A bonzer Australian Road Trip!

 

A fortnight, I have been at my beloved Winter Palace, slowly getting settled in, and my latest opus, the revised edition of Andrew Lamb's A Life on the Ocean Wave, the story of Henry Russell, having winged its way from Yamba to New York, I've had a few days being 'busy doing nothing'.

Actually, there has been little choice. The climate here is what may be termed 'sub tropical'. Warm, even muggy, but occasionally decidedly damp. And occasionally violently wet. And just occasionally blindingly violently wet. So I, with my wobblyman walk and unsteady stance cannot venture outdoors, on wet footpaths, grass, and over the metre-wide flooding gutters ...

But yesterday, that changed. My dear friends Robert and Louis took me on an adventure.

'I'm going to Lismore ...', said Robert, 'come along'. Well, I'd never been to Lismore. ('Why would you?' says one who will remained unnamed). All I knew of it was that it had got drowned a few years back. Well, why not? Get out of the house for a few hours, in the comfy safety of Robert's Peugeot ...

So, at 8.45 (when Louis had finished his breakfast!) we set off. The first part of the trip was familiar. We have voyaged through Tabbimobile on other occasions. But it is pleasant, green scenery. And then it rained. A grade one power rainstorm. How the cars (not us!) managed to continue their 110kph cavalcade, I know not! Fortunately, the rafales of rain are inclined to be of short duration, so, my first bit of 'adventure' was not spoiled.

We pulled into something named 'Tucki Tucki'. The 'Bora Ring'. Perched on a hill above the plains below. A cemetery!  Well, I am fond of cemeteries: the older the better. This one isn't very old. The area was apparently settled by the colonists as late as 1880. The gravestones seemed to begin at the start of the 20th century ..

However, the star exhibit was intended to be the 'Bora Ring': a pre-colonist aboriginal stomping ground. There was, alas, nothing to see, except a weathered plaque. The 'Ring' itself is merely a fenced-off mass of weeds

Gingerly over the soggy, slippery grass .. back on to the road .. and more nice scenery, until we arrived in Lismore. Well, I've been now. It's an Australian country town which has seen -- from a picturesque point of view -- better days. It has clearly been inundated (as Christchurch has been quaked) horribly. There was a nice view up a hill (ergo: less inundated!) from the waiting room at Robert's specialist, so I sat there until ..

A surprise!  This was more than a trip to Lismore! Louis, too, had an appointment. In Byron Bay! Well, I hadn't been to Byron Bay for twenty plus years. Jamie Thane drove Ian and I through there when we were thinking of taking a place in Australia ... I remember we hurried on to Bangalow ..

But we were going by the 'picturesque' route. And it was! Bexhill, home of my favourite Boorabee Dorper Lamb Stud, Clunes, Eureka ... this is the Australia I love! Then Federal ... where the hungry young folk stopped for a bite ...

So what was the menu? Sushi. I have only eaten sushi once. A quarter of a century ago, when it became à la mode in London, and a posh place opened in upper St Martin's Lane. I hadn't seen any reason to repeat the experience, since. But ... in the Australian country side? It seemed grotesque enough to be a necessity!  Did I like it? The filling was delicious, but I don't care for the nori seaweed wrap. Reminded me of fish-skin. Ohimé, I, who have always been such an adventurous eater. Alas, with my withered hand, I can no longer wield chopsticks, either ..

On, down the hill, with some grand scenery and views, and finally ..

Byron Bay. Well. I gather it's a popular resort town. While Louis was seeing his optometrist, Robert drove me round town a bit. The chief 'attraction' is apparently the lighthouse. Its speciality is that it is the easternmost point of Australia. 

It also costs $10 to park, and is attached to some sort of eatery. We didn't stop. We descended briskly and went to have a look at the fabled beach. 

Well, Main Beach is fair enough. But it wouldn't rate in the top hundred of Beaches I Have Visited. Once again, we didn't park. But Robert stopped the car long enough for me to take a snap or two.

The lighthouse looks nicer from a distance. But there was a distraction in the foreground!

While Louis was choosing spectacle frames, I sat comfortably in the car (the sun had come out) and watched the world go by ... Where were the beautiful people? Skinny twenty or thirty-something girls with lank hair and little clothing, displaying full dorsal buttocks and the occasional 'other eye'. The men ... well, I was reminded of my visit to 'glamorous' Sitges. No smiles. No one seemingly having a good time. I was rather thankful when we rolled out of town ... and headed for home.

And another surprise. 

The boys need their regular coffees. So we made a little side trip to a spot named Lennox Head. Lennox Head is everything Byron Bay isn't. A delightful freshwater lake, with smiling mothers and children picnicking ...

A splendid beachfront, a 'head' without a lighthouse ..

And the coffee? Well, we lucked in!  The first place we stopped at was closing -- in mid-afternoon -- the second was not up to our standards, and the third ... was QUATTRO.

So, instead of coffee, we had a truly delicious pizza marinara, washed down by a couple of excellent margaritas ..

from the fair hands of Tara ...

All I can say is, I shall definitely -- we all will! -- be returning to Lennox Head.

The discovery of the day!

And, so, we headed into the last hour and a bit of our 300-kilometre road trip. No side roads, now, straight down the motorway towards the double rainbow ..

A quiet gin on the dusk-shrouded terrace at The Cove ... and the end of a huge day!

Thanks, my friends ...

 

Emma Beasley

When I began getting involved with my Victorian Vocalists, I determined that I would (a) not write about the 'famous' names, who had already had large studies or autobiographies devoted to them. I would, rather, investigate those performers who had not been previously 'done'. Duly, when my book Victorian Vocalists was published, containing a selection from the 1000 singers to whom I had devoted an article, it contained everything from negelected stars to risible failures, and everything in between. 

Of course, I have an awful lot of articles left over, and it seems silly to waste them .. but .. time!  Well, as from this week I am 'between books', so I'll launch a few, ebfroe I get drowned in proofs ...

Here goes!

BEASLEY, Emma Louisa (b Smethwick, North Harborne, Staffs x 25 June 1854; d 76 Ashworth Mansions, Elgin Avenue 29 March 1926)

 

Emma Beasley had a largely local career, in the 1870s, before retiring to private life.

