The Dancing Master, Op. 34 (1952)

...Arnold’s music — delightful on record — really does work on stage.... More than that: it lights up and pings into focus. 

The word rollicking was invented for operas such as Malcolm Arnold’s The Dancing Master, turning Wycherley’s Restoration comedy into 75 minutes of exuberant, extrovert music-making.

...a work of depth, comedy, warmth, and pure mastery.

...an absolute zinger of a score. …Arnold hits his stride from the first raucous orchestral guffaw. His pacing is very near flawless, and in fact he wrote the score – in barely two weeks – in the same headlong rush of creativity that produced his English Dances, the Second Symphony and no fewer than 11 film scores, including The Sound Barrier. The result is a delight: exuberant but never breathless, passionate but unsentimental, orchestrated on a needlepoint and effortlessly melodic.