GILBERT AND SULLIVAN

Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 January 1941, Page 2

GILBERT AND SULLIVAN

NEW OPERA COMPANY. A BRILLIANT COMBINATION. In the course of a conversation with a “Wairarapa Times-Age” representative last night. Mr J. Farrell, business manager of the J. C. Williamson Gilbert and Sullivan Company, which is to stage “The Gondoliers" at Masterton on February 11. stated that the company had achieved a phenomenal success in New Zealand. The Auckland season had been extended and had been a remarkable one. At Hamilton last night hundreds had been turned away. In Auckland the present company was considered the best Gilbert and Sullivan combination to visit the northern city for at least twenty years.

Mr John Fullard. the noted young London Covent Garden tenor possessed the real tenor voice which was so rarely heard nowadays, said Mr Farrell. It was recognised wherever the company had played that no one on the stage had ever sung “Take a Pair of Sparkling Eyes" so well as Mr Fullard. Miss Viola Wilson, another Covent Garden singer, had a magnificent soprano voice. Like Mr Fullard she would make her first appearance in Masterton on February 11- Mr Ivan Menzies, who was well known in Masterton, was a strong advocate of the moral rearmament movement. The company was certainly a brilliant one. said Mr Farrell.