.
SMART, Laura (b Plymouth 4 July 1857; d 3 Mount Street, Liverpool
11 October 1913)
This article
started out to be a little piece on Miss/Mrs/Madame Smart, generally recognised,
in the 1880s and 1890s, to be the outstanding soprano in the Liverpool and
Manchester area. But then it grew, to take in her husband and his/their musical
world, and it has ended up as a glimpse at a whole home-grown part of that
world and its music-making population. But let’s start with Laura.
She was born in
Plymouth, but I think that may just have been because her peripatetic parents
were passing that way. Her elder sisters were born in Leamington and Canterbury, and her
younger brother in Chepstow. And why were her parents peripatetic? Well, father
Fred (b Brighton; d Shaftesbury Rd, Allerton 12 July 1888) was ‘a professor of
penmanship’, and I guess he went where the business was. Fred and Fanny Smart seemingly
decided, in the late 1850s, that the business was in Lancashire, and, soon
after, they set up house in Chorlton upon Medlock. By 1859, ‘Smart & Co’
‘of London’ was in action at 18 Victoria Street, Manchester, giving tuition in
writing and book-keeping. The history of Smart & Co is a long and
successful one. It spread to branches in Liverpool, Blackburn et al, Mrs S came
in to teach the ladies, and it seems to have survived, under Fred’s son, ‘Professor’
Ernest Smart, up till the Great War. By which time it was teaching typewriting,
rather than handwriting. The girls in the family apparently didn’t go in for
calligraphy. Clara began teaching piano from a young age, Florence married (13
November 1878), and Laura … well, she did both music and marriage. To their
mutual benefit.
I first see Laura
singing in public in February 1875, in Staffordshire, then in 1876 at the
Kirkburton Band Concerts. She is billed as being ‘of the Liverpool and
Manchester concerts’, so I imagine she’d put a quiet toe into the pool
somewhere. She sang a vocal waltz (unnamed) and a piece called ‘The Ray of
Hope’, previously favoured by local soprano Mrs Billinie Porter, but otherwise
unknown (to me). Shortly after, I spy her at Golcar, going the whole hog: ‘Bid Me
Discourse’, ‘The Nightingale’s Trill’, ‘Il Bacio’ and at the National School
Room, Meltham, with local Tom Law, repeating ‘The Ray of Hope’. Over the next
couple of years, I spot her occasionally in the surrounding counties (repeatedly
at Simpson’s concerts at Hanley, ‘sang very well’), ‘Bid me discourse’ at
Burslem, Longton, Tunstall and Stafford, The
Creation at Preston with Bernard Lane, and at Harrogate Spa, while at least
one of the (other, presumably) Misses Smart was temporarily looking after the
handwriting ladies at 2 Brown Street, Manchester. Mrs Fanny Smart, previously her
husband’s assistant, had died at Grafton Street 24 May 1877, aged 47.
In 1879, Laura’s
career and life took a definitive turning. The man who entered her career was
Mr William Lea, son of the schoolmaster at Harthill, Cheshire. The young
William was apprenticed to a gardener, but took a bent for music and set up as
a music teacher in Liverpool. From teaching, it was but a step to buy and
selling musical instruments, and Mr Lea took that step, in 1871, with great
success. In the 1870s, his depository at 56 (and then 56 and 58) Melville
Place, Myrtle Street, for the sale of harmoniums and pianofortes, flourished.
So Mr Lea took the next traditional step: into concert management. On 11 July
1877, he presented the musician W H Jude at the second-level Hope Hall, in the
‘east end’ of Liverpool. Mr Jude was a triple-threat performer. He played
serious music on Mr Lea’s harmoniums and pianos, he sang comic songs, imitated
Henry Russell and John Parry, and he was, as they say, ‘a host in himself’ for
an evening’s entertainment. This experience of management was obviously a positive
one, for 23 September 1877 Lea launched a series of Saturday Nights at the same
Hall. Jude was the centrepiece, whether singing, playing, conducting, or all
three at once, but Lea filled his bills with local artists, professional,
semi-professional and barely professional: the Misses Harriet Leders, Marie
Ternan, Laura Jane Haworth, Lily Moulsdale (once the juvenile ‘Nightingale of
the North’), Linda Cuthbert (‘pupil of Schira and the London Academy’), Alice
Jackson, the Messrs George Barton (tenor), T J and J L Hughes, Emmanuel Spero,
‘Sydney Gladwynne’, Inman Moore, J Busfield, George A Paris, T H Harrison. And
the result was highly successful.
