Julia Lucy NORTHALL of Brooklyn ... a discovery!

 

In the twenty years and more that I delved into the world's Victorian Vocalists, and wrote up some thousand of them, there were some areas on which I somewhat focussed more lightly than others. For various reasons. One of them being the sources available. I mean, Boston? One of the most important and worst documented (on line) major cities in America. Which kind of put the singers of mid-century Massachussets out of my reach. Mrs this and Mrs that ... Oh, I picked up the ones who went international, but ...

Well, yesterday a righted that neglect just a little. I picked up a piece of music ...

Well. Linley ain't rubbish. But who is Miss Northall. Julia L Northall. That frightful middle initial thing, so clearly American ...

Wrong.

Julia Lucy NORTHALL was British-born, even though her singing career was made wholly in America. She was born in Lower Mitton, Worcestershire, on a date she 'couldn't remember' and christened there 15 January 1823. She was said to be the daughter of William Knight Northall, a schoolmaster who at various times ran a 'Classical and Commercial Seminary' in Stouport and at Birmingham's Synge's Hill et al. The history of Mr Northall (b 1780?) is not quite clear, but he married an Ann Drucilla Turley in 1802 and, at undefined dates, fathered five children. He christened them all, in a job lot, at Mitton, in 1823. After Drucilla died. He remarried promptly and seems to have more children ... but in 1837 announced his departure for America.

He can be seen in King's NY, in the 1840 census. Family not listed. So I wonder who came with him. Or is this son William, born allegedy 1811 ... I don't know and I'm not going to dig any deeper. William jr became a dentist in Brooklyn ..

Henry became a 'merchant and committed suicide.

Julia became a vocalist. She played around with her date of birth, so I'm not even trying to sort that out. She claimed Drucilla as her mother, so, work it out.

Professionally, I find her first at the New York Tabernacle 6 January 1845, singing alongside the violin antics of Ole Ball. The Tabernacle would be the base of her early years, in concerts alongside such as de Begnis, Brough, Rosina Pico ... the backbone vocalists of the best concerts of the time.  I don't know who sang what when they performed Messiah. Madame Pico was a 'dramatic soprano'. Julia was 'a sweet little singer'.

She was seen lavishly in New York and Philadelphia concerts thereafter, always to darling responses. She sang with the New York Sacred Music Society (Creation, Elijah, Messiah), the New York Philharmonic Society, at the Castle Gardens ('Per questa fiamma', 'Dovè mai' 'Slumber, sweetly slumber') and 6 November 1846 she gave a concert of her own at the Apollo Rooms ('Bird of Spring'. 'Giorno d'orrore' with Mme Pico). A few days later, she sang at a Henri Herz concert at the Tabernacle with a song entitled 'Jessie' (10 November). I think it may have been the only time.

More impressively, she joined de Begnis and Pico in the bass's famous duo and trio from Il fanatico per la musica, duetted Maria Padilla with Pico, and gave such pieces as Maria Hawes's 'Thou art Lovelier', Knight's 'I'm Queen of ther Fairy Band', Bellchamber's 'The spell is broken', and even 'In questo semplice'. The critic was not quite convinced by her rendition of Italian opera.

5 May 1848 she sang in a Benefit concert at the Apollo Hall where all the participants were British -- Mamvers, Eliza Brienti, Stephen Leach, Arthurson, George Loder, Mrs C E Horn, Samuel Lover -- and later that year she teamed up with pianist Moritz Strakosh for a series of concerts around Eastern America. Boston, Philadelphia, Brooklyn, Washington et al. She interleaved his keyboard items with such numbers as 'The Captive Greek Girl', the cavatina from Parisana, 'Robert toi que j'aime', 'The Heart of Norah', Salute à la France, 'Casta Diva', 'Bird of Spring' and most regulalrly, Balfe's 'By the Banks of the Guadalquivir'. And all the time, she continued to appear regularly at the Tabernacle for this society, that charity, for Allen Dodsworth the cornettist (Spohr's 'O mighty Love') , one Desire Ikelheimer, a blind harpist, and a Madame Bornstein-Routh from Paris ..

6 March 1849 she sang at a special Benefit. Brother William the dentist, between teeth, had become a playwright and journalist, and he was given a Concert at Burton's Theatre.

But the following year it came to an end. In August, Julia married a young man from Breslau by the name of Frederic William BODSTEIN. Quite what Mr Bodstein did, I cannot be sure. He is usually listed as a clerk, a bookkeeper, working for the Post Office or Customs  ... but other momentary occupations seem to have intervened. Anyway, he did his husbandly daughters, and Julia gave birth to three daughters, Clara, [Julia] Lucy and Emily Pearson (20 May 1862).

Although Mrs Bodstein appeared now in concert only on special occasions, she by no means ceased singing. Since 1847 she had been the soprano of the Grace Church choir and she would continue in that employ ($1500 pa) for some twenty-six years.

Mr Bodstein seems to have died in the mid-1880s, and daughter Lucy, unmarried, 23 March 1895 at the age of 39. Julia survived them, and died 28 June 1896 at the alleged age of 73. I need to check Drucilla's death date ..

Daughter Emily was the success story. She married Mr William Proctor, son of Harley Thomas Proctor, the original Proctor of Proctor and Gamble. She died at Corfield Cottage, Bar Harbour 25 September 1949.

Clara died 1 January 1907 at 103 East 29th Street.

As for the Northalls, I don't know how many of them and which ones came to America. We know W K jr became the journalistic dentist, and another brother, Henry, hanged himself, aged 46, in Gloucester, Mass ... as for Julia, well, working out whether she was born before or after Drucilla's death ..

And now I want to know about Rosina Pico. I see her in London in 1865 ... Havana ... Mrs Adelindo Vietti .. oh! its THAT Rosina Pico (mezzo-soprano). She got around. Died Chelsea, London 1884. Maybe tomorrow ... one two-hundred-year-old soprano a day suffices ...

Esther Jacobs: high notes and low life

 

Twenty-five years ago I researched and wrote this article about the soprano, Esther Jacobs. One of my first shots at a Victorian Vocalist. I hav'n't ever come back to it for a second try .. but today this photo turned up on e-bay, so ...

JACOBS, Esther (b City Road, St Katharine Cree c 1831)

 

Launched on a career as a soprano concert vocalist, with some success, in her earliest twenties, Esther Jacobs later moved on to a colourful career in theatre, and an even more colourful one in the world.

 

Miss Jacobs was born in the City Road, apparently the first daughter in the considerable family of John Jacobs, a tailor, and his wife Sarah née ?Davis (d 117 Queen’s Road, Peckham 12 December 1890). By the time of the 1841 census, the Jacobs household, at 8 Bury Street, St Katherine’s Cree, already housed, alongside their parents, Esther, Harriet, Ellen, Joseph, Henrietta and Henry Jacobs, and two further infants, Julius and James, would soon follow. By the 1851 census, John Jacobs had risen to the rank of ‘clothier’ and, by the following year, twenty-one-year-old Esther had made her first appearances as a vocalist.

 

I first spot her out in public on 7 January 1852, in a concert given for the benefit of the Youths’ Benevolent Society at the Sussex Hall. If the venue was one largely used for not-always-classy Jewish entertainments, on this occasion the bill was a splendid one: the young Esther shared the programme with Louisa Pyne, Joseph Swift, Charlotte Dolby, Henry Whitworth and Ferdy Jonghmanns, with whom she sang the duet from Lucia di Lammermoor.

 

On 3 March of the same year, she appeared at the same venue in a concert mounted by the tenor George Perren, this time giving a version of ‘Nobil signor’ (Les Huguenots) and, if her singing won pleased notices, her appearance attracted a different kind of notice: ‘[Miss Esther Jacobs] whose physiognomy as well as her name betrays her Israelitish origin sang ‘My Lords I salute ye’ (‘Nobil signor’) with great taste and substituted, as an encore, an Irish ballad which she rendered equally well, but while we acknowledge her taste as a musician, we must protest against her taste in decorating her pretty person as being altogether unsuited to display her charms to advantage…’

 

On 29 March, Esther produced herself in concert at the Whittington Club, with a bill including Perren, Rose Braham, Jonghmanns, and the Brougham sisters amongst its attractions, and then, two days later, she made her debut at Exeter Hall. Joseph Stammers’ Exeter Hall Wednesday concerts had already won notice and popular success, above all by the success of the new young artists they had introduced – Rose Braham and the Broughams amongst them: this series introduced a very old favourite in John Braham, but the new artists were there too and, in the third concert (31 March), Esther Jacobs was one of them.

