Every so often, the words of Andrew Lamb ring in my brain. 'Get those Victorian Vocalist articles of yours up on the Blog, or you'll die and they'll never call you father'. Waiting for my doctor's results, today, I was feeling particularly 'mortal', so when the Henrion music sheet popped up on the Internet, I decided to 'do' this lady ..
HENNELLE, [Sophie] Claire (b Paris, 30 December 1806; d after 1850)
Madame Hennelle had but a short time in the limelight, appearing with much success in the Parisian and London concerts during the 1840s, when she was adjudged one of best French concert vocalists of her era.
Madame Hennelle was born Sophie Claire Wuïet, the daughter of one Jean-Baptiste Wuïet and his wife Louise Angélique Théophile Herbillon, and a niece of the celebrated Caroline Wuïet, at a date which I have finally managed to unearth. She married, 14 February 1828, Charles Hennelle …
This is Dr Charles Hennelle (b Paris 31 March 1794; d Paris 4 July 1850), surgeon and the author of Nouvelles recherches sur le mode d'action du principe de derosme et de la morphine, rather than Monsieur Hennelle, the baritone of the Paris Opéra …
Mme Hennelle doesn’t seem to have started a career as a public performer until a decade after her marriage, although I spot her singing at a fashionable do in the Faubourg Poissonière, before notables of the worlds of music and medicine, in 1837, and a piece of music (‘Ma mère, c’est ma patrie’) dedicated to her in 1838 by the composer Paul Henrion.
I also spy her in 1842 (27 August) giving a ‘remarquable’ ‘Non piu mesta’ at Castellino near Paris. Confusingly, Monsieur Hennelle de l'Opéra, appears on the same bill!
It seems that she operated, initially, largely as a singing and piano teacher, for when, in 1843, she published a Rudiment des chanteurs, ou théorie du mecanisme du chant, de la respiration et de la prononciation, she was billed as Mme Hennellle ‘professeur de chant’.
It is 1843, also, aged 37, when Mme Hennelle comes fully into view as a performer, first in concerts of her own in Paris (‘Non più mesta’, Halévy’s ‘La venta’, ‘belle voix … plein de gout’) and then, the following year, in London. Her first British showing appears to have been at the tenor Brizzi’s concert (21 June), in the company of Grisi, Persiani, Favanti and Castellan, followed by the concerts of the W H Seguins (24 June, Offenbach played the 'cello) and Mme Oury (1 July), where she sang alongside Castellan, Révial and Marras. On 8 July she staged her own concert (with Mecatti) at the Princess’s Rooms, and was acknowledged as ‘an improving vocalist and well deserving of success’ for ‘an expressive delivery of those French romances … in which one gets a whole opera in half-a-dozen couplets’.
She returned to Paris and, during the winter, was heard at ‘at the Ministry of Finance, chez the Duchesse Decaze and M Orfila, where she had a brilliant success’. Dr Orfila was a colleague of Dr Hennelle. In March, I see her at the very social Marras’s concert (‘professeur de chant qui a fait ses preuves et les fait tous les jours’) and at the Salle Pleyel (12 March) on her own account, before at the end of April she made another sally to England.
She appeared again in the fashionable company she had found in Paris, singing for Brizzi and for various charitable causes, then on 23 June 1845 she made a debut at the Philharmonic Society, with her Cenerentola scena and a Belisario duet ('Chi mi reggi') with Pischek.
The press described her as ‘a lady who from change of circumstances has nobly determined to convert an accomplishment into a profession’. Really? This was a frequent ‘excuse’ for a lady going on the stage or the platform. Daddy lost all his money, or my husband died. Well, maybe he did. Anyhow, Mme Hennelle needed no excuses when it came to quality: ‘a soprano of pure quality and extensive register, though not remarkable for power’, ‘Her intonation is perfect, her taste pure and her execution equal to any demand that rational music can make on it’, the Rossini being judged ‘effectively rendered … her success may be pronounced decided’.
The next week she gave a concert in Albermarle Street (Clapisson’s ‘La Fauvette’, ‘La ci darem’ with Pischek) and sang at Leopold de Meyer’s concert, and a fortnight later (7 July) she was summoned to entertain Queen Victoria and her guests, along with Pischek and Dorus-Gras, at a Buckingham Palace dinner party ('Non più mesta', Adam's boléro 'Mariquita'). The next week she sang at Willis’s Rooms for Sabine Lozano (more 'Non più mesta'), for Mlles de Dietz and Bochkoltz (9 July, Meyerbeer’s ‘Chanson de Mai’), and for Eugenie Garcia (Sonnambula aria, duet with Garcia, trio) before ending her season and returning to France.