 

Emma was born in Smethwick, the daughter of Benjamin Beasley (d George Hotel, Huntingdon 11 February 1907), variously an ironmaster’s clerk and a gun-maker, and his wife Sarah Julia née Brierley (d Brampton Park 21 October 1900). She was enrolled, as a teenager, at the Royal Academy of Music, where, under the teaching of Randegger, she held the Westmoreland Scholarship 1872-4, and was awarded a silver medal. Her first public appearances seem to have been during her Academy days – I spot her playing dates with fellow student Henry Pope at Euston (Stabat Mater) and Tunbridge Wells (The Rival Beauties), at the Corn Exchange in Cambridge, with another student, Gertrude Bradwyn, round Wales (Denbigh, Ruthin, Rhyl), and in concert with Vernon Rigby in Birmingham and Walsall ( 'From Mighty Kings', Sullivan's 'Guenevere', Braga Serenade) and fellow Randegger-pupil, Orlando Christian, in Buckinghamshire. The concerts proliferated, in Sheffield with Sims Reeves (‘From Mighty Kings’, ’Bid me discourse’, ‘When I Remember’), at Albury ('A Day Dream'), in Buxton ('The Legend of the Rose', 'The Old Cottage Clock'), Worcester ('Softly Sighs'), Coventry, and, above all, in Birmingham where she appeared with Edward Lloyd (‘I will extol thee’, ‘Be with me still’, ‘The Bailiff’s Daughter of Islington’), in Smart’s Jacob with Shakespeare and Fanny Poole, in the Stabat Mater with Sinico, Rigby and Whitney, and The Creationalongside Pearson and Wadmore.

 

In July 1876, she made a rare return to London, to sing at the Philharmonic Society (‘From Mighty Kings’, Raubert’s ‘Cradle Song’) before returning to her native places to sing in concerts, in Judas Maccabeus, Elijah, the cantata John Gilpin, and -- in a stage first -- an amateur operetta, as Araminta in A Majority of One, or the Fatale Vote (26 April 1877) by the Anderton brothers. She briefly made the transition to the professional stage, appearing as Clara in The Siege of Rochelle with Carl Rosa, and subsequently as Arline in The Bohemian Girl in the English provinces.

However, in spite of good notices, she did not continue her operatic career, but returned to local concerts. She visited Wales, to sing again for Miss Bradwyn, in the company of Mr William Edward Fisher, a local amateur tenor, whose day job was as a fitter and engineer. On 9 August 1879, Emma would become Mrs Fisher. 

 

In the meanwhile, she sang The Seasons with Lloyd and Foli at Wolverhampton Festival, at the Birmingham Popular Concerts and in their Christmas Elijah, at Manchester (‘Soflty Sighs’,‘In questo semplice’) alongside McGuckin and Santley, at Huddersfield, Norwich (The Fairy Ring), Edinburgh with Carlotta Patti, Glasgow, Sheffield, and in Lincoln, giving Mendelssohn’s Loreley.

 

She visited London for some smaller concerts (Bow and Bromley with Brocolini, Jenny Viard Louis, Albert Hall, Stedman’s at the Birkbeck Institution) and ventured to Belfast for a Creation, and to Chesterfield, but, as ever, sang chiefly in her home region – the Harp Festival with Reeves, Judas Maccabeus, Elijah. She seemed to be dropping out of the musical world, following her marriage, but in September 1882 came a surprising announcement: Miss Beasley was to take the lead role, created by Florence St John, in Richard Barker’s tour of the comic opera Les Manteaux noirs. And she did. She played Girola alongside Madge Stavart, Arnold Breedon and C A White to an excellent reception. But once again, when that tour ended, nothing happened. Except, of course, babies.

 

She advertised in the trade press, but her one essay in theatrical comic opera was to remain just that. One.

 

Over the next 18 months she surfaced periodically. In a minor Messiah, in a Manchester concert, and I last spot her in late 1884, advertising ‘Madame Emma Beasley’s Concert Party’ in her home areas. They weren’t really ‘home areas’ anymore. The family had relocated to Willesden, London. Father was now a ‘wine merchant’ and a little Dora Julia Marie and Elsie Emmeline had been added to the family.

 

But the Beasley family was to undergo a change of fortune. Father Ben had been, throughout his life, a stutterer. He had cured himself, and now he set out to teach others how to overcome their handicap. At a price. In 1889, he took on Brampton Park House, in Huntingdonshire, as a school for stutterers and, with his wife and his sons-in-law as ‘professors of elocution’, ran a successful establishment for twenty years. He published two books and numerous treatises on his speciality, and maintained a lavish lifestyle at Brampton and at the ‘office’ in Willesden, which the family seems to have shared periodically.

 

I don’t know what happened next, but in 1901 and 1911 there is no sign of Mr Fisher. Emma can be seen in Brampton with boss Benjamin ('specialist and surgeon') and London respectively, in the censi, but no William Edward. Dora had married well (Mrs Thomas Greaves Waterhouse) in 1907, Elsie, the year after and even better, fringing the aristocracy as Mrs Cecil Massy Collier. Fitness-freak Leslie went off to the east to do something in rubber. But 1907 had been terrible year. Ben Beasley had died in a pub (which some said was appropriate) in Huntingdon, and Brampton Park House was hit by a massive fire. 

 

In 1911, Emma is living in Great Tichfield Street with her remaining daughter, Daisy Gertrude (b 7 November 1887; d Hendon 2 April 1969), who the census tells us is a vocalist. She is ‘married’ but there is no William. Daisy married actor Samuel George Herbert Mason in 1914, and in 1915 (14 August) son Lieutenant Leslie Benito Fisher (b 27 June 1885) was killed in France. He was listed as the son of the late William Edward Fisher, accountant, and Emma Louisa Fisher of Brampton Park. And Daisy says the same on her marriage banns. So does Elsie. 

 

Edgar? Accountant? Sigh. Well, William Edward is said to have died in Fulham 22 January 1912 leaving his £92 will to be executed by an ironmonger’s wife Florence Martha Dixon. Not his wife or his son? Had William Edward had done the classic mid-life thing and jumped ship? I think this must be another William Edward, though the family historians have taken him on board. And have also left us the portrait of Emma here included.

 

In 1921, Emma can be seen living at Broome Lodge, Sunninghill, with the Waterhouse family.

