Avonia Bonney

 

This picture came up on ebay today. So since I had a wee article on file, I thought I'd pair them up ..

BONNEY, Avonia [Melvill] (b Cambridge, Mass 9 May 1854; d 60 Bay State Road, Boston 8 April 1910).

 

Avonia Bonney was one of the horde of young Victorian Americans who trouped to Europe in search of a musical education and prima donna-dom. Most postulants got some of the first, and very little of the second. But Avonia did very much better than most. Because she was not over-ambitious. She spent ten years in Italy and worked solidly, in leading roles, in the eight years between her debut and her return to America.

 

She was, it must be said, watched every step of the way by the folks back home, for Avonia was ‘somebody’, or rather related to ‘somebody’. Her Christian name told the tale. Her mother, who was born Caroline Emma Jones (b New York September 1838; d Cambridge, Mass 27 February 1924), was sister to the well-known actress Avonia Jones (Mrs Gustavus V Brooke), immortalised by Pinero as Avonia Bunn in Trelawney of the Wells. That meant, of course, that Emma was the daughter of the character who called himself ‘Count Joannes’ (George Jones), sometime actor and later laughing stock, and his first wife, Melinda Jones (actress). Emma had wed William Larrabee Bonney (b Maine 1823; d Boston 12 June 1896) ‘merchant, of Jordan, Marsh and Co’, on 28 August 1853, and Avonia was born in 1854. 

 

So, ‘the grand-daughter of Count Joannes’ got more coverage in the American press than most aspiring soprani, and – as in the paper Folio of 1873 -- it seems to have been surprisingly accurate.

 

The teenaged Avonia was educated at the New England Conservatoire until 1869, when her mother took her and her younger sister, Emma [Linda] (Mrs Brownlow, 1856-1899) to Italy to study. An early souvenir of their stay survives in the shape of a music sheet, Usiglio’s Le educande di Sorrento transcribed for piano and dedicated to the two girls.

 

The teacher chosen was Giuseppe Gerli of the Milan Conservatoire, and Avonia was put before the public for the first time, at all of seventeen years of age, as Amina in La Sonnambula at Alessandria in Piedmont. Sufficient success was achieved that, the following season, she was engaged for a five months’ season at the minor Teatro Balbo in Turin. I spot her there in Linda di Chamonix and as Oscar in Un ballo in maschera, and Folio assures us that she also sang Lucia di Lammermoor, Crispino e la comare andL’Elisir d’amore, all of which seem perfectly suitable to her light, high soprano. She also created the title-role in Giuseppe Bozzelli’s Caterina di Belp, but the young composer’s piece was not a success.

In 1873, I spot her at Barletta and nearby Bisceglie (Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Un ballo in maschera), in 1874, at Avellino (Linda di Chamonix, La Sonnambula) and the Teatro Communale, Pordenone (Don Pasquale), and subsequently at Salerno, Reggio Emilia, Malta, Voghera (Ines in L’Africaine). No Milans or Genoas or major theatres ... but leading roles in smaller venues and houses. When she ventured a Lucia at the Naples Teatro del Fondo, she was scoffed at by the unforgiving Neapolitan audiences as being inaudible. So it was back to Traviata at the Teatro Civico, Vigevano, and the Teatro Sociale of Varese, Ernani at the Cicconi Sant’ Elpidio, Ballo at Lecce, Traviata at the less pretentious Teatro Bellini in Naples, and at San Paolo …

 

Avonia Bonney had found her niche, and in houses and roles suited to her physical and vocal means, she had put together a well-stuffed professional life. However, it was coming to an end. In the last months of 1879, she went to her most esoteric prima donna engagement of all: at the Teatro Nuovo Reale on the island of Zakynthos. I see one local (?) Dionysus Mousmoutis has written an entire article on this episode (‘The soprano Avonia Bonney in the theatrical scene of Zakynthos’) … I just spot her doing Ruy Blas, Ballo and Rigoletto, this last in March 1880.

And by the time of the 1880 census of America, she is back at home with mother, father and sister … ‘professional singer’. But not very much, nor very often, nowadays. The opera-house years were over. Avonia settled down as a singing teacher, a profession which she would follow to the end of her days.

 

There were still events, however, to come in her life. Marriage and childbirth. That same 1880 census which has 25 year-old Avonia back home, shows a 15 year-old ship’s carpenter’s son, working as a farm labourer in Scituate, Mass. Transcripts of the Massachusetts registers show that Willis Abner Li[t]chfield (age 28) and Avonia Bonney (age 27) were wed in Boston 31 December 1887. It’s either a case of Victorian Scribal Error, or deliberate deception. Their son, Willis William Lichfield, tells us later that he was born in Paris, in 1887 or 1889 or 1890 … and here comes Avonia on a ship from Europe in July 1891 bringing with her a theoretically 11-month old son … who had been christened in London 15 September 1889. Born 23 May 1889.

 

Mr Lichfield sr (b Scituate 6 November 1864; d Scituate 1936) progressed to being a glass-cutter, then to working in stained glass, and Mrs Lichfield regressed steadily in her age, to the extent of chopping a decade off her birth date, as she worked on in the music profession as a ‘Voice Master for Grand Opera’. They family can be seen – husband, wife, mother Emma and two servants – at Boston’s 60 Bay State Road in the 1900 census.

 

Avonia died, at that address, at the age 55 years 10 months and 29 days, of pulmonary tuberculosis.