MADAME MELBA.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume L, Issue 12199, 17 April 1909, Page 5

MADAME MELBA.

From the hund.ede bf tributes which havo been paid to Madame Melba, who is to give a concert in Wanganui on May 12th, one is selected. , This is what Anton Seidl, the eminent critic and conductor, wrote in "Harper's Weekly" in summing up a grand opera season in New York: "Now I come to Madatne Melba, in wjiom wo find the prodigal richness of one of the most beautiful voices that' ever rang from human throat. Melba's voice has a, magical fairylike tone/ and yet, with all' the charm of sound, there is present suck; a roundness of technique that bno is simply amazed. Generally heretofore colorature singers have not grown in very luxurious profusion with sustained catilena or melody. Patti alone hitherto had had both in the highest completeness; but in Mme. Melba song and technique ar© present, not only in the greatest completeness, but brilliant, fairylike, and as if shining with supernatural glory. The trill hi her case is of quite fabulous sustention: for instance, she has at her command a long and nowerful crescendo on th"> highest notes that is without a paraflel, and yot performed with a clearness and certainty which simply excite astonishment and at the same time soft, clinging and cajoling. Her science of taking breaths is complete, and infallibly calculated for tbe length of a musical uhrase, no\'er left to chance or error, but ever firm, even, and without deception. A finer singing of the mad' soone in Lucia could not have been de^ sired by the composer himself. It is impossible to think of a higher education in technical power and performance for a human throat.' 5