ALDA'S OUTBURST

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 210, 24 November 1927, Page 18

ALDA'S OUTBURST

AUSTRALIANS AMUSED “UNTRUE AND RIDICULOUS’’ More amusement than resentment has been caused by the outburst of Madame Alda against Australia, as cabled from Vancouver. The s merer nrac- I

me singer prac- 1 j tica 11 y repeated [ with variations the [ “motif” that was | her theme in Adei laide and Perth \ relative to Ausjj tralian taste and ’ Australian institutions. “Abominable.” “uni endurable.” “insufi ferable,” were three * adjectives she applied to their con-cert-halls, theatres

and railway trains. The last “shake all the music out of

“Cold as Ice-Boxes” Mr. Frank Tait, one of the proprietors of the Auditorium, where Madame Alda had her Melbourne season, admitted that he could not tell what the singer meant when she said that all the concert rooms were .as cold as iceboxes. “There is a modern heating system in operation at the Auditorium,” he said, “and I assume that it was in use during Madame Alda’s season. It was mere for use, anyway. “I understand that while she was here Madame Alda spoke of the bad taste of Melbourne audiences. She came at a bad time, I suppose, after other famous artists. The public she appealed to were the same as had supported the others. “It is noteworthy that Mr. Hislop, who came after Mad|pe, was singularly successful in appealing to Melbourne mu sic-lovers. He found no fault with the concert hall or the people’s taste. I have the highest regard for Alda’s art, but her remarks seem to have been dictated by personal feeling. “Our theatres —I speak only for J. C. Williamson, Ltd. —are all centrally heated, not so greatly as American theatres, of course, but we think them over-heated and stuffy, just as Alda thinks ours cold and freezing.” “A Great Frost” One musician refused to comment. His eyes twinkled, and he said reflectively, “Yes, as I remember it, there was a great frost just about the time Alda was here. No doubt she felt it.”

Says a writer in an Australian paper: “The inquiry as to who is Melba’s successor gets an answer from Thomas Beecham: ‘Florence Austral is the world’s finest dramatic soprano,’ says the conductor, as recorded in a cable. By loosing the Melbourne singer on London in an entirely Wagnerian programme Beecham confirms the opinion of some few Sydney critics who five or six years ago ventured to announce