Fanny Stockton: what might she have done ..

This photo popped up on ebay this week, so since I had, way back, penned a wee article about the lady, I thought words and photo ought to go together ...

STOCKTON, Fanny or Fannie (b New York c 1839; d Manhattan 24 December 1870).

A thoroughly useful American performer, who didn’t seem to mind alternating between topping the bill and playing comprimaria roles, during her truncated career.

Miss Stockton (if that were, indeed, her name) was said to have been born in Saugerties, NY and/or Tivoli on the Hudson. Or both. There’s only a river in between. Others said England, but I’m pretty sure that’s bunkum.

She trained with Signor Carlo Bassini (d Irvington, NJ 26 November 1870), a violinist turned vocal coach and pundit (a subsequently revered ‘vocal method’ book), but he seemingly went off half-cocked with Fanny. She was brought out (11 February 1858) at the Hope Chapel at a concert of the ‘American Music Association’ alongside Clara Brinkerhoff, William Candidus, Guillmette and violinist Henry Cooper. And then, on 6 April she launched a concert of her own at Dodsworth’s Rooms. The press noted ‘a stout, pretty, young lady with Circassian eyes, hair and complexion ... her voice is a good pure sympathetic soprano – not grand or dazzling, but winning and mellifluous …’. This, it is said, was not the take-off hoped for, and Fanny went back to her studies, and appeared only occasionally in public in the next few years. I see her just in some church concerts, and at the Palace Garden Music Hall (‘I’ve been roaming’, ‘The Orange Girl’, ‘Comin’ thru the rye’, ‘Kathleen Mavourneen’).

In 1862 she resurfaced, singing at the Gottschalk concerts at Iriving Hall, under Theodore Thomas, and alongside William Castle, and then in 1862 she was hired as a minor principal in the Jacob Grau opera company (the goatherd without the song in Dinorah with Cordier, Ines in La Favorita with Guerrabella) continuing on the next year in the Maretzek Opera Company. Angiolina Ortolani Brignoli and C L Kellogg were the principals, Fanny was given Flora in La Traviata, Martha in Faust, the unloved role of Donna Elvira with Medori and Kellogg, and Oscar in Ballo in maschera: ‘Miss Fanny Stockton appeared as the Page and sang [well] enough to show that, when she learns the part, she will be a worthy successor to the best Oscar we have had here—of course we refer to the lamented Isabella Hinckley.’

Isabella Hinckley

In 1864, the Maretzek company included Carrozzi Zucchi, Elvira Brambilla and two rising star American sopranos, Laura Harris and Jennie van Zandt, but Fanny was there as Miss Useful, taking the parts other people didn’t want. She also appeared in concert at the Academy of Music, in the company of some of the stars, ‘by permission of Maretzek’.

Then, suddenly, she was promoted for a tour to prima donna. Not with Maretzek, or the Italian opera, though. Messrs Castle (tenor) and Campbell (baritone) launched their own company, and Fanny was their leading lady in The Bohemian Girl, Maritana, The Rose of Castille.

In 1866, she returned to Maretzek and also took time out to play Inez in a season of The Doctor of Alcantara at the French Theatre. She played more Donna Elviras and Lisas with Clara Louise Kellogg and Minnie Hauck, took the role of the fairy alongside Kellogg and Giorgio Ronconi when Crispino e la comare was produced and Henrietta in I Puritani, before quitting the company for an engagement at the Olympic making ‘her first appearance on the dramatic stage’ for Jefferson, top-billed opposite George L Fox as Oberon to his Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Her singing was a feature of the production.

Her success as Oberon doubtless led to her next top-of-the-bill engagement, at Niblo’s Garden. The Black Crook having closed, the Garden was trying another piece on similar, but more coherent lines: an adaptation of the famous La Biche au bois as The White Fawn. Where The Black Crook had had mezzo-soprano Annie Kemp-Bowler as its operatic fairy, The White Fawn had Fanny Stockton as Aqualina, singing Howard Glover’s ‘The Bridal Morn’. And she was the hit of the show. During the run of The White Fawn Fanny appeared in a Benefit play Blanche in Glover’s Once too Often.

From The White Fawn, she continued to another starring engagement, repeating her Midsummer Night’s Dream in Chicago (‘This lady has made a genuine hit’) and Cincinnati, then migrated to the Chestnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia where she co-starred with Alice Oates in a version of the glamorous burlesque The Field of the Cloth of Gold.

And then, having established herself as a leading lady in the musical theatre, she did a volte face. She took an engagement as a mezzo-soprano seconda donna in opera once more. However, the company was one of the best ever to visit America: that led by Madame Parepa Rosa, with Rose Hersee as its alternative leading lady.

But before the Rosa company began its season, in August 1869, Fanny apparently took the step into wifehood. She became Mrs Smith. Who was Mr Smith? ‘A machinist from Philadelphia’. That is all the usually ravenous-for-gossip theatre press could come up with.

Fanny played the Gipsy Queen in The Bohemian Girl, Marcellina in The Marriage of Figaro, Lisa in La Sonnambula, Jacintha in The Black Domino, Jessie in The Puritan’s Daughter. She was becoming a useful and versatile soprano-to-contralto operatic seconda donna. But it wasn’t to be.

Fannie S Smith died in New York on Christmas Eve 1870. They didn’t say of what, even though her passing even got a mention in Paris’s Le Guide Musicale (‘miss Fanny Stockton, chanteuse bouffe’) alongside the death of Hervé. One of those C19th post-marital deaths, it seems. Sad.

So we actually know very little about Fanny Stockton the person. Was she really ‘Stockton’. Her father was said to have died on the eve (or the morning, or during!) of the opening of The White Fawn. Only her death is recorded. I suppose a certificate might tell something …



Postscriptum: One US paper says she was Mrs Charles B Smith. Alas, that leaves me none the wiser. Another says she died ‘of consumption'. And a third, of a stroke.