A PALTRY £200.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 88, 15 April 1939, Page 11

A PALTRY £200.

SIGHS FROM GIGLL

FAMOUS TENOR TALKS ABOUT

• FEES.

DATS OF MELBA.

(Special.—By Air Mail.)

LONDON. March 11.

"In the days of Melba it needed something more than a fine voice to enable one to reach the footligh**.""

declared a famous tenor this week. Beniamine Gigii, who has j« st mrrired iin I»ndon from tlic United St*t*&- *"* 'comparing conditions when he * e f** • career with conditions U,*T jJ^J get an «• t of Jd-T P pened in the MetroLLn Opera House. Xew Wk. the iplaee which for 30 years has patd /higher fees than any other opera holies world, where Caruso's figure was normally £1000. i "What on earth i= the good of £200 to me?" he asked. "I accepted it because jit was. obviously, all that the management could afford. But when I deplored | the conditions which made me accept 'this little fee and said something sad j a bout the city in which singers had once i flourished, my remarks were resented. I "It is not so in England. lam certaia jthat if there were no great singers to be had. Covent Garden would turn to i something else. They would not iust put on any fresh young voice that came along and expect people to sit where tbey had sat to bear the great one* iand imagine that they were hearing fin» J opera."