MELBA OF TO-DAY

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 55, Issue 242, 26 July 1935, Page 8

MELBA OF TO-DAY

AN INTERNATIONAL SEARCH.

Alelha and Patti are dead, and today it is the Garbos, the Hepburns, and the Gracie Fieldses who occupy the limelight which once was the unquestioned! property of the spectacular and brilliant opera stars, writes Glyn Roberts in the “Daily Mail.” Yet very cosmopolitan and very varied in temperament, in appearance, and in gifts are the great prime donne of to-day.

Poland supplies the regal and beautifuili Alaria, .Olsczewska, a consumate Wagnerian singer; Hungary the dazzling beauty, Maria Jeritza, whose excellent yoice and overwhelming personality are backed! up by a first-rate acting ability.

The Scandinavian countries not content with Jenny Lind, and the gift to the talkies of the incomparable Garbo, are well to the fore with Gota Jjungberg, who has to her name a list of sensational first appearances—she is a woman of exceptional beauty—in different opera houses which none of her contemporaries can surpass; Eide Norena, whose pure soprano voice has made her the idol of Paris; and: Kirsten Flagstag, whoso recent work in New York has excited critics enormously. B'eth the two last-named are Norwegians.

Two Spanish singers stand glaringly to the fore, on on each side of the Atlantic. In America there is the beautiful and popular Lucrezia Bori, who lately surprised New York, which knew her only as a delightful delineator of light florid roles, by taking a leading part in saving the Metropolitan Opera House of New York flrom financial collapse.

In Europe there is the ebullient Conchita Supervia, a beautiful woman, fin excellent actress and a singer , without an equal in her own particular province. She has made London her home.

Great German singers are Frida Leidcr, Gertrudfe Kappel, Erna Berger —a brilliant newcomer, this—Emily eßttehdorf, Elena Gerhardt, Frieda Hempel. Grace Moore is America’s newest and best.

The most famous Italian prima donna of the day is Rosa Ponselle, who was horn of Italian parents in America. To France goes the distinction of providing the newest sensation —Lily Pons, frail and diminutive, still only in her twenties, yet the possessor, says the doctors, of the most powerful throat since Caruso. Where stands England ? Not badly. Eva Turner is a star of European reputation, and there are some young performers at the Old Vic and. elsewhere, who may shortly attain international celebrity—Ruth Naylor, Thea Phillips, Joan Cross, Elena Danieli, for example. One great singer remains unmentioned. I have left her to the last because it seems fair to name her as all in all, the finest musical artist, the greatest woman singer of the day. I mean Lotte Lehmann, for many years now an idol on the Continent, in Chicago, and New York, and at Covent Garden, where sh is singing now.