Stars of the Operatic Season

New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 459, 9 April 1948, Page 20

Stars of the Operatic Season

HEN Bizet’s Carmen is staged at the four main centres during the next few months (starting at Dunedin on May 27), the two leading parts will be sung by the English artists Janet Howe and Arthur Servent. Janet Howe (whose picture appears on this week’s cover) appeared as Carmen last year at the King’s Theatre, Hammersmith, and later in Scotland and the pro-» vincial centres. Arthur Servent,: a leading tenor of the Sadler’s Wells Opera, has frequently sung the part of Don Jose at Covent Garden. The other main roles in Carmen will be taken by New Zealand singers, and the orchestral work will be by the National Orchestra of the NZBS.

The leading role of Carmen is traditionally a difficult one to fill because of the comparative rarity of dramatic contraltos who can make a success of the part. In this respect Janet Howe, who is described as a "dynamic brunette," is one of the best Carmens who has appeared in Britain in recent years. She started her singing career when she was ten, and later took a job as a shorthand typiste in an office until she won a Leverhulme scholarship that sent her to the Royal College of Music. She studied there for three years until, in the spring of 1939, she was able to go to Italy on the money from a Clara Butt Scholarship. . When war broke out she returned to England and in 1942 sang to the late Sir Henry Wood, who gave her three Promenade concerts that season and sponsored her appearance all over England. He himself coached her in oratorio and introduced her to leading Choral Societies. He refused to,let her sing in opera at first, but advised her to make her name as a concert singer before she attempted opera. From 1942 to 1946 she appeared in orchestral concerts and _ oratorios throughout Britain, and in 1947 sang her first operatic role as Carmen with the Carl Rosa Opera Company. At present she is singing in The Barber of Seville in London. Arthur Servent has been a singer since his earliest days as a boy soprano in the Bradford Cathedral Choir, and he made his reputation in oratorio and on the concert platform. He was the first tenor to play the part of Schubert in the operetta Blossom Time, and in 1941 joined the Sadler’s Wells Opera as principal tenor. Between 1941 and 1945 he sang the leading roles in nearly 400 performances of famous operas, and in 1945 toured Germany with Sadler’s Wells. He also took the part of the poet Rickard Nordraak in The Song of Norway during its long London run,