"One of the most revealing articles featuring her was one which appeared in the Australian Musical News of August 1922. Here the editor chose to reprint a rather lengthy statement by the London critic Figaro, who, when provoked by the question what was the greatest operatic performance he had ever seen, nominated a war-time performance of Tristan and Isolde by the Beecham Opera Company at Drury Lane, which featured Rosina Buckman, Edna Thornton and Frank Mullings. When it is explained that Figaro claimed he had seen 96 operas at home and abroad and could recall performances by Caruso, Zenatello, Tetrazzini, Destinn, Renaud, Journet, Knupfer, Scotti, Van Rooy, Calve, Nordica, Gilibert, Marcoux, Battistini and Chaliapin, it puts a new dimension on his opinion of that night in the autumn of 1917 when, with bombs raining down upon London, he reported ...

 

Miss Rosina Buckman and Madame Edna Thornton had to perform in the most difficult and exacting opera in the repertory before an audience that averaged one nervously anxious person per row of forty or fifty seats...The air raid arrived all right; bangs and crashes made the floor tremble under one's feet, and presently reached so intense a pitch, the sparse audience making its escape through the exits while Isolde sang on, that the manager had to appear before the footlights, clear the stage, and warned what remained of the audience to seek cover.The gunfire ceased, Isolde resumed her role where she had left it, and although thereafter there were other bursts of fire quite as menacing and unsettling as the first, British sang froid triumphed and the performance pursued its unhurried course to the end... the occasion typified Miss Buckman's artistic courage and purpose. (Musical Opinion - June 1920)"

(in The Record Collector Vol. 47 Nr. 1, S. 57-8)