AMUSEMENTS.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXII, Issue 50, 23 February 1912, Page 5

AMUSEMENTS.

MISS ROSIN A BUCKMAN. It is necessary for a person possessing striking talents in any of the arts to sojourn abroad to be. appreciated in his or her birthplace. Australians did not know that Nellie Armstrong could sing until, as the incomparable Melba, she had won the plaudits of the cognoscenti. Miss Rosina Buckman has for some years now demonstrated that she is among the first flight of vocal artists, and has been able to charm the most critical audiences. In the opinion of the present writer there is hardly a better woman’s voice in Australasia, and it has, since her successful debut, attained a maturity that cannot come to an artist except by direct contact with life, with passion, with joy, and with sorrow. These things are necessary, apart from all aids of training and culture, to add soul to singing. Miss Buckman has interested Melba, and therefore Miss Buckman is introduced to a career. But even the artistic aid of the greatest singer cannot give to a people the Divine gift of singing to the heart. Miss (Buckman has this gift. In the mechanics (if one may use this phrase) the singer is accomplished, and the voice itself is of very fine quality indeed, and in the past few years she has felt the magnetism of her art, and has been able to transmit it. On Febraury 29th Stratford will hear this gifted singer. It is not merely that the local people may go to see her, because they knew her as a child, but because she is a recognised artist whose brilliancy is never questioned outside Taranaki. She will be assisted by Mr. Hamilton Hodges, the fine Afro-American vocalist and others. Miss Buckman is later proceeding to England to further her studies.