N.Z. SINGERS

Southland Times, Issue 19899, 18 June 1926, Page 5

N.Z. SINGERS

RECITALS IN ENGLAND. London, May 4. The Musical Times has the following notice about the first vocal recital given' in London by Mr Kynaston Franks, of Christchurch—“He had the chief excuse for a singer—a good voice, and he managed to make his words good without losing tone. But one felt that his mental survey was not sufficiently ranging to give us an equal interest in everything he sang, and his voice is not yet used with any formed or characteristic art. Here and there his high notes broke harshly into the listener’s pleasure. Mr Franks showed, however, that he could at times correct the natural heaviness of his voice by floating a string of soft tones, and that he could also find effective employment of his mezza-voce.” Miss Stella Murray, whose recital will take place on June 9, at the /Eolian Hall—her return to the concert platform in London is being looked forward to with pleasure —spent the week-end at Cambridge as the guest of Sir Ernest and Lady Rutherford, who gave a dance in her honour. The New Zealand friends of Mrs Una Bush (nee Miss Una Rattray, daughter of Mr C. W. Rattray, of Dunedin) will be interested to hear that she made a very successful appearance in “The Yeomen of the Guard” with the Tavistock Amateur Operatic Society, in the middle of April, when she took the part of Phoebe. Of her performance the Tavistock Times comments —“Her acting and deportment throughout stamped her as an artist of more than ordinary ability. She had the happy knack of being natural, which means success. Her opening song while spinning ‘When maiden loves, she sits and sighs,’ was sung with a pathos that had its effect on the audience. And no wonder, for she has a soprano voice of somewhat unusual but entirely attractive texture, pure and rounded, though without great power. Her scenes with the heroic Colonel Fairfax were convincing, but most of all one enjoyed her interpretation and coyness in ‘Were I thy bride,’ with the gaoler.”