Choir In Festival

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31762, 20 August 1968, Page 9

Choir In Festival

The Orpheus Choir of Wellington will be a principal attraction at the Auckland Festival next March. It will join the N.Z.B.C. Symphony Orchestra in one programme and will give a full choral programme, conducted by Malcolm Rickard, on the final Sunday afternoon.

With the N.Z.B.C. orchestra, conducted by Juan Matteucci, the choir will sing the Te Deums of both Berlioz and Verdi.

The orchestra will, as usual, be one of the mainstays of the festival, presenting full programmes by itself as well as in conjunction with the choir.

One of the items will be new to Auckland—a Hoff-nung-type concert in which the musicians will satirise their profession, the conductor. and the audience. Tours will be a major sideline in next year’s festival, with thousands of visitors and even Aucklanders travelling

by bus and car to historic buildings, factories, art galleries and the Auckland Museum. One tour will involve the seeking and polishing of semiprecious stones by “rockhounds.” Those who want to know more about wine and food will be able to do so, and others will be able to learn what can be done with computers. The new gas turbinepowered generating plant and the neighbouring substation at Otara will also be on the tours programme. European ceramics, Maori art and Oriental applied arts will be some of the subjects covered in tours of the Auckland Institute and Museum, each accompanied by a lec-ture-commentary. Arrangements are being made for visits to private collections of painting, sculpture, and other objects of aesthetic appeal and value. Opera will return to the festival on a full scale in March, when the first full productions in Auckland of Mozart’s “Il Seraglio” and Beethoven’s “Fidelio” are planned with overseas principals. The performance of “Fidelio” in a concert version with the New Zealand bass, Donald Mclntyre, under the direction of Ray Wilson and with the Auckland Choral Society, was one of the high points of this year’s festival.

No decision has been announced on conductors or casts for this year's operas, except that Inia Te Wiata will return for the initial performances of “Il Seraglio” in Wellington from mid-September.

Whether Donald Mclntyre will return as Osmin in the Festival production is not yet known.

The operas will also be in a new setting. For the first time they will be in the St James Theatre, for a full season, instead of in the smaller His Majesty’s Theatre. The larger theatre has been used once previously in the festival, for the Royal performance of "A Unicorn for Christmas,” the New Zealand opera by David Farquhar.