Opera Singers Relax With Wharf Fishing And Basking in Sun

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27083, 18 May 1949, Page 4

Opera Singers Relax With Wharf Fishing And Basking in Sun

What do members of the Italian Opera Company do in Dunedin when they are not on the stage for rehearsals or operas? This question had its answqr in part for the Daily Times when staff members were in widely different parts of the city and the borough of St. Kilda yesterday afternoon. They encountered the visitors in unexpected places.

Perhaps the most unusual sight was presented by the baritone, Enzo Titta. He had gone to a considerable amount of trouble in finding his mode of relaxation yesterday. He procured a piece of cardboard, some catgut, hooks, a length of fishing line, and a lead weight for a sinker. With visions of his warm Adriatic waters and their prolific yield of small fish, perhaps one of the tiny edible octopuses found there, he wound his line on the cardboard and set up his gear in the best Isaak Walton tradition. For him, bait presented few of the problems he would find on the Adriatic seaboard, and a visit to the butcher, a change of clothes, and a brisk walk in the sunshine to the Birch street wharf combined to place him in a position where he could indulge both

his curiosity about the fish-yielding propensities of Otago Barbour and his penchant for being alone with the sun on his face and a salt breeze in his hair. The serene waters of the harbour were not kind to him. They failed to produce to Signor Titta any kind. of fish, although he gazed with earnest intent at the shoals of small mullet that darted in silver streaks around his line. He was not even permitted. to relax. His unusual dress for this part of the world proclaimed him a visitor, and the inevitable small boys pestered him. He professed ignorance of English, in English, when the Daily Times approached, but mellowed when asked in war-time Italian what luck he was having. When last seen, he was still casting his bait on the waters