1956-10-29 — Page 4

THE CHINA MAIL, MONDAY, OCTOBER - 29, ́› 1956;

CHALIAPIN

PATT)

MICORMACK

MELSA

CARUSO

I'M STICKING MY NECK

OUT...AND ATTACKING

THE 'NOT SINCE CARUSO' SNOBS

BY

NOEL GOODWIN

M

was opera

pop singers it stars who made the early fortunes of the gramophone companies.

Up to 1939 quite a large selection pi records by OST people who famous singers truly hig think they toric performances of the

standard know a thing highest.

kept in circulation, or two about singing - critics included are

fond of telling their neighbours that voices today are not what they used to be.

flourish

Н

you

Over - 60's bunch of names at you very fast, like "CarusoSembrich- Planco Alda." Unless are over 60 yourself and heard them, you

cannot argue, Under-30's say just the same thing because at their age they know they are right anyway.

can

The only evidenco

WI

TREASURE

were

the

Wan arki WITH the

"Long-Play" revolution afterwards all these became obsolete. Except to avoid collectors who would pay £5 or more for a dusty, second-

hand dise of Ponselle or

Gulli-Corel and then be almost afraid to play it for fear of breakages,

אנית

JA!

the giant Muster's Votre CONIDIDY trus begun to knock the bolton out

of that market yout

call is a gramophone record--and more treasures records are enshrined on than many people nowadays realise. Long before the

The archives are yielding up their treasure in bring the great lees of the past to the ears

the present.

A new "Golden Treasury uf tmmortal Performunes,'

19

launched with collections of the these-wity and Ilimited in uld records in long-play form. sound though

they are have First to car are five clisen ralled "Fifty Years

come through the transfer to of Great LP with remarkable success. Singing" - one Operatie

(or ench devarle from 1900 to 1930.* If anybody has the impulse Singers who are now no more to enigger at orchestrus round- chon some come alive again ing like eteam-whistles, et with the arinal sound or their

Vo

them stop and listen keenly to the voler. That will teli Its own story,

And if they prove anything at all it is this: No one decade. no one generation. even, was that much better than another.

I am not going to join the chorus of, praise for the past of the expense of the present.

KEIR HARDIE,

the Rebel in Politics

M

EMRYS HUGHES, MP for South Ayrshire and Hardie's son-in-law, begins a "short life of the great Scottish Labour leader, idealist and visionary, who fought for the rights of the working

ARY KEIR'S boy

Was born

in

ก

ол

man

Tho

"But that was pay-day, and on books.

Arst book ho I was filled with hope, 'You remembered reading was

"Tales wanted upstairs by the Wilson's

δ The are August 15, 1856, master,' said the girl behind Borders," and Д "Lite of one-room the counter, and my heart almost William Wallace" which made

him a staunch Scots patriot. mud floor cottage- little stopped beating,

Then he turned to the poenis "Round the great mahogany more than a shelter from

There was a of Robert Burns, the members of the tabio sas the cold and the rain-in family, with the father at the melancholy struin in young Hardie and ho had a lot in the village of Legbrannock, top. In front of him was o

with the inspired Lanarkshire. She called him very wonder-looking coffee common

who had written boller, in the great glass bowl ploughman James after her father and of which the coffee was bub- bitterly that his early life had registered the birth at Holy- bling. The table was loaded combined the loneliness of the

with town giving the father's with dailies,

galley slave," name as William Aitken, FINED miner.

own.

Hardie's

6617 master looked at mo

go!'

thotr hot 1 Therefore

hermit

the tell of the

Hardio worked in the Lanark shire

pita until he was twenty- three. The family settled in a

SQUALOR

Nothing moro is known *W over his glasses and sold typical miners' row of the time. about the father except that he refused to acknow- in quile a pleasant tone of voice: houses that the colliery com- grim street of brick #bleak, ledge the child. Three years 'Boy, this is the second morning pany had built near the pit, mo you have been late, and my water, no sanitation and jurt later she married David customers leave me if they are

one pump in the street. Nearly Hardie, a ship's carpenter kept waiting for

every house was grossly over- rolis breakfast from Glasgow, and was glad dismiss you, and, to make you

crowded, all ages and sexez together with Hitle to go away with him to the more careful in the future, I crammed

chance of comfort or decency. city where nobody knew have decided to fine you Here they were born-here they

And now you clod. her story and where it week's wages. I stick my neck out and say would be thought that the may First on the Bat in Francesen

that, on the contrary, singing | chiki was David Tamagna -- the

Now nobody is going to agree has enormously improved over bull-throated Italian teng who was Verdi's that every selection is the best the past 50 years, that come

that could be made of each of the best Next Otelloin an aria from "Il

today, such as There wan to compulsary For one Trovatores

thing, the recorded

Tebaldi and Callos, could sing education and the boy did not 1007 singer In

choice when he was over 60.

was designed primarily circles round the old-timers in gu to rchool. Wages were low 10 reppend to American certain parts.

and the family lived near to So the galaxy begins.

starvation. At the

age

Pott,

uf Melun, Caruso, Emmy

boy with the Ingers great certainly were from whom weet young James was sent us Destin,

McCormack favourites .atonu

there were hardly can still learn a thing or two. work is a Inessage follow at his heels.

