VALUE OF A NAME

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 23, 28 January 1928, Page 20

VALUE OF A NAME

PSYCHOLOGY OF ENTEBTAINMENT. In an. article in the London "Daily Mail," entitled "Why I Changed My Name," Miss Florence Austral, the famous dramatic soprano, says: "My real name is Wilson. In the course of years of training, of hope deferred, of striving for an ideal, I learned the lessons that all artists • learn—that though the gift of voice may. be great and constant in the same person, you are not likely to gain the full reward unless you have a foreign name. I am all British, born in Australia, of true i British . parents. Yet in this country of England, which has: given me io much,: the country in which I live, the country to which, despite my Australian birth, I shall always return, I have been described as an Armenian. Even the Armenian Club of London has written to ire hailing me as a confrere, offering me praise, welcoming me as a guest. I trust the members of the club, and even the author of 'The Green Hat,' if he is a member of the club, will forgive me when I say that the gesture, though kindly, disturbed my feelings a little. He, too, has changed his name. When I entered the Conservatorium of Music in Melbourne a good many years ago I wanted to learn the piano, but neuritis destroyed the chance, and then I had to turn to singing, and learn, everything all at once to catch up with girls who had been singing all their lives. Thus it was that a nervous Australian came to Co vent Garden on a May day five years ago with a high hope and a humble heart, and learned that her name was all wrong. -The aarne is no good, they said. Yon must have another one; one with a suggestion of something foreign. So I jettisoned the name of Wilson and took the name of Austral, which suggests Australia and yet has a trace of the Continent—'•though not,of Armenia. It is a. queer commentary on the psychology of our race that our singers, dancers, and musicians should have to drop their birthright to gain a hearing ana appreciation. And the strangest thing of all is that, once this has been accomplished there is no city in the world that counts so much as London. Cortot, the French pianist, was talking the other day of exactly the same thing. ' Once it was Berlin, once it was' Paris. ■ , But to-day, he said, if you make a success in London in music, then the great cities of the world follow her choice."