“Australian” Soprano Was Born At Sumner

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30234, 12 September 1963, Page 2

“Australian” Soprano Was Born At Sumner

[From the London Correspondent of “The Press”! LONDON, August 28. A question asked on more than one musical quiz has been: name the famous Australian operatic soprano who is not an Australian? The answer is Joan Hammond, who was born in 1912 at Sumner.

Her mother and father and her two brothers were travelling to Sydney from England. “I was on the way,” she said today, “and my mother’s health on the voyage was such that it was decided she should leave the ship at Wellington instead of continuing to Sydney.

'“She took a little home at Sumner in Christchurch —I have since revisited it where, in due course, 1 was born. Two months later we continued our journey to Sydney.”

Had she been bom on board, Joan Hammond would have been English, since the ship sailed from an English port; a little later and she •would have been Australian; by a technicality she is a New Zealander. And it was of New Zealand that she talked a great deal this afternoon—of her first visit there 30 years ago es a member of an Italian opera company; of her second visit a couple of years later with the first Tasman Cup golf side; of her last visit (in 1947) when she made a concert tour. "New Zealand . . . yes. I would really like to sing there again before I retire,” she said.

Miss Hammond. whose favourite composers are Verdi and Puccini, but who admits to having no favourites in songs, in opera, or m roles—“l don’t sing anything I don’t care for . . . and I have to like the words”—is really only now shaking off the final effects of the very bad motor accident in which she was involved on the Oxford bypass more than two years ago. Her Rolls-Royce, in which she was travelling with her lifelong friend and companion, Lolita Marriott, was badly damaged, and Miss Hammond suffered severe damage to her right knee and a tremendous blow on the jaw. "I thought my teeth had been knocked out.” she said, "and that, of course, would have been frightful.” But what was agonising for her was the effect of the shock—a periodical and momentary inability to re-

member the words of songs. That,, however, is something over which she has at last triumphed, to her enormous relief. Less well known than her singing is her work for charity—much of it behind the scenes. It is something about which she would prefer not to talk. Ten years ago she was awarded the 0.8. E. and

Coronation Medal, and in the CJ3.E. she was awarded last June one can sense some recognition of her work for the less fortunate. Prison Recitals

Every Christmas Joan Hammond sings at prisons in and around London: at Wormwood Scrubs, Wandsworth and Pentonville. Last Christmas, for the first time, she sang for women prisoners, at Holloway. She really enjoys singing to prisoners. “I give a full recital—the prisoners are not allowed to request songs —in full evening regalia, with jewellery. It is as important as any other concert,” she said. Joan Hammond has been golfer (winner three times in four years of the New South Wales chamipionship), swimmer, squash, hockey, lawn tennis, basketball player, and now dedicated yachtswoman. Her love of yachting and the sea was stimulated by a holiday in the Bay of Islands on her finst visit to New Zealand.

Her pride and joy today is her 38ft 6in twin-screw motor-yacht, built at Poole, in Dorset, and launched this year. "I sail as much as I can, and with Lolita as my first mate, I can handle her,” she said.