THE SAPIO-URSO COMPANY.

Southern Cross, Volume 2, Issue 9, 2 June 1894, Page 9

THE SAPIO-URSO COMPANY.

Lovers of music throughout the district will be delighted to learn that the Sapio-Urso Company intend to begin their New Zealand tour at Invercargill, opening here on Tuesday, 12th inst., and giving two other concerts on the 14th #,nd 15th. Speaking of the opening of the season in Melbourne the Age remarked : “ It is a long time since a concert of high-class music has aroused such a furore of delighted applause here as that given at the Town Hall last night, when Madame de Vere-Sapio made her first bow to an Australian audience, and Madame Camilla Urso revisited the scene of her former triumphs after an absence of fourteen years. . . . Madame Sapio has a soprano voice of full round tone and great power. Its compass, as exhibited last mght, extends from A below the staii to E in alt, or two octaves and a fifth, and the quality is perfectly even and homogeneous throughout this great 'range. Her voice has the true sympathetic ring’ about it without which no singer can ever be really great. Highly as rumour had spoken od Madame Sapio, it had hardly done her justice. —And how can we speak of the great violiniste in words that will adequately express all that there is to convey P Utterly undemonstrative in manner, devoid of all the tricks and flourishes which form half the stock-in-trade of the inferior player, and from which even great artists are not always free, she might give a deaf man the impression of being a cold and unsympathetic exponent of her art ; though how great would be his error needs no telling to those who have ears to hear. Her playing is of the kind that can hardly fail to move the heart and quicken the pulses of the most apathetic listener, and roused her audience to the highest pitch of excitement. At the conclusion of one of the selections the whole house “ gave tongue,” and Madame Urso was well-nigh concealed behind a small mountain of floral tributes.” We may add that with these queens of the concert stage are associated Signor Sapio / the renowned composer and conductor, and Mr Walker, the eminent baritone.