 

She appeared in the next two Wednesday concerts as well, and went on to be seen at the City of London Institute, the London Tavern, at Crosby Hall, in concert at Sadler’s Wells as well as, on a regular basis, at the Sussex Hall. Her versatility was already making itself evident, for in the summer she appeared in concert at the Margate Assembly Rooms, in November she took a turn to Holder’s Variety Theatre in Birmingham, and in March 1854 she won grand reviews performing with E L Hime at the Dover Catch Club and in June at the Royal Panopticon alongside lectures on Frictional Electricity and the hot topic of Decimal Coinage. Later in 1854, after a further concert of her own at the Sussex Hall, she and Hime joined the actress Isabella Glyn to supply the musical accompaniment to her readings from Shakespeare at the same hall.

 

If the centre of Miss Jacobs’s musical world remained at the Sussex Hall, rather than the Exeter Hall (her concerts, Charles Lowick’s, David Miranda’s, The Creation with the City of London Singing Association), she also travelled frequently out of town, and also into town where, for example, she took part in the Saturday Concert series at St Martin’s Hall, in 1856-7.

In 1856, too, she took the step that would lead her definitively away from Exeter Hall and all it stood for. In May, she took an engagement at the Strand Theatre, where she came out in a comedy entitled Lovers at Play, which required her to play three separate characters, as well as, of course, sing the incidental score ('a clear, fresh voice and a good deal of dramatic talent'). She went on to appear in a run of pieces at the Strand, in comedy such as The Two Gregories, in burlesque, where she played Marietta in the Belphegor Travestie, in the favourite musical comedies (Perfection, The Loan of a Lover, The Queen’s Musketeer, The Beggar's Opera) and, come Christmas time, in the theatre’s pantomime, playing Lady Agnes and a Singing Columbine in The Magic Mistletoe.

 

In 1857, Miss Jacobs appeared in burlesque at the Olympic Theatre, playing Graceful, the King's minstrel, alongside Clara St Casse in The Fair One with the Golden Locks, in concert at Cremorne, and at Glasgow, guesting with George Honey in operetta, musical comedy, burlesque and tragedy. She also, unfortunately, got married.

 

The gentleman (and I use the word very loosely indeed) whom she married (4 June 1857) was named Abraham Levi Goodman. Now, there were two of these – father (d 1863) and son (?1832-1904) – and both were well known figures in London life and, most particularly, nightlife. They were also well known in the British law courts and on British racecourses. Goodman senior had been condemned for ‘robbery at the races’ as early as 1828, again as the ‘keeper of an infamous night-house’, for various gambling offences in 1838 and, as the proprietor of an ‘oyster and wine rooms on the corner of Bow Street, Covent Garden’, which was used as a front for a gambling business, in 1840. In 1844 he had been a key figure in the famous ‘Running Rein scandal’, in which a betting coup was pulled on a ringer, in the Derby. The press referred to him daintily, on the occasion of his bankruptcy in 1847, as ‘well known on the turf and in the play world’, and on several other delicate occasions – such as the elopement of his 14 year-old daughter with an army officer – as simply ‘connected with the turf’.

 Goodman junior followed, if a little less dramatically, in his father’s footsteps, being involved in a gambling club at 14 Jermyn Street, another like establishment at 28 Coventry Street, being apparently connected with ‘a saloon in Piccadilly’ and also ‘well-known as a gambler on horses’.  Esther was marrying into one heck of a family, even if – as it turned out – not for very long.

 

Professionally, she continued in what was now her established vein, mixing concert singing, at the Sussex Hall, the Royal Surrey Gardens (‘I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls’) or at provincial music halls, with theatrical engagements, notably pantomime, Lalla Rookh, or The Princess, The Peri and the Troubador at the Lyceum (1857, Hinda), Oberon, King of the Elves (1858, at the Liverpool Adelphi) and at Astley’s Theatre in Harlequin Tom Moody (1859, the goddess Diana), and performing with Mr J H Ogden (‘the greatest delineator of Irish character since Tyrone Power’) (1859).

 

From 1861, however, Esther Jacobs moved definitively into the theatre, and over the next half dozen years she became a great favourite in, especially, two of London’s most roaringly popular houses – the Britannia Theatre in Hoxton in the East End of London, and the Surrey Theatre, south of the river in the Lambeth Marshes. 

 

Among her credits at the Britannia were included Claude Melnotte in An Extraordinary Version of the Lady of Lyons, Lord Lovel in Ye Mysseltoe Bough (1861), Sir Rupert in Little Busy Bee, Apollo in Midas (1864), The Swiss Cottage (1866) and Mephistopheles in a burlesque of Faust (1867). In the burlesques she played opposite the theatre’s manageress, Mrs Sara Lane, whose rousing performances kept East End playgoers cheering for many years, and one critic commented that Mrs Lane was ‘hardly as demonstrative or saucy as Miss Jacobs’, which says something for the broadness of Esther’s acting.

 

At the Surrey, she again appeared in burlesque and pantomime – Hey Diddle Diddle and the Twelve Dancing Princesses, Poor Tom, Mad Fred – singing a burlesque of ‘Sweet Spirit Hear my Prayer’ --, Old King Cole, Miss Leer &c), but also in musical comedy (The Loan of a Lover), and in opera. In 1861, she sang the role of William in Rosina, alongside Fanny Thirlwall and Thomas Wallworth, and, in 1862, she was seen in the title-role of The Waterman.

 

Between her engagements at the Britannia and the Surrey, Miss Jacobs played a season at the East End’s Standard Theatre (Midas, Cherry and Fairstar), and took turns to Weymouth, Birmingham, Margate and other provincial theatres. In 1864, when she appeared at Birmingham’s Theatre Royal as Leicester to the Amy of Ada Harland in Kenilworth and in the title-role of Endymion the local critic noted ‘she has a voice the equal of which is possessed by few burlesque actresses’. ‘Plays and sings with a wonderful amount of skill and spirit’. He also noted her East End habit of playing out front instead of to her fellow actors!

At Christmas 1866, when Esther appeared at the Britannia, it was recorded that ‘she was received with tumultuous applause’, and a survey of British burlesque beauties approved her as ‘a good-looking Jewess with a fine voice for singing’, but, soon after, her name disappears from the theatrical listings.

 

The only trace of her that I can find thereafter is in the theatrical press of May 1869, where the details of the divorce suit (24 April 1869) in which she finally rid herself of Mr Goodman, were displayed.

 

I tracked down the rest of the extended Jacobs family, in the hope that the divorced Esther might have moved in with one of them. In the 1881 census, mother Sarah, now 80, is living at 64 New Kent Road, with unmarried Julius (‘musician’) and James; Henrietta has become Mrs John Hopkins Keen, wife of a former hay merchant, now a traveller in photographic equipment, and Rebecca (with whom Esther was living in 1861) is now Mrs George Rogers Harrison, wife of the solicitor who managed Esther's divorce. Joseph is an auctioneer. But there’s no sign of Esther. Nor of ‘Goody Levy’.

So I don’t know what finally became of Esther Jacobs, East End vocalist and actress. Hopefully, one day, I’ll find out.

 

Just in case you are feeling sorry for Esther, getting mixed up with the seediest part of East London Jewry, I should add that she was seemingly bred in ‘the milieu’. Her father was up in court quite young (‘John Jacobs, a young Jew clothes salesman who keeps his shop in Crown Street, Finsbury square, was brought up on a charge of changing good money for bad’), a few years later for ‘stealing second hand clothes and trying to palm off a dubious 10 pound note’ and, in 1834, for another money-changing scam. It’s all in the blood, as they say. But Esther could really sing, it seems ..

 

 

 

Memories of West End Days .. Driving Mr Daisy mad!

 

Half a lifetime ago ...

This little thing brought an episode fluttering back ...

