Southampton Musical Society won plaudits for its staging of the Song of Hiawatha

Southampton Musical Society was taking on the theatrical challenge of staging the musical Hiawatha, a show which called for hundreds of actors, singers and dancers.

The show would be a dramatic version of Longfellow’s epic poem The Song of Hiawatha, and was presented at the Central Hall in Southampton back in May 1931.

Previously, thousands of theatre fans had packed the Royal Albert Hall in London every time the production was staged, so local members of the musical society were confident their version would play to capacity audiences during the six-day run of the show in Southampton.

For the amateurs of the musical society this was an enormous undertaking, but their reputation did attract one remarkable professional performer who was internationally known on both sides of the Atlantic – Chief Os-Ke-Non-Ton.

The chief was born in the year 1888 in Chaghnawaga, Quebec, Canada, and was the son and grandson of the famous chief of the same name from the Bear Clan of the Mohawk Tribe.

It was said Os-Ke-Non-Ton’s childhood days were spent on the reservation among his people where he became an expert with the canoe and learned the habits of the wild creatures in the forest.

One biography of the Chief says: “After his schooling in Toronto he went back to his people and one day he had been leisurely paddling the wide river and had drawn his canoe to shore and made his camp.

“He sat watching the evening light play over the water and fade over the hills. As he sat there in the stillness, his mind lapsed back to the early days to the traditions of his people, and his voice sounded out ‘The Appeal to the Great Spirit’.

“A party of men heard this, and the singer was sought after because of the beauty of his voice. He was soon known as the Native American version of Caruso and went to cross the Atlantic 35 times and appeared throughout Europe in concerts and performed for many heads of state.”

In 1927, four years before he appeared in Southampton, the chief sang to an audience of 45,000 people at the Hollywood Bowl, in California.

Under the headline An Imposing Spectacle, the Daily Echo reporter who attended the first night of Hiawatha wrote: “One came away from the first-night performance at the Central Hall feeling that success had not only been deserved, but also achieved.”

The review also praised the show’s producer, T C Fairbarn, for overcoming many of the limitations placed on the production by the size of the Southampton venue.

“For some five or six years the producer has directed the Royal Coral Society’s Hiawatha production at the Albert Hall, and in attempting a similar sort of thing at Southampton the question of space presented an obvious difficulty, and one has nothing but praise for the admirable use that was made of the very much smaller space available at the Central Hall,” said the Daily Echo.

Those overseeing the Southampton presentation made use of every inch, as the show featured 36 actors, 180 singers in the choir, a chorus of 25, an orchestra of 36 musicians, and 78 ballet dancers.

“The costumes which in the main were made by members of the society, were extraordinarily effective, the arena from beginning to end being a regular riot of colour, providing an imposing spectacle that was by no means the least interesting feature of the production.

“Southampton is indebted to the society for this opportunity, the first outside London, of seeing and hearing a production that in every possible way is so thoroughly worthwhile.”

Later in the week the newspaper carried the following letter from a member of the audience who attended the first night of Hiawatha: “Would you permit me to express through your hospitable columns the delight I experienced with all those who had the privilege of witnessing the opening performance of Hiawatha at the Central Hall.

“I had, of course, expected a good performance but had little dreamt that it would be possible to present such an amazingly beautiful combination of music and pageantry.”