UNREHEARSED TRAGEDY

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 111, 7 November 1923, Page 6

UNREHEARSED TRAGEDY

A SINGER'S EXPERIENCES,

„: Mme. Lipkoyska, the Russian eperatic star, who. will be singing hi Wellington j next week, has had' an experience that, | surely, never fell to the lot of any art-I ist before. In the course of conversation^ with a representative of..."The.! Post" to-day, she described how-she was < caught in the vortex of the. Russian Red Revolution, when things were at the worst; She _ had returnedvSpijcially to Russia in 1914 to take:'!pattern >''Ivan the-Terrible," with Chaliapin, and then came the war. Things went ■ on/much : -as usual, so far as opera was concerned, I and even after the first revolution the' wealthy patrons of "the opera- attended as .if very little had happened.', But ■ very few then, had tho slightest idea that j things would assume such tragic "shape | as they did under the Bolslieyik-regime. I No one could very well get away then, ! and bo Mme. Lipkovska had to sing. I When the Bolsheviks had got the upper ! hand they took charge of opera and everything else. It was in Moscow that she was singing in 1919, and in a moment everything was Sovietised. Aitists who •were receiving, their equivalent of hundreds of pounds a night were placed on the same pay-level as .ushers and sceneshifters ; and the opera, houses were thrown open free to all. The Soviet der iriand at the iloscow Opera House was for "Faust," and "Faust" had to be given. ,The crowd assembled at dawn.' So great was the crush to get in that many lives were lost at the doors, and j the dead bodies of women and children were just kicked on one side out of the crush and pushed into the gutters. That night when the curtain went up the scene for the artists was most terrifying —a nightmare, in fact. The Faust,' a i famous tenor, was naturally appalled. I He did not .please the savage audience. [They shouted for his life. Some cried ■that he' should have no. bread, ticket. Then there was indiscriminate shooting at the stage, and the teuor fell dead.' No stage hand dared remove the body. Mme. Lipkovska was terror-stricken, but she went on to the stage, ' singing | to a dead Faust. Mephistopheles tried to escape by a back window, but was dragged back and made to sing, which he did. The crowd cheered him, because, they shouted, they liked the Devil. Evi-, dently things.had gone too far even for those in high Bolshevik authority, for an order was issued next morning that "No operatic artists are to be killed." Then Mme. Lipkovska turned, the subject in a more agreeable direction, telling how she finds it better for her audiences and certainly more congenial for herself to sing • certain things in costume. "You see, I am an operatic artist by preference.and training, and—l but I do not speak English well —. She ' does; remarkably well. But she chose to make her husband, M. Richard, her mouthpiece. She sings' certain of her , songs in the costume of their country ! and time, especially the Russian, The ■ classics she sings in the robes of to-day. Some, songs are sung in early Victorian, with the fullness of the crinoline, and the ' hair dressed a la two-shilling piece of Queen Victoria. The . reason of this j singing in costume, she holds, is as sound as it is artistic: it is to invest the song or operatic' selection in its proper atmosphere, to transport the audience into that atmosphere. Speaking of the present vogue of Russian music, graphic art, and dancing, Mme. Lipkovska agreed that it had'received a great impetus in countries outside Russia .through the scattering of j Russian : artists by. the terrible happen- I ings in their country. She owes her j life to her husband, who during the war I was an officer on a French torpedo boat' and was able to facilitate her escape from Odessa, where he was on service at the time. After that she' became his wife. He had saved her life.