SANG WITH MELBA

New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 499, 14 January 1949, Page 25

SANG WITH MELBA

Kosina Buckman Dies in London |

OSINA BUCKMAN was one of the few New Zealanders to achieve world fame in grand opera, and in the years between the wars she sang with tie leading British opera companies @ made several overseas tours, both in opera and as a concert artist. After early New Zealand appearances in Alfred Hill’s opera A Moorish Maid in 1905, she went to England and studied with George Breedon in Birmingham.

She-was successful first as a concert singer, but then, according to one story, her refusal of a part in Mozart’s Magic Flute-she declined it. on the ground that she had no operatic ambitionsled to no further important engagements being offered and she remenes to New Zealand. Later she sang in ‘Acetiaite with a touring light opera company, and _attracted the attention of Dame Nellie Melba. She joined the Melba Grand

. Opera Company in 1912 and returned to England in the same year at the urging of John McCor mack. She soon secured an engagement at Covent Garden and a long contract with the Beecham Opera Company. She also sang with the English Opera Company, the National Opera Company and during 1919-20 she was principal soprano at Covent Garden. Among her greatest roles were those of Aida, Cho-Cho-San, and Isolde — the latter probably her greatest and one of the best English performances ever given. In 1919 she "married the tenor Maurice d’Oisly, Latterly sh had suffered from thrombosis, _and had been a patient at Battersea General Hospital for about a year when she died there on December 30.