VICTORIAN SINGER

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 82, 7 April 1938, Page 18

VICTORIAN SINGER

MEMORIES OF BALMORAL

(From "The Post's" Representative.) LONDON,. March 16.

A favourite singer of Queen Victoria, Mmc; Blanche Marchesi, will celebrate her 75th birthday this month by giving a song recital. Her beautiful voice is seldom heard in public these days, but she still devotes a great deal of time to teaching others.

In an interview with a Fleet Street journalist this week, Mme. Marches! recalled her first visit to Balmoral, where she was presented to Queen Victoria.

"The Queen's greatest pleasure in the evenings," she said, "was to have a musical party, and Albani, Jenny Lind, Calve, and others sang for her there at various times. I made a good impression; she was pleased with my singing, and from that time I became one of her favourites. The Queen was fond of fresh air, and though it was winter, with snow on the mountains, the windows were wide open, and such a draught of icy air came through that

the heavy curtains of Scottish tweed were blowing into the room. Because of- my throat I was allowed to wear a shawl, and at last even the Queen sent for a shawl, but the ladies in their low-necked gowns had to shiver in silence."

Mme. Marchesi said that the Queen's taste in songs was chiefly for those of Schumann, Schubert, and Mendelssohn. After she had sung several times at Balmoral she once tried to mix with these composers some English music and inserted: into her programme an air of Purcell's. But the. Queen crossed this off • the list and commanded instead another song by Schumann. It was explained that as a child Victoria had been a martyr to classic music, and now ' would hear nothing but what she really liked.

' The strict ceremonial of the Court was sometimes relaxed a little at Bal- ' moral, however, lor the Queen gave Mme. Marchesi her Diamond Jubilee medal and a signed photograph over [the tea-table. "Yet while the Queen !was taking her tea on that occasion nearly all the Royal Family were present, but they as well as I had to stand. On the other hand, after being commanded to sing one night-at Balmoral, the next day the Queen asked if I would sing again, and when I said [that my accompanist had already set jofl for London she replied that her daughter would play for me instead. So all that afternoon Princess Beatrice and I practised the songs, and I must say she played them all faultlessly, much to her mother's joy."

Mme. Marchesi added that what perhaps gave her most pleasure at' Balmoral was when she was allowed to have tea with Queen Victoria's grandchildren. "Edward was then just over two years old, Albert—now King George VI —was 16 months, and Princess Mary was on her nurse's lap."