OF MUSICAL INTEREST

Ladies' Mirror, Volume 2, Issue 8, 1 February 1924, Page 36

OF MUSICAL INTEREST

Mrs. Horace Hunt, of Wellington Madame Marguerite Alvarez, the famous prima donna, was in Wellington last year, she heard Mrs. Horace Hunt sing, and, greatly impressed with the quality of her voice, advised her to go to New York for 18 months study. She promised her personal supervision and help, and predicted a great future for Mrs. Hunt, adding that in addition to a really beautiful voice, she had imaginative and emotional gifts and a charm of personality and appearance, which would all contribute materially towards her chances of success. Many visiting artists forget the things they have said during their brief sojourn here, but the contrary has happened in this instance, as Madame Alvarez has kept in touch with Mrs. Hunt, and when in England interviewed her mother, Mrs. A. E. A. Pethybridge* and a fortnight ago a cable was received saying Madame Alvarez was* in New York now, and wished Mrs. Hunt to join her as soon as possible. o O o Bringing the Opera to the public the audiences at Covent Garden in these days show that there is a new public for opera in London. Of old there used to be an “intellectual” audience for Wagner and a fashionable audience for Verdi and Puccini, but opera was not the entertainment of the average man. A change is certainly in progress. One cause, no doubt, is the now established practice of singing in English not, of course, always intelligible English, but intelligible enough to give a clue to the situation. The hardened opera-goer used to be above such curiosity— German, or Japanese was the same to him—such asceticism is not to be expected of the average man. I hen very certainly the gramophone and, more lately, wireless have done wonders in familiarising people with operatic music. ' In any number of homes it has become everyday fare, and , the average man attending “Aida” or “The Valkyrie,” instead of feeling himself adrift on an uncharted sea, is charmed to find the score, as the countryman found “Hamlet,” full of quotations.’ Only to take the risk of seeing a brand-new opera still appears too heavy a tax on the ordinary Englishman’s courage. o o o “Italian audiences are the limit,” writes Miss Eileen Driscoll, the Wellington soprano. “One night a tenor went out of tune, and they at once hissed him. I got hot and cold, and wondered what Avas going to happen. A few clapped, me among them; he boAved, and they hissed'him again. If a conductor comes in late, they hiss him. 1 mentioned it at the hotel and was told that such was always the ease. When ‘Butterfly’ Avas first produced at La Scala it AA r as hissed and booed, and the audience Avould not let the opera proceed, but that did not prevent it becoming a Avorld success.” Misses Driscoll and Esquilant also visited Venice, and send a photograph of themselves feeding the pigeons before the classic facade of St. Mark.