Gertrude Johnson

 Horace Stevens: A brief history of his career and repertoire

Introduction

It is of no surprise that Australia has produced a plethora of excellent opera singers in the brief time Europeans have lived here. Dame Nellie Melba, though not our first opera star, is certainly one of the best remembered. She has gone down in public consciousness in part for her exceptional voice and in part for a steely desire for self-publicity. Currently there are at least five biographies of Melba on the market, including her autobiography Memories and Melodies. Opera historian Roger Neill has produced his excellent book on the students of Mathilde Marchesi, which includes not only Melba, but Australians Ada Crossley, Fanny and Martina Simonsen, and their sister Frances Alda.

Neill has also written an essay on the mysterious Australian dramatic soprano, Margherita Grandi, which places the histories well and truly into the post-world war two era. Opera Australia historian and archivist Brian Castles-Onion AM has produced a series of CDs displaying the talent of Sutherland’s contemporaries, which includes interviews he was able to undertake before some of these legends were lost to us forever.

The histories have been predominantly directed at our female stars. The glamorous Marjorie Lawrence had her autobiography Interrupted Melody turned into a Hollywood movie, and a further biography, Wotan’s Daughter has been produced following a renewed interest in her re-released live recordings. Another Brünnhilde, Florence Austral was celebrated in an autobiography by James Moffat, accompanied by a two CD set released by Larrikin Records, but what of our male singers? There have been several world class talents, and particularly in the inter-war period Australian exported a trio of exceptional baritones; Harold Williams, John Brownlee and Horace Stevens. Brownlee is remembered in America because of his time at the Met, and as director of the Manhattan School of Music. In addition, he is the subject of a biography A memoire of Don Juan, and features on the justifiably famous Fritz Busch recordings of Mozart Operas from Glyndebourne in the thirties. Harold Williams is less well remembered, although the recent re-release of the first ever complete recording of Mendelssohn’s Elijah from 1930 has brought renewed interest in his career.

Horace Stevens, on the other hand, remains an enigma. He was of an earlier generation to his aforesaid baritone colleagues, born in the same decade as singers of the golden age like Caruso, van Rooy and Tetrazzini. He arrived on the British music scene in 1919 as a dramatic baritone with his voice fully matured and nurtured by the sophisticated Melbourne musical scene of the Edwardian era. His very first performance as Elijah created such a stir, he was hailed as the greatest exponent of the role since Sir Charles Santley (an opinion echoed by Santley himself), and later endorsed by no less a personage than Sir Edward Elgar who described him as the greatest Elijah, “not excepting Santley”. His operatic debut as Wotan at Covent Garden at the age of 47 resulted in adulations from Melba, something so unusual, it was remarked upon in the newspapers of the time.

Sir Edward Elgar

Sir Charles Santley

This “out of time” quality alone is worth further investigation. By the time Stevens was creating such a stir, his operatic contemporaries had either died or retired. The interesting point to make here is that often one’s introduction to the singers of the “golden age” is an acoustic recording where the singer sounds like they’re a mile away, calling through the scratches and hiss. With Stevens we can hear what a robust sound these singers must have made, with his later electrical recordings.

The other important point I would like to make about Stevens is his pedagogic pedigree. While the majority of singers at this point in history went to Europe for their singing lessons, Stevens was a home-grown product. As a child he was taught by Mr. Charles Truelove, the chorus master of All Saints Church, St Kilda. As an adult, he seems to have been taught solely by Bessie Jukes, a close friend of his mother’s, and to whom he credited his technique quite late in life. The longevity of Stevens voice, and it sounds just as impressive in recordings made before he left Britain in 1937, also points to the amazing musical scene in Melbourne in the Edwardian era. Though he had sung no opera by the time he arrived in Britain, his knowledge of concert repertoire was astounding. He maintained a life-long love of choral works, many of which we may never hear again, due to the financial resources and sheer numbers required to stage them.

This brings me to my third and final point. We know so much more of singers in the Victorian and post-World War Two eras, than we do of the Twenties. After the First World War Europe was in a parlous financial state, and understandably the health of the Arts was not at the top priority for governments. Without the Aristocracy to fund opera and concerts, a group of concerned musicians set about creating Government funding of the Arts. This passed without a murmur in Europe, but Britain was less inclined. In 1922 the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) was created and, despite a rocky beginning, was able to save institutions like the Proms. Opera in Britain was not as smooth: as then, like today, its social desirability attracted too many cooks, but by 1931 Covent Garden was funded by the British Government. Against this unstable background, it is amazing that Stevens made the extraordinary impact that he did. When he returned to Australia with the Fuller Opera Company in 1934, it was expected the newly formed Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) would assist with the running of the company, and Australia would have a National Opera. Against the background of the Great Depression, this proved not to be the case, although Stevens continued to lobby for a national company, and was able to assist Gertrude Johnson in her efforts to create the National Theatre in the forties.