 

Emma died in 1926. Daisy’s husband executed her will. For what it was worth. She left a little over a hundred pounds.

 

Emma was a clearly worthy Victorian Vocalist. A rather wasted one, perhaps. She was still calling herself ‘vocalist’ in the 1911 census, long after she had ceased to sing. She was also chopping a decade off her age. Strange, this story. And Ben the stuttering gun-barrel-maker turned boozy pseudo-medico … evidently quite a character!

 

 

Avonia Bonney

 

This picture came up on ebay today. So since I had a wee article on file, I thought I'd pair them up ..

BONNEY, Avonia [Melvill] (b Cambridge, Mass 9 May 1854; d 60 Bay State Road, Boston 8 April 1910).

 

Avonia Bonney was one of the horde of young Victorian Americans who trouped to Europe in search of a musical education and prima donna-dom. Most postulants got some of the first, and very little of the second. But Avonia did very much better than most. Because she was not over-ambitious. She spent ten years in Italy and worked solidly, in leading roles, in the eight years between her debut and her return to America.

 

She was, it must be said, watched every step of the way by the folks back home, for Avonia was ‘somebody’, or rather related to ‘somebody’. Her Christian name told the tale. Her mother, who was born Caroline Emma Jones (b New York September 1838; d Cambridge, Mass 27 February 1924), was sister to the well-known actress Avonia Jones (Mrs Gustavus V Brooke), immortalised by Pinero as Avonia Bunn in Trelawney of the Wells. That meant, of course, that Emma was the daughter of the character who called himself ‘Count Joannes’ (George Jones), sometime actor and later laughing stock, and his first wife, Melinda Jones (actress). Emma had wed William Larrabee Bonney (b Maine 1823; d Boston 12 June 1896) ‘merchant, of Jordan, Marsh and Co’, on 28 August 1853, and Avonia was born in 1854. 

 

So, ‘the grand-daughter of Count Joannes’ got more coverage in the American press than most aspiring soprani, and – as in the paper Folio of 1873 -- it seems to have been surprisingly accurate.

 

The teenaged Avonia was educated at the New England Conservatoire until 1869, when her mother took her and her younger sister, Emma [Linda] (Mrs Brownlow, 1856-1899) to Italy to study. An early souvenir of their stay survives in the shape of a music sheet, Usiglio’s Le educande di Sorrento transcribed for piano and dedicated to the two girls.

 

The teacher chosen was Giuseppe Gerli of the Milan Conservatoire, and Avonia was put before the public for the first time, at all of seventeen years of age, as Amina in La Sonnambula at Alessandria in Piedmont. Sufficient success was achieved that, the following season, she was engaged for a five months’ season at the minor Teatro Balbo in Turin. I spot her there in Linda di Chamonix and as Oscar in Un ballo in maschera, and Folio assures us that she also sang Lucia di Lammermoor, Crispino e la comare andL’Elisir d’amore, all of which seem perfectly suitable to her light, high soprano. She also created the title-role in Giuseppe Bozzelli’s Caterina di Belp, but the young composer’s piece was not a success.

In 1873, I spot her at Barletta and nearby Bisceglie (Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Un ballo in maschera), in 1874, at Avellino (Linda di Chamonix, La Sonnambula) and the Teatro Communale, Pordenone (Don Pasquale), and subsequently at Salerno, Reggio Emilia, Malta, Voghera (Ines in L’Africaine). No Milans or Genoas or major theatres ... but leading roles in smaller venues and houses. When she ventured a Lucia at the Naples Teatro del Fondo, she was scoffed at by the unforgiving Neapolitan audiences as being inaudible. So it was back to Traviata at the Teatro Civico, Vigevano, and the Teatro Sociale of Varese, Ernani at the Cicconi Sant’ Elpidio, Ballo at Lecce, Traviata at the less pretentious Teatro Bellini in Naples, and at San Paolo …

 

Avonia Bonney had found her niche, and in houses and roles suited to her physical and vocal means, she had put together a well-stuffed professional life. However, it was coming to an end. In the last months of 1879, she went to her most esoteric prima donna engagement of all: at the Teatro Nuovo Reale on the island of Zakynthos. I see one local (?) Dionysus Mousmoutis has written an entire article on this episode (‘The soprano Avonia Bonney in the theatrical scene of Zakynthos’) … I just spot her doing Ruy Blas, Ballo and Rigoletto, this last in March 1880.

And by the time of the 1880 census of America, she is back at home with mother, father and sister … ‘professional singer’. But not very much, nor very often, nowadays. The opera-house years were over. Avonia settled down as a singing teacher, a profession which she would follow to the end of her days.

 

There were still events, however, to come in her life. Marriage and childbirth. That same 1880 census which has 25 year-old Avonia back home, shows a 15 year-old ship’s carpenter’s son, working as a farm labourer in Scituate, Mass. Transcripts of the Massachusetts registers show that Willis Abner Li[t]chfield (age 28) and Avonia Bonney (age 27) were wed in Boston 31 December 1887. It’s either a case of Victorian Scribal Error, or deliberate deception. Their son, Willis William Lichfield, tells us later that he was born in Paris, in 1887 or 1889 or 1890 … and here comes Avonia on a ship from Europe in July 1891 bringing with her a theoretically 11-month old son … who had been christened in London 15 September 1889. Born 23 May 1889.

 

Mr Lichfield sr (b Scituate 6 November 1864; d Scituate 1936) progressed to being a glass-cutter, then to working in stained glass, and Mrs Lichfield regressed steadily in her age, to the extent of chopping a decade off her birth date, as she worked on in the music profession as a ‘Voice Master for Grand Opera’. They family can be seen – husband, wife, mother Emma and two servants – at Boston’s 60 Bay State Road in the 1900 census.

 

Avonia died, at that address, at the age 55 years 10 months and 29 days, of pulmonary tuberculosis.

 

 

 

 

 

The Barnby Boys

 

 

The name of ‘Mr Barnby’ was a well-known one in Victorian cathedral and concert music, due to the activities of one family: five brothers.

