WELLINGTON NOTES.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Issue 1548, 24 December 1919, Page 37

WELLINGTON NOTES.

(By

“Lorgnette.”)

WELLINGTON, December 20

A unique interest attaches to the coming grand opera tour, which is to be inaugurated at the Grand Opera House on Monday evening next by the J. C. Williamson Grand Opera Company, and the enterprise should be nothing less than the first chapter of a permanent grand opera organisation for Australasia. There has never been any doubt that in this part of the world we possess the voices and other resources — opportunity has alone been wanting. Of course, everything has its beginning, and so at last has come the chance for establishing grand opera in a permanent way here. So we are having the farewell tours of Muriel Starr. In her three visits to the Dominion the Americantrained young Canadian has been seen in a range of plays of extraordinary diversity. She has appeared in comedy on occasion, but for the better part of her stay in the southern hemisphere she has traversed the highways and by-ways of emotionalism. Miss Starr’s engagement in these parts has been almost universally happy. Her farewell season in Wellington will open at the Grand Opera House on January 22, with “The Man Who Came Back,” and will be followed by “The Bird of Paradise.”