Wednesday, November 6, 2024

'Miss Roden': singing for pleasure ...

 



RODEN, Constance [PROTHEROE, Louisa Roden] (b Clifton, x 23 February 1821; d Ingmanthorpe Hall, Wetherby, Yorkshire 25 March 1886)

 

From time to time, there appears on the musical scene an artist who seems destined for a major career and considerable fame, but who simply, voluntarily, turns his or her back on such possibilities. The lady who called herself ‘Constance Roden’ was one such.

 

The real identity of ‘Miss Roden’ was clearly no secret in her own time, at least, not in the Bristol area from which she and her family hailed, but with that mock modesty which characterised the period and its press, it was pushed behind local lace curtains. A girl of ‘good family’ taking to the public platform, it was considered, had the right to shield her family name from any possible disgrace involved. So ‘Miss Roden’ was allowed to be Miss Roden, and only occasionally did a clever journalist venture ‘she is a native of Bristol, in which her family at one time held a commanding position’ or, worse, ‘without trenching on the privacies of life…’, and spouting the usual tale of a family fortune depleted, a father dead .. 'she is the daughter of an eminent merchant in one of our chief commercial towns, who was reduced to poverty by a failure in business, and then died..’

 

Well, the fortunes of the family Protheroe of Clifton, Gloucestershire, doubtless, were depleted in the hands of Thomas Skyrme Prothero (b Clifton, 10 February 1781; d 15 Meridien Place 1 February 1864), son and merchantman-business-partner of the wealthy Thomas Protheroe of Abbotsleigh, and some kind of descendant of Welsh royalty. But there had been quite a lot to deplete from. Actually, Thomas was not dead when the tired old tale was launched by the Gloucestershire gossip press, simply old and retired, and living at 15 Meridian Place in Clifton, with his wife and three of his five daughters. And there is little question that daughter number four, Louisa, did not go on the stage to earn a living, as her career and its unambitious shape bear witness.

 




Louisa studied singing with Crivelli, and, after his death, with a Signor [Leonardo] Perugini of 9 Ebury Street, who advertised that he spent ‘a few hours a day perfecting the style of amateur vocalists’. And, in spite of the quality of her voice, an amateur vocalist was what ‘Miss Roden’ was, and would remain. 


She was already well over thirty when she made her first appearance in a London concert room, in April of 1857, at the amateur concert series which had the previous year seen the debut of a young lady by the name of Helen Sherrington. Miss Roden made quite as enormous an effect, and the music press was all agog: ‘a rich mezzo soprano voice very fresh and pure it is what may be termed a sympathetic voice and remarkably so. Her intonation is correct, her pronunciation distinct, she sings with expression with a good methode and has that rarity, a remarkably open and beautiful shake. To this young lady I can safely say, as of Miss Sherrington, that she bids fair to be a great acquisition to the profession’.

However, unlike Miss Sherrington, Miss Roden did not set out swiftly towards the heights. She appeared in a second amateur concert, giving Spohr’s ‘Quanto vagi’ and ‘Dove sono’, alongside the young Lucy Leffler, and that was it, until the following year.


She appears to have made her first ‘professional’ appearance on 6 March 1858, at the Crystal Palace, sharing the vocals with Mathilde Rudersdorff. Her inexperience apparently showed, and the vastness of the auditorium was not in her favour, but, nevertheless, the new singer won all votes.


Then, three weeks later, Miss Roden made her debut on the London stage. Ben Webster mounted a version of Boieldieu’s The Caliph of Baghdad at the Adelphi (29 March 1858) and, in the leading roles, he cast two neophytes, Mr Fourness Rolfe and Miss Constance Roden. Mr Rolfe was well received, but Miss Roden was the hit: she ‘promises to be an acquisition to the lyric stage’, ‘her voice is of remarkably fine quality’, ‘her method of singing betrays professional education of the most judicious sort, demonstrated in the facility of her execution, the dramatic intention indicated in her style, and the appositeness of her expression. She is tall and has a fine figure, with features not regularly handsome but sweet and intelligent, and there is a corresponding sweetness in the tones of her voice, both in speaking and in singing. She is evidently quite without experience on the stage and her movements, consequently, were timid and constrained but without awkwardness. Indeed, her whole demeanour had a natural and ladylike grace which was very interesting… In short it is a long time since we have witnessed a more interesting debut than Miss Roden’s.. .’ (Daily News) Her ‘perfect trill’ gave the music writers quite a turn.

 

The Caliph of Baghdad was succeeded by Guy Mannering, with Miss Roden playing alongside Mary Keeley, Paul Bedford, Webster and Madame Celeste as Meg. She introduced ‘The Soldier’s Tear’ and ‘The Queen of the Seas’ into the proceedings, and won unbounded praise. On the last night of the season, for Webster’s Benefit, she appeared between the pieces to sing ‘The Waters of Elle’.