Joseph Barnby

 

The five were the sons of Thomas Barnby (b York 29 January 1792; d Chapterhouse Street, York 23 October 1860) and his wife Barbara née Robinson (b York 3 July 1791; d York 13 May 1856) who were married in that city on 9 October 1814.  Six sons and three daughters, born over a period of twenty years, survived to adulthood.

 

The Dictionary of National Biography (for one son has earned his place therein), tells us that Thomas was an organist. Well, he may have been a musician for pleasure, as was the widespread custom of the times, but music was not his profession. The 1841 census confirms that he was a ‘shoemaker’, and the 1851 document confirms, more loftily, that he was a ‘boot and shoe manufacturer’. At his death, it was reported that he was ‘much respected’ in the city, so he possibly ended up a man of some substance.

 

He clearly had some interest and connection with music, however, for five of his sons in turn were sent to Matthew Camidge, the organist of York Minster, for musical education at a young age, and all five became, in their turn, boy choristers at the Cathedral.

 

The first son, William, (b Girdler Gate, York, x 29 December 1816; d St Mary’s House, York 24 February 1895) was to make his whole career in York. After his stint as ‘Master Barnby’, he became a counter tenor chorister at the Minster. Over the years, he was also organist at St Crux, music master at St Peter’s School, connected with St Olave’s Church in various capacities and, most notably, music master at the Yorkshire School from the Blind. The School was founded in 1835, and, in December of the year, teenaged William became its first music teacher, a position he held for the whole of his career. At his death, he was succeeded by his son, Louis Hague Barnby.

 

Robert BARNBY (b York, 28 October 1820; d 9 St George’s Square, London, 1 June 1875) followed his brother from the ranks of boys, to a place as a counter tenor at the Minster, and was active in local music making until February 1841, when he won an appointment to the choir of St Paul’s Cathedral. He went quickly into action as a public singer: on 24 May 1841, he was a tenor soloist in the concert of the Sacred Harmonic Society. Thereafter, he followed the career of a successful church musician in London, singing with glee parties and such groups as the Purcell Club and the Round, Catch and Glee Club, he appeared in the semi-chorus at the Norwich Festival on the occasion of the English premiere of Spohr’s Last Judgement, he sang in the concerts of Ancient Music for a number of years, and in supporting alto roles in oratorio. In 1845, he was appointed a lay vicar at Westminster Abbey, and in 1847 a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal. In 1850, while appearing at the Gloucester Festival, he was called upon to sing the contralto music of an ailing Charlotte Dolby.

Robert Barnby

For the next quarter of a century Robert Barnby was seen regularly featured in part-music and choral situations: at the wedding of the Princess Royal, in Edward Land’s group at the Surrey Garden, at the Mansion House at many a banquet, for the Royal Society of Musicians, the Royal General Theatrical Fund and other ‘royal’ occasions, in line with his position at the Chapel Royal, St James’s. Shortly before his death, he could be seen appearing as counter-tenor with a group including Montem Smith, G T Carter, Horscroft/Hilton and William Winn, at the Albert Hall and the Crystal Palace.

 

Third son Thomas (1822-1894) preferred initially to follow his father into the boot and shoe business, but ended up a baker and grocer in Berkshire, but fourth son Henry BARNBY (b Swinegate, York 14 September 1826; d Slough 2 April 1885) put things back on a musical footing.

Henry performed as a soloist as a boy, and featured, from 1839, in the concerts of the York Choral Society as well as at the Cathedral. As an adult, he bucked the family’s falsetto trend and became a bass, leaving York Minster for, successively, Carlisle Cathedral, Armagh Cathedral, Westminster Abbey, and ultimately for St George’s Chapel Windsor, where he would remain for twenty-eight years. 

During the 1850s, Henry performed with the Sacred Harmonic Society, the London Sacred Harmonic Society, at the oratorios at St Martin’s Hall, seconding such as Lewis Thomas, Weiss, Santley and Belletti in St Paul, Elijah, Israel in Egypt etc . He took part in the 1852 (‘a voice of good quality .. correct’) and 1855 Hereford Festivals, and the 1861 Choral Festival at Westminster Abbey, but in the 1860s performed largely his duties in chapel and concert in Windsor and Eton.

Henry married (9 December 1853) Charlotte [Icely] WARMAN (b Lower Road, Deptford 14 June 1835; d Windsor ?30 July 1877), a young vocalist, ‘pupil of George Smart’. As Mrs Henry Barnby, she would come into her own in the 1860s, singing in concert with the Barnby family, the principal soprano music (with her husband in the title-role) in Elijah, oratorio in Oxford, and even guesting at the prestigious Boosey Ballad concerts in London, before her early death.

 

While the other Barnby brothers stayed in Britain, and mostly found long-secure jobs within the musical (or grocery) establishment, Frederick BARNBY (b York, 26 September 1828; d Montreal, Canada, 30 September 1865) had a less steady life. Frederick started off as a Minster chorister and ‘pupil of Dr Camidge’, and shows up, from 1845, as organist, variously, at Pontefract Church, Lower Mitton Church in Stourport, Kirkgate Chapel in Bradford, Holywood Church, Belfast  -- and after an inglorious bankruptcy – in 1858 he was appointed to St Paul’s, Birmingham. Once again, he did not stay long. In June 1859, he quit wife and family and sailed for Canada, where he was engaged at the Protestant Cathedral, Montreal. Like everyone else, Canada liked him (‘the first church organist in Canada … his taste and skill are unequalled in this country’) or his talents, but not for very long. Frederick died in Canada, aged 38.

 

James BARNBY (b York 29 April 1832; d West Coker, Yeovil, December 1916) became a lay vicar at Hereford Cathedral, before taking on a similar post at St Paul’s Cathedral, where he remained as a vicar choral and, latterly, dean. His son Sidney Percy BARNBY(b Hereford 1854; d 9 Stracey Road, Harlesden, 31 October 1907) carried on the family tradition, spending thirty-three years with the St Paul’s choir as an alto.

Joseph Barnby

The last son of Thomas and Barbara’s family was the one that earned the family its place in the reference books. Joseph BARNBY (b York 12 August 1838; d 20 St George’s Square, London 28 January 1896) won his laurels not as a vocalist, but as a conductor and composer. He instituted a choral association in 1867, and held an important place in the oratorio concert-world of London when, for some seasons, he led the Royal Albert Hall oratorio concerts. He ended his career as principal of the Guildhall School of Music. He was knighted for his well-recorded musical deeds (which I, thus, have no need to record), a few years before his death.