On 21 September
1878, he and ‘W H Jude’s concert company’ began a second season, and in week
two he scored a major hit by introducing into the programme a large selection
from the latest London comic opera hit, HMS
Pinafore. Jude was Sir Joseph Porter, Marie Ternan was Buttercup and Miss Moulsdale sang Josephine. This
seems to have been Liverpool’s first hearing of the Pinafore music, and the fame of Lea’s concerts was sealed. He
repeated Pinafore to a ‘crammed
hall’, then mounted The Sorcerer with
Jude in the title-role, alongside Miss Moulsdale (Alice), Miss Jackson
(Constance) and Gladwynne, then more Pinafore,
No Song No Supper plus Romberg’s Toy Symphony in which the singers played
the ‘toys’, then more Gilbert and Sullivan. The company remained largely the
same, but in the listings for the performance of 28 December (52nd concert) a
new name appeared. Mr Josef Cantor.
Mr Cantor was a
young Jewish gentleman from London, who had just arrived in town. He was the
son of a Rotterdam-born market porter and his English wife, Charlotte Solomons,
and he had worked until recently as a cigar-maker. Unfortunately he had got
mixed up in some neighbourly brawling, which had ended in his killing his
aggressor with a poker. Justice gave him one month. After which he left town.
Maybe they didn’t make cigars in Liverpool, but Josef decided on a career
change, and when Lea found that he, like Jude, could play, accompany, sing and
put over a comic song, he was hired for the Hope Hall company. His solo, on
this first occasion, came after the comic opera selections: he gave
Mendelssohn’s ‘O give one tender token’. Next up, The Spectre Knight was given, with Josef as the Lord Chamberlain
and Laura Haworth as Rita, then, at the 58th concert Princess Toto.
Then, at 61st
concert, on 1 March 1879, there was another cast change. Miss Moulsdale having
sadly seceded, Harriet Leders returned and a new soprano was hired. Miss Laura
Smart. She sang ‘Bid me discourse’, ‘Il Bacio’ and Wade’s ‘The Wanderer of
Dreams’ with the experienced George Barton, and promptly took her place at the
head of the Hope Hall’s bills. At concert 62, she ventured ‘Al dolce canto’,
the famous Rode’s Air and Variations of Catalani, and Josef played the accompaniments.
The ‘comic opera
selection’ made up the whole of the first half of the evening, while the second
half was given over to a more straightforward concert, so when The Sultan of Mocha was given, Laura
Haworth sang Dolly, while Laura Smart gave ‘L’Ardita’, but when, at the 65th
concert, Il Trovatore was selected,
Laura S sang Leonora to the Manrico of David Inman Moore and the Azucena of Miss Ternan, while Laura H
joined the father and son Hugheses in the concert. At number 69, the two Lauras
shared the soprano music of Princess Toto
and Josef sang the show’s comic hit ‘The Pig with the Roman Nose’, and when (11
April) Edith Wynne, Liverpool’s prize vocal export, visited, and took pride of
place for one Saturday, Laura S still sang ‘Bid me discourse’.
The Lea concerts
being only on Saturdays, there was opportunity for other dates in the week
(Bootle, Blackpool, Birkenhead &c) but it was the suddenly glorified Hope
Hall that attracted the attention and audiences with its stout repertory team
and its excellent programming. During 1879, The
Lily of Killarney, Robin Hood, Maritana, Princess Toto. The Spectre Knight, Il
Trovatore, and The Bohemian Girl were
selected, and a Bishop concert was given in which Laura gave two pieces from Henri IV. At Christmas, the Hope Hall
team gave The Messiah and Laura sang
‘Rejoice Greatly’ and ‘I Know that my Redeemer Liveth’.
When the Hope Hall
season was finished, Mr Lea was decidedly not, and Mr Lea’s concert parties and
their members voyaged to Manchester, the Isle of Man or Wales, when the season
was ‘on’ they, including Laura and Josef, were back in Liverpool, he now being
effectively a mini-Jude and she singing selections from pieces from Lurline to Les Cloches de Corneville.
