“SING MUCK”

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 428, 9 August 1928, Page 9

“SING MUCK”

Dame Advises Dame AUSTRALIANS HURT OFFENDING MEMOIRS (United P.A. —By Telegraph — Copyright) (Australian and N.Z. Press Association) SYDNEY, Wednesday. Australians have been stirred by a reported reference in the memoirs of Dame Clara Butt, the famous prima donna, which have just been published in London. In one paragraph Dame Nellie Melha is alleged to have said to Dame Clara when the latter was coming to Australia for the first time: “Sing them muck. It is all they understand.” Dame Nellie denied having uttered the offending words. As a result of an interchange of cablegrams it is explained that the paragraph quoted “crept into the book” without Dame Clara’s knowledge. The publication of the book has now been stopped and efforts are being made to recall the copies already issued. A message from London says the "Daily Express” asks: “What did Melba say in 1906. If we may venture an opinion the advice she is said to have given is sound as applied to any country, although it is of a kind better spoken than repeated in writing. After all Dame Nellie will be remembered more for what the ‘highbrows’ might unpleasantly describe as ‘muck’ on her programmes, than for classical selections.

“Tosti’s ‘Good-bye,’ and ‘Down in the Forest,’ were her ace and king of trumps, and she always kept ‘Home, Sweet Home’ up her sleeve. We urge both ladies to be calm. Muck-raking may be the pastime of a certain type of politician, but it is not for Dames.”

Plainly memoir-writing is a risky busines, but not ail Dame Clara’s book is written in words so sharp. She tells many good stories of her colonial tours, and here is one of an occasion upon which she- and Melba gave concerts in Calgary on the same day, the bookings clashing by accident. “On the morning of their arrival the two special cars were ‘parked’ in the station side by side, and Dame Clara heard Dame Nellie singing like a lark long before she was out of bed. Soon a note arrived from the Australian singer, with an invitation to breakfast, and when the two parties foregathered the Pressmen began to swarm about them. Dame Clara soon explained the situation. ‘When I heard both concerts were to be the same night, I knew we should be all right,’ she said. ‘1 knew we should get Dame Nellie’s overflow!’ There was plenty of good-natured badinage over the situation, which was summed up by one of the reporters thus: ’I left the two Dames standing hand in hand, quarelling over whose ‘overflow’ the other was to have. . . . Both concerts were crowded. Many of the guests had solved the problem by going to half of each programme.”