 

"I walk ...."

 

It's something most of the world takes for granted.  Not I.

Over the past few years, the effects of my 15 year-old stroke, which I thought I had largely conquered, have gradually started to kick in. 

Nowadays, I have often to use a walking stick. Even two. I have refused a frame. I fall over occasionally. But not if I'm careful. I cannot bend down to pull the weeds in my garden: I topple into the greenery.

So, most of the time, when at Gerolstein, I sit at my desk and write. I rarely, even, go outside to visit the horses. And when I leave the farm it is, nowadays, always under the guidance of Wendy and her wheels. I try not to let it get me down. After all, in one's 80th year, one can't expect to have all one's faculties, and I have -- thank the Gods -- still got my mental ones.

But, right now, I am not at Gerolstein. I am in Yamba, NSW, in my little Winter Palace (2rms, k&b). And Wendy is on the other side of the ocean. I have to fend -- with more than a little help from my friends -- for myself. If I, suddenly, find I need or want something from the shops or (more likely) the pharmacy, for example ... ? Up till recently, I could just pop down the hill ... And the wonderful Wednesday weekly market ... a trip up and down the hill, and the return journey laden to the gunwales ..?

And an unkind voice whispers in my ear 'if you can't do those things, you cannot spend four or five months a year on your own, on the top of the hill, by the seaside'. So, will my years of Yamba soon be over. Could this be, even, my last winter in my Palace?

I woke, this morning, at 5am, and made up my mind. I would try the Market trip. The worst that could happen would be that I'd end up in a bruised heap on the ground. Best-friend Robert had taken me to the supermarket on Monday to stock up on heavy things, like bottles and cans, so I would only have to carry my 'delicacies' ...

As soon as the dawn cracked open, I set out. No stick, as both hands were needed for shopping bags .. across Flinders Park (beautifully maintained by the local council) with its views out over the ocean ..

I took the slope slowly. Breathing was fine, but feet were a little unsteady on the dewy grass. And eyesight was a tad fuzzy. I fear I was inelegant; I got one or two curious glances. Past Robert's house -- where he was on a conference call to European parts -- then downwards to the coast and the Market. 'Down' is actually trickier than 'Up'. You feel you need crampons. But I reached my goal safely ...

Goodness, all those people! At 7am! The queue for Woody's Tomatoes was 30 metres long! I couldn't stand in line that long, so no tomatoes today!  Smoked trout and gravad lax, lamb fillets and patties, bananas (Jupiter, a bunch of bananas is heavy!), raspberries and blackberries, a big tub of excellent olives, avocados from Wendy's favourite stall ... 

A littlle chat to Pete, the orchid man ... whose stall is right by the road of return. Well, here goes! Oooh those bananas are heavy!

Up the hill. Very slowly. Five steps. Stop. Regain balance. Look at the view ..

Five more steps. Cheery hellos from other folk, heading downwards, and the odd 'are you all right?'  'Yes, I'm just a wobbly man!'. Up, up to the top of Flinders Park, and home is in sight. Downhill. A handsome young man in a nice car pulls up and offers to drive me home. A lady I've met before offers to ferry my bags home, on her bicycle ...  but I'm only 100 metres from home ...

Like a racehorse in its last furlong, I dragged myself to the Cove gate ... each step shorter than the last ...

It was an hour and a half since I had set out. But my mission was accomplished. I CAN still do it. Just. But next time, a smaller bunch of bananas!

Elisa Volpini: a star from Spain

 

VOLPINI, Elisa (née VILLAR Y JURADO, Elisa Margarida) (b Madrid ?20 July 1835; d unknown)

 

VOLPINI, Ambrogio (b Cremona c1826; d 9 Boulevard des Italiens, Paris 14 September 1871)

 

Two splendid artists: one, indeed, the lady, frankly famous. Much has been written about her, but facts, of the personal variety, are few to find. I have done my best.

 This little piece is really about the lady, but the gentleman, who was something like a decade older than she, had already been a well-liked leading tenor on European stages well before their marriage, so I’ll start with him.

 

I don’t know much about his background, just that he came from Cremona, learned his music from one Wenceslao Cattaneo, apparently in Milan, and had what appears to have been his first engagement at Carnevale 1844-5, at the Teatro della Società at Bergamo, where I spot him singing in I Lombardi (‘giovane che assai promette di sè’) and the contralto role in Mercadante’s Il Reggente. A season at Civitavecchia (May 1846) seems to have gone carrot-shaped, but he went on to Pavia for Primavera (Arvino in I Lombardi ‘ha sorpresi’), and, 1 July, he began a term at Milan’s Teatro Re, alongside another Cattaneo debutante, Angiolina Bosio, and the baritone Corsi. They began with I due Foscari (‘che già in questa parte ha colte bella palme’) and followed up with Giuseppe Devasini’s new Le due Sorelle di Corinto, in which he played the hero, Nettoleno. The young singers were greeted with a splendid reception. When he sang at Bassano (I due Foscari, Linda di Chamounix) with Guiseppina Leva, he was acclaimed as ‘il secondo Fraschini’.

 

He and Corsi both continued to Piacenza (‘giovine tenore che bene annunziadi sè’) and joined Annunciata Tirelli in I Due Foscari, Beatrice di Tenda, I Puritani and Giovanna d’Arco before, in March 1847, Volpini made an appearance at La Scala, creating the role of Volmiro (as a replacement for Moriani) in Carlo Boniforti’s opera Velleda alongside Eugenia Tadolini. It was a Benefit performance and the opera seems to have been played but once. However, he appeared in I due Foscari, and in Giovanna d’Arco and as Publio Ebuzio in Uranio Fontana’s I Baccanti at the Carcano, with Ersilia Ranzi, before leaving Milan, this time for Spain and Portugal.

 

I see him at Lisbon’s San Carlo, singing in Lucrezia Borgia, Giovanna d’Arco, Lucia di Lammermoor, I due Foscari, Attila, La fidanzata Corsa, Battista's Anna la prie and Ricci’s Gli esposti and soon the announcement appeared ‘L'Agenzia Verger e Co è esclusivamente incaricala di trattare gli affari … dal tenore Ambrogio Volpini che tanto si è distinto sui teatri di Spagna e Portogallo’. And he was re-signed for Lisbon (Eran due ed ora son tre, Lucia di Lammermoor, Macbeth, I Masnadieri, Lucrezia Borgia). The Verger family would have much to do with the Volpinis over the coming years. And so would the Iberian peninsula.

