"ALIEN'S" LETTER FROM ENGLAND.

Otago Witness, Issue 2809, 15 January 1908, Page 75

"ALIEN'S" LETTER FROM ENGLAND.

(Specially Written for the Witness Ladiee' PageJ LIGHT AND SHADE.

All operatic London is raving about the new Patti — Mme. Tetrazzini — a Russian, •who made her English debut in "La Traviata" at Covent Garden on the 2nd of November. It is one of those romances that make themes for the novelist — yesterday unknown, and to-day the idol of London ! And nowhere else in the world can genius come so quickly to fame. Mme. Tetrazzini came to London a few short weeks ago with a good Continental reputation; but comparatively unknown, and was at once hailed as the second Patti. The scenes at Covent Garden have oeen ■without comparison since Patti's debut. The stalls and boxes alike have simply gone wild with delight and enthusiasm, and have expressed their delight as only such an audience can. Kings and queens, princes and princesses have been among the most enthusiastic of the audience, and it has been curious to note how far they have travelled sometimes from the scene of other functions to be present at the Tetrazzini nights at Covent Garden. Mme. , Tetrazzini is dark and handsome, with the beautifuL eyes that go with the artist .Nature. But her whole personality is • merged in her singing. She is not acting, Dut living her part, and the spell under •which she puts the audience is unbroken till she ceases — and then ! When asked how to become a singer she replied : " I am afraid I cannot teJ you. When I go on the stage to play 'Violetta' or ' Luia ' I simply forget all about the audience, and — how do you 6ay? — ' lose ' myself in my part and the music. Do you know, the other night, after I had sung in the scene between"Violetta and the father of •Giorgio Germont, in 'La Traviata,' there ■were real tears on my cheek." And there ••were tears on the cheeks of others also, and when the house found voice what raptures of applause! Mme. Tetrazzini says no one can learn to sing as people learn to play games. The gift of a voice and a heart : the heart to feel the great passions and the voice to interpret them. " But how' often does tins occur? 1 have heard so many vocalists with wonderful, pur-e, perfectly-trained voices who sing the notes flawlessly — but that is all-. There is no warmth, no passion, in their singing ; it- leaves one quite unmoved afterwards. And this is solely because they have not been born with a heart. "The voice can be trained, but the heart never. It is there or it is not there." -* From her earliest years Tetrazzini has been steeped in music. Her elder sister "was a prima donna, and the atmosphere >f her young environment was music. Hearing her sister sing inspired the j'oung girl with the ambition to sing too. " Then in Italy — the land of the sun — everybody sings. You hear them in the streets, the cafes, the theatres — everywhere you go. In Florence, where I was born, no one is so poor o-r so sad that they cannot lift their voices in a light-hearted canzonetta. I think the Italian people must have music in their blood." But her parents were very much against Mme. Tetrazzini becoming an opera singer at first. They thought one prima donna in the family enough. " But I felt as though I had to sing or die. At last," her narrative runs, " they let me go to a teacher, and I sang him the chief soprano scenes from Borto's ' Mejistojele ' and * Semiramide ' and the ' Aye Maria ' from Verdi's 'Otello.' He seemed to be astonished, and said I had a natural 'trill,' and also that I had nothing to learn in ' respiration.' I studied operatic parts with him for six months,, and that is all the training I ever had," is the astonishing statement. Mme. Tetrazzini says that she has never heard Patti or Melba'except on the gramaphone. "I want to bear the Australian singer very much." Curiously enough, she was singing not loni ago at the Tivolo in San Francisco at the game time as JNlelba was singing at th« Alhambra in the same town, so - as they were both singing at the same time it was impossible. Mme. Tetrazzini has been paying some of the penalties as well as receivings the rewards of her triumph. For days after her sudden leap into fame at Covent Garden she was inundated not only with ■ callers and flowers and letters, but with photographers, reporters, and offers to sing into gramaphones. But, after all. what a royal road to success! Hard-working and ' great as -it has so far been, it has not known the despair of many a great artist. I was readinsr the 6tory the other day of Mies Marie Hall, the wonderful violinist, and her -success. Here, again, was the God-given gift, but the way was harder to the laurels. The sketch of her childnood is infinitely touching, when even in .the streets her "music arrested and gave its message to the wayfarer. For an instant the little crowd stands in a "poised intensity of listening, hushed to catch every breath of the stilled music; m their ears is yet the dimming echo of the last plaintive strains of the violin, the echo of thai- mu«ic which has arrested their passing, which has caught them with insidious, compelling fingers, and drawn them clo?e, 'closer, till they press in a dense, si'ent "circle about tli« child and the old man with .his harp. For a moment the child stand*, heT cheek caressingly nestied against the "violin, listening to the reverberating whispers; the bow hovers an instant above the strings, wavers, then the thin, tired arm •falls and the shoulders pathetically droop — she is such, a little girl, and so very tired and cold. Drays and trucks rumble over the muddy cobbles; street children scream to one another shrilly ; the fretful whimpering of a baby rises to a wail ; eddies of dank fog creep in from the river; the chill drizzle falls with dreary monotony. The last echo is dead; ■ the spell is broken. The child raises her head, and her dark, sorrowful eyes sefch appealingly from one peering face to another. Kough facesj hard faces, have these men —

