VICTORIA DE LOS ANGELES

New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 900, 2 November 1956, Page 5

VICTORIA DE LOS ANGELES

Sir,-In the midst of the public hysteria and the brouhaha of your critics Sebastian and B.E.G.M., may I pose a few queries concerning the recent concerts of this artist? 1. Why do female singers persist in singing songs that were composed specifically for a male voice? In her first Auckland concert los Angeles sang at least four lieder in this category. 2. Should a first-class lieder singer commit the solecism of taking such things as "Mein" and "Wohin" out of their proper context in the Schone Mullerin cycle? : 3. Lieder in general and most of the songs this singer gave us were composed for performance in a large room or small hall. Performed as they were in a large concrete barn with shabby acoustics to three thousand people, do they not lose much of their intimacy and appeal? 4. Is not the essence of lieder-singing an equal partnership between singer and pianist? Mr. Till, I felt, for the most partly, merely kept in touch, so to spent, and rarely proclaimed his equalty.

5. When will the concert section of the NZBS seek competent typographical advice for its programme ‘design? The los Angeles programme printing was abominable. 6. Victoria de los Angeles sang in four languages; for one shilling this concertgoer expects either (a) a literal translation of the foreign text, (b) a précis thereof, or (c) a translation of thre title, Is this an unreasonable expectation? Actually in one of the few cases where the annotater essayed a précis, "Ich Grolle Nicht," a completely wrong idea of the German text was given, so it may have been just as well nothing was done about the Italian and Spanish numbers,

CHAS. E.

WARDLE

(Hamilton).