In my time, I cast or part-cast or re-cast a schlepp of (mostly) musicals, from On the Twentieth Century through Barnum, Singin' in the Rain, Chess, 42nd Street, the splendid Charlie Girl revival, Robert and Elizabeth, Fat Pig, Carmen Negra (Vienna), The Biograph Girl,   and .. I forget (some, purposely). Most of the assignments were thoroughly enjoyable - I except the Peg experience, with a producer who could be persuaded into ghastly extravagances by .. well, enough. THAT's another story!

The producer of 42nd Street -- dear Helen Montagu -- was a little like that, too. Ring up dahhhling Helen and avoid that punctilious casting director -- even Harold F got briefly caught that way until he realised that I could find him better (and cheaper) than Miss X's clients!

I adored Helen. And after my long stint on 42nd Street, I became her reference in casting matters. Chuckle, I was better and cheaper than most around!  So much so, that when she produced this delicious play, I was given -- my first non-musical job -- the casting. Halloo Hallay! Certain agents became much more respectful towards this man who 'only does musicals'.

The joy was slightly muted by the fact that 'we have to have Wendy Hiller, dahling'. Fair enough. Name value. I didn't fight Michael Crawford in Barnum or Tommy Steele in Singin' in the Rain .. who would? They were both superb, a joy to work with on repeated re-castings ... happy days!

I found an excellent understudy for Michael ... yes, that's an important part of the job, as important as three days of chorus replacements .. it's not all above-the-title casting!

So. We would need a cover for Wendy, an elderly black man (not easy, in the UK!), and a middleaged actor with (imho) a special quality. He has to be quite nice, but 'managing'.   WRONG!  I was sorting out potential Wendy covers, when Helen bombed: 'Oh she won't be off, dahling, and if she is, we'll just cancel'. Theoretically, my job had just been made easier. But it hadn't.

I lined up every ageing gent of colour in the UK. Most of them, I had to dig out with a microscope. We needed TWO of these rarae aves. Player and cover. Oyyyyyyy! And, of course, that useless blob named Equity wouldn't let us import. Day One of auditions. Disaster. The lovely Alfred Uhry blanked them all. They have West Indian accents! Oyyy! We can't cast Bertice Reading ...

We saw some very, very capable actors for the part of the son. Any one of ten of them would have been capable of playing the part. But there was one who SHONE ... his name was David. Something. He'd just been in something in the West End. And he was PERFECT.  Did the get the part? No. I pushed and shoved. Alfred didn't seem to care .. and, then, Mr Barry Foster swanned on to the stage. 'Hello, Helen. Of course, you won't want ME to read, will you?'  A cold shiver went down my back. I'm going to be debited with casting this man. And, yes ... dammit, Helen fell for it. He played the role exactly as any of the ten others could have done ... David, I'm sorry, it should have been your part. Huh! The Foster family tried this on me again with daughter Joanna ...  I won that time.

As for the hugely important role of the chauffeur ... well, we got there. I knew Clarke Peters as a youngish song-and-dance lad. But he was negro and American so, I made a call and ....  Clarke, made up old(ish), was a triumph. I am glad he was never off, for one of aged West Indians was, perforce, his understudy.

Wendy was OK, Clarke stole the show, Foster was forgettable ....

Helen died. And noone ever entrusted me with a play again.

PS Merde, I see Mr Foster even negotiated himself second billing above Peters ... yeccccch!

Hull Theatre 1821: scrutonizing the Scruton family

 

A queer night. In bed by 7.30pm, as usual. 10pm, pee-stop number one. Switched out light. Slept. Then, suddenly, awoken. Switched on light. Nothing. Looked at illuminated clock. Non-illuminated. Bloody power cut. Tried to get to the fridge for some iced water. Well, I have difficulty walking in the daylight, in the Stygian dark I wobbled ferociously at every step. Made it safely back to bed -- there will be a few crooked pictures in the morning -- and grabbed Schnidi for safety. OK. It's not one of those two-minute powerblips. Schnidi sang me a dragonabye ... and I dreamed I was preparing to ride a horse for Peter Wolfenden. I was late and I'd left my hard hat at home and .. it was a galloper! (I hav'n't sat on a horse's back, as opposed to behind its tail, for 75 years!)

I awoke with the dawn. The clock is flashing. Phew, that meaning there will be water, lavatory, a shower, my hot lemon and, hopefully, the computer won't have suffered. The first four rituals accomplished, I set out to reset the clock. But ... it had reset itself!  Odd. Oh, well, on to the computer. It, too, was in pristine ready-to-go condition. No. No restart, no passwords .. just go. And there, on the screen, was a document I'd whizzed past the day before .. glaring at me, challenging me ..

Scruton? How unusual. I thought a scruton was a testicle-receptacle. Well, I thought, there clearly would not be too many of those around, and it's a beastly, muggy 27deg outside, so I might as well play with the Scrutons for a nice, quiet day. 

1821, eh? Mr and Miss. Father and daughter? Husband and wife? Brother and sister ..?  Well, I picked wrongly, and spent several hours among the several (yes!) James Scruton 'musician's ... I won't list the details ... here's what I've distilled ...

The answer, by the way, is brother and sister.

This is what, I think, is the family. Ignoring Mr Scruton the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, painter and pantomimist et al.

James Scruton 'musician', son of James Scruton, barber, of Silver Street, York. I guess they are the James Scruton seen at 'at the sign of the Noah's Ark, Silver Street' in 1803.

1804 'the celebrated ventriloquist'? 1805 and thereafter oboeistt, clarionettist, flautist through a couple of decades... in 1806 he's 'Mr Scruton jnr' ... and Mr Scfruton sr is playing bassoon ...

In 1800, he married a lady named Charlotte. We don't know for sure if she were Charlotte CLOUGH or Charlotte RESTIAUX, because she couldn't write. Maybe there were two Jameses and Charlottes. Anyway, thence came a James (9 September 1801), a Charlotte Elizabeth (27 April 1803), a Caroline (1 February 1805), an Elizabeth (13 May 1808), a Matilda (22 November 1810) ...

I discovered Matilda first and puzzled a while how she could have played Jeannie Deans at ten years of age, till I discovered the elder sisters. So ... I presume that the 'Miss Scruton' at Whitehaven, in 1814, must be one of those elder sisters. Which one? No idea. In 1819, Miss C Scruton (presumably Caroline) can be seen singing at spots in Westmoreland ...

Miss M[atilda] and E[lizabeth] come on the scene around 1824-5. One of them sings Rossini at the Yorkshire Amateur Meeting. They all seem to appear together at the Liverpool Olympic Circus, 'Miss' appears in Norwich and Bury, and, goodness, here is 'Miss' singing Semira alongside Miss Stephens at Chester!  And then in 1829 we have the 'three Misses Scruton' all together at Liverpool .. by 1830, it is two again, for Caroline 'of the Theatre Royal, Bolton, has married. 

The name of her husband is recorded variously as John Walker MASON/MAYSON/MAYON!/MANN (it was Mayson) and he was a Bolton-born solicitor from Preston. The chap who became Mayor of Tynemouth (d 1870). This gent married a widow in 1844 ... so I suppose Caroline had died. Yes, there she is, died Northumberland, 1842. And there they are in C41, at Dispensary House, Tynemouth, with John's brother, William 'apothecary'.

Sister Matilda married into the theatre. A performer named Edward Benwell (17 January 1831). Witnesses James and Elizabeth Scruton. Brother and sister.

Married life was too much for Edward. He supplied two sons, in two years, and then headed for the churchyard. After which Matilda married a Scotsman, Thomas CUNNINGHAM. And I lose her.

But all this was after the theatrical heyday, such as it was, of the Scruton family.

I hope I've sorted them out correctly. But they are confusing. The 1841 census shows, in Liverpool,  James Scruton aged 55, with wife Charlotte 65 ... with Edward (9) and William (7) Benwell. 

So which James is that? Obviously Matilda's ... brother?  Teacher of music at 7 Hunter Street in the 1840s?

So, who is the James who died in 1834 aged 34. Who is the James 'musician' who died at Walmgate 22 December 1824? 

Death and the burlesque beauty

 

A decade or two ago, I dove deeply into the careers and lives of the young ladies who, in their time, had been member of the celebrated Lydia Thompson troupe of, so-called, British blondes. I wrote up quite a few of them, then published the principal ones in a European scholarly journal, and abandoned the rest of the work.