 Her decidedly successful debut, however, was not followed up. When she came before the public again, in January 1859, it was at the Polytechnic, with a lecture on The Beggar’s Opera. Miss Roden and tenor Thorpe Pede sang the music, and George Armytage Cooper (later replaced by Lennox Horne) read the text. The entertainment was a great success and Miss Roden’s Polly won the highest accolades; ‘We have heard many Pollys in our time, both before and since Miss Stephens, and bearing in mind the difference between stage representation of a character and the conventional tameness of  concert-room singing, we confess we never heard the music and words of Polly’s portion of the opera more exquisitely or artistically given’. ‘Rarely has the well-known music of Polly been more charmingly rendered…’. After sixty performances in Regent Street, Miss Roden took her piece to the Cavendish Rooms, to the Lecture Hall Greenwich, to Hounslow and a whole series of other dates. On 15 November 1860 she appeared at the Victoria Rooms in Clifton, with Peed, Horne and one of the Misses Rowcroft RAM, in a double bill of The Beggar’s Opera and a concert.

 

Over the next few years, Miss Roden turned up spasmodically in the concert room. She sang ‘Home, Sweet Home’ at the Royal Society of Musicians, ‘Cease your funning’ and the serenade from Paisiello’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia on several occasions, Kücken’s ‘Ave Maria’ and ‘The Waters of Elle’ at the Vocal Association, and was seen also on such occasions as Madame Puzzi’s well-reputed concert, giving ‘Voi che sapete’ (‘very effective and successful’) at Wilhelm Ganz’s concert, and on several programmes at the Monday pops (‘Cease your funning’, Cherubini’s ‘Ave Maria’, ‘Voi che sapete’, the Paisiello). ‘She is too seldom heard’ complained the press, ‘an extremely clever vocalist whom we should be glad to welcome more frequently to the concert room’. 


Their wishes were not to be granted.


 



I spot Miss Roden at Windsor, 9 January 1863, singing with the Gentlemen of the Chapel Royal – ‘Cara adorata imagine’ ‘with remarkable brilliancy’,‘The Home Song’ by Bristol’s George Rennie Powell and George Frederick Powell, ‘The Waters of Elle’ ‘which she has made completely her own’ --, at the National Melodies concert at St James’s Hall – ‘Dermot asthore’, ‘The Waters of Elle’, ‘Till Killarney's wild echoes had borne it away’ (‘Miss Roden’s upper notes are as clear and pure as her softer ones are dulcet and melodious’) and, back in the Entertainment world, singing the illustrations to David Fisher’s Facts and Fancies. At one moment she would be at the Polytechnic, giving Virginia Gabriel music in a ‘bijou concert’, the next, at Drury Lane on the glamorous bill for Joseph Swift’s concert. On 29 July 1864 she even joined with pianist Eleanor Ward to present a matinee of their own, at a private home in Cadogan Place (‘her pure voice and clearness of pronunciation mark her a vocal artiste of the first order’).


On 9 November 1864, Miss Roden returned to the Adelphi Theatre and Ben Webster. She played a custom-built part in a 1-act Lennox Horne ‘musical drama’ entitled The Baron Abroad and the Rustic Prima Donna, which existed solely to give its leading lady, maidservant Susette, the opportunity to give selections from Bellini (Sonnambula, Norma), Weber (Freischütz), Rossini (Gazza Ladra, Barbiere di Siviglia), Barnett (Mountain Sylph), Mozart (Don Giovanni) and Verdi, as well as, at some stage, some newer songs by Miss Gabriel and by Ernest Gaston.  The Times applauded ‘without having had much practice on the stage, yet naturally graceful, Miss Roden never offends by awkward action, and is remarkable for her clear diction whether speaking or singing. Miss Roden is likewise famed for an extremely even and sweet-toned voice, and probably the most manageable and brilliant shake possessed by any singer… it is not too much to ascribe the success of the piece to the talent of Miss Roden’.


Two years later, she returned once more to the Adelphi and played another series of performances of The Baronet Abroad, before replacing it with a new vehicle, Garibaldi in Sicily. This time there was no Verdi nor Mozart in the score, it was a home-made book of music composed by J L Hatton and J G Callcott. Although the score was estimated ‘devoid of merit’, Miss Roden’s performance kept the piece on the bills for 102 performances, before she switched back to The Baronet Abroad.

 

Although her name appeared, from time to time, in concert, it was 1869 before Miss Roden came back into full view. This time, it was as manageress as well as star. She took the Olympic Theatre ‘for a short season, for light operatic entertainments’, and presented herself, with Elliott Galer, Fanny Reeves, Eugene Dussek, J G Taylor and Lennox Grey, in a production of Boieldieu’s John of Paris (31 July). For once, things were less than perfect. On opening night, the star had a cold. Also, she had infiltrated a stripped-down version of the French score with ditties by Bristol musician, W F Taylor. The result was imperfect, even though Miss Roden and her ‘singular taste and refinement’ were still as admired as ever. But the ‘short season’, duly completed, was to be the lady’s last appearance on the London stage.

 

In fact, I think it was her last appearance on any stage. The only engagement which I can find for Miss Roden thereafter, is an appearance at the opening of Galer’s new theatre in Reading, in October of 1869.

Then, she simply and gently eclipsed into another world, after what cannot really be called ‘a career’. There is no doubt that she could have had one. A career. Maybe an exceptional one. But she simply didn’t care to.

