ENGLISH OPERA

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 132, 25 August 1927, Page 16

ENGLISH OPERA

BEECHAM’S NEW PLAN A few hints regarding his great opera scheme which he proposes to reveal in the near future have recently been dropped by Sir Thomas Beecham. Broadly speaking, it as a scheme to maintain a first-class opera company, mainly, but not wholly, English-speak-ing, in London during the greater part of the year, and also a symphonic orchestra, permanently engaged and fully occupied with the best music. Scattered over the world, said Sir Thomas, there are a number of Eng-lish-speaking singers of the first order of excellence, who would make London —which, all said and done, is as agreeable a place as any in the world —their main field of activity if they could. Edward Johnson, the Canadian, is one of the best all-round tenors now singing, and both Piccaver, of Vienna, and James Hislop—one of the most intelligent and artistic of living opera singers— are British. Every week or so one hears of Eng-lish-speaking singers having success abroad. Eva Turner, formerly of the t’arl Rosa Company, has just made her name at the great Colon Theatre, 1 luenos Aires, as a dramatic soprano. In Brussels a young American baritone has lately been singing “Don Giovanni” in a way that has made a “star” of him. . .. _ But I am not banking only on existing singers. Onco a scheme such as I have in mind gets going, singers will crop up as they did in the time of the old Beecham Opera Company. A subsidiary part of the scheme deals with the coaching of such singers as are merely promising or just ordinarily able to develop their stage effectiveness. ___