WELSH GIRLS ON TOUR.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 302, 21 December 1935, Page 9

WELSH GIRLS ON TOUR.

CHORAL PEACE MISSION.

LEADER AGED 74.

(Special.—By Air Mail.)

LONDON, November 30. Thirty-three pretty Welsh girls sit sinsins in a London music room. As they ting they knit, and many weep, moved by the beauty of their own song._ The Royal Welsh Ladies' Choir starts on a singing tour of the world next week The most brilliant singers that Wale's can produce, they are all inspired by one idea—to bring the hymn of peace to every country. For hours every day, they are rehearsing at 10, Stanhope Street, Park Lane, the home of Mme. Clare Noveilo Davies. Mme. Davies will take the choir on their tour. She is 74, but in this mission of peace she feels that she has realised her life's work.

When her original Royal Welsh Choir san<r the first words of "The Lord Jβ My Shepherd" to Schubert's music in Chicago in 1803, 25,000 people heard and fell silent. Many of these singers are daughters of the original Welsh choir. Several are conductors of choirs themselves, who have appeared before Royalty; others are winners at the National Eisteddfod; and one has 280

prizes. "It is wonderful how they are sail willing to sink their identity and come and sing with me for peace," Msae, Davies said. "Many have sacrificed engagements to come, and rehearse. If we could sing before Mussolini, I am sure that we could not fail to move his heart."

The girls will wear Welsh, costume, tall hats and buckled shoes. Madame Elso Tostia, the Welsh pianist, _-will accompany the choir, and Mrs. Reginald Clarry, wife of the M.P. for Newport, has written a peace song for them, dedicated to Mrs. Stanley Baldwin. "I appeal to composers who have ■written or can write peace songs to send them in to us," says Mme. Davies.