NO OPERA FOR WANGANUI

Wanganui Chronicle, 23 February 1949, Page 4

NO OPERA FOR WANGANUI

' I ’HE public is entitled to resent the non-inclusion of Wanganui 1 in the tour of the Grand Opera Company and the National Orchestra. It can hardly be doubted that if the district from Patea to Sandon had been better served by its public men a different decision would have been arrived at. It is easy enough to present difficulties about a company being able to visit any centre so the cataloguing of difficulties is not in itself impressive. When the list of objections to the opera coming to Wanganui ends with the assertion that the Italian artists have to return to Italy to fulfil engagements there the impression is created that the list has been overdone. It is recognised that the Italians have to return to their own country on time to fulfil their engagements there; it is recognised, too, that they must be at the port of departure in order to catch their steamer, but these obvious matters need not be emphasised when discussing an itinerary which could be shaped to either include or to exclude Wanganui from the tour. There are a number of reasons why the Opera Company should, in its own interest, come to Wanganui. The first and foremost is that in Wanganui the company would have been assured of a full house. It would have paid the company to have come to Wanganui to play in the Opera House, the first municipally built opera house in the Dominion. The company, nevertheless, having the assistance of the National Orchestra and presumably of the Government, is not entitled to pick the eyes out of the Dominion and consult only its own convenience. A comprehensive tour of the Dominion should have been planned and insisted upon. The inclusion of Wanganui in the tour would no doubt have presented some difficulties, but these are neither exceptional nor insurmountable. The playing in towns that arc close together and by-passing a city that happens to be off the main trunk line is not good policy from the standpoint of developing the public taste for opera. Onera singers and managers should surely be interested 1o develop their own market in this Dominion and what better step could be taken than to come to an educational centre where there, are so many secondary schools like Nga Tawa and the Wanganui Girls College, that go out of their way to assist visiting musical artists.