DORA LABBETTE (Soprano)
HEDDLE NASH (Tenor)
THE WIRELESS MILITARY BAND
Conducted by B. WALTON O'DONNELL
THE last of Puccini's operas, Turandot, was left unfinished at his death. It was completed by Alfano, an operatic composer himself, who is less well known in this country than in Italy, and the opera was triumphantly produced at Milan in 1926. Already, in Madam Butterfly, Puccini had made some use of ' local colour,' having gramophone records of Japanese music beside him while he composed it. For Turandot, he was even more anxious that something genuinely Chinese should be embodied in the score, and actual records of Chinese music made by native performers were furnished to him' Many of these melodies are actually incorporated in the score, and the music as a whole does have some genuinely Chinese atmosphere.
LIKE many another of the race to which music owes so much, Goldmark spent his early years in very humble circumstances, and had little chance of education, in music or in anything else, until his own talent and his own hard work brought it within his reach. Even after a measure of recognition and success had come to him he never lost the faculty of taking pains ; stern criticism of his own work went hand in hand always, with slow and careful labour.