Stanley Parker caricature of Stevens as 'Wotan'

Table Talk (Melb.), Thursday, 8 November 1934, p.22

John Frith caricature of Stevens as 'Kurvenal'

The Bulletin, 6 February 1935, p.18

During the research and writing of this thesis, the writer has pondered the question “why is the Australian public so much more interested in our female opera singers, than our males”? At one stage I conjectured that it may have been a form of sexism. I suspect the true answer, though, lies in several interviews Stevens gave in the thirties where the interviewers felt compelled to point out that men in the arts weren’t “sissies”. There is something of this attitude even today. The male singers of this era we return to as a nation are Peter Dawson, who, one might argue, never had the size of voice to sing the great orchestral works, and Malcolm McEachern, who put aside his career as Hagen to become Mr. Jetsam in a popular music hall duet. Stevens remained a true artist. A friend of Ralph Vaughan Williams and Sir Edward Elgar, he is truly an Australian legend.

Preliminary considerations

Horace Stevens is an important singer for several reasons. He spans three very distinct eras in classical singing, providing a link between those scratchy acoustic recordings of the early part of the twentieth century, to his connection with a generation of post Second World War vocalists who recorded onto magnetic tape, and in stereo.

Secondly the study of his repertoire provides a window into the lost world of the great tradition of Victorian choral music, with its massive groups and extraordinary compositions, sometimes of a gargantuan size, both in physical resources required for their staging and in the physical stamina required for their length. The texts of these works comprise an eclectic group of subjects taken from the Bible, religious and secular poetry and historical subjects.

Finally, Stevens was a part of a largely forgotten group of Australian musicians who travelled to Britain, Europe and both North and South America after the First World War with remarkable success. Considering the paucity of operatic performance in Australia, their success is nothing short of miraculous. Many of these artists, Stevens included, were involved in the unsuccessful attempt by Sir Benjamin Fuller to start a full-time opera company in Australia in 1934. After his retirement from professional singing, Stevens indeed pursued a long-held desire by assisting his colleague Gertrude Johnson in the formation of an opera school to prepare a generation of young singers for their turn as Australia’s operatic ambassadors to Europe.

Stevens was born in 1876. Fifteen years younger than Melba, he was three years younger than Caruso and Chaliapin and the same age as DeLuca, the great baritone. While these singers are remembered as the golden generation that performed from 1900-1920, during this period Stevens was a successful dentist and a popular recitalist in Melbourne. Not that he was estranged from the performances of international singers. Australia, and particularly Melbourne, was visited by some of the greatest vocalists in the world, due in no small part to the influence of Melba.

Clara Butt, Kennerly Rumford and family embark for their 1907- 08 tour of Australia and New Zealand for J & N Tait

Because of the era in which he was born, and the artists with whom he sang, Stevens becomes a missing link between the operatic “Golden Age”, the mid-19th century and ultimately with today. I have sung with one of Stevens’s pupils on many occasions in the early part of my career as a singer and have been influenced and educated by that experience. We can experience the era of electrical recordings through Stevens whereas many of his contemporaries only survived to record in an acoustic format.¹ The quality of his voice in his live recording of Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius from Hereford Cathedral in 1927 gives the listener an insight into the two singers he was so often compared with, Sir Charles Santley and the French basse chantante, Pol Plançon, both of whom recorded before the First World War.

The repertoire with which Stevens rose to prominence is also of interest, and possibly a reason why he is not better known today. While it is true that his operatic output remains at the core of modern operatic repertoire, nevertheless Stevens didn’t appear on a professional operatic stage until 1923, at the age of 47. Prior to that he was famous in his home state of Victoria as an amateur recitalist, and a soloist with many of the local, long-standing choral societies and remembered predominantly as a “concert singer”. He continued as a concert singer well into his 60s, performing his last Elijah in 1939.

It is difficult, from a 21st century perspective, to understand the importance the community choral group played in Victorian and Edwardian society. By the time Stevens was performing in the United Kingdom in the 1920s and 30s, it was already waning. In an interview from 1934, at the beginning of his Australian concert tour, he remarked that “due to the popularity of wireless more than 25 per cent of musical societies have been forced to close”.² These were not small groups. A photograph in my possession of the Murwillumbah Philharmonic Society from 1950 shows a group of over 50 performers, whose repertoire extended from William Byrd to Benjamin Britten. In 1852 the Handel and Haydn Society of Boston boasted a membership of 200.³ The Fairbairn production of Hiawatha that featured so prominently in the career of Stevens, was said to have utilized 800 choristers. There were certainly so many that they had to dress in tents erected outside the Royal Albert Hall, in Kensington Gardens.

Understandably, much of the repertoire of this period can no longer be performed. The resources are no longer there. The Early Music renaissance has allowed the choral masterpieces of Handel to remain in repertoire, simply because he used much smaller choral resources, often one singer per part. Other pieces like Mendelssohn’s Elijah, are performed regularly with smaller groups. Coleridge-Taylor’s Hiawatha, although glorious, is a victim of modern sensibilities to the plight of the Native American, while a massive choral work like Bantock’s Omar Khayyam was regarded as a “bulky novelty” when revived in 1927.⁴

Swindon Libraries

Stevens as 'Hiawatha'

Many of these pieces have, though, had very good modern recordings made of them and can be rediscovered in the privacy of one’s lounge room. When one considers that great composers like Gounod, Elgar and Vaughan Williams composed specifically for these great choruses, they remain an important area of musical achievement, and help to illuminate an era in which a performer could survive purely as a concert singer.