Then, some years later, I started on a history of burlesque. A factual one was, and is, needed. But I abandoned that too, when a chunk of what I already written was drowned during my computer's encounter with a dish of Dorper Lambjuice. 

Today I came upon a photo of a British burlesque beauty who was never a member of the Thompson troupe, but, rather, was promoted instead as a rival to Lydia. In America. Fatally. For her. Which was very unfortunate, for she was indeed one of the best burlesque girls in her home land ... if only she has stayed home, she might have had a happy career and a happy life. But from the moment she left London town ...

Her name was Elise Holt. Properly Elizabeth Harriet HOLT born 11 July 1847, in St Pancras, the second daughter of one Thomas Holt, who ran a manufactuary of iron bedsteads, and his wife Eleanor or Ellen Ann née Dowdell. 

She apparently learned dancing from 'Madame Louise' (Louise MILLER), a former soloist and maîtresse de danse at Drury Lane and at the Italian Opera House, and the teacher of many a good English danseuse, and is said to have made her first stage appearance under her aegis 'at the Surrey'. Well, Mme Louise hada hand in the panto Old King Cole at the Surrey in 1863, and her featured girlie was Miss Celia Reynolds. Miss Reynolds was to become 'Minnie Venn', best remembered as one of the paramours of composer Teddy Solomon.  But Elise wasn't there. Perhaps she was, earlier. Now she was at the Victoria, playing in Giselle and the Phantom Night Dancers as a little Cupid, and dancing Harlequina. The role of Giselle was taken by Ada Harland, who would become one of the famous 'original big four' in the Thompson troupe. And a certain 'Miss [Nellie] Farren'. Oddly, Celia/Minnie was billed as 'pupil of Madame Louise', but Elise wasn't. Ah, I see that another source says 'the Surrey Gardens'. Not so easily traceable.

Anyway we can count the Victoria as the first meaningful engagement in Elise's career. She would remain there for more than a year, acting, singing, and above all dancing in the variegated programmes produced. At Easter, Madame Celeste came for a season 'supported by the whole strength of the company'. Misses Farren and Maria Daly got the girl's parts. It wasn't till the production of the drama Troubled Waters, or The Family Secret at the end of June that Elise had a noticeable part. A drama? Well, she was cast as Lotti Lawson 'a strolling player in the backwoods' and noticed for her 'saucy little mannerisms and spirited dancing'. 'Miss Daly has a song and Miss Holt a dance' .. and the drama managed to sneak in a negro minstrel act.

Miss Daly was featured in another piece, The Detective, or A Ticket of Leave in which Elise played a boy, and when Miss Daly took the lead in another drama Elise and Ellen Powell featured in a ballet divertissement.  When Life in Lambeth was put forwarded she seconded Miss Powell in a rustic ballet. And then it was panto time, and once again Elise was Harlequina (with Miss Powell as Columbine) as well as 'the Dog Star' in Baron Munchausen, or Harlequin and the Mountains of the Moon. But, come March, it was back to the dramas -- I see Elise cast in The Octoroon -- and at Easter Miss Holt, in one of the few good decisions of her professional life, moved on. 

The wage was 15 shillings a week. But the engagement was at the Swanborough family's Strand Theatre, the bloomingest burlesque house in London's West End. And she opened her stay there in the title role of a 'six-nights only' revival of their hit Aladdin or the Wonderful Scamp. Elise had found her metier, and the Strand Theatre had found a player ideally suited to the pieces they produced. 'Excellent', 'saucy', 'lively style and abundant confidence', 'dancing encored'....

Miss Raynham

Aladdin stayed on the bill for an entire month. Of course, Miss Holt was not to be leading lady at the Strand. Ada Swanborough of the management family was in loco stellaris, the top 'boy', Alice Raynham, firmly installed ... but she was not too far below the title. And there, for the best three years of her career, she would remain, occasionally in a play (Snatches in Upstairs and Downstairs, Orange Blossoms) but above all, radiantly out-front in burlesque. The Earl of Surrey in Windsor Castle, the blind fiddler in Mazourka, Oneiza in Mazeppa, Don Alva in L'Africaine, Cupid in Pygmalion, Mercury in Paris, Kenilworth, Pierre Gringoire in Esmeralda, Fra Diavolo, Albert Tell in Tell, Hassan in The Caliph of Baghdad, de Boisey in The Field of the Cloth of Gold. 'One of the cleverest dancers and most piquant actresses on the stage'. One of. The star of the last piece was Lydia Thompson.

And she had arrived at the Strand just as it reached the peak of its powers and prosperity. With Windsor Castle and L'Africaine it had produced what might be regarded as the first English equivalents of the new French opéra-bouffe.  With The Field of the Cloth of Gold it had boosted Lydia Thompson up the next rung towards mega-stardom ..

Elise was not a Lydia Thompson. Indeed, she had similar talents, but a different projection. Let's just say, Elise was more out-front, less subtle, less winning. And that is part of the reason why, especially when she got to America and became broader in her delivery, she played to a different kind of audience. The 50 cent one, rather than the $2 one.

As in Lydia's case, America was the fault of a man. And, yes, eventually a husband. Which was a  bit of a nuisance because whereas Lydia had lost her husband to a racing accident, Elise still had one. And two pre-marital babies. 

He was Henry Gordon Palmer, an Irishman, son of a colonel, briefly attached to the Royal Artillery (he squeaked into Woolwich in last place), and dragged to court in 1864 for theft of a £10 note. Her first child Arthur Henry Holt Gordon was born 17 December 1866, the second, Catherine Elise Holt Palmer on 7 September 1868. After which they got married (23 November 1868). I don't believe they ever divorced, nor do I know what became of the babies, but they both married or 'married' elsewhere ...

But the man who messed up Elise's life had only good intentions. Like, making money. His name was Harry H Wall and I am not going to attempt to unravel him, as there were several Harry Walls (one of whom was the husband of singer Annie Adams) on both sides of the Atlantic. Our one was the one who was a dramatic agent in New York. 27 June 1868 he sailed for London on The City of Paris and returned 7 December bringing with him that latest fashion in the theatre world, a troupe of British blondes. Elise Holt, vocalists Emily and Mary Pitt, Emma Grattan ... and a burlesque from London's Holborn Theatre, Lucrezia Borgia MD or, The Grand Doctoresse.

While Wall announced his troupe for The Olympic Theatre, the New York gossip press fulfilled its part: 'her rare beauty makes her very conspicuous' etc etc. They didn't open at the Olympic. They didn't open 'on Broadway'. They opened indifferently at the Boston Continental. But they trudged on to New York's Waverley Theatre. Indifferently. Elsie had laryngitis. She was 'off'. And 'off'. They fled to Philadelphia. They flopped. Elise's blonde hair and 14 1/2 inch calves (padded?) weren't pulling them in. They fled to California, downmarketing as they went ('her costume consisted of three inches of white silk tightly girt' , 'the most outré kind of burleque'), but persisting with their three-wheeled burlesque in which the title-role had devolved on to Wall. They tried a report that Elise has whipped a newspaper editor ... then they set out for New Orleans, Cincinnati, Albany ... and threw in the sponge.

Mr and Mrs Wall (as they allegedly now were) headed for London, and the Strand Theatre, where the Swanboroughs welcomed Elise back at £15 per week (and an extra 5 for the husband). Now she was Darnley in The Field of the Cloth of Gold ...  But times had changed, and Elise had undoubtedly coarsened in her delivery since the old days. The theatre closed and Wall sued for wages. He won, but the doors of the Strand would be closed henceforth to them.

Elise played in The Mistletoe Bough at the Adelphi at Christmas 1870, at Bath for panto 1871 (Valentine in Valentine and Orson), took over for Mrs John Wood at the Adelphi briefly, and fulfilled an engagement at the Alhambra playing in Clodhopper's Fortune with Harry Paulton. Christmas 1872 was Birmingham (Dick Tucker in Twinkle Twinkle). I think she may have, by now, been too broad even for Bimingham.

It hadn't worked, ths return to sources. They packed up, and, in September 1873, headed back to New York for an engagement at Wood's Museum (which was thoroughly not what it had been in the days of Lydia and Ixion) ... It was worse than before. They were reduced to minor houses ...  In January 1874, they were playing New Orleans when Elise got ill.