1 eailor-men and deck-hands, factory workers | and teamsters; they stare back at the child | with eyes unconsciously softened, eyes from j which coarse-fibred souls have just now ' peeped, lured by the music from unknown depjhs. In the dreary chill of winter twilights, in the stifling summer nights, when the violin must pierce above the discords of the roaring, teeming streets, above the clamour and , quarrelling of scores of grimy, unheeding ■ children, they play, these two, patiently, uncomplainingly; they play, and wait. But this child was to reach Buckingham Palace and play for the Que-en ; for her a " bow-length compared to that road over which others must struggle. 1 ' Edward El gar and the great Wilhelmj gave the child free instruction ; then she won the Wessely scholarship at the Royal Academy of Music in London ; then because she had ' not the means to live in London she re- ' turned to Bristol, where the genius of I the child of 11 made influential friends, so 1 ; that afterwards study in Prague became ; j possible ; then followed 20 months of unj ceasing work under a greafprofessor with ' whom the celebrated Jan Kubelik had pre- | viously studied. " Twenty months ! A mere clock-tick of time. Only 20 months, and then the great master places hi 6 own bow in the child's hands and' tells her that she alone can interpret its glorious message to the world." Which Marie Hall has done. In every Court in Europe and in every capital every honour which fame can win is given to this girl of 21., As' she crosses the stage and comes down to the footlights through the great hush of 1 the packed house, you who have never before Been Marie Hall will feel a shock of disappointment. You have come to see and to hear one of the greatest women violinists in the world, and there will stand before you a simple, unaffected child, with great, sad i eyes; a girl slender and fragile and delicate, dressed simply in white, like your own i schoolgirl daughter at your side. She is 1 not beautiful, only jery sweet ; there is about her none of that compelling personal magnetism of the great concert performers, no mannerisms, no aggressive self-assurance. As she stands there swaying in the glare of the footlights, a lonely "figure before the gie*t crowd, you who know Tier story see m her the little violinist of bygone days; and perhaps she, too, sees beyond you and past the glare of lights and the glitter of jewels, back to the old life, for there is -no smile in the sombre, thoughtful eye 3 nor in the pale girlish face; the throbbing prelude echoes away and dies; 'the girl raises the violin quietly and draws the bow sharply across the strings. And with that simple motion the air be- , comes glorified with pulsing intonations. The essence of life '->as\ crystallised into sound ; fresh-throated new birds sing ; little soft nestling babies crow and gurgle — love — love — love; blue sky is above you — the air ia warm, heavy with -fragrance, drowsy with. 3umrner sunshine and the droning of lazy, I blundering bees and beetles ; there is the < rustle of crisp green leaf against its neighbour, the murmur of a pine forest, the lapping of creamy little waves on white sand. Faster! Sharper! Shrieks of laughter and calls of romping, rollicking children — playtime, dance-tim«, you are laughing aloud — no, you are sobbing! The wind is cold — it is growing dusk — frightened children I whimper and cry in the dark ; there is the ' hiss of wind-driven rain — the trees drip — the surf booms sullenly — there is the long moan of the bitter cold night wind. Faster, faster, faster! The world is^ mad. Fear is abroad; a lost soul is swept by in j the blackness; someone is hurt — is dying — iis dead ; wail upon wail of women in an- ' guish — -the slow throb of the last march for ihe soldier dead — the cold, filled grave, Jid the lonely rain-washed hillside. j A bare of golden trumpets — the.hosannas of a thoupand glad voices! Life, light, tvarnith, perfume, colour; and then, softer, I fainter, more and more exquisite in the ' swiftly lengthening distance, there float back 1 th« carols of 9 band of little children trampj ing away down the dusty 3un-lit road and OTsr tb.2 hill into the silence. -* S'ich is the description given by W. G. Beymer of Marie Hall's playing. To turn away from life's successes to j life's failures is like the sudden plunging from light into darkness. But the darkl ness is here, and must be contemplated. I Already the cry of hungry children is j loud in the land, and our winter but just j begun. The dosing of tho mills in Sunderv| land through shortage of work has thrown I many thousands out of work in the north, ' and grim want has caused awful suffering. I The Mayor of Sunderland has a terrible I task before him — a task to make the ' stoutest heart quail, with thousands of I staining men and women crying, "Where I shall we get the next meal for our children?" Subscriptions were- wired from London — £110 the first day the truth of j 30,000 starving was known. One Labour lpader sa.id he couldn't bear to walk down the centre of the town in daylight and face the men waiting at every corner .asking where food was to come from for their children. One man said he knew that he couldn't do anything for him — he didn't ask it, although he had had no food for twio days, — but he asked for food to be got somehow for his two children, who were shut up at home, starving. 1 The homes are bare and the fire-grates ! empty ; everything has gone that could possibly be done without to turn into money for bread. The children go fainting to school, and one little girl had to be j fed with" hot cocoa by teaspoonfuk befoie i she could get the strength to eat the fcod \ ' provided there. ; And with Christmastide approaching the tragedy of contrast in the London streets j has to be met at every turn. "There are 1 eight millions," Jerome K. Jerome says . In his "Troubles of a, Well-fed Man," I '"living in these islands on the verge of J starvation — eight millions who do not know { I what a dinner means, eight millions living j th«- lives of wild beasts. They get in the 1 way of my sports. I like skating, and I get cheerful when cold, frosty weather I come 6 ; ajid then perhaps I have to walk jup the Embankment — there they are, 1 ! huddled va t in their tattered rags. If you j

don't throw them overboard altogether, what are you going to do with the-m?" There is England's problem. But it is with the children that the contrasts are saddest. Sid© by side with the gay epriies of happy circumstances the gaunteyed waif looks on, as eager for joy and warmth and^foad as only the outcast can be. But these contrasts are too varied to enter into in a paragraph, and must wait for my next letter, where I will ask ! you to accompany me through the Christ- j mas streets.