My research has uncovered so many Australian musicians who worked with their British colleagues to keep opera as a valid art form in inter-war England. Conductors like Aylmer Buesst, who assisted John Barbirolli and Adrian Boult, both with the British National Opera and the re-formed Covent Garden in 1931. Forgotten singers like Sydney-born soprano Leah Myers who created a storm in the 1923 Covent Garden season performing the lead role in Charpentier’s Louise. Sydney-born baritone, Harold Williams and Melbourne-born bass baritone Frederick Collier. So many stories. Their brief appearances in the Stevens story belies their importance in the history of Australian music.

Horace Stevens and "friends" at the re-opening of Covent Garden (photo by Sasha) The Tatler (London), 23 September 1931, p.521

Williams was, like Stevens, a digger in the war driving an ambulance, although one story has him discovered by General Birdwood singing in the trenches of Gallipoli and moved to the entertainment corps. Collier, a little younger than Stevens was a product of Archbishop Thomas Carr, Roman Catholic prelate of Melbourne’s attempt to inject some Catholic blood into an art form that had attracted mostly Protestants.

All these Australians arrived in Britain with extensive musical experience in their home country. Stevens’s background with the Melbourne Philharmonic had grounded him in the repertoire of the great oratorios. It must be remembered that when he made his historic debut as Elijah in Leeds in 1919, he had been performing in the piece since 1888, first as a boy, then in the title role from 1902. As a youth he had observed the great Charles Santley sing the role in 1890. Unlike many Australian singers, his vocal education had been an all-Australian affair. His mother’s life-long friend, Bessie Jukes eased the transition from boy soprano to baritone, and, as he remembered in an interview during his brief return to Australia in 1920, she had coached him on all his repertoire since then, until the war.⁵

There are several remarkable aspects to the British career of Stevens, not the least being that by 1922 he had performed with Sir Henry Wood, Sir Thomas Beecham, Malcolm Sargent and Adrian Boult. He was introduced to Sir Edward Elgar in 1926 and recorded with him in 1927. He sang with Ralph Vaughan Williams throughout the twenties and premiered his Sea Symphony in the United States. During his visit to North America, he was bass soloist in the American premiere of the Bach B minor Mass with the New York Philharmonic.

All these accomplishments are remarkable, but to that I add his operatic accomplishments. By all accounts not the most animated performer, nevertheless it appears he may have been Australia’s first, native-born Wotan. There is more information coming to light every day, but for now, this brief introduction will help fill in the blanks of an extraordinary time, and an amazing Australian performer.

Australian Singers 1890-1950: A Literature Review

Two books form the principal secondary sources for Australian singers of Horace Stevens’s lifetime: Opera for the Antipodes by Alison Gyger,⁶ and Singers of Australia by Barbara and Findlay Mackenzie.⁷ The Mackenzie’s present brief biographies of Australian singers from 1880 to 1966. The book is now dated but when it was written many of these singers were either still alive, or fresh in the memories of people who knew them. As Horace Stevens was a very private man, accounts by contemporary colleagues and friends are a vital window into the life of this great artist.

Opera for the Antipodes is a fascinating overview of the Australian operatic world from 1881 to 1939. The only section that deals with Stevens directly discusses the Fuller tour of 1934-35 in some detail. The book is of great interest also, for information about the Australian cultural world prior to the First World War in which Stevens established his career. The earlier development of opera in Australia in the period between 1861-1880, prior to Stevens, is outlined in The Golden Age of Australian Opera.⁸ This book is useful as it discusses some of the older singers who sang with the young Stevens, for example the tenor Armes Beaumont.

There are several books which present biographies of individual Australian singers of this period. Four biographies of Dame Nellie Melba are currently extant, plus her autobiography Melodies and Memories.⁹ Melba’s very presence was such an inspiration to young singers. She regularly returned to Australia to hear and advise young singers, many of whom she took under her wing. At a time when it took a month by steamer to travel between Australia and England, her international schedule was exhaustive.

After Melba, the Australian singer most often written about is the Wagnerian soprano, Marjorie Lawrence. Less familiar to Australians, her career was mainly in North America, where she made regular appearances at the Metropolitan Opera. A famed beauty, her vocation was interrupted by polio. Her autobiography, Interrupted Melody ¹⁰ was made into a Hollywood film ¹¹, and recently a biography, Wotan’s Daughter ¹² has been published.

Marjorie Lawrence

photo by Delar, N.Y. (1947) - National Library of Australia, Canberra

Florence Austral

National Library of Australia, Canberra

A direct contemporary of Stevens and his partner on both the operatic and concert stage, soprano Florence Austral was the subject of a biography by James Moffat.¹³ There are some errors in the references to Stevens, particularly regarding his 1927 American concert tour.

Stevens’s famous contemporary, Peter Dawson, also wrote an autobiography, Fifty Years of Song,¹⁴ and an excellent biography of this artist was written by Horace Stevens’s last student, Russell Smith.¹⁵ Given the popularity of Dawson between 1900-1950, I was initially surprised how little his story connected to Stevens’s career. Dawson’s reputation has been raised to mythical proportions, but during my studies it became clear that he was in a different milieu to Stevens. Although Dawson appeared in the Proms two or three times, and attempted to sing Elijah once, he was primarily engaged for popular entertainment, in which he was a highly-paid success.