I spot her in the winter, singing ‘Giorno d’orrore’ with Ida Bertrand at that lady’s concert at the Salle Herz (15 January 1846), at Dr Orfila’s with Valerie de Rupplin ('Mme Hennelle a ouvert la soirée par le duo du Comte Ory, qu'elle a chanté avec le talent qu'on lui connaît, et elle a obtenu les suffrages unanimes en disant la cavatine de la Sonnambula, dont tout le monde sait la difficulté’), and in Maximilian Girac-Lévy’s symphonie héroique Les Cendres de Napoléon, before heading again to London for another season of fashionable concerts (Brizzi, British and Foreign Institute, guitarrist Louisa Johnson, Sophie Dulcken, violinist Signor Emiliani, Kathinka de Dietz and Nanny Bochkoltz, Moscheles, pianist Madame Judine, Parish Alvars, Mme Oury, de Rupplin, the Distins, Mlle Judine) and another of her own (with Mrs Bompiani) at the Hanover Square Rooms (22 June 1846). She sang Adam’s ‘Cantique de Noel’, a Dessauer romance, ‘Le Retour des Promis’, and an aria from Pacini’s Saffo, and was now comfortably greeted as an old friend: ‘a vocalist of great taste, finish and facile execution. There is both purity and energy in the style of Madame Hennelle and she bids fair to become one of our most popular and distinguished concert singers’.
In the Paris season, she appeared in an opéra-comique, L'Anneau de Mariette, chez Orfila (22 November 1846) and she teamed up again with the baritone singer/composer Ercole Mecatti, frequently singing his songs at his and her concerts.
‘Mme Hennelle a chanté un ravissant duettino de Mecatti avec l'auteur, et un boléro qui a vivement impressionné l'auditoire: elle s'est surpassée surtout en interprétant avec un sentiment exquis, avec une expression merveilleuse, la nouvelle romance de M [Francesco] Bonoldi, ‘la Prière exaucée’,‘elle a de la legèreté, un gout exquis, un excellent style’,‘[elle a] parfaitement chanté l’air de Lucia … une belle voix, une excellente méthode ... une artiste hors ligne’.
Come the season, the two artists were seen again in London, where they appeared in several concerts, giving his duet. She also sang Clemenceau’s ‘playful and tasteful’ ‘La Bouquetière du roi’, a Neapolitan song at Julius Benedict’s huge concert, for the Seguins and Emiliani again, and for her own concert (17 June 1847) brought out the well-tried ‘Naqui all’affano’. ‘An excellent artist …unaffected, musicianlike … lovely soprano voice’.
In January 1848, I see her at the Hôtel de Ville in charity concert, with the Iweins d'Hennins giving the Adam 'Noël' ('chant religieux empreint de plus haut élévation'. 'Nous avons reconnu dans le chant de Mme Hennelle la supériorité de la méthode qu'elle s'est créée et qu'elle applique avec tant de succès dans son enseignement'.
She returned briefly to London in 1848 and gave a concert at Coulon’s Rooms, and again in 1849, when her programme, at the Beethoven Rooms, featured the Pyne sisters, Sofie Vera and Ciabatta … I see her in 1849 singing at Longchamps, at Willis's Rooms for Frederick Chatterton ('Le haut-bois') and as late as 1852 giving a concert (20 March) at Paris’s Salle Pleyel, while advertising as a teacher from 47 rue du Four Saint-Germain …
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‘Madame Hennelle qui professe le chant avec autant de succès qu’elle en obtient comme cantatrice a donné chez Pleyel sa soirée annuelle devant un brillant auditoire (Cherubini ‘Ave Maria’, Henri Reber ‘Hai Luli’, Joseph Dessauer’s Boléro ‘Ouvrez, ouvrez, c’est nous’)’,‘Madame Hennelle, professeur distingué et cantatrice remarquable, a réuni son fidèle auditoire de chaque année, et lui a fait admirer le bel ‘Ave Maria’ de Chérubini,..’,‘Mme Hennelle, la cantatrice si distinguée et si renommée pour son talent de professorat, donnera son concert annuel ...’
The notices stop after 1852, but I think Mme Hennelle was still teaching, if not singing. I have discovered a music sheet – a piano piece, ‘Les Castagnettes’, by Joseph O’Kelly, published in 1868 and dedicated to Madame C Hennelle.
Sophie had a daughter [Marie] Blanche Hennelle (1831-1906) who married Hugues Marie Henri Fournier (29 July 1821- 1898), senator and diplomat in Hanover, The Hague, Stockholm, Italy and Constantinople, in 1854 (6 May). Blanche has become a byword in universities and art histories since she was credited with the compilation of a book of multi-media collages known as The Madame B Album.
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