“STUDENT PRINCE" AND “MADAME POMPADOUR”

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 354, 15 May 1928, Page 15

“STUDENT PRINCE" AND “MADAME POMPADOUR”

BOX PLANS NOW OPEN The preferential box plans are now open at Lewis Eady Ltd., for the season of the J. C. Williamson Royal Comic Opera Company, which commences at His Majesty’s Theatre on Wednesday, May 23, and extends for three weeks, during which the two most popular comic operas of recent years, “The Student Prince” and “Madame Pompadour” will be staged. “The Student Prince,” the spectacular comic opera appeals not only as a tender, romantic love story set to exquisite music, but it also has a potent appeal to all who love either mass singing or concert music or both. The earlier and later scens of “The Student Prince” are laid in Old Heidelberg, and are replete with the gatherings of the students en masse. The moment the students corps arrives there is a mass singing of college songs and also the solos .and duets of the principal characters against the high tonal background of the student chorus and the maids of the inn. This mass singing has been one of the great features of “The Student Prince” everywhere. Of "Madame Pompadour,” the company’s second production, a Sydney critic says, “The great days of Versailles were revived last night when ‘Madame Pompadour’ made her appearance in operatic guise. It was a brilliantly successful first night and the Dutch leading lady, Beppie de Vries, justified all that had been said of her. The opera is full of colour and melody. It also has a genuinq strain of humour. To add to its other merits, the piece has a plot that would do credit to romantic drama.” Prominent people in the company are Beppie de Vries, James Liddy, Frank Webster, Hedley Hall, Arthur Stegant, Leslie Holland, Vera Spouli, Adele Crane and the famous 40 singing students.