 

The story of Miss Roden doesn’t end there. The Victorian vocalist story, yes, but not the full story. Alas, the end is a puzzlement. And there has to be a story in it, if only I could decipher it.


In the 1881 census, Louisa Protheroe, along with her widowed sister and a niece, can be found at Ingmanthorpe, ‘visitors’ in the home of Andrew Montagu (1815-1895), the vastly rich and aristocratic sometime mortgagee of Covent Garden Theatre, who, in his time, had poured money into the Gye regime of Italian opera, and who was a significant supporter of the Conservative Party, to the extent of rescuing Disraeli from debt. He had, also, been the finance behind Miss Roden’s management at the Olympic Theatre. Montagu was a bachelor. Louisa was a spinster (and her sister a widow). And they remained that way. But ‘remained’ is what I mean. Louisa Protheroe remained at Ingmanthorpe until her death in 1886. Her sister and niece stayed on even thereafter, apparently up till Montagu’s death. Some ‘visitors’.





Louisa Roden Protheroe (spinster) late of 96 St George's Square, Middx died 25 March 1886 at Ingmanthorpe Hall in the County of York. Administration was granted on 11 January 1887 to Sophia Maria Cameron (widow and sister) at Ingmanthorpe Hall. She left a mighty £15,953 12s 6d. Did daddy not really waste away his patrimony? Or is there another explanation?

 

What is the story? Even though I’ve uncovered much of the truth about ‘Miss Roden’, I think there is still something to be found.

Tuesday, November 5, 2024

LA MASCOTTE: the days when musical-theatre sex was frothy French fun ...

 


 

LA MASCOTTE Opéra-comique in 3 acts by Henri Chivot and Alfred Duru. Music by Edmond Audran. Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens, Paris, 29 December 1880.



Produced at Louis Cantin's Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens following the enormous success there of Varney's
 Les Mousquetaires au couvent, Audran's successor to his splendid début with Les Noces d'Olivette was thus given two very difficult acts to follow. It triumphed unequivocally, giving the Bouffes-Parisiens another vast hit and going on to become and to remain one of the most popular French opérettes of all time.


Marie Montbazon as Bettina


The turkey-girl Bettina (Mlle Montbazon) is a `mascot' -- that is to say, she brings good luck to her household -- and when she joins the working staff of the miserable farmer Rocco (Raucourt) his luck changes immediately. Bettina's boyfriend, Rocco's shepherd Pippo (Louis Morlet), isn't allowed too close, however, for a mascot ceases to be a mascot if she ceases to be a virgin. Alas, when her virtues are discovered by the interminably unlucky King Laurent (Paul Hittemans), poor Bettina is dragged off to court, much to the displeasure of the Princess Fiametta (Mlle Dinelli) who, obviously unaware of the rules of being a mascot, assumes the girl is her father's mistress. A whole barrage of complexities leads up to preparations for a double royal wedding, from which Pippo and Bettina escape just as Fiametta's rejected suitor, Fritellini (Charles Lamy), attacks the now-instantly-unlucky Laurent with his army. But luck has changed sides only for as long as it takes for Pippo and Bettina, finally, to get wedded and bedded. When all efforts to stop this disaster fail, both camps have to sit down and wait for nine months and hope the young mother will produce twins. One apiece. For it appears that mascotry is hereditary.


King Laurent peeps over the wall to make sure there is no sex happening

Louis Morlet (Pippo)






Chivot and Duru's joyously lubricious libretto -- in which, of course, only the juves actually had sex -- built up to wilder and wilder comic scenes which, in the last act, bordered on the burlesques of earlier days, and the comedy was illustrated by a delicious Audran score. The hit number of the show was an ingenuous love duo for the shepherd and the turkey-girl with a `glou-glou' (her as the turkey) and `bé-bé' (he as a sheep) refrain, whilst Fritellini's melodic analysis of his own qualities (`Le je ne sais quoi poétique') and his bamboozling of the naïve Pippo (`Ah, mon cher, que vous êtes naïf') and Fiametta's appreciation of Pippo's muscles (`Ah! qu'il est beau!') boasted the piece's loveliest melodies. The comic side was topped by Laurent's declaration of his main advantage as a husband for Bettina -- his impotence (`J'en suis tout à fait incapable').


 La Mascotte was an overwhelming success at the Bouffes-Parisiens, playing for the entire season, and then for most of the next one as well. Cantin removed it in order to stage Louis Varney's Coquelicot, but when that piece failed to take he promptly brought back La Mascotte which proved far from having exhausted its public. It was nearly two years from its opening night when the show was finally taken off and replaced with the next Audran work, Gillette de NarbonneGillette de Narbonne was another fine success, but La Mascotte was naturally brought back in 1883 (11 April) with Piccaluga, Mme Gugot-Morlet (replacing a too-pregnant original star) and Édouard Maugé for another 92 performances, and it resurfaced again in 1889 with Théo, this time, in the title-rôle. Paris revivals were regular thereafter, including runs at the Menus-Plaisirs (1890, where on 14 July the show celebrated its 1500th Parisian performance), the Gaîté (1897, 1901 w Germaine Gallois, 1915 w Angèle Gril), the Apollo (1913, 1914), the Mogador (1921, 1944) and the Porte-Saint-Martin (1933 w Edmée Favart, 1935, 1968) as La Mascotte confirmed itself as one of the surest pillars of the opérette repertoire. 


