Australian Historical Medals

Lot 1096    SESSION 5 (4.30PM TUESDAY 21ST NOV)    Australian Historical Medals

Estimate $200
Bid at live.noble.com.au
SOLD $120

INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION BRISBANE, 1897, in gilt (C.1897/4c) (Carlisle records that the medal is gold but it failed the gold test; 5.95g; 22mm), provision for hole at top but not pierced, reverse inscribed, 'Souvenir/To/Signor G.Truda/From His/Orchestra'. File gold test mark on rim, suspension on top rim removed, a few grafitti letters at lower obverse, otherwise nearly fine and very rare.

An article in The Queenslander newspaper on Saturday 12 September 1896 on page 501 reads as follows.
Signor Giuseppe Truda is a native of Italy, having been born at Viggiano, in the Neapolitan territory, on 5th August, 1869. At the age of 9 he began his musical education at the Conservatorio of Salerno. At the age of 14 he was playing first violin in the Salerno Theatre, and after another year went to England, where he travelled "to earn my living as well as I could," to use his own picturesque form of speech.
After about twelve months spent in that way, he came out to Australia, under engagement with the opera company piloted by Martin Simonsen, who was the Carl Rosa of Australasia in those days. Playing alternately under Simonsen, Caron, and Adzon, he remained in Australia about three years, when he returned for a short time to his native land. Came back to Australia, where he first "knocked about a bit," ultimately accepting another offer to play with the Simonsen Opera Company. But unsatisfied ambition to excel in his art impelled him once more to return to Naples, where for two years in the Reggio Conservatorio he studied under Dvorak, with whom he still keeps up epistolary communication. "Like a bad penny"-his own words-he once more turned up, about six years ago, in Australia in general and Brisbane in particular, and here his habitat has remained ever since. A visit to the Signor's home on Wickham-terrace, if you are lucky enough to find him free of pupils, will be an hour most agreeably spent. You will find, as the writer of this did on such an occasion, that, like all true artists, he is supremely happy in his art. "People like me", he will say, are not rich; we do not go into Parliament or get handles to our names, but we are far happier than they. Look at me! I have worked and suffered, and I can work and suffer still if you give me this-he is speaking with the beloved violin in hand all the time-" Ecco! and he touches a string or two that lights up his eyes and entrances his hearer", untwisting all the chains that tie the hidden soul of harmony.
What do you think of the future of good music in Queensland? he is asked. "I am very hopeful of it," answers the Signor, "from one point of view, that is, not from another. Pupils, of the violin especially, are too much in a hurry to become players. Violin teaching differs from piano tuition in this, that youthful fiddlers when they have got just the amount of knowledge which is dangerous think they know as much as their master, knock off study, and join an orchestra. On the other hand, audiences are becoming more and more appreciative of good music, and by consequence less tolerant of the bad, trashy kind. Formerly, I remember, I could play Beethoven, Mozart, or Mendelssohn all night, and they might encore me while sucking oranges because 'it is Truda', but if for the encore I gave them 'The Mocking Bird' or some rubbish like that, they would yell their applause until the orange juice would nearly choke 'em. Now it is getting different, and 'The Mocking Bird kind of thing is not quite as popular.'
It will gladden all lovers of the violin as it should be played to learn that Signor Truda's fixed intention is to make Brisbane his home for the rest of his life. He likes the place and the people, and they manifestly like him.