AMUSEMENTS.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVI, Issue 2074, 28 December 1907, Page 2 (Supplement)

AMUSEMENTS.

local fixtures. HIS MAJESTY’S. To-night—Howard Vernon’s Company “Chrysanthemums.” 1908. January 1 and 2 Cooper’s Biogrnph Company. March 11 to 14—Brough Flemming Company. 4. May 11, 12, 13—J. O. Williamson. Juno 8, 9, 10—J. C. Williamson. August 12, 13, 14—Frank Thornton. Tho Oporascopo Company opens on New Year’s night. Blanch Arral had 110 "compunction in taking the concert platform in Sydney -after Melba and following with the mad scene from Hamlet.

Tlio lady who was billed on the Trip to Chinatown programme as iMr AY. Thorpe, taking the part of Rashleigh Guy, is a first-class performer in songs and dances of the vaudevillo typo and reminds one very much of Aland Beatty at her best.

Tlio “Bulletin” scut a Sydney musical authority to report Melba, and got this result: Very doggedly determined to. ova to was the crowd that filled Sydney Town. Hall 011 last Saturday niidit. And rightly so. Melba is our prodigy, slip is the most wonderful thing we have exported to date; sho is a Marchesi pupil (poor old Ceeclii wo wave gently asido). She wears great Orders, and comes to us followed by the affectionate regard of a dozen European Courts. She is an institution. Fervently have Molbadovers been proclaiming these weeks past that tho Voice is “still there,” still as fresh us ever it was, with all its “girlish” quality of years baclf. Wo are proud of our Melba, and so wo protest and wo protest. But does the community at the back of its head believes all . these things which it so wants to believe? Tho writer recalls tho night, .nearly a decade agonc, when lie saw this artist for the first time. Covent Garden mis packed from floor to roof to hear her with tlio do Iteskes (Jean and Edouard) in “Romeo et Juliette.” “011 Lammas-eve at night shall she be fourteen” —almost the music seemed to phrase the words, and then Juliet came 011 with thuds —not Shakespeare's Juliot, but a Juliet who was matronly, buxom, and wore black gipsy hair about her shoulders. Then presently tho gorgeous voice poured forth, and straightway one knew there could lie no other Juliet but this, the most gracious sweet- childwoman any poet ever imagined; and till the curtain fell at the end the spell lusted. AA’ould the Melba voice of last week compel any such allusion? It is divine; but is it divine as a girl’s voice is div.i.ne? Is it still, for that matter. of an effortless, undimmed freshness even? Melba, honest, forthright hater of cant as she is, must have smiled wearily and oft- at the futile stuff which has been written and chattered about her in this connection of late. She is still the great singer of bravura passages, tliougii hero .noticeably a little of the oldtime consummate ease is wanting; still a most polished' and agile vocal genius, with an organ which in a thousand respects has- marvellously outlived her youth; but appreciation stops at that point, and hysteria and all- fulsomeness begin. Ot her numbers the Donizetti “Mad Scene” impressed and astounded the ' most. The valse song—Arditi’s “So Saran Rose” —appeared to give more genuine pleasure than any other to. a type of audience whose cup of ioy would have overflowed had Gounod's Julietto aria been on the programme. Very beautiful was Lenimone’s flute rendering of Briccialdi’s “AYind among tlio Trees” ; and Andrew Black and clever Uua Bourne did notably weli.