Peter Dawson

photo by Harrods (c.1933) - National Library of Australia, Canberra

Harold Williams

National Library of Australia, Canberra

During the 1930s there were three Australian baritones frequently appearing together in reviews and articles: Horace Stevens, Harold Williams and John Brownlee. Brownlee, like Lawrence, is better known in the USA, appearing regularly on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera, and later directing the Manhattan School of Music. He is commemorated in Giovanni: the life and times of John Brownlee by Lloyd Bell.¹⁶ Harold Williams is treated in a chapter within Singers of today by Donald Brook.¹⁷ Sadly, written after Stevens’s retirement, and a year before his death, Brook’s book does not include Stevens, but is a significant source of information concerning many of Stevens’s fellow performers, including Norman Allin and Muriel Brunskill, who also were part of the 1934-35 Fuller tour of Australia. While the biography Malcolm McEachern: Master of Song by Howard C. Jones documents the life of the Albury-born bass.

Despite the significant presence of Australian singers on the International opera and concert stage at this time, it is remarkable there are so few books detailing their lives and careers. Many of the women are discussed in Roger Neill’s Divas: Mathilde Marchesi and her pupils,¹⁸ but material discussing male singers is comparatively sparse.

Understanding the Context.

The accounts of pre-Federation and early Edwardian Melbourne in Manning Clark’s History of Australia ¹⁹ illustrate the vibrancy and sophistication of the city, although in country Victoria people were shooting each other. The Kelly gang was formed the same year Stevens was born. The incomplete collection of The Australian Musical News (1911-1963) at the State Library of Queensland ²⁰ and chapter two of The Australian Symphony from Federation to 1960 ²¹ by Rhoderick McNeill also shows how musically sophisticated Australians were during this period.

The era of Stevens’s professional life in Britain between 1919 and 1937 is best understood from the biographies and autobiographies of the conductors and musical leaders of the era. Many of the problems encountered by singers of the age were a direct result of the mighty shadow cast by conductor Sir Thomas Beecham. His efforts to control operatic Britain both during and immediately after the First World War were set against the social and fiscal difficulties that the war had created. Beecham’s autobiography²² finishes at the beginning of 1923, the year Stevens made his operatic debut at Covent Garden as Wotan. The centenary tribute by Allan Jefferson²³ did not illuminate the period surrounding 1923, where Beecham left the Garden, and 1931, when he returned. However, the musical politics of the era is well presented in A History of the Royal Opera House. Covent Garden. 1732-1982.²⁴ A key contribution to operatic stabilization was made through the continued political lobbying of publisher William Boosey, which resulted in the Government funding Covent Garden in 1931. This is chronicled in his autobiography, Fifty Years of Music.²⁵

Charles Reid’s biography of conductor Malcolm Sargent²⁶ mentions Stevens in a way that shows his importance in the musical world of Britain at the time. It gives vital information on the preparation and performance of the fabled Hiawatha performances at the Royal Albert Hall.

HIAWATHA perfomed as an Opera at the ALBERT HALL, The Sphere (London), Saturday, 24 May 1924, p.11

As Stevens’s professional career was tied so closely to the support of Sir Henry Wood, the related chapters in My Life of Music²⁷ are pertinent. Although Stevens is not directly mentioned, Wood describes the British debut of fabled heldentenor Lauritz Melchior at the Proms. Stevens was the Wotan at that concert, and Wood points out that each singer in the concert performance of Die Walküre sang in their native language.

Finally, the conductor Eugene Goossens’s²⁸ letter to his father en route to take over the Sydney Symphony Orchestra is perhaps more evocative of the personality of the conductor than of the singers he dismisses as teachers in Australia.

What is documented about Stevens?

Aside from Singers of Australia and Opera for the Antipodes, there is little published about Stevens in secondary sources. The essay on Horace Stevens in the Australian Dictionary of Biography²⁹ is a very important source and features some interesting anecdotes. The author, James Griffin, knew Stevens personally, according to his son, and many of the references at the end list ‘private information’. I have been able to access Griffin’s other named sources which include the Mackenzie book, Isabelle Moresby’s Australia makes Music ³⁰ and Melbourne Savages by David Dow.³¹ The Moresby account of Stevens has the friendly, chatty aura of an interview, although it mistakenly puts Stevens’s Covent Garden debut in 1927 rather than 1923. The Dow book is reverential towards Stevens, while detailing some of the robust exploits of the Savage Club members.

A Century of Harmony, the centenary history of the Royal Melbourne Philharmonic Society, by W.A. Carne is a very important source. Through its chronological list of all appearances as the Youth to Sir Charles Santley’s Elijah in 1890 to his final official appearance with the choir in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in 1935. He is not mentioned in the cast of Hiawatha in 1939 but did perform in it and was broadcast in the role by the ABC.

There are several mentions of Stevens in Frank van Straten’s National Treasure,³² the story of Gertrude Johnson’s creation of the National Theatre. Stevens and Johnson knew each other when they were performing together in Melbourne before the First World War. Given the tone of some of Stevens’s interviews when he returned to Australia, the germ of an idea to train young singers in stage craft had already taken root by 1934. He assisted Johnson and coached from time to time. Brian Castles-Onion, in his obituary for Robert Allman for The Australian ³³ mentioned that young singers were sent to Stevens first, to gauge their suitability in the field of opera.

