Hermann who???? Tenor singer and mystery.

 

I like to think that I know (at least 'of') just about every British Victorian Vocalist. The professionals anyway. So I was curious when this gentleman turned up on e-Bay this week.

The back says Hermann Slater (not Herman D Slater) as Manrico in Il Trovatore. 

Immediate reaction? Amateur? And surely a bit wimpy for an heroic tenor? Even though, as we know, Manrico wasn't played, in early days, by gents with the voice of a bull or a buzz-saw. 

Well, Hermann Slater wasn't an amateur. He was a pianist, piano teacher, glee-singer and concert-giver. For a whole three, maybe four, years, before vanishing, as he had come, utterly from my ken ..

I am assuming he is not the Mr Slater part-singer in Manchester in the early 1850s. Although he may be.  When he turns up in London's Store Street Concert Room 17 May 1861 giving 'his annual concert', he is referred to as 'tenor of the Quartett Concert Union'. The what? Elizabeth Poole sang his song, 'Goodbye, goodbye', and Laura Baxter topped the bill. 

He repeats his 'annual' at the Whittington Club the following year. Miss Poole helps out again, singing his 'The Forsaken', on a largely unimpressive bill. Mini-tenor Melchor Winter, Bessie Palmer, and Liverpool's Alice Dodd sang alongside an 11-year-old Blanche Slater (sister? daughter?) and Hermann gave Hatton's 'Come live with me'.

By August, when he appears at Miss Dodd's hometown concert with his most successful song, 'I'm going o'er the sea Nelly', he is billed as being of the Exeter Hall and St James's Hall concerts'. Where? When? As part of a group, maybe ...  But he and Alice did sing 'Si la stanchezza' together. In costume?

And by December, when he is listed to be second tenor of the Cooper opera troupe in Cork, he is 'of Her Majesty's Theatre'. Well, all I know is that he didn't go to Cork as no2 tenor. Maybe chorus?  Brookhouse Bowler sang second to Joseph Swift ... and I see Hermann no more. No more singing, no more songs ...

Did he die? Emigrate? Change his name? It's pretty hard to stop a songwriter from writing. I chased up his photographer, Leopold Frederick Manley (1825-1898), painter, photographer and gent. Nothing. I chased up his most frequent lyricists. William Brook Bridges Stevens (b Tamworth 1836; d 1876) 'bohemian' writer on anything from Garibaldi to 'How the World Wags'. He ghosted sermons at so much a page. So he probably supplied rather wordy lyrics by the yard.  Then there was 'Lavinia'. We are chasing 'Lavinia' who penned those little column filler pomes for various magazines ...   Benjamin Wells?

I cannot find Mr Slater in the records of any known country. But I'm blimming sure he didn't sing Manrico at the Italian Opera. Not with the figure and that frock!