RUSSIAN OPERA

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 1, 1 July 1938, Page 13

RUSSIAN OPERA

POSSIBLE TOUR OF N.Z.

Advice has been received by Mr. L. E. Strachan, formerly assistant musical director of the New Zealand Grand Opera Society, that arrangements are reported to have been completed. for a tour of Australia, and probably of New Zealand, by the famous Aristov Russian Opera Company,- which has been appearing ""at the Paris Opera House. • -

The company, which is headed by Prince Zeretelli, will stage six of the best-known Russian operas, including Tschaikovsky's "Eugen Onegin," the same composer's "Pique Dame," Borodin's "Prince Igor," Moussorgsky's "Boris Godonov," and two The Aristoy Russian opera chorus played an important part in the obsequies in connection with the late Feodor Chaliapin. In the Russian Cathedral in the Rue Daru in Paris they sang an elaborate choral service lasting two hours and a half. One of those present at the ceremony writes: "It was the most wonderful unaccompanied choral singing I have ever heard. The earnestness and the wholehearted emotion these choristers and former colleagues of Chaliapin put into their singing were very, very touching." Chaliapin's funeral procession halted at the Paris Opera House, where the choirs of the Russian Opera and Cathedral sang his favourite number, "Eternal Remembrance." Earth brought from Russia was sprinkled on the great singer's coffin and he was buried at the Battignoles Cemetery.