Haydée Abrek, or the Baroness takes to burlesque

The most unlikely things turn up on e-bay. Ten years ago, I wrote this little article, and consigned it to the 'failure' shelf, resigned to never knowing who this noble lady, fleeing the Franco-Prussian war in England, was. Well, I still don't know for sure ... but here is a photo of her!

ABREK, Haydée

In an age where newspapers make a speciality of trying to publish everything remotely private or secret about even the most unfamous 'celebrity', it is hard to credit the modesty of the Victorian press. And that modesty and respect are the reason I can’t identify Mlle or Madame Abrek for you.

The lady had a short career on the British platform and stage – just the time it took for the Franco-Prussian war to do its thing – but, during that time, I can find no journal which let out her aristocratic identity.

‘… the name assumed by a lady of high social position and acknowledged ability whom recent events in France have compelled to appear before the public as a professional singer.’

‘… under whose fanciful nom de guerre Parisian visitors may perhaps recognise a mezzo-soprano whose voice has been often heard in the Madeleine’

‘… many lady amateurs, owing to revolutionary changes in France and Italy, have adopted the lyric drama or have taken to the concert room professionally …’

The Marquise de Santayana ‘formerly lady-in-waiting to Queen Isabella of Spain’ was quoted as an example. And Mme Abrek. There was a suggestion that she was a Baronne … that is all.

The fanciful name in question was taken from Mikhail Lermontov’s 1835 poem Khadji Abrek, and I wondered why. I searched the 1871 London census, and found, interestingly, in Gloucester Place, a certain Philip Albrecht (not the Duke of Württemberg!) with a fifty year-old lady just given as H and a 20 year-old daughter, also H. And I found a Madeline Albrecht in Charlotte Street, ‘29 years old, actrice’, also from France. But I’m just guessing.

Mme Abrek’s arrival in London was marked by a concert on 2 March 1871 at St James’s Hall. Gardoni and delle Sedie supported, and the lady sang the Bacchanale from Galathée, Gounod’s ‘Ave Maria’, Angela’s air from Le Domino noir and ‘La Manola’ in a programme notably briefer than the usual London concert, before a largely French audience. The critics allowed her ‘considerable power and good quality’ and thought her innate drama would make her more suitable for the stage. Within days, the press was publishing an evident floater that she was ‘rumoured to be hired by Mapleson’.

delle Sedie

She wasn’t, but she played plenty of other engagements. Two days after her concert she was on the programme at the Alhambra at a French charity concert, and 1 April she made a debut at the Crystal Palace alongside Natalie Carola and Vernon Rigby. She gave Métra’s ‘Valse des roses’ and ‘Orpheus and his lute’ and Gounod conducted. She followed up at the New Philharmonic (Galathée, ‘La Manola’, ‘Ah, mon fils’) and on 16 May launched a series of concerts entitled the ‘Lady Artistes Musical Soirées’ at St George’s Hall. The Gottschalk girls, Mesdames Calderon, Sanz and de Lys performed, along with one Mlle Brusa ‘a supporting player from the Italian opera buffa’ (I thought hmm, for another French actrice, Mlle Brun, is Miss Albrecht’s roommate in the census) and the international press gave much notice to this one-sex arrangement. Mme Abrek sang her usual numbers and also recited Racine’s ‘Songe d’Athalie’.

Delphine Calderon

She appeared during the season at the concerts of Mr Austin, Sophia Flora Heilbronn and the young harpist, Mme Léonie Vattelette-Mottard, alongside the well-connected Mme Conneau, and the English Princess Matchinsky (who failed as a singer), and in August began a season with the Covent Garden proms. She was referred to as ‘the esteemed French singer and reciter’ and showed, in Offenbach’s ’Invocation to Venus’, where her best abilities lay.

Early in 1872, she appeared in Antoine de Kontski’s concert, alongside Monari Rocca and shortly after the pair played, with Mme Conneau, in the musician’s operetta Les deux distraits at St George’s Hall.

In May, she was taken on by Montelli’s French opéra-comique company, playing a hastily put together season at the Opera-Comique with Marie Cabel as star. She played the Marchioness in La Fille du régiment, Madame Barneck in L’Ambassadrice and Jeannette in Les Noces de Jeannette and, after a nervous beginning, where her humorous acting was more appreciated than her out-of-tune singing, improved into an acceptable performance.

Producers now felt her apt for the stage, and she headed for Liverpool to attempt Emily Soldene’s role of Drogan in a pirate production of Geneviève de Brabant. She soon left, and returned to town, and instead took up the role of Crusoe in an Olympic Theatre extravaganza How I Found Crusoe.

‘Madame Abrek made her debut as Drogan and Miami. It was a pity more of the music of the piece was not allotted to her, as she possesses a fine voice which she uses artistically. Her knowledge of English is hardly sufficient as yet for spoken words …’. The piece ran through January 1873, and closed.

Mme Abrek did not take to the commercial stage again. She played in Prince Poniatowski’s little Au travers du mur at St George’s Hall, and then…

Well, I suppose then it was safe to go home. To be a Baronne again, and leave the world of music which she had undoubtedly adorned better as an attractive amateur, than as a professional.