Laura and Josef
were married in 1881 in, of all places, Birmingham. I suppose there was a
reason for it’s not being Liverpool. Probably because the bride was largely
pregnant. Josef Eugene Francis Cantor was born, at Liverpool’s 84 Edge Lane, a
few months later. After which Laura was promptly back on the platform.
On the occasion of
Lea’s 150th night, she topped the bill at Hope Hall with a now largely
unfamiliar cast, singing ‘Bid me discourse’ and Ganz’s ‘Sing, sweet bird’, at
no 156 she is there doing the Miserere with Howard Welch, but the original
repertory idea which had been so successful had dissolved somewhat. In the
months in which she would normally have been resident at Hope Hall, I spot
Laura at Morecambe with the Paggi Family, at the Sunderland People’s Concerts,
at Chester for the Cricket Club concerts, at Hull for Holder with the Grenadier
Guards Band, at Ripon with an umpteenth cricket club, at the Blackburn Pops …
more often than not with Josef in support. At Christmas, she gave Messiahs at Hope Hall and in Douglas,
Isle of Man. Now billed as ‘Madame Laura Smart’.
The 167th concert
took place 7 January 1882 and there was again a guest. But Signor Foli had to
take place behind Madame Smart, billed in the biggest type and singing Balfe’s
‘My task is ended’ (The Enchantress)
and Bevignani’s ‘The Flower Girl’. Josef sang comic songs and threatened to
steal the show. At the 200th (30 December 1882) Laura sang Les Cloches de Corneville and Josef sang the ‘Modern Major
General’. Inevitably, Lea’s concerts, bit by bit, changed their original
character. By the 220th concert Sims Reeves was the guest artist, and Lea was now
giving monthly concerts at the more upmarket Philharmonic Hall (Laura sang).
The ‘repertory’ feel had gone.
Laura (and Josef),
their reputations made (‘our best local singer’, ‘beautiful voice and
cultivated style’), performed far and wide in the early 1880s. During 1882-3 I see Laura at Preston (‘It was
a dream’, ‘Sing sweet Bird’) with Joseph Maas and (‘Angels ever Bright and
Fair’) with Herr (!) William Ludwig, then at Darwen, Mold with James Sauvage,
Cleckheaton (The Creation, Lobgesang,
Stabat Mater), Matlock (Judas
Maccabeus, Elijah), Liverpool (Samson),
Wirksworth (St Cecilia’s Day), at the
Morecambe Winter Gardens with Josef ‘the celebrated buffo vocalist ... every
afternoon and evening’, at the Wrexham Corn Exchange Horse Guards Concerts, at
Garston for the Mayor of Liverpool, at Burnley Mechanics’ Institute, at
Warrington, at Nottingham (Messiah), at
Manchester for the Philharmonic Society, at the Sabden Ballad Concerts, Chester
and Salem for The Messiah, Birmingham
for the local Pops, heading the bill for the Liverpool Rovers Bicycle and
Tricycle Club concert, and singing for what seemed like every tiny cricket club
concert in the county.
On 26 February
1883 the couple topped the bills at the Wrexham Music Festival alongside a new
baritone, Mr Eaton Batty, RAM. Robert Eaton Cordeux Batty (1852-1908), son of a
well-known late clergyman of the area, would be a colleague for much of his and
their career.
William Lea,
however, was still going strong, and Mr and Mrs Cantor were regulars on his
bills at the Philharmonic and at Hengler’s Circus, where he staged a series of
Proms. I spot them at the Philharmonic Hall a number of times in 1883 and 1884,
Laura singing her Enchantress aria,
and a Pinsuti piece entitled ‘We’ll gaily sing’, which introduced ‘The Last
Rose of Summer’, Serpolette’s song from Les
Cloches de Corneville, ‘When the Heart is Young’, Jude’s Milkmaid’s Song,
the Esmeralda Swallow Song, ‘Sweet
spirit hear my prayer’ etc, and Josef specialising in the Bumpti ra-pa-ta from Boccaccio, the Major General, Princess Ida’s ‘The Ape and the Lady’.
The Philharmonic programme of 19 April 1884 was entitled ‘Gems from the
Operas’.