 

In 1849-50 I see our tenor singing I Lombardi, I due Foscari, Attila and Macduff in Verdi’s new Macbeth at Oporto, and at the Teatro San Fernando in Seville, in Cadiz (Lucia di Lammermoor, I due Foscari, Maria Padilla) and at Gibraltar; in 1851 I spot 'il bravo tenore' at Valenza (Beatrice di Tenda, Linda di Chamounix, La Favorita), in September at Alicante and in 1853-4 he’s back in Seville again, alongside the Sulzer sisters. Then Madrid with Gazzaniga, Nantier-Didiée, Prudenza, Malvezzi in Nabucco, Rigoletto, Lucrezia Borgia. In 1855-6, there he is again at Seville and Lisbon, giving Il Trovatore, Marco Visconti and Maria di Rohan, with Marietta Spezia and Mauro Assoni. And having his portait, by Greppi, lithographed. 

 

And somewhere in there is where Elisa Villar enters the story. Elisa had apparently been born in Madrid on a date which we are assured was 21 July 1835, to German Villar of Toledo, a music master, and his wife Maria Dolores née Jurado from Cartagena. The parentage, if not the date, are confirmed by her (second) marriage registration. The family removed early on to Seville, and settled, so an enthusiastic blogger tells us, in the Calle Betis. The teenaged Elisa apparently sang in the chorus and in small roles in the operas at the San Fernando Theatre. I see an Isabel Villar listed as comprimaria in the company there, but another biographical note assures us that this was her sister.

 

Anyway, in 1854, at Cadiz, Signor Volpini married Elisa Villar. Which seems odd, because, in 1860, she (‘age 28’) sailed to New York with her husband (admitting to 33), plus a 10 year-old Juan and 5 year-old Marie. But we know that Marie de la Espectacion Rosa Volpini y Villar was born in Vera Cruz 18 December 1858. So perhaps that New York document (or my eyesight) isn’t to be relied upon. In 1862, 'Ambroise' is said to be 35, and Elisa .. 21.

 

Anyway, it is a few years before Elisa makes an official stage debut, and, in the meanwhile, Ambrogio is going strong: further seasons at Madrid and Lisbon (Maria di Rohan, La Traviata Marco Visconti, Il Trovatore, a season at London’s Drury Lane, followed by a visit to Liverpool, Dublin and spots beyond. London was fairly impressed. He opened as Gennaro to the Lucrezia Borgia of Grisi and they nodded ‘Signor Volpini is supplying the place vacated by Mario, with a degree of success beyond expectation’. ‘To appear immediately after Mario in one of that great artist’s finest parts is a severe trial, but Signor Volpini stood it well. He is young, somewhat slight in figure, but well made and of an altogether agreeable aspect. His voice is sweet, mellow and what is called ‘sympathetic’ … his lower noted are veiled and deficient in clearness, but in the higher region of the scale there is a degree of volume and power which reminded us of Tamberlik, His intonation is irreproachable … taken altogether he is a performer of uncommon merit’. He followed up as Manrico to Grisi’s Leonora to more cheers ‘We make little doubt that this gentleman will become a great public favourite.  There is a freshness on his voice that is especially charming, sweetness and strength being happily combined with a perfect mastery over the best forms of Italian vocalism’. He also sang Edgardo to the Lucia of Madame Gassier (‘... a tragedian, who has few superiors on the musical stage’).

 

After London, he went to the provinces as ‘the new tenor who made so successful a debut at Drury Lane’, repeating his roles and also giving Alfredo to Mme Gassier’s La Traviata, Raoul in Les Huguenots and, in Dublin, he paired with Catherine Hayes in Lucia, Norma, La Sonnambula and Linda di Chamounix. They subsequently played a few performances at London’s Princess’s Theatre, in August 1857, before the British interlude was over.  

 

A little parenthesis here. Once upon a time, there was a Liverpudlian tenor named Henry Croft who, the Liverpool press claimed, was actually the Volpini of Drury Lane. He was not.

 

I don’t know exactly when the South American trip was set up. I don’t know precisely when they went. The tale is told that Elisa was along with them as wife and mother, and not as a member of troupe but, one night the star was ill and she went on as Tremocolada in Marco Visconti and .. etc etc. Maybe so, maybe not. The end-of-career Cortesi was prima donna, Tomassi [Sra Ardavani] was second, her husband the baritone, and a certain Sra Enrichetta Figlioli Fattori, of whom I know nothing, was also of the trip with her conducting husband.

Anyhow, they arrived in Mexico, before September of the year, and Ambrogio can be seen there singing Pollio to Adelaide Cortesi’s Norma and the Adalgisa of Elisa Tomassi in the capital and in Vera Cruz, with great success, in the final weeks of 1857. 

I have few records of their activity in South America, but it seems that Ambrogio sang all the tenor leads, at some stage (early, I suspect) a female ‘de Volpini’ was listed at the bottom of a company list, and only later Elisa Villar de Volpini was billed third behind Cortesi and Tomassi-Ardavani. The only actual sighting of her, on stage, that I have exhumed from the mass of Mexican reporting is dated 28 September 1859. That date was the premiere of local composer Cenobio Paniagua’s Marco Visconti remake as Catalina di Guisa, in which Elisa took the title-role opposite her husband. 

 

In 1860 and 1861, Signor Volpini produced seasons in Havana. The first featured the Heron (Natali) sisters, with Elisa billed next, the second toplined Frezzolini and Lotti, and Elisa sang La Traviata and Maria di Rohan. An American paper, summing up, as they ended their sojourn noted: ‘She is an artist much like Piccolomini and has just been engaged for three years for the Italian Theatre in Paris’. She. Not he.

