CLARA DUTT AND HER CRITICS.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume XVI, Issue 936, 13 February 1908, Page 16

CLARA DUTT AND HER CRITICS.

Consider!..g the feet-deep praise that was ladled over to Clara Butt when in Auckland, it rather seemed like a voice crying in the wilderness when the “ Review ” took the great contralto to task for her singing of “Abide With Me.” The “ Triad” strongly supports the “ Review ” with the following scathing criticism of the visiting artist: — Mrs Rumford has a very powerful voice, with a reputed compass of three octaves from double C. At this concert (Christchurch) she permitted us to hear two octaves (of the tempered scale) from Aat below midd eC,to G sharp. Mrs Rumford has an exceedingly troublesome break on A above middle C-, and what we heard of her lower register was inferior in quality to that portion of the voice above the break. Moreover, these lower notes seemed to be, as it were, hurled at the heads of the audience. Her registers are astonishingly uneven in quality; so much so, that the high and the low notes respectively give one the impression of being sung by two different people. This is a well-known characteristic of contraltos who have either been badly taught, or who have sung too much before they were rightly directed. Mrs Rumford has a voice of phenomena! power, but it is ponderous and unwieldy, and there is but little silver in it. Probably, the voice has already lost much of its former timbre, and if I am any judge, unless the voice is more carefully nursed, in a very few years there will be but little quality left.

At this concert, Mrs Rumford did not sing one single composition by any real’y great writer, and even the Verdi contribution cannot be ranked among the highest expressions of vocal art. The only other item on the programme was Liddle’s trashy setting of “ Abide with Me,” and the encore numbers told of birds and babies.

Mrs Rumford’s diction is extremely sloppy. She mispronounces her words, and constantly runs her final consonants into the following initial vowels. Here are some painful instances:—“ gardun, ” “momunt,” “comferts,” “ erway,” “ .O wabide ” (O abide), “ bloomer new” (bloom anew), “ ebb sowt ” (ebbs out), “ aroun’ die” (around I), “ gui dand ” (guide and), “ closee ngeyes ” (closing eyes, “an’ dearth ” (and earth). I have not seen the song “ Abide with Me ” (nor do I wish ever to do so), hence I know not (nor do I wish to know) whether the

voca’ist or composer is responsible for the false emphasis in the sentence “ and point me to the skies. ...” And whence Mrs Rumford’s reputation as England’s greatest contralto? Frankly, I cannot tell. But this I know, that if Mrs Rumford is regarded in musical circles as a great singer (in any but a physical sense), English vocal art, or English taste—or both —must be in a parlous state.