STAGE AND SCREEN

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXIV, 21 February 1931, Page 3

STAGE AND SCREEN

«®>- j Dame Clara Butt anu Kcnnerley | Rumloicl are coming out from Hong, Kong to give a scries of conceits, throughout Australia. New Zealand is almost sure to have them later. Also coming in March is Joseph Hislop, tbej tenor, and later —as his private yacht will bring him from San Francisco a Croatian violinist with the unbelievable j name of Balokovic and the Christian; name of Blatco. At least lie ought to call bis yacht “Blanco.” There is a captain oil it and a crew of eleven, not counting the cat. Well, anyway, that s the nucleus of an audience these days and Blatco can be sure of twelve hearty cheers wherever be goes.

Dailv bulletins have been issued from St. Vincent's Hospital about the condition of Damn Nellie Melba, wlio at one period was thought to be in the gravest danger (writes a Sydney correspondent ). She was on a visit to her sister’s homo at Moss Vale, hut had to be hurried to Sydney and taken to hospital. Blood poisoning is saicl to be tin? trouble. So many flowers were received by the diva while she was in St. Vincent's Hospital (the St. Evin s branch of it) that they had to be stopped. The nurses did not. have sufficient time to arrange them. Flowers have been pouring in here as well, but scarcely to that extent. Melba lieiself is cheerful and talks of sitting up next week. She is unused to illness, having been phenomenally healthy all her life.

BROADCASTING AND ATTENDANCES As “To broadcast or not to broadeast” will, no doubt, be a debatable question with our musical societies this coming season, the following extract from “The Musical Standard” should be of interest: “We have never believed that the broadcasting of a performance would tempt a genuinely musical person to stay at home to listen to it. The great band of the semi-musical arc a more doubtful quantity, of course. But they arc of much less importance in London and the big towns generally than in small provincial towns, where there are mere handfuls of consistent concertgoers to form the nuclei of the local choral societies’ audiences. Whatever loss is experienced owing to the .appeal of the arm-chair and the fireside is surely made good by the widening of the public interested in music. On one condition, of course —that the conceit be really worth leaving an arm-chair for. A broadcast Queen’s Hall symphony concert may not be nearly as good "as the real thing, but it is probably a. great deal better than the local choral society’s performance of “Elijah,” conducted bv a local organist. In future, small amateur societies—the bodies' who arc always complaining that wireless is hurting them—will have to be more and more content with rehearsal awl perhaps only' semiprivate performance. After all their function has always been primarily to give the amateur a chance to mako music; it is an extremely valuable one, anil can be in no wise injured by broadcasting or any other form of me-, elianieal music-making. No man who really loves singing or playing his fiddle wants a machine to do it for him. although he probably enjoys the machine-made music all the better because he can do something himself. If ij be objected that •members of elioirft need the incentive of public performance to spur them on, there are a dozen answers. Let them sing madrigals at eliaritv concerts or motets in church—or what they like. If these societies arc really alive they will go on living, though' in a different way perhaps.' Meanwhile first-rate musicmaking has nothing to fear —and will have nothing, or very little, even when transmission becomes good enough to give ms music “with the bloom on.” For there is a profound psychological fact that appears to he ignored by both, the friends and foes of broadcasting. The effect of music is enormously increased by mass excitement. To the subtle sympathy of crowds wo owe that keen edge which makes this or that musical experience for ever memorable. To listen alone, or almost alone, is almost to listen coldly.”