The Letters of Annabel Lee

Radio Record, Volume II, Issue 1, 20 July 1928, Page 6

The Letters of Annabel Lee

| M* dear Elisabeth: As is usual in the gracious city of the south, in appreciation of art the Florence of New Zealand, Dunedin rose to the occasion in enthusiastic support of the Fuller-Gonzalez Opera Company. Each night a fresh-Italian opera was produced by this magnificent combination of artists; a wonderful.test of ability and endurance, to which the performers, individually and _ collectively, rose like a bird. The rendering of "Il Ballo" in particular was superb, and considered a+ fine as a production at Covent Garden; the tenor and baritone especially achieying enchanting beauty of tone and interpretation. This opera of Verdi's, in his later manner, will be remembered, together with the great and tragic "Aida," as marking the climax of his career, though he lived afterwards to jan advanced age.

1 relation to this epoch-making musi- | cal event, Izal, Scamuzzi, Polenti ‘an Rota, the tenor, are names to conjure with. The season ‘omed in Dunedin, with a house each night pocked with the best and brightest of intelligentsia, the early doors often sold out fefore nine in the morning. The efficient, melodious chorus is made up of talented girls picked from all parts of Australia, at least one of the charming galaxy being well-known to radio listeners in the sister continent, and a great favourite in concerts by wireless. Each girl is a trained vocalist, and several have been students at Sydney Conservatorium. Only two of the principal women singers speak English, one being the delightful Danish soprano Margherita Flor, and the other the brilliant Henkina, who hails from Russia. NOVELIST, playwright, and gifted student of the human comedy, Miss Clemence Dane is at her brilliant best in her latest novel. "The Babyons" is not amusing reading, with its earnestness of purpose and entire absence of superficiality; but it is an

enthralling chronicle of an English county family through several generations, and an arresting analysis of the | lives and vagaries, chiefly of an amatory character, of the members thereof. Four episodic stories make up the history of succeeding branches of the family, the first living out a brief drama in 1750, and the last in the present’ century; all linked together by hereditary attributes and the family strain, with its modicum of lurking insanity which oceasienally crops up, leaving an aftermath of tragedy. Of these tragi-comedians the dear Menella is first and sweetest, with her short, idyllic loye-story with ill-fated Jamie, truly a handsome Lothario ™ and made for love, but cursed from beyond these voices by the dark Hariot whom he jilted. ‘Chen there is the haughty Isabella of that hovse of memories, imperious and wayward, going forth into a world of shadows with her gypsy lover, her midsummer man; gentle, silent Anne, her descendant, who after storm and _ stress of emotion and endurance, finds peace in a son’s deyotion, aS many another woman has done throughout the years. Lastly comes brave, gay Antonina, generous of heart, impetuous of speech, sometimes blundering in her puzzling union with the last of those Babyons, whom many women loved, but who made turbulent, perilous partners in the life of the intimate everyday, as is sometimes the way with those who charm both in and out of literature. Each of these short tales ends on a note of tragedy. Subtly and skilfully constructed, with the vision and true touch of an artist, there is always the consciousness of the lovely English country, as background in these skilful stories of poor humanity striving to juggle with fate. ANOTHER painter of the human form-worlds away in vision and treatment-is Mr. Harold Speed, who in this year’s picture, "The Vale of Leutha," has presented mythological landscape, with conventionalised blue waterfall tumbling waters over weird rocks and vegetation; while in the foreground, amid the pomegranates

and not the apples oL Ye, Supine, seductive, is the recumbet figure of 2. beautiful nude, with a gentle girl satellite as foil. The whole is an atmosphere of that joyous clarity we find in the radiant figure. paintet by Mr. Speed, lately acquired by the Wellington Art Society, which one feels is destined to be the delight and .despair of youthful aspirants of the future who are desirous of studying from the life. ps "Adventure" Rosita Forbes tells ~ With gay insouciance of wanderings in jungle and deseft, the world at the back of beyond, the wilds of Abyssinia and the perils of China. No difficulty too great to be surmounted, it would seem, by this nonchalant lady, who pushes aside danger and. ‘literally) lions in the path as matters of sinall moment. Strange places and

people are described, the while is highly extolled the quality of courage, agreeing as the author does with Alan Brock in his pithy words: "To be afraid of a thing, and yet to do it, is what makes the prettiest kind of man." Just so. Hain would we all achieye beauty of this description, and stand a test which the writer expresses as "the fight that can be put up against fear." A great attribute in any of its manifestations, this gift of the gods which is revered of all men, | as exemplified by late frenzied acclamation of those who fly the world. Well imbued with it is the woman explorer, and worthy of place beside that. gallant company of heroes of whom Alfred Noyes wrote his shining lines which end "Tales of the Mermaid Tayern." Thus did they sail the scas, And, dazed with exrcecding wonder, Straight thro’ the sunset-glory Plunge into the dawn; Leaving their home behind them, By a road of splendour and thunder, They came to their home in amacenent Bimply by sailing on. Your

ANNABEL

LEE