STRENUOUS LIFE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 22 September 1938, Page 5

STRENUOUS LIFE

LAWRENCE TIBBETT’S TOUR STRAIN OF SINGING. SEVERE TAX PHYSICALLY. “Yehudi Menuhin will come to Australia and New Zealand again in 1940 —your centenary year,” said Mr J. Evans, who was in New Zealand as manager for Lawrence Tibbett. “I must say that our relations with the Menuhins, all through, have been most delightful. Speaking of Mr Tibbett, Mr Evans said his trip to Australia and New Zealand meant that he had had to gC) without his vacation this year. He had had no rest, save that on the ship. Before leaving he sang one night in Los Angeles and sailed the next day for Sydney. He will arrive back on October 3, will begin another tour of the United States on October 4, and will continue to sing until May. “That is a tremendous tax,” said Mr Evans, “for singing great programmes is a severe tax physically. It takes as much out of Mr Tibbett as a 40-minute match does out of a boxer or a wrestler. It is the same with Menuhin, who has two changes of underclothing every evening he plays. “Even while touring or on holiday, a man like ’Tibbett has to study .new and learn new songs. On this tour he is studying the role of the fat? knight in ‘Falstalf,’ and Boris in ‘Boris Godounov,’ with more than.a glance at Simon Boccanegra.’ ” “I might tell you that the negotiations for the present tour of Lawrence

Tibbett occupied five years,” said Mr Evans. “The demand for the services of world stars is exceptional. They are wanted for opera, for the concert platform, and often for pictures—apd then you find some distant country calling for them. Well, it can be done only now and again.”