STARS AT COVENT GARDEN

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 44, 14 May 1927, Page 5

STARS AT COVENT GARDEN

The Grand Opera Season

ONLY one new opera is on the list of the Covent Garden productions for the season which opened on May 2 and that is Puccini’s “Turandot.” But there are several others that have not been heard at Covent Garden for long, such at Beethoven’s “Fidelio,” Verdi’s “Trovatore,” Mozart’s “Seraglio,” and Meyerbeer’s “Huguenots.” “Trovatore” has not been sung at a foreign season at Covent Garden since 1595. The singers include several of the best of those who have been heard in the past three seasons, and also a number of newcomers. None of the sopranos will be more warmly welcomed back than Mme. Lotte Lehmann, the principal soprano of the Vienna Opera, who is perhaps the finest artist of all the remarkable Austrian and German women who have sung at Covent Garden since 1924. She is to sing again the part of the Marschallin in Strauss’s “Rose Cavalier,” in which she first made Londoners her friends. Other parts which Mme. Lehmann has sung with every accomplishment and charm are Elsa, Iva, and Desdemona. There have een two other distinguished women

musicians named Lehmann—Lilli, the great Wagnerian soprano, and Liza, the English song-writer. In fullness of voice and superb stage presence, Mme. Maria Jeritza is the most striking soprano of the list. By birth she is a Moravian. She has sung at the Vienna Opera since 1913, and since 1921 lias been idolised in America. To-day her splendid voice, her handsome person, and golden locks are famous the world over. She will take the part of the Princess in “Turandot.”

The little Hungarian coloratura soprano, Maria Ivogun, will be heard again. She is 36. Munich has long been her home, and her husband is Karl Erb, a German tenor who this year is to appear at Covent Garden for the first time.

Great things are expected of Mme. Helene Wildbru«n, the Berlin soprano who is to sing Leonora in “Fidelio.” She is Viennese by birth, and was a pupil of Mme. Papier-Paumgariner. She began her operatic career at Vienna and at Dortmund as a contralto, and then went on to Stuttgart as a dramatic soprano. She has for some time been a great favourite of

opera-goers in Berlin. One of the new contraltos, Mme. Sigrid Onegin, has long had a great name in Germany and in America. She is 41; she was born of German parents (Hoffmann by name) in Sweden, was trained in Italy, and married a Russian composer, Eugcn Onegin, who was a pup\l of Sir Charles Stanford’s in London.

British singers are very few in the list. One is the tenor, John O’Sullivan, unknown as yet save by gramophone records, but who has sung much and received much praise in Italy. Mr Dennis Noble, the excellent young baritone of the 8.N.0.C. (with whom he was singing Figaro in Rossini’s “Barber of Seville” the other day), is re-engaged for Covent; Garden, where he has sung several times. The new Italian tenor, Aureliano Pertile, comes with all the laurels of Milan. He was chosen by Toscanini to sing the tenor part in Boito’s “Nero” in 1924. He was born near Padua and is 41. The Italian baritone. Carlo Galeffi, also comes with strong recommendations, as w r ell as being favourably known by his gramophone re cords.