Open Microphone

New Zealand Listener, Volume 34, Issue 872, 20 April 1956, Page 19

Open Microphone

NEWS OF BROADCASTERS | ON AND OFF THE RECORD)

ENTHUSIAST

= NE of ‘my earliest mem- | ories is sitting on a piano’ stool beside my uncle. while he played and _ whistled the lovely melodies of Gilbert and Sullivan." Hamilton Dickson, whose light opera company was heard recently in a performance of The Emerald Isle, told us this when we’

called the other day to ask how he became in- | terested in light opera.

"Those haunting melodies of Sullivan have come with me down the years," Mr, | Dickson said, "so it was no accident that one of the first comic operas my Singers presented was by Sullivan." Apart from that stimulus from his uncle’s love of opera, Mr. Dickson recalls an early association with Tom Pollard, director of the Pollard Opera Company of many years ago. "He was a personal friend of my family, and when I was a lad approaching my teens he told me many stories of the stage

and its fascination.’ While he was stil quite young, Mr.. Dickson decided to make music his profession, and studied first in Christchurch, his home _- town. Later, in Sydney, he took voice production and singing with Roland Foster and composition with Alfred Hill, When he came back to

New Zealand about 20 years ago he settled in Wellington, where he esta lished’ himself as a teacher. He is also well known as a competition adjudicator, and has judged at most New Zealand festivals. As Listener readers will have gathered from Mr. Dickson's remarks when we talked with him about The Emerald Isle a few weeks ago, light opera is more than an interest with him

-it’s an enthusiasm; and now that he has a group around him to share it, he expects to produce many more opetas, including at least one more of his own, in the years ahead. P

‘ 1OT long ago, you will remember, we mentioned on this page an act by "five singing dogs." It appears now that if the dogs woofed their singing teacher spoofed. After the recording of their performance was issued, American entertainment agents tried to book their act-only to find that there wasn’t one. The recording company’s publicity officer got around it this way: "We have never claimed that there was a singing i

dog act. All we claimed is that the | sounds ‘were mace by actual dogs." What really happened was that Carl Weismann; who "presents" the dogs, | tape-recorded innumerable barks from the animals, and then edited them before re-recording them with musical backing.. Weismann has apparently made several other recordings of this kind, not yet released. Qne of them is a rhythm number. 4,

JULIET

[7's more than 20 years since Peggy Ashcroft first played Juliet-in an Oxford University Dramatic Society production of Shakespeare’s famous play.

This part, which she plays again in a BBC World Theatre production of

Romeo and Juliet, to be heard trom ¥C stations next week, is her Shakespearean role. Back in the days when she first tackled it, the OUDS

always called upon. the services of professional actresses and a_ professional producer, and the company assembled to take part in Romeo and_ Juliet _made it a particu- | larly memorable | production, It was _the first play that | John Gielgud- had

ever produced, and © ‘the cast included Edith Evans. Chris-

_topher ~ Hassall (as Romeo), William Devlin and Hugh Hunt. Terence Ratti‘gan had a one-line part. »

| ISTENERS will bé sorry to hear that Frank Broad, who has fairly described himself as a "veteran of variety," is in hospital in Auckland. "I am slowly getting better," he writes, "but I shall be here for some time." Mr. Broad has been in hospital many times since he was wounded in the First World War, but he sencs us this: assurance: "I may be down, but I am not / out, and will stage a comeback."