In 1887, when another damsel launched a girlie troupe as 'Elise Holt's Exquisites, the editor of The Clipper remarked : 'not the GREAT Elise'. Well, the only thing 'great' about Lizzie Holt was her (padded?) calves. She had been a fine second boy/girl in good  burlesque who found -- like Lisa Weber and Ada Harland of the Thompson quartet -- that when promoted to top-of-the-bill, she didn't quite cut it. And then, of course, the man ...

Father Thomas died, also, in 1874. He had re-married after Eleanor's death (1863). In the 1871 census Elise's little daughter can be seen living with him in Newington Causeway under the name 'Catherine P Holt'. More than that I cannot tell ...

PS Somewhere in my divan drawers I've got some broadsheets of Elise's greatest Strand successes. I will get them out and add them in here ... another day :-)

Trotting down near Antarctica ...

 

A moment back in the 21st century, on behalf of our little girl .... she goes to the races again tomorrow!

So I popped in to see against who she was racing and ... what a muddle .. I gulped a large whisky and had a wee rant. No one will listen, but I enjoyed the whisky and got it off my (what passes for) a chest.

Something Rotten in trotten in the State of Southland

 

What is happening in the trotting world in Southland? And who is responsible?

 

On Wednesday Invercargill HRC has a meeting. Nine races scheduled of which two are trots: a maiden worth $12,000 and an everybody-else worth $11,000. Anomaly?

 

There are 96 nominations for the combined nine races. so .. about 10 horses per race? Oh no. The maiden trot has 6. The rest-of-them race has 19. 

 

The pacers? The maiden pace -- to be run in two heats -- has, guess, twelve horses racing -- ie six per heat. Oh and $12,000 per half. They can't be topped up from the 1-win heat, ($10,000!!) because that's only got nine nominations ..  

 

There are three more pacing events with a total of 36 nominations. Three ... to share a number of horses not even twice as large as the poor 'all-the-rest' trot.  Who'd be a trotter?

 

It seems to me that whoever is responsible for framing the programmes down Antarctica way is out of touch with reality.

 

But that isn't all in the way of anomalies. The race conditions for 'our' trot (yes, we have a horse nominated) states 'front 35-40; 10m 41-50; 20m 51-57; 30m 58-65'. But the noms include Aveross Majesty (53) off the front? A horse that has won $84,000 in stakes and is nominated for the Green Mile. Its fellow 8 year-old, Cody Banner, which has won a deserved $147K, is off 20. And we? We are on 10, as we were last start. We have won $66K. As for the back marker, the likely favourite, Missile, he has just $43K in the bank ... What's up?

 

Another anomaly. Four of the six maidens are rated 'unruly' and three of the 'bottom' five grown-ups -- who will, doubtless, be dumped into the maiden race, are also 'unruly'. I can see a race like a maiden at Taranaki developing!

 

Right. Fields will be out shortly. Let's see how Invercargill have resolved this mess -- whether it was they or HRNZ who created it ...

 

SO ...

 

Withdrawals. Phil Williamson has, understandably, taken two of his out, leaving 17. Aveross Majesty is still off the front ...  and there are still just six maidens ...  Oh no! the best race of pacing day, the 2yo race, is going to be split ... bah!

 

Still waiting. Less than 48hrs from the meeting and no fields yet. What are they toiling and troubling over down there? Trying to make a race meeting out of ...  Or at HRNZ. Auckland has its fields for Friday up at 3.45. 

 

OK, here we finally are. Three trotters removed from the 'free-for all', down, to the maiden. Which is no longer, thus, a maiden, but an old-style C0 and faster. Why only three? Still fourteen left, in the grownups' race. Ah, I see Aveross Majesty is back to its proper rating ... duuhhhhhh. 

 

Well, they've done amazingly well in making up a decent programme. Nine puntable races. Even if not necessarily the races that were advertised in Programmes.

Sad, that they chose to split the 2yo race (for sexist reasons) instead of the trot. But hey ... you can't fight Town Hall. And definitely HRNZ ....

 

Now we have to wait till race day. Best race, by miles: the grown-up trot. $11K. Well, maybe we'll get a slice of it. Behind MISSILE or CODY BANNER or SHANDON BELLS ... Fingers crossed ...

 

(To be continued, after the race)

I'm a lousy picker.

But it was a queer race.

First shock. Our EMILY was hot (and I mean hot) favourite. I have no idea why. CODY BANNER misbehaved horribly. MISSILE was sabotaged by its own stablemate, a beast named DWINDLE STAR. This creature, which had got in our road in little Em's first Southland race, didn't seem to have learned anything from that experience. It shot to the front, imprinted a fast tempo -- with the result that Em was forced to race parked for the whole race, but also that MISSILE could never make up its 30 metre handicap! Team racing ... NOT!  Em did her damnedest, but as so often in cases of this kind a horse which had sat quietly mid-field bombed them all in the last metres. And a good solid mare which had had a perfect run on the rails ran on for second. EMILY fought womanfully for third ... which is about what I'd looked for, before the gambling world went crazy ....

Meanwhile, up at Addington the magical McClymonts -- RATA and STYRAX -- added two striking metropolitan wins to the Southland total ...  the former beat Emily half a length at her previous start, with the latter down the track. 

No, we are NOT going to Addington. Ever again. EMILY is a Southland girl now and forever!

Agnes Molteno: Melbourne's prima donna

 

MOLTENO, Agnes Maud (b Launceston, Tasmania ?8 October 1867; d London 1947)

 

Agnes Molteno was one of the musical family of a bookseller turned schoolmaster, Frederick James Molteno, and his wife Laura Antoinette née Sheridan. The couple were wed in 1856 (19 March) and in the thirteen years allowed them before Laura’s death produced an almost end-to-end run of children of which the majority participated in music to a professional level.

 

Mr Molteno left Britain for Australia in the gold-rushed year of 1852. His father, John Molteno, a lawyer, had died in 1828, leaving his wife, Caroline, with plentiful children and less money than his position suggested. She can be seen in the 1841 census running a boarding school in Peckham, and with the three youngest still at home. The elder boys set off to foreign parts, to found their fortunes, and it must be said that they succeeded. John Charles (1814-1886) went to South Africa and ended up being Premier and a Sir, while Frank (1816-1869) went south to Australia, and thence to Hawaii, became a whaling Captain, married a local woman and stayed. Frederick followed Frank and sister Alicia (Mrs Arthur Hartley, b 1825; d Maclaren Street Sandhurst 23 April 1857) to Australia. He opened a bookshop and employment agency in Mundy Street, Bendigo, then, after his marriage, changed profession and became a school-teacher at the Geelong National Grammar School, then latterly at the Launceston equivalent. There, in Tasmania, his last two daughters were born on 2 September 1867 and 8 October 1868. One must have died, the other was Agnes. But Lord knows which one. They were baptized without Christian names. So, birth date 50/50. With a slight leaning to the second.

Sir J C Molteno

The first Molteno child to shine in the music world was six-year-old Frederick John (b Pakington Street 28 March 1859), who made a public debut as a violinist at the Melbourne School of Arts on 1 February 1866, accompanied by the usual kiddie prodigy noises. He was well received, and took up an engagement supporting the Lancashire Bellringers on tour. He died during that tour, at William Street, Norwood, Adelaide 2 September (sic) 1866.

 

The next child to come before the public was nine-year old Alice [Edith] (b Melbourne 5 June 1857; d Salisbury 23 February 1931) who appeared at White’s Rooms, Adelaide 1 October 1866 with Mr and Mrs George Loder, top-billed as ‘the Australian juvenile harpist’. Later, she performed with her younger sister, [Laura] Ada (b Emerald Hill 30 January 1861; d Norwich 1927), violinist. The girls would have a juvenile career, which included a brief 1873 visit to America (‘The Miniature Minstrels’ with Lizzie Coote, Humpty Dumpty at the Olympic), leading to a teenage one, before becoming music teachers, and then, respectively, Mrs Wallis (Madame Molteno-Wallis) and Mrs Arthur Isaac Durrant.

Ada

 

Life did not treat Mr and Mrs Molteno very kindly. They lost two baby daughters, and, travelling to Tasmania, to father’s new post, on the Black Swan, they suffered a shipwreck, and lost quasiment their all. A Benefit concert raised them 40 pounds. Finally, the family decided to return to England. They left by the Swiftsure in August 1869. Soon after their arrival, Mrs Molteno also died (4 Belinda House, Cold Harbour Lane, Brixton 11 December 1869). The rest of the family soldiered on.

