Australian Tenor in "Messiah"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 544, 25 November 1949, Page 13

Australian Tenor in "Messiah"

ROM shearers’ cook to leading tenor is the record of Lorenzo Nolan, the Australian lyric tenor who has been brought to New Zealand by the Royal Wellington Choral Union and will sing in seven performances of Messiah throughout New Zealand this summer. He is also giving a series of studio broadcasts from NZBS stations. Listeners and concert-goers heard his voice when he sang the leading tenor part in Elgar’s massive oratorio The Apostles, which was presented in Wellington recently,

and he also gave broadcast recitals from 2YA on November 13 and 15, from 3YA on November 19 and 20 and from 4YA on November 22 and 24. Next week listeners will hear him in a broadcast presentation of Messiah from 3YA with the Royal Christchurch Musical Society, and on, the following Monday (December 5) he will give a Studio recital from the 3YA _ studios. Further performances of Messiah in which he will take part will be given in Whangarei (December 7), Auckland (December 10), Hamilton (December 12), New Plymouth (December 14), and Wellington (December 17). A final studio broadcast will be given from 1YA on December 20. Lorenzo Nolan was one of the few Australians to sing principal roles with the visiting Italian Opera Company last March. He did not start singing seriously until he was 20, he told The Listener in an interview last week. When he was 17 he left his native Victoria in search of work-it was during the depression-and he ended up as a shearers’ cook or rouseabout in Queensland. He used to sing as he went about his work, and the quality of his voice so impressed the men he worked with that they persuaded him to take up serious study. He got his first concert opportunity at the Brisbane Theatre Royal, and after this he went to Sydney, whére he studied under Spivakovsky for four years. During the war he joined an Army conGert party, and sang to the troops

in Australia and the Pacific. In 1945, he toured New Zealand and Australia with Gracie Fields, and on his return to Sydney he received a contract to make two recordings a week for three and ahalf years. He sang in opera and oratorio in Australian cities, including leading roles in Bach’s St. Matthew and St. John Passions and his Christmas Otatorio and in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas. After his present New Zealand tour he will return to Melbourne either to take part in next year’s opera season there, or in a series of Gilbert and Sullivan performances.