The Record Collector ³⁴ has a fascinating article by Wayne Turner and Graham Oakes which appears to have information that could only be gathered from first hand sources, including a story of the 12-year-old Stevens suffering from stage fright at his first audition. It makes a couple of obvious errors. The contralto for the Santley performances of Elijah was not Adelina Patti, but Janet Patey. However, the article includes some descriptions of Stevens’s performances by colleagues Sir Keith Falkner, Norman Allin and Rispah Goodacre. The Record Collector article claims that Stevens sang in The Golden Cockerel, Madame Butterfly and The Marriage of Figaro, though I have found no press reviews to confirm or consolidate this information.³⁵

Stevens is so closely associated with the three major oratorios of Sir Edward Elgar, particularly The Dream of Gerontius, it came as no mild surprise that he didn’t meet Elgar until 1926, the year before their celebrated collaboration at Hereford Cathedral which produced the magical live recording of ‘Jesu, by thy suff’ring dread’. Michael Kennedy’s essay ‘Some Elgar interpreters’ in the book Elgar Studies³⁶, is effusive in his praise for Stevens’s performance. Bearing in mind the recording itself, (initially re-issued on Lp in 1972 and re-released on CD in 2011), one can only agree. It has been said that the acoustic of Hereford Cathedral was perfectly attuned to Stevens’s voice. One certainly hears none of the American critic’s complaints that sometimes he was drowned out by the orchestra.

Regarding Stevens’s limited recording career, I was fortunate to obtain a copy of Herman Klein’s contemporary reviews for the magazine The Gramophone.³⁷ Klein is extremely complimentary about Stevens’s voice and, usefully, most of the recordings he reviews are issued on the Truesound Transfers discs discussed below. Klein also provides critical comparisons with contemporary singers in the same repertoire. Most of these recordings are also available for comparison.

Singers to Remember,³⁸ by Harold Simpson, gives a good, if somewhat basic account of Stevens’s career. It ignores his amateur career in Melbourne, and, like many of the later articles and biographies, places his death in 1954. There is also mention of him singing Hagen from Götterdämmerung. The Moffat biography of Florence Austral also states that he took part in a performance of that opera with her. It was never reviewed, if it happened. The excerpts at the Cincinnati May Festival in 1927 contain no Hagen sections.

James Glennon devotes one and a half pages to Stevens in his book Australian Music and Musicians.³⁹ It is a brief and basic account of his life. The dates and repertoire are correct. There is no mention of Elgar and Sir Henry Wood becomes Sir Thomas Wood not once, but twice.

Portrait of Horace Stevens by Ernest Buckmaster (Entered into the 1936 Archibald Prize)

The Recorded Legacy

One of the most challenging aspects of researching Horace Stevens is the difficulty in obtaining recordings, not only of Stevens himself, but also for much of the music he sang, which is no longer fashionable, or requires resources that are, at best, difficult to assemble.

In dealing with Stevens’s recordings, the Eloquence release on Decca, ⁴⁰ Pearl’s 20 Great Bass Arias and songs volume 2 ⁴¹ and The Elgar Edition on Warner Music⁴² (formerly EMI) all contain the same excerpt; ‘Jesu, by thy suff’ring dread’. At the start of my research at the beginning of 2017, YouTube had one Stevens recording; an obscure aria, ‘Sulla Poppa’, from La Prigione d’Edimburgo (Frederico Ricci).⁴³ This performance is of interest because it appears to be Stevens’s only recording not in English (his Italian is impeccable), and that there is no evidence that he sang it in public. The year it was recorded, it was sung at the Proms by Herbert Heyner.

Two volumes of Stevens recordings are available on Truesound Transfers.⁴⁴ Restored by Christian Zwarg, they contain his important recordings, including the Elijah arias, both in early versions for Vocalion records, and later versions for the fledgling Decca corporation. ‘Hiawatha’s Vision’ is also there, and gloriously sung.

Lastly, there is Elgar’s Interpreters on Record. Volume 5.⁴⁵ This set contains excerpts from The Dream of Gerontius from 1936, conducted by Adrian Boult. We hear Stevens at 60, about to leave England forever, and despite Boult’s extremely slow tempi, the voice sounds powerful and fresh.

Finally, I needed to familiarise myself with the music Stevens sang. Whenever possible I tried to obtain contemporary recordings or versions that retained similar performance sensibilities. Stevens recorded the arias from Elijah, but the first recording of the complete oratorio was made in 1930 featuring compatriot Harold Williams.⁴⁶ Sir Malcolm Sargent left an early recording of Handel’s Israel in Egypt⁴⁷ without bass solos. The bass chorus sings ‘The Lord is a Man of War’. It doesn’t include the interpolated aria from Ezio, ‘Nasce al Bosco’, that Stevens sang, but it presents an interesting insight.

