THE POPULAR SINGER.

Digger (Invercargill RSA), Issue 39, 10 December 1920, Page 15

THE POPULAR SINGER.

No triumph is so easy, so undeserved, and so devastatingly vulgar as that cf the popular. singer. She has many assets, but only one gift. But of that oue gift — a powerful and musical voice she is -insanely vain ; her vanity breeds self-as-surance, and from that self-assurance arise a thousand petty affectations and insincerities'i her brainless little head swells to incrdinate size, and she tours through the English provinces and the American States convinced, a la Mary Pickford, that she is one of the greatest .ones of the earth. Whereas, of course, she is nothing but a laryngeal curiosity. For Nature blunders sadly in the bestowal of her gifts— to the empty-headed she gives, perhaps as compeasation, a marvellous voice, whilst the keen-witted and .th6 imaginative have t-o gO empty away. As Mr Ernest Newman said when writtiiig of Hugo Vv olf , the goods mean well, but their technique is weak. When by some divine accident, a fir.e voice is allied with a robust and sensitive brain, we get a great singer; but great singers are as rate as great poets or as honest politicians. Moreover, they cannot hope to compete with those whom the public worships. When Madame Airfo Actke comes to town she gives pleasure to hundreds, but when Dame Nellie Melba sings Tosti's "Good-Byee," with a sob in her throat, vast multitudes lie prone and j weep.