THE OPERA HOUSE.

Wairarapa Daily Times, 12 April 1935, Page 5

THE OPERA HOUSE.

(Tho Editor). Sir, —If I should express a wish that any letter of mine would be regarded by the Trust Lands Trust as other than frivolous, I should probably bring clown a storm of derision from various correspondents, accusing me of vanity, yet it was. with some such thoughts as these that 1 pushed open the back door of tho Opera Houso yesterday. The hinges groaned like Trustees querulously denying their trust. As I entered tho weird world of silence, which struck me with tho cold chill of a vault, my footsteps echoed hollowly, giving a terrible impression of arrested life. Mounting the stage, I tried to pierco the gloom of the auditorium, hoping to envisage a sea of white faces, bright with expectancy, but all I saw were great festoons of cobwebs. I thought that if my hearing were keen enough, I might catch a fugitive note of George Hutchinson’s cornet, tho throbbing wail of Tunnicliffo’s bass violin, telling of all tho hopes and fears, the successes and failures enacted within these walls, or again the shuffle of little feet as they go through their oft rehearsed parts; but all I could hear was a rat scuffling in the balconjM A twelvemonth of. dust lay thick where. Aghast that such a. monument of inertia should flourish in our tiAe, I sought tho sunlight, and the fresh air, resolved that not till all the ink in the world were dried' up ■would I cease in my efforts to have the Opera House restored or rebuilt. —I am. etc.,

TIM FAGAN.

(The above letter was written before last night’s meeting of the Trust Lands Trust. —Ed., W.D.T.)