Stevens sang in the British premiere of Handel’s Eracle under Beecham. A later live recording from 1958 at La Scala exists⁴⁸ that shows an older performance practice with basses singing the castrato roles, now usually undertaken by counter tenors, and the tenor arias sung by Franco Corelli, not a voice we would associate with Handel today. The Vaughan Williams Sea Symphony,⁴⁹ and the three Elgar oratorios⁵⁰ are all available under Sir Adrian Boult, with whom Stevens worked on a regular basis. Parry’s Job,⁵¹ Coleridge Taylor’s Hiawatha ⁵² and Bantock’s Omar Khayyam⁵³ are available on excellent, modern recordings. Stevens’s repertoire as a boy soprano can be heard on the Nostalgia Naxos release; Master Ernest Lough. Wings of a Dove.⁵⁴

Leff Pouishnoff, who shared the concert stage with Stevens on his tour of Australia in 1934, can be heard on a double CD set for APR.⁵⁵ Sadly, his lieder recordings with Walter Widdop are yet to be released.

The performers with whom Stevens shared the operatic and concert stages are available on several excellent compilation CDs, and to finish, to give some of the flavour of the 1920s music scene, Whispering Jack Smith⁵⁶, the performer who provided light relief during Stevens’s Armada Concert on BBC Radio, and the Coon-Sander’s Nighthawks,⁵⁷ who finished off the Cincinnati May Music Festival, after the concert performance of Götterdämmerung, both have dedicated CDs.

To be continued...

Endnotes

1. Many of Stevens’s operatic contemporaries had remarkably brief lives. Caruso was dead at 48; Emmy Destinn, Puccini’s first Fanciulla del West died in 1930 at the age of 52.

2. 20 February 1934. The Argus, p 5. Trove. Accessed 21 March 2017

3. Michael Broyles. Growth, Change, and Discoveries in the Nineteenth Century. P. 57 The Handel and Haydn Society. Bringing Music to Life for 200 years. The Handel and Haydn Society in association with David Godine, Publisher, 2014.

4. The Times 29 October 1927 p. 10; Issue 44725. Trove. Accessed 3 May 2017

5. Table Talk. 19 August 1920 p 25. Accessed 19 April 2017. Trove.

6. Alison Gyger: Opera for the Antipodes: Opera in Australia 1881-1939. Currency Press. 1990

7. Barbara and Findlay Mackenzie: Singers of Australia from Melba to Sutherland. Lansdowne Press 1967

8. Harold Love.: The Golden Age of Australian Opera. W.S. Lyster and his companies. 1861-1880. Currency Press. 1981

9. https://trove.nla.gov.au/book/resulty?q=Damje+Nellie=Melba Accessed 11 March 2018

10. https://trove.nla.gov.au/book/result?q=Marjorie+Lawrence Accessed 11 March 2018

11. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0048210/ Accessed 11 March 2018

12. Richard Davis. Wotan’s Daughter. The Life and Times of Marjorie Lawrence. Wakefield Press. 2012

13. James Moffat Florence Austral. One of the Wonder Voices of the World. Currency Press. 1995

14. http://trove.nla.gov.au/book/result?q=Peter+Dawson Accessed 11 March 2018

15. Russell Smith and Peter Burgis. Peter: Peter Dawson. The World’s Most Popular Baritone. Currency Press. 2001

16. Lloyd Bell. Giovanni: The Life and Times of John Brownlee. [Philadelphia]: Xlibris. c 2002

17. Donald Brook. Singers of Today. Tapp and Toothill ltd. 1949

18. Roger Neill. Divas. Mathilde Marchesi and her pupils. Newsouth. 2016

19. Charles Manning Clark. A History of Australia, Melbourne University Press. 1962

20. http://onesearch.slq.qld.gov.au/primoexplore/search?vid=SLQ&searchscope=SLQPCIEBSCO&query=any,contains,Australian%20Musical%20News

21. Rhoderick McNeill. The Australian Symphony from Federation to 1960. Ashgate 2014 Chapter 2

22. Sir Thomas Beecham.: A Mingled Chime. Hutchinson and Co. 1944

23. Alan Jefferson. Sir Thomas Beecham. A Centenary Tribute. MacDonald and Jane’s. 1979

24. Andrew Saint. B.A. Young Mary Clarke. Clement Crisp. Harold Rosenthal.: A History of the Royal Opera House. Covent Garden. 1732-1982. The Royal Opera House. 1982

25. William Boosey. Fifty Years of Music. Ernest Benn Limited. 1931

26. Charles Reid. Malcolm Sargent. A Biography. Hamish Hamilton 1968

27. Sir Henry Wood. My Life in Music. Victor Gollancz. Ltd. 1938

28. Carole Rosen. The Goossens. A Musical Century. Andre Deutsch. 1993

29. http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/stevens-horace-ernest-8653 Accessed 1 March 2017

30. Isabelle Moresby. Australia Makes Music. Longmans, Green and Company. 1944

31. David M. Dow. Melbourne Savages. A History of The First Fifty Years of The Melbourne Savage Club. The Melbourne Savage Club. 1947

32. Frank Van Stratten. National Treasure. The Story of Gertrude Johnson and the National Theatre. Victoria Press. 1994

33. https://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/a-baritone-of-celebrated-force/news-story/4b1f555ab3b4a967f1c30d79d34afde8?sv=58df8723023c060e8936f5074e4c4009

34. Wayne Turner. Graham Oakes. The Record Collector. Vol. 46. No. 3. Editor: Larry Lustig. September 2001

35. The absence of Horace Stevens in the credits for such productions listed in J.P. Wearing's The London Stage 1920-1929 and The London Stage 1930-1939. [Scarecrow Press. 1984], indicates that such performances took place outside of London. 

