KUBELIK TO TOUR

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 855, 26 December 1929, Page 14

KUBELIK TO TOUR

INTERESTING CAREER Kubelik will be the first of the visiting artists in Australia next year. He will begin his season in Melbourne about the end of March or the beginning of April. The tour, which will be made under the direction of Messrs. J. and N. Tait, 13 unlikely to extend to New eZaland. Kubelik, who was born In 18S0, visited Australia in 1908, eight years after his London debut at a Richter concert. The story of this violinist’s rise to fame and fortune is full of interest. Jan Kubelik’s father was a gardener living at Michle, near Prague, with very little money, but blessed with a great love of music. When Jan found a violin in the possession of his elder brother, he begged his father to teach him too. The boy was only five years old, but in three months he was superior to his'elder brother, and in six months knew more than his father. People came miles to hear the child, and managers were eager to bring him before the public. But Kubelik senior, though very poor, would not listen to them. He knew that if he made money by exploiting Jan as a child wonder, the boy’s future would be ruined. At 12 years *Jan was taken to the Plague Conservatoire and placed under the famous teacher Sevcik for six years. Fame came quickly to Kubelik. When his studies at the Prague Conservatoire were over, on the day of the final examination, his playing created a furore. In 1902 Kubelik made his first tour of the United States when from 60 concerts he netted £23,000. A second tour realised £50,000, and that with other earnings enabled him later to buy Prince Hohenlohe’s ancestral estates in Silesia for £160,000.

ALDA AND O’SHEA

Singing Together For Radio PUCCINI’S “BUTTERFLY” Twenty-two seasons as prima donna soprano for the Metropolitan Opera House are behind Frances Alda, who made known her decision recently to let twenty-two be enough. Madame Alda, who recently toured Australia and New Zealand without great financial success and who returned to America with a very decided dislike of Australia and everything pertaining to it, Vill henceforth sing entirely for the radio. Madame Alda, who was partly responsible herself for a certain measure of unpopularity, expressed her opinion of Australia in no uncertain terms. New Zealand, according to the temperamental soprano, was not so bad.

Strangely enough in her first radio performance, when Puccini’s “Madame Butterfly” was given, her Pinkerton was the Australian, Alfred O’Shea, who sang in Auckland not very long ago. Referring to Alda’s performance, an American critic states that “radio has made a good gain out of opera’s loss. She was in excellent form, her voice coming through with all clarity. Not only tonally was her performance worth special mention, but her acting was intelligently conveyed and adapted to wireless exigencies.” It was said that O’Shea’s Pinkerton was “generally good.”

News of Vladimir de Pathmann's illness brings to mind the hope he once ardently expressed of retiring from concert life. It was his ■‘dream,” de Pachmann said, to acquire one or two more rare stones for his diamond collection and to buy a modest little house in a remote corner of Europe. “'And then,” he remarked with one of his excruciating grins, “I shall wear ze dressing gown and slippers. • I shall play no more for ze damn public, but I shall play for me.”