LONDON BOUND

New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 510, 1 April 1949, Page 19

LONDON BOUND

AY TREWERN, the well-known ‘Wellington tenor, has booked his passage for London on May 12, and he intends to study there for several years under one of England’s leading operatic teachers. Before he goes, listeners outside Wellington will be able to hear his voice in a series of broadcast recitals starting this Sunday, April 3, when he will sing from 3XC Timaru at 7.30 p.m. He will give a Brahms and Schumann recital from 3YA at 8.0 p.m. on Wednesday, April 6, and at 8.30 p.m, on Friday, April 8, he will sing a bracket of operatic arias from the same station.

After Easter he will be heard in a , further series of recitals in Napier and Auckland. His broadcasts from 2YZ will be heard on April 24, 25, and 28, and those from 1YA on May 1, 3, and 7. Ray Trewern established himself as a singer both here and in Australia, when he won the all-Australia vocal championship in 1936. In this contest he competed with Australia’s leading young singers in all classes, both male and female. He believes he is the only New Zealander to have won this contest. While he was in Australia he competed also in the Melbourne Sun aria contest which was held that year, and succeeded in reaching the finals, He also won the Grand Opera aria contest which was held in Wellington in 19386. Later he sang professionally in Australia for some years, and when Richard Tauber heard him sing he offered to help him, but the outbreak of war, and later Tauber’s untimely death, set back his plans for going to England to study. During the war he served in the Air Force, and he sang with the R.N.Z.A.F. Band in New Zealand and on their tour of Australia and the Pacific. In 1943 he sang on a Bond Waggon Tour through New Zealand with a number of othet local artists, including Stewart Harvey and Reg Morgan. Last year he sang in the Wellington performances of Carmen in the role of the smuggler Doncairo.