EMPIRE EXHIBITION.

Waikato Times, Volume 96, Issue 15865, 11 December 1923, Page 6

EMPIRE EXHIBITION.

STADIUM PROGRAMME. One of the chief attractions of next year’s' British Empire Exhibition at Wembley will be the events to be staged in the gigantic Empire Stadium. An elaborate programme is being drawn up. The Stadium season wall open on April. 12 with the England v. Scotland Association football match, and a fortnight later the Cup final will be played off. On or about Empire Day a great military tattoo with massed army bands will be staged. The general scheme is to draw bandsmen from all the line regiments and to form them into one huge band numbering, with pipes' and drums, about a thousand strong. This will be reinforced by a mounted band recruited on the same lines from the cavalry regiments. The combined band will be the largest even seen in the British Empire. Fir six weeks during July and August a Pageant of Empire will be shown daily, illustrating the growth of the Empire from the earliest times. Cavalry and artillery will both take part, anrl the 10.000 boy scouts who arc holding an Imperial jamboree during the first week in August will lend their aid.

In September, after the Pageant is over, there will probably be a second edition of the Military Tattoo. A series of six massed concerts with a choir numbering 10,000 voices will take place at intervals during the course of the Exhibition. Dr. Charles Harriss, who conducted the Peace Celebration in Hyde Park, is to conduct. At least once a week firework displays will be given in the Stadium by Messrs .Tames Pain and Son. Apart from the usual firework effects, appropriate set pieces will he arranged for special occasions'. In the Exhibition grounds, though outside the Stadium, a gigantic bandstand with seating accommodation for 10,000 people is in course of erection. There concerts will be given daily by the best British and Dominions bands.