 

Little Agnes did not, apparently, have the juvenile career that her sisters did. But she was, on the other hand, to have the longest, and most successful, life in music of any family member.

 She first surfaces to my view in 1883, singing with the Peterborough Choral Society (‘Golden Love’, ‘Give me back my heart’, ‘La Serenata’) before, in 1884 she and her sisters all joined Lila Clay’s ladies troupe. Ada played violin, Alice harp and Agnes the harmonium. Apparently, jobs were hard to find, for, in March 1887, Agnes advertised ‘niece to the late Sir Charles Molteno, formerly Premier of the Cape Government. Talented musician with good voice. Situation wanted as companion to a lady’. But she didn’t have to go companioning. After a few dates at the Royal Victoria Ballad Concerts, in May 1887, she was hired for the Oxford Music Hall and there, as ‘Agnes Branson’, she sang nightly until November. That engagement led to another, as a take-over for Violet Cameron in Cellier’s The Sultan of Mocha, for the tag end of its London run.

And then, in December 1888 came the decisive step: she was hired as a principal soprano with Arthur Rousbey’s ambitious touring English Opera Company.

 

She made her first appearance as Arline in The Bohemian Girl, played Countess Almaviva to the Susanna of the company’s other leading lady, Emily Vadini (‘sings better than she acts’) and went on to add Maritana, Marguerite, Zephyrina in Belphegor, Donna Elvira in The Rose of Castille, Leonora in Il Trovatore, Donna Anna in Don Giovanni, Lucia di Lammermoor, Eily in Lily of Killarney, Gilda in Rigoletto (‘a voice of singular purity and sweetness…’) et al to her escutcheon.

In 1892, she left the company and went on tour with a production of The Sultan of Mocha, before joining up with J W Turner’s Opera Company, with whom she played Lucia, Marguerite, Amina and Violetta, and a four-week season at London’s Standard Theatre.

 

She would rejoin Rousbey for 1894-5, but now in the company of her new husband (10 March 1893), the troupe’s second baritone, Frank [George] Land (1865-1914). On 5 October 1895 she gave birth to a daughter, Eileen Molteno Land, and took up performing again, as Fairy Coraline in the Dublin pantomime.

 

In 1896 (15 April) she appeared as Arline in a brief production of The Bohemian Girl at Drury Lane, before she and Frank turned again to the road, first with Rousbey tenor, W H Hillier, and then back in the Rousbey ranks, and briefly with the Moody-Manners company (Bertha in La Poupée de Nuremberg), before travelling to South Africa with Rousbey, sharing the lead roles (Marie, Santuzza, Lucia, Maritana) with Mrs Rousbey while Frank shared the baritone ones (Alfio, Silvio, Plunkett, Ashton) with Rousbey himself.

 

The death of Rousbey on the homeward journey put an end to the company and the couple’s long-term engagement with it, and they turned to a series of minor jobs, such as the John Ridding opera company, Henry Swinerd’s The Squatter’s Daughter, Harry S Parker’s The Fisher Girl, George Nielson’s very unpretending opera company, as well as singing operatic and ballad music in the music-halls.

 

In 1903, in a last burst of operatic glory, Agnes was called in to play The Bohemian Girl with the Carl Rosa company, at the Queen’s Theatre, Manchester, and then it was the music-halls all the way. And by no means as prima donna. I see her billed in small print under the banner line of the whistler Frank Lawton at Ardwick Green. Elsewhere she is billed underneath performing cats and dogs. Her act consisted of more, however, than singing. It was ‘staged’: ‘The Holy City’ and ‘Ave Maria’, for example, were sung on an electrically-lit set of a church. In 1908-1910, she took out a scena entitled An Old Time Story or A Dolly and a coach, in 1912 she travelled Her Fairy Princess. 

 

In 1912, her daughter Eileen Land (‘a charming comedienne with a sweet voice’) travelled with her. Later, as Eileen Molteno, she would play leading roles in The Arcadians and The Pearl Girl, for Robert Courtneidge, on tour. She apparently retired to become Mrs Frank Ernest Simpkins, and died, at the age of 88, in 1983.

 

I last see Agnes performing, on the radio, in 1924.

 

I don’t know what became of Frank latterly. The couple can be seen playing together in The Fisher Girl but, then, while Agnes turned to the halls and ‘The Holy City’, Frank continued in opera, with the Moody-Manners and Hilton St Just until 1905, after which I lose him, to murmurs of illness. I see references to ‘Frank Land, the Irish baritone’ (apparently, he spent his childhood there) and some of the (unusually diligent) family historians have him buried in 1922 in Limerick. But The Era says otherwise. The issue of 18 November 1914 dutifully records his death ‘aged 50’. Yes, in Limerick. And, just to set the record straight, he was born in Brockhurst, in the Isle of Wight.

I wonder if he is the Frank Land ‘strolling player’ born Tipperary, aged 45 listed in the Irish census for 1911. With a wife Janitza … 42 …

 

 

 

 

 

An American jukebox musical ... Cincinnati, 1878.

 

Oh yes. 

The days when the latest hits of the international musical theatre could be pillaged by American 'writers' ...

Of course, the pasticcio musical play had existed forever, but pieces like The Beggar's Opera and La Biche au bois helped themselves largely to ponts neufs, traditional music or elderly tunes ... pieces like this one 'borrowed, the songs from the the latest, still-running hits.

So who was Mr H J Wetherell? Well, I burrowed and I've found him.

Horace Jackson WETHERELL (b Worcester, Mass 29 May 1845; d Oxford, Ohio 22 October 1884). Son of Horace and Sarah Wetherell.  He was in the Cincinatti area by 1864, when he enrolled in the militia at the quoted age of 18, giving his occupation as 'farmer'. By 1873 he was a 'clerk'. But around this time he got involved in local amateur dramatics and music with the local Davenport Dramatic Club. I see him performing in The Contrabandista (1875) and Maritana (1876). 

He became the bass in the choir of the Second Presbyterian Church, and later the 7th Street Congregational, took part in amateur charity and club concerts, played with the Tabernacle Musical Society (The Haymakers), sang with the Cincinnati Choral Society, and in 1878 turned out the four-handed 'operetta' The Admiral's Daughter.

The piece was launched at Riverside, Ohio 4 April 1878 with Wetherell supported by Irish railway agent-tenor John Frank Dunnie who had once been a minstrel, Mrs Robert W (Clara Isabella) Richey (née Hubbell) and Nettie Gordon comprising the cast. It was well-enought liked to be repeated at Avondale 1 May, and then at Cincinnati's Melodeon Hall 7 May. 

Church's published something called 'The Toast' and then, as we see, the whole shebang.

Horace dipped once or thrice into professional theatre. In 1879 he took a turn at playing Dick Deadeye (HMS Pinafore) in a touring company, I see him announced for something called Love's Trials which hogges the music from Pinafore and .. Trovatore!, and again for 'Sheppard's Dramatic Co', but the experiment didnt last. Soon he was back, and set up as a teacher of singing and elocution in Walnut Hills. That didn't last either. Horace died 'aged 38' in 1884.

His wife, Harriet Francelia née Thayer carried on the music-teaching, and died in 1929.

And The Admiral's Daughter? I see it at Lebanon, O in November 1878, Ludlow Ky, 4 February 1879 by the Galaxy Opera at Armory Hall with a Mrs J L Bowman of the place teamed with three original cast members, again with Mrs Richey (now three-acts!), for the Harry Lewis Testimonial at Cincinnati's Grand Opera House ... 

I imagine they all had fun. I hope they did.

Poor Dunnie suffered a stroke in 1884. It seems he died of it. Mrs Amelia Dunnie is listed as 'widow' in 1887.

Mrs Richey (sic) (b Eaton 30 December 1843; d Cincinnati 21 November 1898) lies in Spring Grove Cemetery along with the Wetherells.

I don't know about Miss Gordon. There were lots of Netties.  Contralto and pianist. I wonder what happened to her.

 

LA VIE PARISIENNE: another triumph for Bru Zane.