Germaine Gallois as Bettina

The piece also travelled with considerable success. Although Vienna hosted an uncredited (and apparently insufficient) adaptation of Der Glücksengel, with Josefine Gallmeyer given top billing in the rôle of Fiametta alongside Girardi (Pippo), Karoline Finaly (Bettina) and Carl Adolf Friese (Lorenzo) for only 23 performances, and Germany extended it only a slightly warmer reception, in Hungary, where Lujza Blaha took on the rôle of the turkey-girl with Pál Vidor as her Pippo, János Kápolnai (Fritellini) and Vidor Kassai as Laurent, Az üdvöske (ad Jen*o* Rákosi) was an undoubted winner and it followed its original production with many returns. Britain reacted similarly when, after an out-of-town try-out at Brighton (a most unusual thing at the time) Alexander Henderson brought La Mascotte (ad Robert Reece, H B Farnie) to the Comedy Theatre with Violet Cameron and the 22 year-old Savoyard baritone Francis Gaillard starred, Lionel Brough heading the comedy, and Lizzie St Quinten and Henry Bracy in the chief singing rôles. 





After a first run of 199 performances it came back after just a month for a further season with Clara Merivale and Gaillard starred, whilst Kate Santley took her production, and her Bettina, to the provinces. In 1884 Florence St John paired with Gaillard in a re-run, in 1885 Violet Cameron repeated her original rôle, in 1888 the French prima donna Mary Albert gave a season in French and, finally, in 1893, the Gaiety Theatre staged a La Mascotte season with Miss St John (9 September), the sixth sighting of the show in London in a dozen years. 


Francis Gaillard

Australia, in the meantime, had responded with equal delight to a J C Williamson production which featured his wife, Maggie Moore, as a truly lusty Bettina, alongside George Verdi (Pippo), W H Woodfield (Fritellini), Nellie Stewart (Fiametta), H M Harwood (Laurent) and Edwin Kelly (Rocco) in the first of what would be a long series of La Mascotte seasons.


The competition to get the first La Mascotte on to the American stage was all the hotter because of the vast success of the American version of Les Noces d'Olivette, but in the end it was the management of the ever to-the-fore Boston Museum who won the race. They mounted Theodore T Barker, Emile Schwab and J W Norcross’s version ('original dialogue and scenes by') of the show in April 1881 with Helen Carter, Seth Crane and Harry Brown in the principal rôles, and toured it under the banner of the 3ed-rate Grayson Comic Opera Co. 





It was nearly a month after this before Broadway got its first glimpse of the new show at the Bijou Theater, the house which had so successfully staged the earlier piece. They brought in the touring Wilbur Opera Company’s production, with Emma Howson (the original London Josephine of HMS Pinafore) and John Brand heading the cast, four days before the Boston company appeared at the Park Theater with their version. It was the Bijou which came out the better, for La Mascotte, an oversized hit in no time, ran there for an uninterrupted three months (108 performances), the Gobble Duet became, as it had in Britain, one of the hits of the season, and the floodgates were opened for productions of the show around the country.




Over the next 12 months Selina Dolaro appeared as Bettina in a quick revival at the Bijou (60 performances, see above), Geraldine Ulmar and H C Barnabee (Laurent) headed the Bostonians' production at Booth's, Paola Marié introduced the original French version, which was also played in repertoire by Louise Théo; Jenny Stubel and Alexander Klein gave Der Glücksengel at the Thalia-Theater in German, whilst the young Fay Templeton appeared in the title-rôle of a (grossly) remade-to-order production at the Windsor Theater. The flood slowed thereafter, but it did not stop for many years: Judic played Bettina during her 1885 tour, the Bijou revived the piece in 1887, a 1892 production at Palmer's Theater presented William Pruette as Pippo, Henry Dixey as Laurent and Camille D'Arville in the title-rôle, and Raymond Hitchcock and his wife Flora Zabelle starred, for a month, in a 1909 Klaw and Erlanger production at the New Amsterdam Theater. The last sight of La Mascotte on Broadway was in 1926 (1 December) when Jenny Syril and Servatius featured in a revival at the Jolson Theater, by which time the show had proven itself one of the most standard standards of the American-French repertoire. Largely because Audran's name has not remained a fashionable one, it has not, however, followed Offenbach and Strauss's works into the modern opera houses. Which is a pity.








A French film version was made in 1935 by Léon Mathot, with Germaine Roger as Bettina alongside Dranem, Lucien Baroux and Lestelly, which can be seen on DVD to this day, but La Mascotte had undoubtedly its most curious film exposure in 1913 when it was presented as a three-reeler film starring Minnie Jarbeau `in three six-minute acts' with accompanying sound `by means of Edison's wonderful kinetophone'. The experiment was apparently successful enough for the manufacturers to subsequently serve up the customers a version of Les Noces d'Olivette recorded in the same style.