 

The couple travelled back to Europe on the Adriatic in May, (and I notice that, since the early months of 1860, they are down to one child) and, in October 1861, Elisa made her debut at the Italiens, in the role of Lady Henrietta in Marta (29 October 1861) ‘mit bestem Erfolge’. Her colleagues were a mighty team: Alboni, Mario, delle Sedie, Zucchini. But Elisa Volpini came through splendidly: ‘Mme Volpini est ce qu'on peut appeler une jolie femme, elle a du feu, de l'intelligence, et sa voix, sans être forte, est des plus fraîches et des plus agréables à entendre’, ‘[Marta] ….. de Flotow était d'ailleurs représentée par une débutante dont la voix et la physionomie ont excité là sympathie générale’.    

Zucchini

She continued her ‘debuts’ the next season as Adalgisa to the popular Norma of Rosina Penco, and the approval continued: ‘Mme Volpini qui débutait dans le rôle d'Adalgise, dut être satisfaite de sa première épreuve, ainsi que de l'accueil qu’elle a reçcu’ ‘Elle a su se faire applaudir à outrance …  Mme Volpini nous paraît intelligente, sa méthode est excellente, elle vocalise avec charme et légèreté, et dans les passages un peu doux, sa voix est des plus sympathiques, Si Mme Volpini se montre dans d'autres rôles ce qu'elle a été dans celui d'Adalgise, nous lui prédisons un fort beau succès …’. ‘un veritable talent … Mme Volpini a fait applaudir au contraire des qualités simples et naturelles qui ne demandent qu'à grandir'.  

 

She visited Lille for a concert, Barcelona for a brief season with Mario (Rigoletto, Il Barbiere di Siviglia) and completed her Paris ‘debuts’ in Don Pasquale. Then, in June 1863, she made a first appearance in London, in the Italian Opera at Her Majesty’s Theatre. Still, she trod carefully. She began as Oscar in Un ballo in maschera, alongside Titiens and delle Sedie and was immediately declared a ‘valuable acquisition’. ‘Her well-trained high soprano voice is beautifully clear and brilliant and she sings with true Italian feeling and sentiment’, ‘took the honours’, ‘a young singer of great mark and likelihood ..’. But Spanish, of course!

 

She was scheduled to sing the Mermaid in Oberon, but in the event Rose Hersee did that, and the new little favourite’s only other role for the season was Zerlina alongside Titiens and Louise Michal.

 

When the company went on the road in August, Ambrogio joined them. In Dublin, in the missed-train (?) absence of Titiens, Elisa, regarded as an Oscar-Zerlina-Marta performer, made an unscheduled (?) appearance as Lucia di Lammermoor alongside none less than Sims Reeves and Santley. A ‘great success’ was recorded and Elisa’s career took a sharp upwards turn. She continued in Marta and Ballo as intended, and then came out as La Traviata to a huge reaction: ‘We question if we ever witnessed so perfect an impersonation of this character even with the recollection of Maria Piccolomini … with a voice of infinitely greater volume, tone and richness … Mme Volpini united all the dramatic force and reality of style …’

 

Across the channel, Paris thought they hadn’t had enough chance to see this new star: ‘Il y a un mois, à Dublin, Mme Volpini, obligée de chanter à l'improviste le rôle de Lucia, en remplacement de Mme Titiens, y obtint un tel succès que de ce jour, par toute l'Angleterre, elle est réclamé pour des concerts ou des représentations sans nombre (...) Attendrons-nous quinze ans pour réentendre Mme Volpini à Paris et pour connaître M Volpini?’. 

Well, it wouldn’t be fifteen years. But Mme Volpini was now the rage (‘one of the favourites last season at Her Majesty’s Italian Opera’, ‘a genine furore’). She starred in the Jullien concerts at Her Majesty’s Theatre (‘Saper vorreste’, ‘Leggero invisibile’, ‘O, luce di quest’anima’, ‘Il Bacio’, Venzano waltz, ‘Last Rose of Summer’) where she shared the honours with violinist Sivori, then set off for another 'brilliant' Verger engagement at Barcelona (Marta, Faust). In April and May she was engaged at Vienna (Lucia di Lammermoor, La Sonnambula), before it was time to return to London. 

 

She sang Marta with Giuglini and Santley, the Mermaid in Oberon, Andeluno in Mireille (making a hit with the Savoyard song ‘L’alba tranquilla’) and the last act of La Sonnambula in a spectacle coupé, she sang at the Crystal Palace and at Benedict’s and Arditi’s grand concerts and was judged, again, ‘one of the great successes of the season’.

 In later 1864, she sang at Lisbon (Rigoletto, La Traviata, Lucia di Lammermoor, Semiramide, La Sonnambula, Don Pasquale, Marta, Otello) alongside Mongini, Borghi Mamo and Squarcia, and impressed so strongly that she was named as a Court Singer to the King of Portugal. Thence, she proceeded to the Hofoper in Vienna (Un Ballo in maschera, Don Pasquale, La Preziosilla in Forza del destino, Vittoria in Tutti in Maschera) and the Rossini-theater, Madrid (Faust, Marta), and back to Lisbon again (Faust ‘elle fait fanatisme’, ‘one of the best Marguerites ever heard’). Oporto, Liège, Ghent (Don Pasquale) followed, and in winter 1867 she was engaged for the first time at St Petersburg and Moscow. And here, in spite of sharing the bills with Pauline Lucca, she scored as great a hit as she had in Portugal. For a decade, except when not in Europe, Elisa Volpini would spend most of her winters in Russia, feted as a star alongside the great names of the period. 

 

She did spend some time in Paris, however, 2 rue Rossini, where her last child, Pierre César Volpini, was born 19 November 1867.

Moscow 1868

 In August 1868 she sang at Baden, then, at a vastly increased salary, at St Petersburg, where, this year, both Lucca and Patti were engaged. In 1869, she accepted an engagement in a new opera company at the Lyceum, London. The company collapsed quickly. Elisa sang at a few, mostly high-class, concerts (Philharmonic Society, Benedict’s, Crystal Palace), and then hied her to Baden for the season and back to Russia. This year Patti, Artôt, Fricci and Hauck were there, and the programme included a new opera by Fabio Campana, Nostra Dama di Parigi. Adelina Patti declined to learn a new role, and so it was ultimately Elisa Volpini who played the role of Esmeralda (1 January 1870) alongside Trebelli, Bettini and Graziani. And the piece was successful. When Don Giovanni was played, Patti was, as usual, Zerlina and Mme Volpini sang Elvira, when Rigoletto was given ‘Cette représentation n'a été qu'un long triomphe pour l'éminente cantatrice, qui a été comblée d'applaudissements, de rappels, de bouquets et de cadeaux’. The cantatrice in question was Madame Volpini. When the company played Moscow, Elisa scored an 'indescrivibile successo' in I Puritani. 

