MUSIC NOTES.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Issue 1381, 12 October 1916, Page 34

MUSIC NOTES.

(By

“G” String.)

Count Ercole Fillipini, one of the principal tenors of the Gonsalez Italian Grand Opera Company, which visits New Zealand shortly, has sung the part of Rigoletto over 400 times on the Continent and in South America, which he visited some years ago.

Madame Clara Butt has been able, as the result of “The Dream of Gerontius” Festival at the Queen’s Hall, London, and the Clara Butt-Kennerley Rumford Fund concerts, to pay over to the British Red Cross Society £5365.

Miss Mary Law, the English violinist, who was lately in Australia on the Tivoli circuit, is back in England, and is booked to make her re-appearance in London at the Coliseum this month. Paulette Verdoot, one of the celebrated dancers of the Brussels Opera, committed suicide a few weeks ago. It is said that German rule in Brussels affected her mind. She left a letter addressed to the police, in which she stated she would rather die than submit to German rule.

The concert given in the large Town Hall, Wellington, last Tuesday evening by the two Russian musicians, Michael Piastro and Alfred Mirovitch, was a rare and genuine musical treat, and will be long and favourably remembered by the music lovers of Wellington. Both artists are two of the most prominent graduates of the Petrograd Conservatorium of the present decade, and they do the Russian Academy infinite credit. The playing of both is marked by extreme virility, and so far as M. Piastro, the violinist, is concerned he produces perhaps the greatest tone that has ever been heard on his instrument in Wellington. In this respect he is somewhat of a marvel. M. Mirovitch, the pianist, in all his numbers proved himself to be one of the most brilliant executants heard in New Zealand for some considerable time. Both artists were exceedingly generous in giving encores, which were received with much gratitude by the audience.