Austria: Theater an der Wien Der Glücksengel 12 February 1881; Hungary: Népszinház Az üdvöske 10 April 1881; USA: Boston Museum 12 April 1881, Bijou Theater, New York 5 May 1881; UK: Comedy Theatre 15 October 1881; Germany: Friedrich-Wilhelmstädtisches Theater Der Glücksengel 25 October 1881; Australia: Theatre Royal, Sydney 25 October 1882; Film Léon Mathot 1935

Recordings: complete (Clio, Decca), selection (EMI-Pathé) etc

Saturday, November 2, 2024

The flowers that bloom in the spring tra-la!

 

Well, flowers and other things ...

Spring is a touch tardy this year. And we're sorta shorta rain ..

But ... here we are, Cup Week coming up and things are budding and even blooming ..

Yellow has been my favourite colour for decades. Witness, my racing silks ..


When my beloved Ian died, oh so many years ago, I buried his ashes under the old cherryblossom tree in the garden in front of my living-room window, and Wendy and I planted golden lilies and irises on the spot. Each year, they come into bloom in Yesvember ... I hadn't really noticed, but of course, each year they have spread a little wider .. and this year they have outdone Wordsworth's daffodils ..


Yes, the cherry tree has gone ...


And yes, that's Mr P[eacock] photobombing ...

Cheeky blighter, he's suddenly burst into activity with the arrival of All Hallows' Eve!  Woglinde got quite a shock ... but she's hanging around waiting for a repeat performance ..




He's thinking about it ....

and doubtless thinking also of past years, when he could battle off the concurrence and service thirty hens a day


This little patio rose has upheld it's reputation for precocity. While other bushes are merely budding, the honeychild is first off the mark as ever ..


He'll have hundreds of blooms over the summer (when it arrives) ... 

The first strawberries are forming ...


The first flowers on the tomatoes


The wisteria is hanging on in there ..


The hawthorn is in flower ...


And the self-planted .. I have a weakness for these children of nature ... and the revenants from previous years are popping up, in places expected and unexpected...












I didn't really need to buy any new ones, but ...


I guess it's time to go out and water all these chaps. All right, I'm coming ....




Music in Boston: 1863

 

I found this bit of Boston musical ephemera yesterday. I don't usually bother with Boston, because that once important musical and theatrical centre seems -- in direct contrast to California -- to be shy about sharing its newspaper archives with those of us who live on the other side of the world. But, sometimes ..


So, what's special about this? Carl Zerrahn (b Malchow, Mecklenburg 28 July 1826; d Boston 29 December 1909) was a leading figure in Massachusetts music for half a century.



Whatever there is to say (and there is a great deal) about him has already been said.

[Maria] Teresa Carreño García de Sena (b Caracas, Venezuela 22 December 1853; d New York 12 June 1917) and her long and shining career (and colourful private life) have also been well documented. The interesting thing, however, is that our document is from the very earliest weeks of her career ..


She was but nine years old, and had made her official public debut only in the preceding November.

Which leaves Mrs Celia Houston Ford. Who? Unlike her two companions, Mrs Ford has left little mark on the history of music in Boston. And, yes, this was her 'debut' performance.

Lucelia A HOUSTON was born in Boston in 1841, one of the children of carpenter William Peterson Houston and his wife, Lucinda née Roberts. She was taught singing by local musician Augusto Bendelari (ex-of Naples) (1825-1903), and married 14 May 1862 Erastus H Ford, a young builder. Erastus would have been around to witness his wife's first public performance, but he died in South Boston, aged 30, 31 December 1864.

I can't find any notices of this concert. And, of course, Celia was wholly incidental to the 'one night only' performance of the cure little pianist ...  and the only other bill on which I spot her is for John K Paine's organ concert at Central Church, Portland 22 April 1863. She 'received great applause for her perfoermances which were rendered in a charming manner ... a sweet voice, of great compass .. accompanied by Kotzschmar ..'. Mr Paine, I see, was 'musical instructor at Harvard University'.

After the death of her husband, Celia set out for Europe 'to study with Garcia'. She may have, but she died 'of consumption' in Milan 27 October 1866.

Well, now we know. And it is a nice piece of musical ephemera ...




Thursday, October 31, 2024

Fanny Jervis aka Mme Rubini Scalisi ... a forgotten musician

 


 

‘Former Great Tenor Dead’ trumpeted the New York Times on 8 May 1905. The New York Herald, not to be outdone, trumpeted too. And papers round the world, as papers did and do, picked up the story …

And almost every word of it was the most egregious poppycock. 

Edoardo Rubini Swynfen Jervis, they claimed, had been first tenor at St Petersburg and Paris, he had taught music to the English princesses, and to a long line of star vocalists from Lucca, Marimon, Volpini, Cotgoni and Campanini to Joseph Maas and ... who? Scalisi? He had taught at the London Academy of Music … and he had come, at last, to New York where he died, destitute, at number 115 West 106th Street.


