle by the Sea'. Indeed an omniumgatherum of melodramas provided Possart and Strauss with apparently congenial and certainly lucrative engagements.

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