36. Raymond Monk. Edit. Elgar Studies. Scholar Press. 1990

37. William R. Moran. edit. Herman Klein and The Gramophone. Collected Reviews. 1923-1934. Amadeus Press. 1988

38. Harold Simpson. Singers to Remember. The Oakwood Press.

39. James Glennon. Australian Music and Musicians. Rigby Limited. 1968

40. Decca Eloquence. From Melba to Sutherland. Australian Singers on Record. Compilation Producers: Tony Locantro and Roger Neill. 482 5892.

41. Pearl. 20 Great Bass Arias & Songs. Volume II. GEMM CD 9173. Pavilion Records Ltd.

42. Warner Classics. The Elgar Edition. 9 CD. 50999 95694 2 3 Mono ADD.

43. https://youtu.be/WSXzyhUh288

44. Horace Stevens 1. TT-3002. Horace Stevens 2. TT-3003. Source Materials provided by Chris Mankelow (Sunday Opera records). Christian Zwarg Compilation, discographical research and digital audio restoration: Christian Zwarg.

45. Elgar Editions. Elgar’s Interpreters on Record. Volume 5. EECD003-5 Broadcasts from the Leech Collection at the British Library. (1935-1950) add Mono.

46. Divine art. HISTORIC SOUND. Mendelssohn: Elijah. 27802 mono ADD

47. Dutton. Handel: Israel in Egypt. CDLX 7045

48. MYTO. G.F. Handel. Eracle. 2 CD 00159

49. Warner Classics British Composers. Vaughan Williams. The Nine Symphonies. Sir Adrian Boult. 5099 0 87494 2 3 Stereo ADD.

50. Warner Classics. Elgar Choral Works. Sir Adrian Boult.0946 3 67931 2 2 Stereo ADD.

51. Hyperion. Sir Hubert H. Parry. Job. CDA67025 DDD

52. Argo. Scenes from the Song of Hiawatha. The Decca Record Company. 430 356-2 ZH2

53. Lyrita Itter Broadcast Collection. Granville Bantock. The Complete Omar Khayyam. Norman Del Mar. BBC. REAM.2128

54. Nostalgia Naxos. Master Ernest Lough. Wings of a Dove. ©2005 Naxos Rights International. 8.1 2083 2

55. APR Leff Pouishnoff. The Complete 78 rpm and Selected Saga LP Recordings. APR 6022.

56. Flapper. Whispering Jack Smith. Past CD. 7074

57. ASV Mono. Living Era. Everything is Hotsy-Totsy Now. The Coon-Sanders Nighthawks. CD AJA 5199.

Portrait of Gertrude Johnson, c.1952. Photo by Sarah Chinnery. National Library of Australia, Canberra.

I have beenasked to state what inspired me to found this movement, and I must say that the original inspiration came to me during the last opera performance of Dame Nellie Melba. Dame Nellie had already sung her farewell at Covent Garden when Lillian Bayliss, of the Old Vic, asked her to sing just once more for the funds of the Sadler’s Wells Theatre, then being built. Melba agreed to give a presentation of La Bohème with an all-Australian cast, including John Brownlee, Browning Mummery, Frederick Collier and myself. During that association one saw what wonderful opportunities the Old Vic was offering young artists, and I remarked to John Brownlee that there should be an Old Vic in every State of Australia, all combining to form a truly national theatre. John laughed and agreed that it was a grand idea, but asked who was to get the thing started?

Sadler's Wells having been built, those who assisted in the raising of funds were invited to a performance of The Snow Maiden. A young South Australian singer by the name of Olive Dyer sang the leading role on this occasion, and the thought came to me again, that opportunities such as these should be given to young Australians in their own country. I made a firm resolution that should I ever return to Australia, I would press the cause of an institution similar in function to the Old Vic.

First Approach

Three years later I was recalled to Australia for family reasons, and at a luncheon given in my honour, the opportunity arrived to voice the need of an Australian national theatre.

Fortunately the guests present were all very interested in the cultural development of the State, and the idea had an enthusiastic reception. An initial meeting was held in November 1935, and at a later meeting in February 1936, a constitution was passed.

As it was to be a people’s movement, some bright soul suggested a nominal membership fee of 1/ and £8 was collected at our first meeting. This sum opened our banking account, and in a short time we had a large enrolment of members. How ever, we soon found that the 1/ membership fee was not a good idea, the amount hardly covering the cost of postage and printing, so that suggestion was eventually dropped. It was essential to secure a regular income, and we devised a plan enabling subscribers to the movement to see eight productions a year in return for an annual membership fee. This meant, of course, that we had to have a theatre of our own to present a continuity of productions, and by good fortune we were able to rent St. Peter’s Hall, East Melbourne. This building, which became the first Australian national theatre, and is still the headquarters of our movement, has an auditorium seating 350, and rooms for studios, offices and wardrobe. We have seen great progress made in this little theatre.

Costume design by Kenneth Rowell for the Three Ivans in Aurora’s Wedding, 1949

Australian Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre Melbourne

Scene from Romantic Suite, 1951. Photo by Walter Stringer.

