OTAGO SINGER'S SUCCESS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22392, 13 October 1934, Page 2

OTAGO SINGER'S SUCCESS

f MR DENIS DOWLING IN MELBOURNE WINS OPERATIC ARIA SECTION. Mr Denis Dowling, the young Otago baritone who, together with Miss Alva Myers, was among ths eight competitors selected at the Ballarat Competitions to sing in the Melbourne Town Hall in connection with the centenary celebrations, was successful in winning the aria from grand opera section, which carries with it a prize of 130 guineas. The section, when heard in Ballarat, contained 93 entrants, consisting of many of the best amateur singers in the Commonwealth, and Mr Dowling's victory against such strong competition makes his performance a particularly meritorious one. Mr Dowling did not undertake the study of singing seriously until he was about 20 years of age, when a he became a pupil of Mr F. M. Tuohy, and in 1930 he made his first public appearance in the Dunedin Competitions Society's festival, achieving considerable success. In May of the following year this success was repeated at the Christchurch Competitions, and he won further laurels in Dunedin in 1933. Mr Dowling's appearances on Dunedin concert platforms have shown him to be the happy possessor of a temperament which enables him to fill roles of a varied nature, for, in addition to fulfilling ordinary concert engagements and taking a prominent part in the Dunedin Operatic Society's production, "Les Cloches de Corneville," Mr Dowling has sung with the Dunedin Choral Society in presentations of " The Messiah " and other exacting works. Mr Dowling possesses a voice of excellent range and quality, and his training has revealed a decided flair for grand opera; probably one of the most difficult vehicles of Vocal art. The section in which he secured the highest honours was ODen to amateur and professional singers of either sex throughout Australia and New Zealand, and as a result he must now rank as one of the foremost vocaiists in the two countries.