ADVENTURES ON TOUR

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 73, Issue 439, 3 December 1930, Page 2

ADVENTURES ON TOUR

A SNAKE IN THE BEDROOM “Life has presented me with a generous share of time-tables and maps. Aly concert tours in America alone cover each season some 10,000 miles. Then there are foreign tours such as my recent ones in tne Philippines, China, Japan and the Antipodes, ’’ writes Amelita Galli Curci in the Daily Alail-

“First, years ago, I sang throughout the length of Italy, then in Egypt, South America, Russia, Spain- 1 first reached the United States intent only on sightseeing. 1 was engaged for three guest-performances at the Chicago Opera and the first of them resulted in my singing for nine consecutive years in the United States. Daily exercise and the refusal of all social invitations during tours arc the two ‘musts’ of the singer who would keep fresh. Courage is needed at one’s debut in a strange land. Concentration takes wings ami one has to trust to instinct to do the ri-dit thing, until an outburst of applause tells that one is facing friends. “Only once have I experienced real danger on the stage- During the war 1 war singing in ‘Dinorah’ at Chicago. A fiend had put a bomb in the orehe. L; There was a flash of flame, but the bomb did not explode- The orchestra stopped and panic, started in the audience. The conductor, Campanini, rapped his desk, and said to the orchestra: “Play the “Star-Spangled Banner”! and to mo ‘Sing!’ They played,

sang, and the panic was over. “In years gone by I was once on

gaged to sing small parts at the Buenos Aires Opera. A prima-donna fell ill, and I was asked at an hour’s notice to sing Gilda in ‘Rigolctto. ’ 1 faced a disappointed audience who had never heard me or of me. Never did I need concentration more. I had to make my reputation before a strange public, and make it in five minutes or not at allAt such times only serenity will conquer. I had to sing ‘intro Nome’ three times that night. For the rest of the season 1 sang lending parts-

“Once I was at Santiago in Chile when a ‘prophet’ foretold an earthquake. The, population nirneil out, into the. park and spent, the night there. I preferred to stay indoors- There was no earthquake, but it rained in torrents. There was, however, an earthquake that, day -ome five or six hours away.

“Amither travelling experience was a sandstorm at sea, three days out from A’okohama. I could scarcely breathe ami it. took me days to get back into good voice. And yet another experience was finding a snake in my bedroom at Rio de Janeiro.”