Laura largely
disappeared from the bills for a considerable while in 1884-5, and produced a
second son, but Josef beavered away, spreading himself around with amazing
vigour. He performed, he conducted, he played, he was a judge at the Mold
Eisteddfod, he fixed orchestras, he was appointed conductor of the Wrexham
Philharmonic, he supplied concert parties, instrumental and vocal, he returned
to Hope Hall, he played and organised countless masonic musical dos, and
finally all his tentacles came together in one octopus. On 11 April 1885 he
produced his own ‘Gems of the Opera’ programme at Hope Hall. Laura topbilled
alongside Edith Eborall, Emilie Young, Kate Nono, Jessie Annie Breakenridge,
Mary Ellen Cottier, and the quartet (or quintet!), Messrs Samuel Kirkham, Edward
Edwards, J A Muir, Nathaniel Frederick Kirkhoff Burt, and Batty. It started
slowly, but Cantor’s ‘Gems of the Opera’ were to become an institution.
He brought his
‘operatic concert company’ out again at Leeds on 9-10 May with Laura as the
star of the troupe (Pinsuti, ‘Banks of Allan Water’) and the Misses Eborall,
Nono and Breakenridge and Eaton Batty leading the rest. Josef sang Trial by Jury, Miss Nono sang the
popular Olivette song ‘The Torpedo
and the Whale’. Come summer, it was the Llandudno Pavilion with another change
of cast: but Laura still, of course led, and Messrs Kirkham, Batty and Edwards
were joined by Mr Edward Grime. Grime would go on to have a career in
provincial opera.
Next, Laura went
off to sing Acis and Galatea in
Macclesfield, Josef to conduct at the Wrexham Festival for Georgina Burns and
Leslie Crotty, but the click was coming. J A Cross hired the ‘Gems of the
Opera’ party for his Manchester Popular Concerts, and Laura and Josef,
accompanied by Annie Hallwood, Lucie Ann Jones, Kate Nono, Emilie Young and the
Kirkham/Edwards/Burt/John Peate team appeared on 31 October with a programme
featuring largely the works of Gilbert and Sullivan. This time, at last, they
played to a crowded house and the ‘Gems’ was launched. The team was re-engaged
by Cross, booked for Preston, and in the new year for the Leeds Coliseum … ‘Gems from the Opera’ was still alive and
booking, with Laura and Josef at its head, into the 20th century, and Cross was
still booking the outfit as late as 1901, and Laura, after her husband’s death,
as late as 1907.
In between the
bookings of the Cantor company, from the Isle of Man to Manchester to Worcester
to Blackburn, Leeds, Huddersfield or Preston, and while the Cantor quartets
racked up further engagements, sometimes with Laura making up the bill, she continued
with the more normal life of a Lancashire concert prima donna – The Messiah at Wrexham and Mount
Pleasant, Samson at Brighouse, St Paul at Huddersfield, The Rose Maiden at Everton, The Creation at Bootle, a jump-in for
Alwina Valleria with the Liverpool Philharmonic Society (‘With Verdure Clad’,
‘The Bird that came in spring’, ‘It was a dream’). ‘She has made gigantic
strides in her profession of late’ judged the press at the end of 1886.
In 1887, she had
time out again for the birth of her third and last child, and when she returned
she largely limited her appearances to engagements with the ‘Gems’
company. In the latter part of the year,
I spot the troupe playing several dates at Leeds, at Huddersfield, Preston,
Blackburn, Worcester, then in early 1888 more repeated Leeds (where they took
advantage of the release from copyright of Maritana
to give a large selection), more Manchester (the local The Sultan of Mocha) including a first booking at the Botanical
Gardens, a date which would be much repeated, Blackburn … Laura sang everything
from I Puritani to Les Cloches de Corneville, Josef gave
Balfe’s ‘Travellers All’, the Boccaccio, General
Bangs’s song from Polly …
In 1889, she
visited the Glasgow Saturday Concerts and reverted to ‘Bid me discourse’ and
‘Sing sweet bird’, she sang Elijah at
Douglas and The Messiah at Burnley,
in 1890 it was Elijah at Burnley in
1891 St Cecilia’s Day and The Bride of Dunkerron at Leeds, The Creation at Mount Pleasant, the Lobgesang and The Revenge at Liverpool … and all the while the ‘Gems’ played on.
‘Casta Diva’ and The Enchantress for
her, ‘From Rock to rock’, ‘Non piu andrai’ for him, and The Sorcerer duet for them. In January 1892, when the ‘Gems’
fufilled an umpteenth engagement for J A Cross, Laura was ill and could not
play. It was ‘like playing Hamlet without Hamlet’ sighed the press.
