Song Quest

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31235, 6 December 1966, Page 12

Song Quest

Entries open this month for the seventh annual Mobil Song Quest, which offers more than £BOO in prizes, including top prizes of £3OO (soloist) and £l5O (vocal group). After entries close on February 18 entrants will be recorded in two songs by their local radio station. Two judging panels will select recordings of 60 solo voices and 24 vocal groups for 18 weekly commercial radio broadcasts, starting on March 27. At a concert in Hastings on July 29 all finalists will sing in public the two songs they recorded originally for final broadcast on July 31. Finalists in previous Mobil Song Quests have since been most successful. Kiri Te Kanawa, winner of the 1965 quest, has won two “Sun” aria competitions and is now studying in London. Patricia Payne, runner-up in the 1965 quest, won this year’s Sydney “Sun” aria contest, while Malvina Major and Lynne Cantion have both won overseas competitions. Malvina Major is now studying in London. ABOUT EINSTEIN Paul Dessau, composer of the opera “The Condemning of Lucullus,” is at work on an opera about Albert Einstein. BIG SEASON Next year the Royal Shakespeare Company will undertake its largest programme yet with six new Shakespearean productions at Strat-ford-on-Avon. In addition, the company will return Cyril Tourneur’s “The Revenger’s Tragedy” to both Stratford and to London, undertake a large-scale provincial tour and visit Russia, and start on 'its projected series of films.