When Songsters Meet...

Radio Record, 19 August 1938, Page 13

When Songsters Meet...

Madame Zelanda and Friend

BY

Emile

T did not seem at all odd that Madame Zelanda, coloratura soprano who arrived in New Zealand last week for a two months’ tour with the NBS, should be so fond of birds. Petite and dark, with quick-fluttering eyelids, she had rather the appearance of a small bird herself. And then there is her voice itself, soft, trilling, rising in song like the voice of a lark. ’ "When I am not in the limelight,’ she told me, "YT go to the bush." \ She has made a habit of this since she was a child in Dunedin. Since the age of three, in fact.... She Went Adventuring T the age of three, accompanied by her six-year-old brother, the young Zelanda went adventuring in the bush of the peninsula to find her friends, the birds. The two infants wandered there all day, the boy searching for rabbits, the small sister for birds with which she could hold her child conversations. Night and the mist came down. The two wandered on till they came to a creek, the boy carrying his small sister across. "We're lost,’ said the boy. , "He insists to this day," Madame told me, "that I re- plied, ‘Damn it, I’m not going to be lost here.’ " Hi young girl was to have many adventures since then. She was to study at St. Philomena’s College Convent of Mercy in Dunedin, and later to go to the New South Wales Conservatorium of Music. After Sydney, she went to Italy, there to study under the famous Professor Benedetto Morasco, of Palermo Conservatorium, in Sicily, where she eraduated as a prima donna. Later she went to Milan and became a pupil of the late Maestro Manlio Bavagnoli, who visited Australia some years ago for the Imperial grand opera season and who has brought before the operatic public of Italy a number of famous prima donnas. "Ts it still necessary to go abroad like this for study?" I asked her. "Could our young singers have their training complete to-day in Australia?" ; She shook her head. "Hor the learning of languages, yes, Australia is a good place. And it is most necessary for the student of singing to be able to speak several languages fluently. "Australia to-day is a nation. Many languages are being spoken in the street. Just before I left 16,000 refugees from Burope had arrived, every boat is crowded with them now. "And every day one sees in the newspapers: Wanted, pupils for German, Italian or French."

THE student of singing could learn languages there, but as for learning singing-‘"for the emission of the voice," as Madame put it-there is no place better ‘than Europe. In Australia, she said emphatically, they de not properly know the art of singing. Young New Zealand students should go to the Continent, to Italy. Of course, even there they should be careful to see they are taught by teachers on the right lines. Even there one can find teachers who can ruin a voice. At the conservatorium in Sydney, said Madame, there: is, of course, a trained director from London. But the conservatorium allows any teachers to hire rooms there and teach, which no government should allow. "Tf I liked I could hire a room there and become a teacher. What control can the director have over what anyone is allowed to teach? It is a wrong principle." Apprenticed For Voice N Italy, on the other hand, the conservatoriums were " run by the State, and every student who passed the audition test was apprenticed under a State professor. The student got his tuition free, and the parents had only to pay. for his music and his keep. It was in this manner that Zelanda had her early Italian training. She was given an audition in the Rome Conservatorium, she was apprenticed to singing and put into a class. The Italian Government paid for this training, in spite of the fact that she was a New Zealand singer. "¥ was the only British artist ever to enter the eonservatorium that way." ROM Rome she went on to Palermo to the Conservae torium and the University, but found she was too advanced, for the classes there, so she went to Professor Morasco. , "I had to pay dearly for that. It was not given free by the State. "That is how it is done in Italy, and until they do this in Australia they will never advance in singing and in musie generally. They are a wonderful people, but I have told them this often. "T hope when you have your own conservatorium here you will have the Italian system of apprenticing pupils "SOSSBID UE DISNUL 07 (Continued on page 63,))

Madame Zelanda

(Continued from page 13.) INCH her last visit to New Zealand in 1986 she has been giving broadcasts in Australia for: the ABC and professional recitals. Just before she left Australia she

was chosen from among all the artists of New South Wales to sing at a large Consular gathering in Sydney given by the.new Swiss Consul. HE bas travelled a long way since the day she was lost in the bush of Dunedin, seeking birds to -.converse with. Yet, in some ways, not so far. For aot long ago, in the bush of the southern highlands, 100 miles from Sydney, she found one of her small friends, He was a-grey butcher bird, sometimes called the Derwent jackass or whistling jackass. "He had fallen from his nest," Madame told me, "and I picked him out from a prickly bush. He perched on my finger quite unconcerned. [I trilled away to him while he perched there watching me from his bright eyes with his head on one side, He seemed to like it." So do listeners, it seems.