There was, however, another to-be-celebrated name hidden among the company: the
clarinettist of Cantor's band was Frederic Norton, two decades later the composer of Chu Chin Chow.
Illness got in the
way later in the year, and Laura took time out in Madeira to recover from a
bronchial ailment, but she was back in town in October, heading the ‘Gems’
round the usual dates (the company numbered 20, so small dates were out of the
question!). At Leeds she gave ‘Al dolce canto’, so her voice must have
thoroughly returned. Then at Manchester ‘Non piu mesta’ and ‘Son vergin
vezzosa’, and at Tom Barrett’s concerts ‘L’Ardita’ and Sullivan’s ‘Let me dream
again’ …
But Josef was not
eclipsed, and when they visited Glasgow for the Saturday concerts in January
1893, it was he, with Andrew Black, who got the star billing. When they returned with their company, the
next month, Laura was back on top of the list of 13 singers and 7
instrumentalists, and Josef was listed just as ‘pianist’. He wasn’t, of course,
‘just’ anything of the sort. He was the life and soul of the party, just as his
wife was the star – except on the occasions when Josef stole the starlight with
his Gilbert and/or Sullivan (‘Ribbons to sell’, the Grand Inquisitor’s and Lord
Chancellor’s songs, ‘The Beautiful English Girl’) and buffo songs. ‘Her vocal
powers show no signs of decay’ confirmed Manchester in 1894 after her Enchantress aria, while Josef tackled
‘Largo al factotum’ with delight.
Through the 1890s,
they continued their concerts round and round the main centres: why should one
pay 7/- to hear Madame Jeanie Sadler-Fogg give the first act of Walküre at the Free Trade Hall, when up
at the Association Hall, for a shilling, you could have a numbered chair to
hear ‘the beautiful soprano voice and admirable style’ of the best soprano in
the district plus nineteen others, including an hilarious buffo…
Laura still
trotted out ‘Bid me discourse’, ‘It was a dream’ and ‘Sweet bird’ at will, and gave
the Miserere with yet another tenor, but there was plenty of fresh material.
She sang in C T Reynolds’s new cantata The
Childhood of Samuel at Birkenhead, Josef added another string to his lute
with a translation of Cesare Ciardi’s ‘The Nightingale’ with flute obbligato,
which Laura gave with the troupe’s flautist, V L Needham, she exhumed ‘Bel
raggio’ and ‘The Mocking Bird’ and gave a song from the musical Kitty Grey … as they went from the
Tynemouth Proms to Blackpool’s Victoria Pier, to the Isle of Man and the Cross
concerts, to Wrexham, to Darwen …
Inevitably, the
pace slowed, as the new century arrived. And then, in early 1903, Josef fell
ill. He died a year later. Laura continued to give the odd performance – J A
Cross called upon her again and again – but, at the age of fifty, she called it a
day.
Laura Smart Cantor
died in 1913, at her home in Liverpool. If her name was wholly unknown south of
Watford, it assuredly meant plenty to a generation of Lancashire, Yorkshire and
Welsh concert-goers. She had been their popular Queen of the Operatic Gems for
more than two decades, and at the centre of both William Lea’s and Josef
Cantor’s ‘local’ concerts, which, in their turn, had done much to provide a
superb shillingsworth for the people of the Midlands.
None of Josef and
Laura’s collaborators at Hope Hall and in the Gems would merit an article in
this collection along with the century’s great and grandish. But they
fascinated me, so I dug just a little… and I’m going to put the results here.
In no particular order, as they say on the TV …
NONO, Kate [NONO, Catherine Mary Theresa] (b Lancashire 27 May 1859;
d Waterloo, Lancs 22 June 1929) was, for much of her local career as a singer,
a ‘Madame’, the wife of Irish borough clerk David W Cangley. I spot her first
at Lea’s 125th, in 1880, and for the last time as a member of Josef Cantor’s
Opera Concert at Glasgow in 1895.
HAWORTH, Laura Jane (b Liverpool 1 October 1856; d 32 Buckingham Avenue,
Sefton Park 4 May 1943)
A professional
soprano vocalist, she married ship’s store dealer Edwin Thraves, but continued
a career in the Manchester and Liverpool concerts from 1876 up till the end of
the century.
