‘DON PASQUALE” BY N.Z. OPERA. COMPANY

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29330, 8 October 1960, Page 4

‘DON PASQUALE” BY N.Z. OPERA. COMPANY

Donizetti's classic - operttic comedy, "Don Pasquale." will be presented by the New Zealand Opera Company in the first week of November as the principal theatrical event of Christchurch's Carnival Week. Sung entirely in English in a new translation by Brian Salkeld. the opera will open at the Theatre Royal on November 8 for a one week season. “Don' Pasquale” will be produced by the man who was responsible for the company's highly successful “Madame. Butterfly,” last year, Mr Stefan Haag. The conductor and musical director will be Mr Walter Stiansy, who is well knBwn throughout Australia for his conducting and his enthusiasm for opera. Noel Mangin, who arrived in the Dominion from Sydney last week-end, will sing the main part. Mr Mangin has spent a very successful year with the Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust with which he sang the bass leads in

•■Rigolotto” and “The Magic Flute," A few weeks ago he won an operatic aria contest held tn Adelaide. This contest open to gingers under 35, won for him a prize of £650. , With the exception of the soprano the cast is the same as the one which recorded the opera for the New Zealand Broadcasting Service in Wellington two years ago. * For the Christchurch season an

orchestra of picked players from throughout New Zealand will perform. Many of them are former National Orchestra members and some will be members of the National Youth Orchestra. They will be led by Ruth Pearl. Mrs Donald Munro will lead the viola section and Marie Vanderwart the cellos. Included in the cast are Bryl Dailey, perhaps New Zealand’s finest lyric soprano. A member of the company for some time. Miss Dailey played Susanna in "The Marriage of Figaro.” Betty Prentice, an Australian, toured New Zealand with the Australian Opera Company in 1952. Noel Signal and Peter Baillie, two Wellington tenors, have been with the company for the last two years. Both are well known for their broadcasts. The artistic director of the company (Mr Donald Munro), who was in Christchurch last evening, said the opera ranked with “The Barber of Seville" and “Cosj Fan Tutti,” in the realms of great comic opera. Mr Munro is on his way to Dunedin and Invercargill to arrange for operatic presentation by the company in those cities next year.