 

Yesterday a long-awaited recording arrived on my desk-top. 'Long-awaited'? Of course. The latest from the firm of Bru Zane, the greatest of French musical theatre organisations of our era, and the producers of the La Fille de Madame Angot which I went into delirium over a few years back.

 

So, what was it this time. Chilpéric? Geneviève de Brabant? No. La Vie parisienne. Again? There have been soooo many recordings of La Vie parisienne over the years. But here is the twist in the tale. Soon after its Paris opening, the piece was largely trimmed. In fact, slimmed of a whole episode, and reduced from five acts to four. And in that shape it is still played in France.

 So, what happened to the other act? Well, some countries and theatres kept it in. In what form I know not. I suspect 'compresssed'. But at home it suffered the usual fate of off-cuts until -- following the 21st-century mania for sticking back in that which the authors, in their wisdom, had cut out -- it was reconstructed and ... well was it 'in their wisdom' or not? Now we can judge for ourselves, for Bru Zane, in their wisdom have given us the whole five acts.

 

Well, a quarter of a century ago -- when there were still records -- I wrote in my Musical Theatre on Record: 'La Vie parisienne, by its nature, needs to be recorded in its entirety. The play, in this case, is every bit as important as the music, and one without the other is rather like a half-baked cake. Unfortunately, it cannot be said that there is as yet any recording which manages to marry happily the comedy and the music'.

 

Maybe, this time?

 

(Opens booklet)

 

Cry of joy. The two outstanding artists from La Fille de Madame Angot are here again. Mlle Gillet -- in the role written for Zulma Bouffar, the only 'singer' in the original cast -- and Mons Sargsyan are once more before us in major roles. 

 

Eeeeek! It's all very scholarly! Well, fair enough, as long as it's fun as well, lively, and, above all, not oversung.

 

Time to press the 'go' button. Well, I think a nice bottle of French wine might go well with this.

 

Phew. It's half time and I've drunk the whole bottle. It's a long first half (2-3 acts).

 

First impressions. I have no comment to make on the 'version'. These folk know more than I. It has obviously been immaculately researched and reconstructed. One expects nothing less from Bru Zane. What there is, is what we get. I shall read the whole booklet later.

I am really qualified only to comment on the performance ... is it another Angot success? At half-time, not quite, but there's time. For now, I have ingurgitated three acts, and I'm quite exhausted. It is diabolically lively (I'm sure the tempi are taken from the original score), almost lusty. (md: Romain Dumas). Sometimes, rather relentlessly so. Not much gentle singing. But, there, it's first and foremost a comedy, so lively is the way. I'm sure the keys are original too, but it all seems terribly high for 'actors'. And just occasionally rather 'operatic'. Which I am not quite comfortable with. How many people can fit on to the platform at the Gare de l'Ouest? If we are being 'authentic', how many actors (not singers) were on the books of the Palais-Royal?

However, my two adored performers, Sargsyan as Bobinet and Mlle Gillet as Gabrielle, again come out with high-flying colours, and here they are by no means alone. 

 

Gardefeu (Marc Mauillon) is a perfect partner for Sargsyan... crisp and clear in dialogue, deliciously ringing in song ... where do the French get these marvellous heirs to Amade and Devos? This pair get the show off to a grand beginning in the mostly male first act. Then the Scandiavians arrive. The Gondremarcks are clearly played for low comedy funny-voice laughs. I was reminded of Lord and Lady Allcash in Fra Diavolo. I suppose that is all right. But it was somehow a tad hefty among all that superb Offenbachian singing.

Bienvenu to my world, M Mauillon

The two brothers-in-escapade are ten-gold-stars performances for me -- listen to their perfect 'Elles sont triste les marquises' -- and so is the third joyeux luron of the piece. Pierre Derhet makes a real merry mouthful of the Brazilian's patter song. And then he turns up as a really sparky, tuneful Frick, duetting lightsomely with Mlle Gillet in an adorable 'Bottier et Gantière'. And then, just listen to her 'Veuve de Colonel'! 

Et bienvenu M Derhet

I feel horrible being unappreciative, again, concerning Véronique Gens as Métella. But, honestly, in spite of her delicious delivery of dialogue, I just feel that her singing voice is not suited to this sort of music. The Letter Song, in the hands of a Suzy Delair, is the highlight (for me) of the whole show. Here it, alas, is not. I would have cast Elena Galiskaya, who give a first-class rendition of the part and the music of Pauline as Métella. Mlle Gens would, perhaps, have been happier with the fun of the Baronne. Ah ... 'Votre Habit a craqué dans le dos'!  Joy!

Elena Galiskaya

 

Well, interval over. Here I go on Acts 4 and 5. 

 

More boys (yayy!) -- a bit of funny voice, but ringing singing from our star supported by two more fine performers as Prosper (Carl Ghazarossian) and Urbain (Philippe Estèphe) -- More Pauline, yay! -- oh, she is delightful!  Lots and lots of giggleworthy grotesque comedy from Mme Quimper-Karadec (Marie Gautrot) -- grand ensemble work ...

A glamorous gorgon: Marie Gautrot

 Then the Baronne (Sandrine Buendia) gets her turn. She seems to have stopped being Lady Allcash, and sings now in conventional ballad style. And ... expression! I can see how this number could have been cut. It's rather stuck in. Like 'Vilja' in Die lustige Witwe. Oh, it's not bad, but our show is getting exceedingly long ... and the comic dialogue which gives us the guts of the story is not to be missed. Here, it is delivered with enormous gusto, with the gorgon Quimper-Karadec riding above all like a Katisha on cocaine. And the ensemble ('Ma tête') and galop of the finale is quite delightful. I'm sorry, if I have to give up any of this, I cannot return to the 4-act version ...

 

The gems keep coming in the final act (an act which could easily be slimmed): the duet between Gabrielle and the Brazilian and Gabrielle's Ronde, perfectly delivered by Mlle Gillet and the vast company assembled at the Brazilian's party... Mlle Gens is hugely better, though rather blurty on the high notes, in her waltzing burlesque of grand opera than she was in the Letter scene ... oh! this is really a jolly play! And all ends so merrily. 

 

Well, I posited at the start of things that we were lacking a La Vie parisienne which supplied both the music and the comedy. We now undoubtedly have it. It's a marathon if you want to listen to it all end-to-end, and I probably sha'n't ever do so again, but this recording will join the very small number of CDs on my shelf because, not only must it remain the reference for this show, for all time, but ... I just really enjoyed it, end to end. Even without Suzy Delair.

 

PS If MM Meilhac and Halévy and Offenbach would like my notes on how they might take half-an-hour out of the work for lazy 21st century theatregoers, tell them to write to me. 

 

 

LA VIE PARISIENNE Opéra-bouffe in 4 (originally 5) acts by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy. Music by Jacques Offenbach. Palais-Royal, Paris, 31 October 1866.

 In the midst of Meilhac, Halévy and Offenbach's dazzling series of successes with the earliest of their famous opéras-bouffes -- La Belle Hélène (1864), Barbe-bleue (1866), La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein (1867) -- the team collaborated on an equally successful non-burlesque work (which they, nevertheless, on the wings of the current fashion described as an `opéra-bouffe'), which was produced by Plunkett at the Palais-Royal. That house and its company were not in the business of producing opérette, the members of the resident company (only slightly reinforced for the occasion) were not experienced singers, only actors, and the piece -- a farcical comedy of manners which did not make extravagant vocal demands on most of its performers -- was written (and re-written, for it was reduced from five acts to four shortly after its première) accordingly.

 Bobinet (Gil-Perès) and Gardefeu (Priston) are a pally pair of men-about-Paris who have suffered some amour-properly bruising treatment in their affairs with the women of the demi-monde, notably the saucy Métella (Mlle Honorine). As a result they have decided to opt for an affair with a femme du monde instead. Gardefeu poses as a tour guide and picks up the visiting Swedish Baron (Hyacinthe) and Baroness (Céline Montaland) de Gondremarck and, in his attempt to seduce the lady, takes the pair to his own home, pretending it is an hotel. The Baron is hoping for a good Parisian time, and indeed has a letter of introduction to Métella, so Gardefeu gets Bobinet to arrange a jolly party -- with all his servants and their friends dressed up as cavorting aristocratic guests -- to keep the husband happy whilst he chats up the Baroness. However, the Baron has no luck with Métella who instead provides him with a masked friend as company whilst she turns her charms back on to Gardefeu. When the mask finally comes off, the Baron finds he has been charmed by his own wife. As for Bobinet and Gardefeu, they are back where they started.