Was any of it true? Well, just a little. He did teach, briefly, at the London Academy of Music. It was probably the best teaching job he ever had. And Scalisi? Madame Scalisi was his sister, who achieved much, much more in music than he ever did and it is for her, certainly not him, that the Jervis family got this little piece in my Victorian Vocalists collection.

 

RUBINI, Fanny [Jervis] [JERVIS, Fanny] (b Lucca, Italy c1847; d 8 Church Street, Shoreham by Sea 13 December 1915)

 

However, ‘Edoardo’ is responsible for much of the mythology surrounding the family, so a quick glance at his pretensions won’t hurt. ‘Rubini’? ‘Swynfen’? The suggestion here is that there is some connection, on the one hand, with the famous tenor G-B Rubini, and on the other with the aristocratic family of Lord St Vincent, rightly named Jervis, and with whom ‘Swynfen’ was a much-used additional name. True or false? My automatic reaction was to say ‘false’, but there just may be a smidginette of truth in there. So I went a-searching.

 

The father of this family was a portrait painter from Sheerness, by name John Jervis. The 1861 census says ‘Jarvis’ which, if true, would ruin the whole story, but other documents all say Jervis, so I allow him the benefit of that doubt. Mr Jervis obviously practised his painting outside England, for at some stage, probably in the late 1830s, he married an ‘Italian’ singer, and their children, born in the 1840s and 1850s, were all born in Italy. I say ‘Italian’, for Mrs Adele Eugénie Jervis was actually German, born in the city of Laibach (ie Ljubljana) around 1813, although she apparently worked under the name of ‘Signorina Rubini’. If she had no right to it (and it was, later, insisted that she was ‘of Italian parentage’) it was, given the propinquity of the great tenor Rubini and his French wife née Adelaide Chaumet (Mme Rubini-Comelli), a rather tacky thing to do. It has been related that a certain singing Mlle [surely not Sophie!] Méquillet of the 1830s took her master’s name in ‘homage’: If this is true, I suppose it could have been she. But it sounds rather fishy.

 

Since the four children of this marriage were all born in Italy: Edward allegedly in Rome in March 1841, William about 1843, Fanny at Lucca in 1846 or 7, and Adele in Florence in 1857, I cannot know precisely how and when they were christened, but the 1861 census entry for 12 Elm Terrace, Kensington, shows the three younger children listed with just one simple Christian name apiece. Jervis. No Rubini, no Swynfen.


 

My first sighting of the Jervis children as performers is in 1855. A little squib in the English press mentions that ‘a Master Jervis and his sister Mdlle Fanny have been giving concerts in Florence with great success’. Yes, there they are, 5 May 1855, at the Sala d’Arte ‘il giovanetto Odoardo Jervis e la di lui sorellina Fanny’. They are playing, not singing: the vocals are supplied by the Irish soprano Elena Corani (née Conran).

 

The Jervis family must have returned to Britain soon after Adele’s birth, for, on 11 July 1859, The Times announced: ‘The little pianiste, Fanny Rubini, pupil of her mother, Signora Rubini, has the honour to announce that she will give a grand morning concert this day (by kind permission) at the residence of Mrs Elliott Macnaughton, 46 Eaton Square. To commence at 3 o’clock. Artists: Mme Rieder Schlumberger, Signora Alba, Signori Marras, Crivelli, Corsi, Ciabatta, Giulio Regondi and Mr Blagrove. Director: Signor Campana.’ The next week ‘the young Italian pianist’ appeared at Giacinto Marras’s concert.




‘Fanny Jervis Rubini’ followed up this debut with another concert the following year (27 June 1860) in which brother, Edoardo Jervis Rubini, also played and conducted, and at which Catherine Hayes sang, and again in 1862 (21 June) and 1863 (2 July). By 1865, I notice, cartes de visite of ‘Miss Rubini’ were being published for sale, and, by 1866, she was well enough considered to be engaged, as replacement for Marie Krebs, from 1 October, as pianist at Alfred Mellon’s series of Covent Garden proms ('She played Thalberg's fantasia on L'Elisir d'amore and was rapturously encored', 'A young pianist of most refined taste and with the specialty of a delightfully liquid touch' 'fait fanatisme .. un talent sérieux' ) . In January 1867, I spot her playing both at the Popular Concerts at Her Majesty’s Theatre ('a pianist of no ordinary stamp') and as guest with the London Glee and Madrigal Union. Although she had sung in private homes since 1867, it is only in 1869, that I spy Fanny out for the first time as a vocalist, when, in a Dublin concert, having given her keyboard items, she also delivered the Faust Jewel Song.


