CLOSE-UP OF ANGELA PARSELLES

New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 358, 3 May 1946, Page 16

CLOSE-UP OF ANGELA PARSELLES

HE easiest way to write penportraits of operatic singers, famous tenors, visiting pianists, and so on, has for some time been simply to assemble a list of likes and dislikes, habits and inhibitions, and so forth. It is a technique that has a popular and lucrative vogue at the moment in America, where there is a keen demand for this kind of information, It results, at its worst, in the massive compilation of irrelevant minutiae, a sample of which we saw reviewed scathingly in the Saturday Review of Literature just the other day. At its best, it provides the general reader with something of the background necessary to relate public figures to private experience. It helps one form a picture of the person on the other side of the "microphone or the footlights. And there are times when these considerations are of some importance-as at present, when Angela Parselles, the Australian soprano (born in Jerusalem, of Greek parents) has just arrived here for a tour of the Dominion. _ Angela Parselles likes: weak tea ("people say I take dishwater’); natural, spontaneous people ("like most real people, she’s just unassuming and natural all the time’"-referring to Mrs. Douglas MacArthur, the wife of the Allied Supreme Commander); New Zealand hospitality, and New Zealand hotels. She dislikes: Hen parties ("Can’t stand them-TI can’t bring myself to just sit and talk about hair-do’s"); reporters who say, "You don’t expect people to listen to that stuff do you?"; and various forms of blatherskiting ("I haven’t given you any glamour stuff, have I?") Further Details Our guess about her weight, avoirdupois, is that it would be about seven stone, if that. She is married, and has a little girl, who used to play with General MacArthur’s little boy when the MacArthur home was, in Sydney. And her name, when she is at home, is Tronser, She wants to have no illusions about her presence, her poise, or her stature. Although she feels at ease on the concert platform, she frankly says she can’t walk into a room with the Prima Donna Manner and put everyone in awe. And she says: "You wouldn’t call me an intelligent musician; I’ve just got a bit of native wit, that’s all. But my husband can sit down and read a score. It makes me mad with envy." Her favourite composer seems to be Mozart. She is prepafed to let herself get really excited about Mozart: "He’s the most fascinating one of all. On paper he looks so easy. But he can put down, in such simple notes, innocence, or hatred, or love-and the simplest written is the hardest to sing." In New Zealand she will be doing >-rogrammes divided into groups, such as Early Italian (Monteverdi, Scarlatti), Bach and Handel, lieder (Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Richard Strauss), operatic (Mozart, Verdi, Bizet, Puccini), and English songs (Quilter, Hagemann, Bridge). Her choice is mainly of popular songs and operatic arias. She has

with her as accompanist Lettie Keyes, an Australian pianist who did a good deal of playing for troops in Australia and New Guinea. Work in London Miss Parselles’ family left Palestine for Australia when she was two and a half, and she has four sisters who were born in Australia. She went to London some years ago and was engaged by the BBC to take part in "Songs from the Shows," conducted by Stanford Robinson. Theatre work in London followed, and she sang with the Debroy Somers and Geraldo Orchestras, along with Webster Booth. Then for two years she sang over Radio Luxembourg, the commercial

radio station which is much listened to in England. Returning to London, she sang with Richard Tauber in I Pagliacci and Madame Butterfly, and took part in films with him. Then came Covent Garden Opera, and she sang the part of Xenia in Moussorgsky’s Boris Godunov, which was produced by Vladimir Rosing, and conducted by Albert Coates, Not long before the recent war Miss Parselles returned to Australia, intending only agshort visit. The outbreak of the war prevented her returning to London, and she remained in Australia, singing on the stage and on the air, and taking part in entertainments for men in uniform under the auspices of the Australian and American Red Cross. After her present tour of New Zealand, she will go to South Africa, and then back to London.