MOORE, [David] Inman (b Old Church Yard, Liverpool 1853 x 8 May; d Wavertree
13 October 1902)
Mr Moore
(originally billed as D I Moore) sang tenor for half a dozen years in the
Liverpool concerts while pursuing a career as a banking clerk. He was one of
Laura’s partners in the Miserere.
MOULSDALE, Sarah Elizabeth (‘Lily’) (b Everton 1857 x 25 October; d Liverpool March 1880)
Lily first emerged
in 1868 as a child soprano, labelled ‘The Nightingale of the North’, under the
tutelage of a frightful fraud of a musician (?) calling himself Henri Cardini
Cole. Then she re-surfaced as leading lady at the early Lea concerts, only soon
to vanish. Lily died aged 22. Later, her younger sister, Clara (Mrs Hawkins) became
a member of the ‘Gems’ company.
GREENWOOD, J[ohn] H[enry] (b Manchester 1846; d 11 Lime Grove Oxford Rd
Chorlton 20 September 1909)
Organist and
choirmaster who made a name as a buffo vocalist: ‘the eminent Pianist and Buffo
Vocalist. The only successor to the late John Parry’.
TERNAN, Marie (Mrs Mary Elizabeth [Thomas] Partridge) (b Franklin Place,
Everton 8 September 1852; ?d 1926)
The first
contralto of the Lea company, a pupil of Edwin Reeves of Liverpool, she sang
everything from Azucena to Little Buttercup. She was still to be seen in the
‘Gems’ in 1884, and my last sighting of her is in 1885 singing The Messiah in Llandudno.
HUGHES, Thomas Jones (b Stanfyllin, Montgomeryshire 1831; d 72 Queensland
Street, Liverpool 26 October 1880)
HUGHES, John Lot (b Myrtle Street, Liverpool, 1855)
Father, T J
Hughes, was a pupil of Mr Saqui and a bass-baritone soloist with the Liverpool
Harmonic Society and in local concerts, while holding down a day job as the
collector of Liverpool’s sanitary rates. He appeared beside Edith Wynne, Eos
Morlais, Lewis Thomas et al in Welsh concerts (Y Tylwyth Teg) and Eistedfodds, and in the Hope Hall concerts up to
his death.
His son, J L
Hughes, began performing as a boy soprano while working as an apprentice grocer.
As an adult, he sang tenor at the Lea concerts' while conducting the choir at St
Cuthbert’s Everton' until 1883 when he apparently left the area.
BREAKENRIDGE, Jessie [Annie] (b Seaforth 28 January 1866; d Hampstead 1952)
For several
teenage years, a featured mezzo-soprano in the Liverpool and Manchester
concerts, 19 year-old Jessie also sang in the choir of Trinity church, Eccles.
Until she eloped with the (married) Rev William Mules, allegedly to America.
But I spy the couple – the Rev is now a golf club maker – in Wales in the 1901
census, and in Kensington in 1911. Jessie stayed in the music business: she is,
in both censi, and in 1939, a‘teacher of singing’.
COTTIER, Mary Ellen (b Edge Hill, Liverpool 4 March 1866; d Bootle 1943) An intermittent
member of the Gems troupe between 1885 and 1889, Miss Cottier worked otherwise
as a servant girl. She became a mother and then a wife (Mrs Patrick Neary).
JONES, Lucy (‘Lucie’) Ann (b Liverpool 22 May 1865; d Liverpool 14 March 1939)
JONES, Dora [Helena] (b Liverpool 6 June 1868; d Holywell 31 December 1944)
JONES, Ethel (b Liverpool 24 November 1871; )
Three of the
daughters of Liverpool Welsh coal merchant, Thomas Jones, and his wife Dorothy, each of whom took a part in
the Gems. Ethel (Mrs William Francis Collins) became a primary school teacher, Dora a nurse, back in Wales,
but Lucie carried on a while as a professional singer before marrying bank clerk Charles Edwin Gill in 1897. A daughter was born deaf and dumb, Gill died in 1909, and Lucie went to live with schoolmistress sister Sarah Jane in Wrexham ...
MEREDITH, Kate
Miss Meredith ‘of
Birkenhead’ was one of the durable members of the Gems team. A multiple
Eisteddfod winner, she brought her rich contralto voice to the ‘Liverpool and
Manchester concerts’ and surrounding cities from the mid-1880s, and to the Gems in the later 1880s. Apparently wed in the early 1890s, she continued to sing as ‘Madame Kate Meredith’ round the north of England into the new century. My last sighting of her is in 1910 in Birkenhead.
