MADAME CLARA BUTT'S FAREWELL CONCERT.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8511, 16 August 1907, Page 7

MADAME CLARA BUTT'S FAREWELL CONCERT.

'(From Our London Correspondent.) LONDON, July 1. Before we again have the privilege iof ilstening to either Madame Clara Butt, or her husband, Mr Kennerly Rumford. they will have charmed sixty or seventy audiences drawn from the principal cities of Australia and New Zealand. On Saturday afternoon, which was their "goodbye concert," we gave up attempting to count either the fragrant tributes or the encores, and those of the huge audience who had helped by their clamorous demands to interrupt the programme's appointed course, paid the penalty, upon leaving, by encountering as violent a {thunderstorm as London has witnessed for a long time. As for the afternoon's music, there is little to be said, save as a mere record. It may be noted that the popular contralto was in full possession of her vocal powers, and did her best to breathe fresh life into Donizetti's faded aria "0 mio Fernando," giving, when asked for more, a melodious,and unaffected setting by LandonJKonald of "Believe me, if all Those Endearing Young Charms." No need to say how Madame Butt sang so well-tried a favourite as Mr Liddle's "Abide With Me," or the evergreen "Kathleen Mavourneen," given as an encore, or that her voice told admirably in a duet from Goring Thomas 5 "Nadeshda," in which she was joined by her husband. Mr Rumford, for his part., made a very spirited essay, among other things, in a well - known excerpt from Rossini's "II Barbiere," his choice for- an encore falling upon one of Maude Valerie White's graceful songs. Between them, naturally enough, the two artists named shared the afternoon's chief honors.