STAGE ATTRACTIONS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 8 April 1938, Page 4

STAGE ATTRACTIONS

CELEBRITIES DUE THIS YEAR. The first of the musical celebrities to be presented by J. and N. Tait in Australia and New Zealand this year will be Lawrence Tibbett, the baritone, star of opera, concert, and screen. His Melbourne season will open at the Town Hall .on Saturday evening, May 28, when the first of his series of concerts will be' gitfen. Tibbett is the idol of New York audieencs, and sings to packed houses. He is a great actor as well as a great singer, and J. and N. Tait will present him in programmes which will afford concert patrons the opportunity of hearing him in items which will display his wondrous art in both phases. Recently, in New York, concert audiences were thrilled when Tibbett sang 20 songs and then acceded to insatiable demands for more. He is very .generous with his encores. Kirsetn Flagstad, the world’s greatest dramatic soprano, will commence her concert season in Melbourne, under the J.' and N. Tait direction, at the Town Hall on July 16. Kirsten began to study the piano as a child, but her parents had ambitions for her to become a doctor. Her beginning as a singer was largely accidental. At the age of ten for her own ■ amusement She began studying the role of Elsa in “Lohengrin” and at a party she sang excerpts from this opera. A musical friend told her that she would ruin her voice if she did not develop it properly, and decided to give the child a few lessons. Thus began her studies as a singer.