 Jules Brasseur had a triple rôle as an extravagant Brazilian (Acts I and IV) out to spend a fortune on a fling in Paris, as a bootmaker, disguised as an army major for the Act II party, and as a butler (Act III), Elvire Paurelle was the pretty maidservant, Pauline, who catches the Baron's eye at the party, and Zulma Bouffar -- added to the cast at Offenbach's insistence to give some vocal values -- played Gardefeu's little glove-maker, Gabrielle, who partakes of all the fun and impersonations and ends up on the arm of the Brazilian as everyone prepares to live it up at the isn’t-Paris-wonderful final curtain.

 Offenbach provided a glitteringly light-fingered musical score to go with the wittily concocted high-jinks of the text. The Brazilian gabbled out his joy at being back in Paris all over the railway station (`Je suis brésilien'), the Baron declared gluttonously `Je veux m'en fourrer jusque-là!', Gabrielle trilled into her upper-class disguise (`Je suis veuve d'un colonel') and described sexily how `Sa robe fait frou, frou', whilst Métella had a showpiece letter song -- the letter in question being the `recommendation' of the Baron's once-lucky friend to show the hungry Swede an extremely good time (`Vous souvient-il, ma belle') -- all as part of a score which never left off laughing from beginning to end.

 In spite of a lack of confidence prior to opening, La Vie parisienne -- soon shorn of a fourth act showing what the Baroness gets up to whilst her husband is partying with Bobinet -- was an enormous success, occupying the Palais-Royal for an entire year whilst the show began to spread itself to other parts of the world. Vienna's Carltheater was first off the mark, opening its version of the five-act version (ad Karl Treumann) three months to the day after the Palais-Royal première. Josef Matras (Bobinet), Franz Tewele (Gardefeu), Wilhelm Knaack (Gondremarck), Karl Treumann (Brazilian/Prosper/Frick), Josefine Gallmeyer (Gabrielle), Anna Grobecker (Pauline), Marie Fontelive (Baroness) and Anna Müller (Métella) took the leading rôles, and the piece became an instant favourite. It remained in the theatre's repertoire for many years, being played 126 times (to 11 August 1876) in its first decade, and was brought back in a new production in 1889, with Knaack in his original rôle alongside Emma Seebold (Métella) and Karl Streitmann (Brazilian), which was played for the next four seasons. A major Viennese revival was mounted at the Theater an der Wien in 1911 (28 October) with Louis Treumann (Brazilian etc), Mizzi Günther (Gabrielle), Luise Kartousch (Pauline), Paul Guttmann (Baron), Victor Flemming (Bobinet), Ludwig Herold (Gardefeu) and Ida Russka (Métella) featured through 43 performances.

 Berlin, which followed Vienna in maintaining the five-act version, followed just months behind the Austrian capital, and, although it never became the favourite that Blaubart or Die schöne Helena did, the show did well enough that it was still to be seen on the Berlin stage in 1906 (13 December) when it was produced at the Konische Oper with Karl Pfann (Gardefeu), Brose (Bobinet), Frln Hofmann (Gabrielle) and Frln von Martinowska (Métella) featured.

 New York first saw the piece, in French, two years after Vienna, with Rose Bell, Marie Desclauzas and Paul Juignet heading the cast of the four-act version, and La Vie parisienne was subsequently played by Marie Aimée and by other opéra-bouffe companies throughout the country, but the first English-language version (ad F C Burnand) was seen not in New York but in London. Burnand considerably altered, resituated and generally anglicized the script and the result, which he even titled La Vie Parisienne in London, in spite of being played by such actors as Lionel Brough (Baron), Harriet Coveney (Baroness) and Lottie Venne (Polly Twinkle), was not long-lived. But the lesson of the flop was not learned. H B Farnie turned out another English adaptation which called itself simply La Vie (all things Parisian having been again deleted), which was mounted by Alexander Henderson with great fanfare at the Avenue Theatre in 1883 (3 October) with Brough again starred alongside Arthur Roberts, Camille D'Arville and Lillian La Rue. It again proved to be a hamfistedly anglicized and altered version and, again, it was a failure although the production was kept doggedly on for 116 performances. This version was later sent to the country, in a production which reeked more of variety-show than of opéra-bouffe, and it was also produced on Broadway -- duly americanized and its comedy even more roundly lowered -- with Richard Mansfield as Baron von Wienerschnitzel (the name more or less typified the tone of the adaptation) and Fannie Rice as Gabrielle. However, even more disastrous than these was an effort by A P Herbert and A D Adams to `improve' Meilhac and Halévy (and Offenbach) with a feeble patchwork mounted at the Lyric, Hammersmith, in 1929 (29 April) and England had to wait until 1961 (24 May) and Geoffrey Dunn's witty version for the Sadler's Wells Opera Company to hear an English La Vie parisienne which approximated the original French one. A British production was given in the 1990s by the resuscitated D’Oyly Carte Opera Company.  

 Budapest first saw Pariser Leben in its German version, but Endre Latabár's Párizsi életfollowed and it won much the same success that the French and German versions had. Swedish, Spanish, Polish, Russian, Danish and Czech versions were amongst those that followed. However, it was in France that La Vie parisienne won and maintained its greatest popularity. The show was taken into the repertoire at the Théâtre des Variétés in 1875 (25 September) where Mlle Bouffar repeated her creation alongside such seasoned musical performers as José Dupuis (Baron), Berthelier (Brazilian etc) and Cooper (Gardefeu), and Paris saw regular performances thereafter. Dupuis, Mlle Bouffar and Cooper repeated their performances in 1883, with Baron now appearing as Bobinet and Mary Albert as Métella. In 1889 (18 September) at the Variétés Jeanne Granier was Gabrielle alongside Dupuis and Baron.

 The Opéra-Comique received the piece in 1931, it was staged at the Mogador with Dréan and Urban as the lurons ..

The Jean-Louis Barrault and Madeleine Renaud company revived it at the Palais-Royal in 1958, with its principals appearing as the Brazilian (etc) and the Baroness respectively, a revised version (ad Jean Marsan, Raymond Vogel) was produced at the Opéra-Comique in 1974 whilst, in the desert of musical productions that Paris became in the 1980s, it was nevertheless produced twice (Théâtre du Châtelet 4 November 1980, Théâtre de Paris 16 October 1985). In 1990 further performances were given at the Opéra-Comique (4 December). 

 The characters of the Baron de Gondremarck, Bobinet and Gardefeu were reprised by Victor de Cottens and Robert Chavray in their 1899 Le Fiancé de Thylda in which the fiancé of the title, longing to taste the naughty world before marriage, dreams himself into a whirl round Paris with the folk of Meilhac and Halévy’s tale.

An important vertebra of the French musical theatre repertoire, the show is played regularly and still retains popularity throughout the world in varying forms -- the German-language theatre, for example, still favours the five-act version and now, apparently, others are also casting eyes towards it -- but in the English-language theatre La Vie parisienne has never wholly recovered from its initial poor adaptations and the unfavourable impression they left behind. English and French versions of an inevitably messed-about-with version were filmed in 1935, with Max Dearly featured, and a slightly less cavalier version in 1977. A trendy, underfunny production from Lyon was videofilmed in 1991.

Austria: Carltheater Pariser Leben 31 January 1867; Germany: Friedrich-Wilhelmstädtisches Theater Pariser Leben 22 May 1867; USA: Theatre Francais (Fr) 29 March 1869, Bijou Theater (Eng) 18 April 1884; Hungary: (Ger) 25 May 1867, Budai Színkör Párizsi élet 1 July 1871; UK: Holborn Theatre La Vie Parisienne in London 30 March 1872, Avenue Theatre La Vie 3 October 1883; Films: Robert Siodmak (1935), Christian Jacque (1977), Videofilm 1991 (CDN).

Recordings: complete (EMI), complete in German (Philips, Klang Forum), complete in Russian (Melodiya), revival cast 1974 (Carrère), revival cast 1958 (Paris), selections (Pathé, Philips etc), English cast recording (HMV)