Proms Soloist

New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 810, 4 February 1955, Page 25

Proms Soloist

NE of the soloists at the Christchurch Promenade Concerts next week is the soprano Anita Ritchie (right), who will sing the’ recitative "And God Said" and the aria "With Verdure Clad," from Haydn's "The Creation," in the concert on Tuesday, February 8. (The broadcast begins from 3YC ot 8.0. p.m.) Anita Ritchie has broadcast for a number of years from Christchurch stations, and took part as first soprano soloist in the Christchurch Civic Music Council's production of "Israel in Egypt" in 1949. She is the wife of John Ritchie, the well-known Christchurch conductor and composer. ~~

FIFTY YEARS OF SONG

"-™ \ HEN Peter Dawson was 18, he worked as a lead-fitter in his father’s iron works in Adelaide, earning 2/6 a week. In the same year he won the bass solo section at the Ballarat South Street Competition, and promptly spent the three guineas prize money in seeing the sights of Melbourne! Now in his 73rd

year with over 50 years of singing behind him, the veteran Australian

-Daritone is Making another extensive tour of Britain. His last Australian appearance before going overseas in November last was made at a Legacy concert in the Melbourne Town Hall, which netted £3000. The story of Peter Dawson’s life is being told in Fifty Years of Song, a series being broadcast from Australian stations (shortwave listeners may pick them up at 11.45 p.m. on Tuesdays from stations of the ABC). Great moments in his career and famous celebrities he has met are recalled in interviews and dramatised episodes. Peter Dawson was born in Adelaide’ in 1882, and began singing with the choir of St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church. He gave his first oratorio performance in Handel's Messiah with the Adelaide Choral Society. "My sister

Jessie rehearsed my solos with me," Peter said recently when recalling those times. He can also remember his first public appearance made a little earlierand without a dress suit-when he sang "O, Ruddier Than the Cherry" with the Adelaide Orchestra conducted by his teacher, C. J. Stevens. Peter Dawson last toured New Zealand in 1949. ~

LADY OF SHALOTT

x "QUR leading emotional actress" was the phrase used by T. C. Worsley to describe Peggy Ashcroft when reviewing the recent revival of Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith. In this "brilliant and exciting" production, he said, Peggy Ash-

crott gave a superpD per-~-formance as Hedda. Peggy has also taken part in a

number of plays for the BBC, the most recent being a recorded performance by the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre Company of Antony .and Cleopatra, in which she played opposite Michael Redgrave. In the current BBC series of poetry readings, By Heart, she reads Tennyson’s poem "The Lady of Shalott" (1YC, 8.18 p.m., Wednesday, February 9). In the same programme, which is the fifth in the series, Valentine Dyall reads another Tennyson poem, "The Revenge: A Ballad of the Fleet," which the poet Laureate wrote nearly 50 years after "The Lady." te

MILES OF PAPER

OW easy it is for a radio writer or a journalist to make a simple mistake or omission — which reduces the point he is trying to get across to non-sense--is something we all learn by

bitter experience. Even a writer as able and experienced as Jim Henderson

can slip up. For instance, he was telling us recently how, in his talks on the new timber towns on the

sunny side of the Lake Taupo area (see page 15) he mentioned that every year Kinleith manufactures enough brown paper. to stretch from New Zealand to England and back again six times. It was not till the talks were all" written that an

NZBS man pointed out the meaninglessness of this remark unless you knew how wide the strip of paper was. It cost Jim the price of a telegram to Kinleith to find that the answer was ten feet.