MUSICAL SNOBS

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 126, 23 November 1935, Page 6

MUSICAL SNOBS

DEMAND FOR FOREIGN NAMES

The snobbery of the British public in. demanding singers and musicians with foreign names was criticised recently by Sir Landon Ronald, principal of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, at the.annual presentation of prizes at the Mansion House. Recalling the new prima donna with the Italian name of Lisa Perli, who took London by storm as Mimi in "La Boheme," Sir Landon said she was "our own dear little Dora Labbette, who came to the Guildhall School as a youngster twenty years ago. "The fact," he continued, "that she and her friends considered it wise to take an Italian name—and she has since stated that it,is only as Lisa Perli that she ever wants to be known in future—is, to mymind, a serious reflection jon the1 intelligence of .the English public. ' . "It means that the public are still such snobs that unless artists have a foreign name they are not interested in them. . " . . ■.'•■ \-_. ..-..- ---"Can you imagine any German, Italian, or French artist dreaming of, taki ing an English name so that he or she might have success in his or her native country? It is only in this country that such a thing could'occur. "It might have been a little more excusable thirty or forty years ago, "when I was a youngster, because then you could count the great English artists on your two hands. But today we have just as many great artists here as are to be found abroad. ' "We have instrumentalists and singers here who can be. compared with the best that come from abroad. I am not referring in particular to the few great 'stars' of the' world, such as Kreisler, Horowitz, , Coftot, Heifetz, Lottie Lehmann, and a few others. These people, to me, have no nationality; they belong to the world. But the status of your other artists arid composers is not to be beaten, and in many, cases not to be equalled abroad. "I feel quite sure, having myself witnessed her performance, that Lisa Perli will go very far, • not only here but probably all over the world. She has to study her own interests, and it is probably on,account of those interests that she thought it wise to drop heii English name." ; I

Sir Landon announced that he had awarded his. annual prize (Grove's Die-; tionary) to Gwen Catley, of Honor Oak, S.E., as, the student most likely: to distinguish herself in the musical profession.