MUSIC AND MUSICIANS

New Zealand Times, Volume LIII, Issue 12549, 11 September 1926, Page 14

MUSIC AND MUSICIANS

If I Could Begin Again

1 1 (By

Dame Nellie Melba.)

The world's greatest prime donna • writes specially for “The Daily Chronicle" what she would do if she could begin again*

There is every difference in the world between sadness and regret. Need I eay that I, who have had so wonderful a life of song, am filled with overwhelming sadness at the thought that soon I shall have sung—for the world, at least—my last? Yet I do not regret. I do not say to myself—"if only I could have it r .all over again." I am not quite so selfish as that —for regret is a selfish emotion, a morbid brooding over what might have been. lam not going to regret anything. I am going to look forward for young singers as, in the past, I have looked forward for myself, helping them in some of the things which I have had to learn myself, telling them of some of the pitfalls which I might have avoided. And yet—inevitably I close my eyes and look over the whole bright pageant of the years—from the days when, as a tomboy of the Australian bush, I ran about in the sunshine, humming, always humming, to the. day when, before a great audience at Covent Garden, I whispered the final "Addio" of dying Mimi. "If I could begin Again!" And I know that I would not alter a single thing. I value my failures just as much as my triumphs. I shall never forget the great

lesson I learned when, nearly SO years ago. I undertook a role for which I was entirely unsuited—that of Brunnhilde in Wagner's great work "Siegfried." It was divine music, but for me—nol The physical strain was too great. I ought never to have attempted it, for had I continued to sing it, I should have lost my voice in a very short time. As one entio observed, it was "Like seeing a

of Dresden china attached by a Yet—l do not regret that false step. Had I not learnt that I oould not sing Brunnhilde, I should have always been longing to do so. always felt myself unfulfilled. As it was, I learnt the true direction in which my artistio career was planned—l learnt to value the lyrical quality, the flexibility and tone of my voice, more than I should ever have i valued the more heroic and robust qualities which the role of Brunnhilde demands. I am not writing in any fatalistic spirit. I am not one of those who believes that one's course is inevitably marked out, that each step was ordained since the beginning of time, and that all one had to do is to walk listlessly along the road which has been prepared for one. No—l believe that one determines one's own goal. I have had to fight to reach that goal. I have had to denv myself a hundred pleasures. I have had to be a wanderer over the face of the earth, when other women have known the joys and the wonder of home. I have had to face hostility, to hear lies and to leave them unanswered, to be the victim of scandals, which, God knows, I have not deserved; to bear a smiling race when it was my woman's privilege to weep. But Ido not regret it. I would go through it all again—the shadow as well as the sunshine. To me, a life of eternal sunshine would be insupportable. Had I had that, I should never have been a great artist. X should never have had the understanding which I hope I may say, has made my interpretation of roles like Desdem°n» in Verdi's "Othello"' or Juliet, something more than a mere matter of singing, something which was instinct with the passion of life itself. When I began, I could not act (although the papers told me that I could) I could not act, because I had not lived or suffered. How then should I regret the sorrows in life which have enriched my art? I have lived for art, an‘d X have turned everything, good or bad, in some way or other, to the service of my art. I would not have been without a single moment of the pain which, in mv crowded life, has been my lot, 9 For always, in those dark moments, one learnr something. One's character was deepened. Another line had been painted in the portrait which, when the artist a name is signed, FINIS, in the foreground, win remain to tell the world wiiat sort of a woman I was.

b» more delightful,” says President de Brasses, "than to see ? .y.? llll *.,® nd pretty nun in a white nabit, with ■ a bunch of pomegranate flowers over one ear, conduct the or, chestra and beat time with all the grace iv, l ® ccn, ?cy imaginable.” He adds that for fine execution, and aa conduci? r . P® orchestra, the daughter of Venice, is second to none." Some of these fair musicians were famed all ever Italy- and Venice used to be split into singer camps ln gu PP ort of this or that But not all of these women musicians were nuns. /Young women were kept there -until their marriage," says Bolland, _ and quotes Groeley as saying, Musio was part, of an education which seemed more adapted to form- Lais and Aspnsias than nuns or mothers of families. In this respect there is a wide S?P. be *?'®?P women’s orchestras in Venice, Calif, twentieth century, and those of Venice, Italy, eighteenth century.