Things seem to have moved briskly from there, but the family moved out of England, and on to the Continent, and my sightings of Mlle Rubini become episodic. In 1870 I spot her singing in concert in Paris. She is, the Paris press say, on her way to an engagement at the Pergola Theatre in Florence. ‘Vingt ans, expressive et charmante personne, jolie voix, du style, un vrai talent de musicienne, voilà certes de quoi se frayer une première place sur nos scènes lyriques’. Later, the report is that she is ‘studying in Florence’. And that ‘Miss Fanny Jervis who had previously made a favourable impression by her singing in the fashionable reunions of Florence, appeared at the Pergola Theatre some nights since in La Sonnambula and made a very successful début’ (‘haben wir für Fräulein Fanny Jervis Rubini die besten Hoffnung’ ‘Frln Fanny Jervis trat im Pergola-Theater mehrere Mal in der Sonnambula mit grossen Beifall auf’.) She is, in any case, doing well enough that ‘Edoardo’ and ‘Guglielmo’ Rubini, music teachers in London, see it worthwhile to advertise themselves, a bit superfluously, as her brothers. She also took part, at the Pergola, in a comic melodrama with music (22 March 1871) Il Califfo by Ettore Dechamps playing the slave, Amina, to the Haroun al Raschid of Pietro Silenzi.


In August 1871, she was back in England, singing at Rivière’s proms and in Manchester, for de Jong (‘a recall after each song’), before whisking back to Aix-la-Chapelle (‘Prima donna of the Covent Garden concerts’), Bordeaux, Lille, Baden (‘avalanche de bouquets’) under the management of Ullman, amid rumours of great things to come. And come they did. Mlle Fanny Rubini -- in demand for the Parisian concerts (Cherubini 'Ave Maria', 'O luce di', duets with Trebelli, Tagliafico)-- was engaged as a principal soprano at Paris’s Théâtre des Italiens. 

 

She made her debut there singing Gilda in Rigoletto alongside delle Sedie, and was wholly successful: ‘[Elle] n'a qu'à se louer de l'accueil du public. Ses deux duos, l'un avec le ténor, l'autre avec le baryton, lui ont acquis les sympathies de l'auditoire. Sa voix de soprano est d'un beau timbre, surtout dans les cordes hautes, et sa méthode est excellente. Mais il ne faut pas qu'elle se lasse de travailler, ne fût-ce que pour donner plus de souplesse à son organe et pour mieux soigner ses attaques, qui parfois n'ont pas été très-exactes. Somme toute, elle peut être satisfaite de l'épreuve, et le succès doit l'encourager. On peut même dire que c'est à elle plus particulièrement que s'adressaient les applaudissements qui ont éclaté après le quatuor.’

 

It was rumoured that she would follow up in La Sonnambula (‘in which she played at the Pergola in Florence’) but she seems, later during her engagement, to have appeared only with Marietta Alboni, Gardoni and Penco, in the part of Elisetta in a few performances of Il matrimonio segreto where her singing pleased more than her acting  (‘Mlle Rubini a lancé une pluie de perles de la plus belle eau et du plus beau son’, ‘Mlle Rubini fait ce qu’elle peut, mais son jeu laisse encore beaucoup à désirer’).

 

From Paris she headed back to London, where she and one of her brothers mounted a concert at the Hanover Square Rooms ('L'Estasi'), then to Baden for the concert season, singing alongside Csillag, delle Sedie and Campanini ('O luce di'), and to Italy or was it Warsaw where, it was said, she had been signed to appear in Mignon. ‘She is engaged for the season as prima donna assoluta at the Apollo Theatre, Rome’ reported the Paris music press. 

 

Thereafter, she turns up Valletta in Malta (Dinorah), at the Fondo (Dinorah) and Mercadante (Rosa in La Campana dell'eremittegio, Principessa di Tesca in Golisciani's Wallerstein) in Naples, and for the summer of 1875, alongside Tamagno and Justine Macvitz, at the Liceu, Barcelona – now equipped with a new name. She has become Madame Rubini-Scalisi, the wife of conductor Carlo Scalisi. 

 

In 1876 she visited South America, and in 1876-7, she can be seen sharing the billing with Erminia Borghi-Mamo and Elena Sanz at the Teatro Real, Madrid, performing La Sonnambula, Rigoletto, Linda di Chamonix, L'Étoile du Nord, Fra Diavolo and Dinorah, with Gayarre as her tenor and Mariano Padilla as baritone. With the last named, she scored ‘un trionfo’ as Linda: ‘la artista de las afligranadas fiorature, a que se presta se voz de siempre grate timbre, y con cuyos magnificos recursos tanto ha brilliado en Rigoletto, Sonnambula Dinorah. In 1878 (27 November) she took the soprano role in Auteri Manzocchi’s Il Negriero (27 November 1878) alongside Stagno and Moriami. In June 1880, in Paris, she played in the Marquis Filiasi’s private production of Il Menestrello, and she also took part in several pieces composed by Bottesini, notably his Ero e Leandro and Cedar, programmed in 1880, at Naples, where she and her husband were engaged.

 

The Scalisis remained a considerable time at Naples and its San Carlo Theatre, where Carlo Scalisi, for a number of years in the 1880s, actually took over the management. Fanny, there, sang everything from Amelia in Simone Boccanegra to Elsa in Lohengrin,the title-role in Dinorah, Catherine in L’Etoile du nord, Gilda in Rigoletto, Sita in Le Roi de Lahore and Santuzza in Cavalleria rusticana.

