A SINGER'S CHOICE

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 243, 13 October 1936, Page 3

A SINGER'S CHOICE

RICHARD CROOKS CONCERT. So many eulogistic criticisms have been published about Richard Crooks —to appear in his second of three concerts in tne Auckland Town Hall to-night—that his advance publicity staff are hard put to it to select superlatives. A simpie remark by the famous critic of the "New York Times" o!in Downes suffices to describe the singer: "No other tenor in the concert field lias a voice of equal texture, beauty and capacity for emotional expression." Richard Crooks is famous not only for his operatic and serious singing, but for his popular numbers. Known as "everybody's tenor;" he sings such contrasting songs as Ben Jonson's "Have You Seen But a Whyte Lillie Grow," an exquisite word-picture set to entrancing music, and the masses' own "Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life." Even the drawing room perennials, "Until" and "Mother o' Mine," are 0:1 his extensive repertoire, preceded or followed probably by excerpts from "La Tosca," "Fedora" or his own favourite opera, the French "Manon." It was in this opera that Crooks made' his debut with the Metropolitan Opera Company in New York on February 2a, 1933, receiving the record number of 37 curtain calls. He sang subsequently at the Metropolitan in "Faust," " "La Traviata," "Linda di Chamounix." "Lohengrin," "Mignon" and "La Tosca."