COLONIAL TASTE?

Evening Post, Volume XLIII, Issue 141, 16 June 1892, Page 3

COLONIAL TASTE?

TO THE EDITOB. Sir — I was at the Opera Honse last ovening', when Lord and Lady Glasgow made their first acquaintance with it. They were escorted down tho dress circle by the Chairman of the Opera House Directors, who look tho party down one alley-way, stopped beforo reaching the bottom, and thon waved them on with a swing of the arms borrowod from tho last Irish tug-of-war captain, to perform a stoepleohaso over a table in the oenti-e of their front row of seats before they discovered that tho party should have been divided. But once they found their way into their seats by the exercise of a little ingenuity on their part, thoy were left to contemplate the chaste advertising curtain which is such a feature of the Welling* ton Opera House, and to gaze in blank amazement at invitations to buy coals and cough drops, perambulators and window sashe3. This was our new Governor's second introduction to a New Zealand playhouso. In tho fhst he had tattered upholstery and dilapidated fittings to contemplate, and in the second, a vulgarly hidoous advert! sing screen, whore all should be chaste and artistic. I can easily imagine what tho members of his party will have to say on " colonial taste" when thoy writo their first letters home, and whether or not they will have a tendency to dcopon or lossen tho impression in somo British (jnarters that we are a race of crudo barbarians. There ore very fow towns in tho world whoro such a drop-scone as that at the Opora House would be tolorated for a ni^ht. I am, &c, A Colonial. lGth Juno.