RICHARD CROOKS

Evening Star, Issue 22458, 1 October 1936, Page 8

RICHARD CROOKS

VISIT OF AMERICAN TENOR The world-famous tenor, Richard Crooks, who is to be presented at the Town Hall on Monday night next by Messrs J. and N. Tait, met with a wonderful reception when he made his first New Zealand appearance at the Wellington Town Hall on Tuesday last. The huge auditorium was filled to its utmost capacity, additional chairs having to be installed to accommodate the record audience. He captured his hearers with his first solo, and from then on the singer scored a wonderful success. _ He was liberal with his encores, and it was half-past 10 before he sang his final number. Then followed a scene of indescribable enthusiasm, quite unprecedented in the history of the Town Hall. The following morning the box plans for his second and final concert were rushed, and every seat was booked up. There has been a large and steady demand for seats for next Monday night’s concert, and it is likely that Richard Crooks will sing before one of the largest audiences ever known in Dunedin. Those who wish to hear the celebrated tenor, and who have not already reserved their seats should book them immediately. Tho catholicity of Richard Crooks’s interests and studies appears in programmes that provide for classics, operatic music. lieder, “ art songs,” and popular ballads. “Even more at home on tho concert platform than he is in opera, this singer,” wrote a Sydney critic, “ imparts to his more popular music a sense of intimacy and genial warmth that captures an audience. They attend in their thousands to hear ‘ Until ’ and the ‘ Song of Songs,’ But they have meanwhile come face to face with some of the best music ever composed for the voice, and never without response to something new, a little strange,_ but strangely stirring. Scarcely conscious of it, they begin to feel a new allegiance. The spell grows stronger until_ they are won over to the great things in song. Richard Crooks is large, imposing, genial, quiet spoken, and delightfully informal, and, like that other great tenor, M'Cormack, kindling to enthusiasm when he talked of the great things in the singer’s repertory and the great exponents of them.” “ It was fine,” wrote the same critic, “to hear Richard Crooks speak in terms of generous admiration of his confreres of the singer’s art. Martinelli, Edward Johnson, M'Cormack, Schipa, Tibbett, Lily Pons, Rosa Ponselle—all these came under review while wo were chatting, and the merits of each were urged by the famous tenor in a spirit of genuine camaraderie and just appraisal.” The public of Dunedin is evidently aware of the fact that it is a rare privilege to have an opportunity to hear a world-famous singer in their own town hall, while he is still in the zenith of his fame, and it has demonstrated this fact by the heavy booking which has taken place at the D.I.C,