Opera School Urged

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32232, 26 February 1970, Page 12

Opera School Urged

If New Zealand opera singers were not to be forced to “clean out icecream barrels in a milk bar in South Kensington or empty spaghetti I troughs in Rome,” New! Zealand had to set up a! conservatoire or opera | training school, two ofj New Zealand’s leading ooera singers agreed on Tuesday evening. The two, who have the leading roles in the New Zealand Opera Company’s production, “The Barber of Seville,” were speaking informally at a gathering of supporters of: the company. Miss Malvina Major, who. will play Rosina in the opera, having played the role in the S’lzburg Festivil of Music in 1968 and again last year, said that New Zealanders should bo trained to the stage that they could go. overseas to

any operatic house in the world. “There is not enough experience available in New Zealand, not even with the New Zealand Opera Company ■ because they don’t have a year-round season,” she said. “I wasted a whole term 'when I first got to London [because 1 bad to begin from ! scratch there. If we had a [school led by someone with overseas experience so that , the student could get actual 'performing experience, such las touring the schools, that would make the world of difference,” she said. John Hauxvell, a New Zealander who has been singing overseas for the last 21 years, said that part of the reason for this was that New Zealand was not particularly well known abroad. “New Zealand's public srelations abroad are shocking. Overseas they know nothing of our people or our culture. They lived on Jack Lovelock for years: then on Peter Snell—and of course the All

Blacks, they go down well,” he said. Mr Hauxvell said that he had cleaned out ice-cream barrels in a milk-bar in South Kensington and emptied spaghetti troughs in Rome to meet his training costs. “But it was fun,” he said. He said that opera was not his favourite form of entertainment. “I don’t like opera madly. I can see one or two acts but a lot of operas bore me to death and some considerably more than that. “I don’t want to shock you, but I’m sure that a lot of you know that feeling of sitting there thinking, ‘Oh God, when will this be over’,” he said. Mr Hauxvell said that festivals such as the Pan-Pacific Arts Festival in Christchurch were a good thing as long as they were not commercialised. “They bring a lot of artists together—but if you look at Edinburgh it has now become an excuse to sell shortbread, tartans and bagpipes,” he said.