 

Elsewhere, in the 1880s, I see Fanny singing Traviata at the Rome Apollo, Aida at Florence and at Nice, at the Carlo Fenice, Genoa in Les pêcheurs des perles, I see mention of her at Brescia, at Seville, Malaga, Granada, Turin and Brindisi, and in 1888, Scalisi having bankrupted at Naples the previous season, she spent several months back in London, once again teaming with Bottesini (‘applauded for the dramatic power she displayed in an aria from Nenia’), with Helen D’Alton and Isidore de Lara, in a series of concerts.

 

After London, however, I find little sign of Madame Scalisi -- although she seems to have tackled Santuzza in Foggia -- until, in 1893, it is announced that she and her husband will take up positions at the head of the singing department at the Naples Conservatoire. If Fanny did this, it was not for long. For, in 1894, I find her – with no sign of him – back in London, and back on the concert stage. The first occasion is a matinee musicale (‘nineteenth season’) given by one Signor Bonetti, and Madame Fanny Scalisi ‘from La Scala, Milan and the San Carlo, Naples’ is top-billed. La Scala? But the surprise comes further down the bill. ‘Madame Adelaide Rubini’. Fanny’s mother would have been over eighty years of age. Surely this cannot be she. Is it perhaps sister Adele taking up the family stage name?  25 July she has her own concert at Collard’s Rooms. The same Madame Adelaide appears again on 2 July 1895, when Fanny mounts her own concert at the Queen’s Hall. The previous week, she had appeared at the Music Trades prize-giving at the Agricultural Hall, as winner of the the piano section! The soprano award was won by … Miss Annie Rosa Swinfen. Oh no!

 

The Queen’s Hall concert is my last sighting of Fanny as a performer. Maybe she went back to Italy where, I think, I have seen her husband conducting in the early days of the new century. Ultimately, however, she did return to Britain, for the British records reveal the death of ‘Frances J Scalisi’, at the age of 68, in the district of Steyning (presumably at Hove) in 1915. She lies in Mill Lane Cemetery, in a sadly neglected grave ...




Mother Adele, who had spent her later life living with daughter Adele (Mrs Inderwick) and her family, in England, died in Brighton in 1903, at the age of 90.

 

As for the music-teacher brothers, Edward – as we know -- ended up in America, and he was never so famous as in death. In the 1870s he began teaching music in Exeter, where in 1883 he married a local girl, Mary Smith (d Surrey, 29 June 1918). From Exeter, Torquay, Tiverton, Taunton and Teignmouth, he moved to Malvern and tried teaching in Birmingham, before throwing it in and emigrating, in about 1890, to Ontario, and finally, in 1897, to America.

 

William made altogether more of a success in life, largely as a composer of light piano music which he published voluminously under the name G[uglielmo] Jervis Rubini. He, too, married and I spot him the 1891 census ‘aged 44’ with wife and baby boy, mother and sister, Adele Inderwick (d 1934) and child, before losing him. Apparently he died in 1895.







Fanny Scalisi did, herself, have at least one child.  In 1927, the Grands Cercles of Paris include amongst their listings one ‘Jervis Arthur Scalisi’. This is presumably the Arthur George Jervis Scalisi, composer of ‘Najah’ (three Hindoo dances for piano) and ‘The Opium Dream’, the George Scalisi seen playing piano at Wigmore Hall, and above all the Arturo Domenico F G Scalisi born in Valetta, Malta, in 1874, and married in London in 1897. 'Captain Arthur George Scalisi-Jervis' of Bedford Chambers ... 'medical officer' ...

 

And here’s the rub. This Arthur Scalisi married, in what seems to have been a double wedding, a Miss Emily Mary Bowden. The other groom was one Luigi d’Antonio and the other bride was Miss Alice Edith Jervis, of Shenstone, Staffordshire, the daughter of the Hon Edward Swynfen Jervis of Little Aston Hall, and the legitimate descendant of that Lord St Vincent to whom, I was so sure, our Jervis family was only pretending to be related.  Do I have now to infer otherwise?

 

Emily Mary Scalisi of the Palazzo Schioppa Riviera de Chiesa, Naples, wife of Arthur Scalisi, died 26 July 1897. Probate to Arthur Scalisi and ... Alice Edith d'Antonio, wife of Luigi d'Antonio ...  effects: a whopping 29,000 pounds! After his momentary marriage, Arthur remarried and he died in Vancouver, Canada 10 February 1942.

 

Well, if there is a connection, the music in the family goes much further back than I had counted upon. To the famously colourful Mary Ann Jervis, pupil of Pasta, composer of the opera Siroe (1831), a selection from which was sung at Oury’s concert on 29 July of that year, the extravagant enchantress of the Duke of Wellington, sometime wife of the ‘mad’ Dyce Sombre, and later Lady Forester.

 

Guglielmo/William (not ‘George’ as the web would have it) published a piece of dance music in 1877. It is entitled ‘L’Étoile du chant’ and its title page bears a colour lithograph of Fanny as Zerlina in Fra Diavolo. Alas, search as I may, I can find no surviving copy. However, the National Portrait Gallery hold this photo of a 'Miss Rubini' which seems as if it might be the young Fanny ...




 

PS I discover that the singing Miss Swinfen (1863-1922), later Mrs Charles Burrell, was the daughter of a city missionary from Brixton … could that name really be a coincidence?