1 wish I known in Britain, One after

and whose voices ii is wonder-

hear to the other corne Mary Garden, knew why somebody was not ful

1.sket to Golfl-Curel,

make Chulbasalt.

a choice of history on record, Gigi, Tiana Lemnitz, Frida Leider,

European interest more

while Rosa Pongelle 58

was about it, instead of them .M.V.

blindly taking over the American selection as it stood. together.

Then again, not every item shown the singer in his or her

FOR USA

O course, the carllest eins long before But even

were mmie electrical recording.

"Finly Years of Great Operatie Singing Va |–1900.1919 (11M.V. COLP.500); Vol. 2-19-1920 (II,M.V. (NL301) Vol. 3-1920-1930 (R.M.V. CNL1502), Vol. 4-1839-1940 (16M,Y, CNLP.500); Vol. 1860–1959, (11,M.V.

81.1.304), 42x. 6d, each.

Quality

need not be expensive

customers.

Some

Great artists

some

of them

the Anchor Line.

making living SACKED

DI

had his first ex-

Few

When death came the corpse was put in the coffin on "I wanted to speak and ex- the built-in bed.

about plain

and my home, muttered out something to ex- plain why I was late, but the servant Look

on by the THE miners became prema-

I Для and led me downstairs.

turely old with ceaseless pased through the shop the toll. They hal targe familles and girl in charge gave me a roll live in constant dread of an and sald a

idnd

word.

accident in the mine. Life was "As the oftemoon was draw ikad, primitive, brutish,

close I ventured home could read or write. Drunken- ing to and told my mother what had ness, when there was money to

11 geemed to be the spend, was happened.

common; for the The roll was still men who worked in the dark- last blow. under my vest, but soaked with mess mort of week, it was escape from Aperience of the sack. His rain. That night the baby was the one af the

and the sun rose on the the sordiness and squalor of father had been unemployed first of January, 1807, over a their lives. for six months, there was fever

which there wan Revolted by the damkenness and his mother neither fire nor La the house

food, though, Hardie joined a temperance or With

met

af fortunately, reller came before nisation. He was expecting a baby.

some fest light. Not Meibo, I fear, BUT let us keep them for the

ministers who per- nor Galli-Curei,

storebook of memory and he earnings of 38. Bd, a week the day had reached Is noon," the local Johri

in a baker's us a messenger

suaded him to go to church-to McCormack, And Luisa Tetraz- stop sentimentalising over the

the surprise of his family who hear their shop in Lancefeld Street, Glos- DISASTER zini-one of whose records my pet, We shall not

were atheists, grandparents

for like again, and I for one do gow, he was treasured

Hot want to.

COON the family moved to the years though they never saw an

years later he remembered mining village of Newarthill opera in their lives-Ands no

wt.a converted ta place at all.

down thee that and James

and joined Christianity For 111⁄2 hours

or doctrine that had and, still only a attracted him but the compas

or

Bu

FINEST

UT the finest Items tre enough to make one forget the quibbles-for me, the sound of Caruso serenely spanning three decades. his duet with Melba from "La Boheme" Marcella Sembrich, the Polish- American горало singing

"Noma"-made stil glorious,

AN IDEA

the only bread- winner in the famity. Fifty

his humilia-

of detail

born,

home

went

He became a Socialist at 21, but it was not until he won 27

he

the

"I was the last week in the mines. His Job was to regulato Evangelical Church, it was not

Ta nuny young singers are cevry trying to imitate their idols- ||tion:

a destroying their own per- conalities in the process.

year,

Mount,

Father find been away the air supply. for two or three days in search a day he was underground often theology Let us tarn our efforts to pro- of work. Towards the end of a solitunto

on the ducing the voices of the future, the week, having been up most child, he experienced the terror son of the Sermon

on of a pit disaster. of the night, I got to the shop

The parents romakned scepil- Slowly, laboriously. tho and was They will not be the same

Jate, Afteen minutes

cal and unconverted. They the right sort of told

miner, tearned to read indy but-given

by the young

in young

His spelling came could not understand what, had training--they can be just as change that if that occurred and write.

He had from looking at pleture books happened to Jamko good and better.

I would be punished, again

a little strango shops. His always been "Next morning the same thing mother taught him to read but He would get over it. Neither he was fifteen before he could made any appeal to them. They

And when I reached the shop I was drenched to the

tell why And, as a first step-happened. I could

but that was neither here nor "Carla Diva" from Belling how about the gramo- there. It was very wet write,

phone companies using morning, some of their profits to endow an opera school to bring that about?

Emmy Destinn

in 1007 and Alda. .Frida Leider In Mozart, and Frances Alda in

Puccini....Printerf-hand me a

full-stop!

stationers'

the New Testament nor the Old

of their days.

He went to night school and remuned atheists until the end began to learn shorthand, prae- skin, barefooted and hungry tising writing the characters at There had not been a crust of spare moments in the pit on a

bread in

morning.

the

house

that

slate smoked from “his” miner's tamp. His spare. money went

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DONALD EDGAR reports from

OUCHY LAUSANNE

WENT for a row on York. Then at the last minute culty that I have told Ira about the Laky of Geneva -I had to cancel it.

It if laks gif, she will be 16

when Ira is only 82: And if he with the 16-year-old "And that cabin was one that is anything as attractive as her mother-to-be Princess Ira was completely destroyed in the mother, I don't know whether Hohenloe-Langenberg, and collision Ira le going to like it." ka her husband Prince I looked across at Ira as he. As fie suid thin its wanted

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