 

This year, she was enrolled for the regular London opera, at Drury Lane, and the British press mused ‘a very sprightly lady with a clear and resonant soprano voice who may be remembered at Her Majesty’s Theatre … singing a small part and a pretty song in Mireille. Since 1864, Mme Volpini has been winning laurels abroad, more particularly at St Petersburg where she is reported to stand almost as well in public favour as Mdlle Adelina Patti herself’.

 

Elisa had certainly risen in stature since her earlier London performances, and she confirmed her new position in Marta, as Susanna in Le Nozze di Figaro (‘a lively natural actress and a thoroughly competent musician’, ‘surpassed Mme Sinico’) and particularly in the role of Filina in Mignon (‘Mme Volpini joue le rôle de Filina avec beaucoup d'animation, vocalisant avec une facilité et un goût à ne rien laisser à désirer’). When Campana's Esmeralda (ex-Nostra Dama di Parigi) was produced, however, la Patti now found the time to learn it. 

 

The St Petersburg season began in October, and Madame Volpini was to the fore, giving her Rigoletto, I Puritani and La Traviata, the last named opposite the Spanish tenor, Andres Marin (ka Andrea Marini).

 

Now, Ambrogio Volpini seems to have vanished from operatic annals for some years by this stage. His name doesn’t surface again. But we know that he died. For his tomb can be seen in Paris’s Père Lachaise cemetery. Apparently it has no inscription. But there is a stonemason’s mark of 1872 on the verso of the monument. It is possible – it was, after all, wartime – that the stone and the mark may post-date the burial slightly. And, yes ... 14 September 1871 aged 45 ... rentier .. 9 Boulevard des Italiens .. and what? 'son of Madame Elisabeth Ferrari de Garcia'?

 

Anyway, Andres Marin would become, eventually (29 November 1880), Elisa’s second husband.

 In 1871, the pair can be seen at Seville’s San Fernando, where the repertoire included Martha, La Favorita, I Puritani, La Traviata, before a return to Russia, now under the management of superagent Merelli (Il Matrimonio Segreto, I Puritani, William Tell as Carlo il temerario). In 1872 she made a brief return to the Paris Italiens, now under the management of Amedée Verger, to sing Don Pasquale with Gardoni and the younger Verger, and Lucrezia Borgia with Nicolini, before hurrying on to her engagement at the Teatro Jovellanos in Madrid (La Traviata 3 April, Don Pasquale, Rigoletto, Faust, Lucia di Lammermoor) with Marin and Napoleone Verger, thence to Hamburg, and another season at St Petersburg. 1873 saw her at Seville and Barcelona (La Traviata, Linda di Chamonix, Il Barbiere di Siviglia) and, of course, her seventh successive year in Russia (Roberto il diavolo, William Tell, La Traviata), while in 1874 she again shared her time between Spain and Russia (Der Freischütz). However, there was a management change in the freezing north. Signor Ferri now took over proceedings at St Petersburg and, when the 1875 prospectus came out, Mme Volpini was not included in the listings. There was an outcry from the subscribers and, when the season opened, Mme Volpini and Signor Marini were there.

Faust

 In 1875, I spot her at Bordeaux; in 1876, at Monte Carlo, Barcelona (La Traviata with Tamagno) and Trieste (Ophelia in Thomas's Hamlet, I Puritani 'immenso successo' with Campanini, Moriami, Castelmary' 'La signora Volpini è una celebrità...', La Sonnambula with Campanini and Tamburini), before, in 1877, Amedée Verger put together a company, with Madame Volpini and Monsieur Marin at its head, to go to South America. Elisa gave her Traviata, Puritani, Don Pasquale, Lucia di Lammermoor and her first Aida at the Teatro Payet, to spectacular response (‘Mme Volpini est adorée dans ces régions où l'on aime le chant brillant, coloré, chaleureux. Jamais cantatrice n'électrisa autant les dilettantes havanais..’). Verger died in the south in 1878, and in March the little team -- including Elisa, who had been reported, also, to have died from the yellow fever, returned home.

And come the winter, there the pair are singing William Tell, Traviata and I Puritani at St Petersburg and Warsaw …

They visited South America once more, in 1880, where Elisa shared the soprano repertoire with Maria Louisa Durand, but thereafter, married now (26 November 1880), they seem to have limited their activities to Spain. I see them, in 1884, with Napoleone Verger, performing in Alicante, Murcia, Cadiz, Oporto, Vigo …

My last stage sighting is an engagement at Malaga in 1886.

 

And I mean ‘last stage sighting’. Andres Marin y Estevan went on to have a second career, as the mayor of the city of Teruel, and has in consequence been much biographised. These biographies mention, of course, that he was the husband of ‘la Volpini’, and they record Marin’s death in 1896, but not one among them can I find which tells what became of the lady. An English article of 1895 refers to her as ‘retired’, a slightly later Diccionario encyclopedic hispano-americano de literature, ciencias y artes says she is living, widowed, in Madrid. The Bibliothèque National Française tidies her up as dead in 1887. A website, mundoclasico.com, say she died in February 1907.  They can’t all be right. But this last one has the flavour of fact... 

 

'Elisa murió en Madrid en febrero de 1907. La crónica de su muerte del diario El Diluvio y de otras publicacione indicaba que murió con 67 años, lo que haría que hubiera nacido hacia el 1839, reforzando el año que se deduce de los registros de nacimiento de sus hijos y de defunción de su primer marido'.

 

So she married at fourteen? I think not.

         

I will keep looking...

 

Articles on Lorenzo Pagans and Uranio Fontana credit both musicians as being, at some stage, a teacher of Elisa Villar de Volpini.

 

Their elder son, Alfredo [recte Alfred] Volpini y Villar (b 15 January 1862) was, in the late 1890s and the 1900s, the impresario of the Barcelona Liceo and the Teatro Real, Madrid.