National Library of Australia, Canberra

Free Schools

During the period 1936–39, Mr. William P. Carr joined us as director of productions, and Miss Jean Alexander founded our ballet school. We soon had the three schools of opera, ballet and drama well established, and were able to demonstrate to the public that we were capable of producing the three arts, in addition to such theatrical presentations as pageants. Before the war most of our big productions were presented at the Princess Theatre, but with the advent of hostilities, this theatre was given over to films, and we had to be content to work in our little theatre at East Melbourne. Until then everything had been progressing wonderfully, but the effects of war threatened to destroy all our work of the past few years. Petrol rationing and black-outs caused us to lose a great number of subscribers, and at one time we thought it would be impossible for us to continue. But a good friend. Dr. Rowden White, the great educationist had been watching our struggle for survival, and he came to our financial aid. His help enabled us to carry on, and we set out to assist various war charities, eventually raising £16,000 for them. This work brought us a number of new friends who were to help us further our aims.

Our next big opportunity came in 1947, when the Princess Theatre became available once more for theatrical productions, and I was able to persuade our president, Sir Robert Knox, to launch our first festival of opera. Melbourne had not seen a professional production of opera in years and the response to our project was most gratifying, a profit of £2,000 being made on this season. Thus encouraged, we decided that our future festivals would feature the three arts. Our first professional ballet company was formed, and Kenneth Rowell was engaged to design the decor of Aurora’s Wedding and Romantic Suite. These two ballets created a great impression, and the 1948 festival brought us the approval of the Victorian State Government in the form of a State subsidy. This subsidy has enabled us to greatly raise our standard of production and is a practical form of help for which we are most grateful.

Set design created by Anne Fraser for Aida, 1951

Australian Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre Melbourne

Scene from Swan Lake, with Joyce Graeme as The Queen Mother, 1951

Australian Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre Melbourne

Opportunity

In 1951, we were entrusted with the Centenary of Victoria State Government festival, and we felt that the time had arrived for us to carry out the full aims of our movement. Our desire has always been to bring our famous artists back to Australia at the height of their careers so that they could be seen and heard by their fellow countrymen, and with the aid of the Australian Broadcasting Commission, we were able to present Marjorie Lawrence singing the role of Amneris in our 1951 presentation of Aida.

It was a wonderful opportunity for our talented young singers, who gained immeasurably from the experience of working with this world-famous star. The support of the ABC Orchestra, under the direction of Joseph Post, was in this, as in other festivals, of the utmost value. That year also provided us with two ballet successes, John Anthill’s Corroboree, with choreography by Rex Reid (a young Adelaide dancer who has since proved his worth overseas) and the first Australian production of the full four-act ballet, Swan Lake. This was reproduced by Joyce Graeme, with décor by Anne Church, and conducted by Verdon Williams with the 3DB Orchestra. These two ballets were chosen to tour the Commonwealth to celebrate the Jubilee, and were later taken to New Zealand.

Costume design by Louis Kahan for Rosina in The Barber of Seville, 1953

Australian Performing Arts Collections, Arts Centre Melbourne

Scene from Crucifixion featuring Paula Hinton, 1952. Photo by Walter Stringer.

National Library of Australia, Canberra

Guest Stars

John Brownlee was our guest opera star for the 1952 festival. He sang the title role in Don Giovanniand appeared as Scarpia in Tosca. It was the first time Australia had the opportunity of seeing this artist in opera, and he created a very fine impression. Walter Gore and Paula Hinton were our guest artistes for the ballet, and they brought to us Walter Gore’s ballets, Antonia, Crucifixion, and Theme and Variations. We had been honoured with a proposed Command Performance for this season, but owing to the death of His Majesty King George VI., this was cancelled when the Queen was forced to postpone her Australian tour. However, I am happy to say that this great honour has been bestowed on us for March 1, next year, during the 1954 Royal Tour, and we look forward to presenting a programme worthy of this historic occasion.

We are very proud of the list of young artists our movement has developed. John Lanigan and John Cameron have both had signal success at Covent Garden, and Eleanor Houston, dramatic soprano, now singing with the Sadler's Well’s Company, has been hailed as one of the finest sopranos in England today. Max Cohen and Laurence Lott are two baritones who are doing very well in London, and Betna Pontin, a fine lyric soprano, has greatly impressed critics in Vienna. Lynn Golding, ballerina, created a very satisfactory impression when she danced in London recently, and Max Collis, male dancer, received much praise for his performance as Petrouchka. Adelaide’s young tenor, Kevin Miller, had a sensational success when he appeared in Melbourne as the Count in The Barber of Seville. Another young Adelaide tenor is proving himself to be a very fine Puccini singer, and I feel that Adelaide will be delighted with the young artists appearing in the forthcoming opera season.

Our hopes for the future are that each State will form a branch of the National Theatre Movement, and that a Federal Council well be set up to establish three interstate companies of opera, ballet and drama.

These will tour the Commonwealth annually, thus providing our best Australian artists with permanent work. We also desire that each State will have its own school for the three arts, developing and encouraging Australian artists who will enrich the culture of our land. I am happy to say South Australia is the first State to affiliate with our movement.

FromThe Advertiser (Adelaide, S.A.), Wednesday, 20 May 1953, p.5, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-page3963122