ROLAND, Amy (‘Aimée’) Theodora (b Liverpool 3 March 1869; d San Mateo, California
16 June 1957).
A prominent member
of the Gems from 1887 until her marriage to African trader Thomas Scott
Rogerson, contralto Amy would seem to have been one of the last survivors of
the company.
GRIME, Edward (b Wigan 24 May 1857; d New Ross 3 October 1907)
One of the most
widely seen concert basses in Lancashire from the 1880s to the 1890s, Grime
latterly sang both in musical comedy (A
Trip to Chinatown) and in opera, with F S Gilbert’s company (Don Jose,
Arnheim), (briefly) the Carl Rosa (Arnheim), and later with ‘Madame Marie Elster’ (Mary Violetta Riddle, b London 8 December 1863; Mrs Dougal Larnach), late of the Australian stage, with a fit-up of his own.
HALLWOOD, Annie (‘Annetta’) Jane (b Appleton, Cheshire 1858; d 1933)
Annie Hallwood
appeared both at Hope Hall and with the Gems, and married the widowed Nathaniel Frederick Kirkhoff BURT (1843-1910), a longtime member of the Cantor
quartet, and by day an electrician and telephone engineer, 8 October 1891.
KIRKHAM, Samuel (b Liverpool 9 June 1849; d Birkenhead 16 March 1912)
Kirkham grew up as
the neighbour of the Ternan family in Liverpool’s Coleridge St, and went to work
as a clerk in the sanitary department of the council, with T J Hughes. He also
became a member of the Liverpool Dramatic Lodge, along with Cantor and most of his merry
men. He sang with Jude’s Sacred Harmonic Society (with the Hughes) and at the
Concert Hall in 1876, and he was, thereafter. one of the longest-serving singers in the Lea
and Cantor teams, topping the male-voice quartet for most of its existence.
 |
| Samuel Kirkham |
LEDERS, Harriet [Neale] (b 62 London Rd, Liverpool 23 May 1848; d Sidcup, Kent 1923)
A leading local
soprano in Liverpool from the mid-1860s (‘decidedly the first among local
artists’), Harriet Leders sang in some of the earliest Hope Hall concerts. She
taught singing for many years thereafter, latterly in Sidcup.
SPERO, Emanuel (b Denmark 1854; d Gloucester Place, London 25
September 1927)
The son of a
Russian ‘clothes-broker’, Emmanuel Spero spent the first part of his life in
Liverpool, where he made good use of his fine tenor voice, singing in concert,
during 1878. He moved on to London thereafter, and became chezan in a
synagogue, and then chief precentor in the Central Synagogue, Great Portland
Street. He composed music for the services and intoned the solos ‘exquisitely’
on occasions such as the funerals of aristocratic Jews … and it was all a long
way from the Hope Hall and its ballads and operatic selections. When he died,
‘the Sweet Singer in Israel’ was commemorated in the press from the Solent to
Shetland.
BARTON, George (b Cockermouth, Cumberland 1843; d 83 Riley Street,
Blackburn 16 May 1926)
Barton began
singing in Liverpool in the late 1860s and established himself as one of the
best tenors around – although he apparently retained his day job as a printer
and compositor for some time. But by 1871 he was already bannered as ‘the
eminent tenor of the Manchester concerts’ and by 1875 ‘now our most popular
tenor’. Over the next two decades he sang round and round the area, including
stints in Lea’s and Cantor’s concerts, while teaching music from his base in Blackburn.
There are more, of
course, where those came from -- Belle Pride, Eaton Batty, David Williams &c. But these are doubtless enough to show where
‘local’ music-making made its home in Victorian days … with folk like Josef
Cantor, Laura Smart and William Lea to lead the way.
Those of you who have read right to the end ... if you have any additional information, please do get in touch ..
And photos! I've pinched Laura, Josef and their three children from a rather iffy family post on the web, but can I find anyone else? Not even the Rev Spero. And the Hope Hall? circa 1875? Even Wikipedia ignores its heyday and says it turned from a chapel into a cinema to a playhouse. And then got knocked down. Bah! There's a shiny new theatre now where the prima donna of the people used to sing to her shilling audience ...
