KELLY’S MOTTO

Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 July 1941, Page 6

KELLY’S MOTTO

FIGURE IN ENTERTAINMENT WORLD.

For anything I know to the contrary he never had a motto, but if he had, it ought to have been: If you want anything doing well, leave it to somebody else. That was his way. Born in Dublin in .1764, or- thereabouts, he had a remarkable voice even as a boy, and the older he grew the more remarkable it became till, as a young man, he was singing in high opera in Italy (of all places) being, it is thought, the first Britisher ever to do so.

For years he sang in Italian opera. He composed music. He gave the immortal Mozart an air which was set in one key and then in another. He scored successes in still more operas, and at last he came to England where he won renown.

The astonishing thing -he did, however, was to produce plays and other entertainments in which there was about five per cent. Michael Kelly and ninety-five per cent other people —the five per cent usually being the poorest stuff.

In 1797 he began the production of a long series of musical settings of plays; and two years later his “Pizarro” was advertised and every box in the house taken before the fourth act was begun, and though Kelly was the leading spirit, the songs and choruses and music were all served up by menials, Kelly himself merely saying grace before the covers were removed. For all that, this, and all his other entertainments, wore immensely successful. At one of his performances there was an attempt to shoot the king, whereupon Kelly appeared and sang an improvised stanza to the tune of the National Anthem, which won loud applause. His sideline was a wine shop, and Sheridan once proposed that over it he should write: Michael Kelly, Composer of Wines and Importer of Music.