FAMOUS QUEEN OF SONG.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21130, 12 March 1932, Page 2 (Supplement)

FAMOUS QUEEN OF SONG.

STILL SINGING AT SIXTY.

COMPANY OF ACROBATS. TETRAZZINI'S FADED GLORY. Madame Tetrazzini, who a few years ago was Iho leading soprano of the world's greatest opera houses, is to-day singing in a Boston picture theatre, of tlie type known as " four-a-day." The prima donna, who sang her farewell at the Metropolitan Opera House with Caruso, recently returned tb America to share in a variety programme with acrobats, backchat comedians and talking films.

Although she claims to have made £1,000,000 by her golden voice in its prime, says tho Boston correspondent of the News-Chronicle, Tetrazzini explains that she has emerged from her retirement because she needs money. Iler present vaudeville setting is in odd contrast to tho glamorous background of her triumphs at Covent Garden, La Scala and the Metropolitan. She was at one time paid £3OO for cacli performance. Phenomenal Memory Gone.

The four-a-day picture houso is smartly new and smartly efficient. After tho acrobats have made pyramids of themselves, the sloek manager sidles from the wings to announce in circus terminology this "engagement extraordinary which the management offers with pride to its patrons " with Italian expansiveness.

The orchestra then blares the triumphal march from " Aida —" Return Victorious." Black velvet curtains part to reveal tlio prima donna in a glittering dress of sequins standing beside a piapo. At 60 she is white-haired and very stout, but beams with good nature. She is fluttering with anxiety to please. licr first offering is " Caro Nome " from " Rigoletto." Although the singer has sung this celebrated display piece with its vocal acrobatics hundreds of times on concert platforms, she is now nervous lest she forget the words. She would not trust the memory that in its prime was phenomenal. She has written the words on paper which quivers violently in her fingers.

" Last Rose of Summer." The waiter says:—"lt would be silly to pretend that Tetrazzini's voice is what it was, but, though shaking with nerves, she successfully negotiates the trills, arabesques and top notes of ' Caro Nome.' " The audience is touched in a way that is probably a little puzzling even to itself. It senses some of the pflthos o.f this stout woman of 60, who 20 years ago was treated like a queen. That sadness becomes almost unbearable when Tetrazzini breaks into the strains of ' The Last Rose of Summer.' In English she sings:

'Tis tho last rose of summer left blooming ulone. All her lovely companions are faded and gone.

" Tears cloud the singer's voice, the ageing singer almost chokes, then she recovers and smiles gallantly. Could she help recalling that Caruso was dead,, Melba dead ? Caruso, she says, once asked her to marry him, and sho still wears his cuff links, watch and scarf pin.

" Could she help recalling her marvellous debut in New York 25 years before, when a crowd of thousands danced in the street outside Hammerstein's Opera and pelted her with that summer's roses ?"