MOODS OF MELBA

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19947, 15 November 1926, Page 10

MOODS OF MELBA

COOLNESS TOWARDS FKIE.NDS, HENRY RUSSELL’S BOOK. LONDON, November 4. There are some lively passages in Henry Russell's book of reminiscences, in which he recounts his quarrels with Meiba anu retraces events which mystified musical circles in 1924, when be unoxnectedly returned fiotn Australia. He first met Melba in 1895. lie records her gratitude to Mr liadon Chambers for his assistance, fol -lowed by a siidden cooling toward him. “I suppose Mr Chambers shared my experience,” wrote Mr Russell, "and found her occasionally too exigent. We treated her royally, making every reasonab.w concession to her foibles. When I met her after her return from America she was obviously cold. I was puzzled, slili having the illusion that the prima donna behaved like normal people. For ten years we passed as strangers.” Mr Russell suggests that his ability as managing director of the Boston Opgra Company in 1908, to offer £SOO for a single performance by an artist made Melba I ‘‘realise that it might bo profitable to be friendly.” But she found it anomalous to I sing there under the direction of a man ; with whom she had not spoken. “For the sake of the theatre I buried the hatchet,” i savs Mr Russell. 1 “We might still have been friend., if I had not made the fatal mistake of accepti ing the artistic direction of her Australian : company. 1 should have remembered i Schopenhauer’s warning about the weakness of a reconciling- with a person who is lit- f .!v to take the first opportunity of repeating the action which caused the breach.” Mentioning Patti, the author says: “Caruso confessed that it was the prima donna, with her temperament, whims and figure, who whitened his hair.” He says that singers are inclined to cat_ too much and exercise too little, but this is only partly responsible to this old typo of nrima donna Mr Russell concludes; “If opera is to suxvive as a serious form of art, the prima donna’s domination must cense.”