DELCY, Miss [Catarina] [LACY, Catherine Josefa] (b Liverpool c 1819; d 11 Leighton Grove, Pancras, London 15 October 1889)
The history of the theatre and of music is filled with stories of ‘stage mothers’. The young lady known as ‘Miss Delcy’ seems to have been the victim of an overweeningly ambitious stage father.
The father in question was the gentleman known, indeed quite well-known, in the musical and theatrical worlds as Michael Rophino Lacy. Whether that were his real name, and whether any of the details concerning him and his family which have reached the reference books of the nation – and all, doubtless, descended from one hearsay source -- are true, I have no idea. But, for what they are worth, here they are. He is supposed to have been born in Bilbao, the son of an Irish merchant (no name ever given), and the date most often quoted is 19 June 1795. Or, occasionally, 1793. But, by 1817 – and probably well before -- he was living in Liverpool, with his wife Sarah née Norton, an actress at the local theatre (m Dublin 21 November 1817).
He tried his hand in several branches of showbusiness: as a child violinist (‘pupil of the celebrated Kreutzer’), and later as an actor, a playwright, a songwriter, a ‘teacher of violin, piano and Spanish guitar’, ‘leader of the Liverpool concerts’ and for several seasons of the King’s Theatre ballet, and a musical arranger, but it was as a librettist or, more precisely, a theatrical ‘adaptor’ and de- and re-constructor – a pinner-together of well-considered trifles -- that he would ultimately find his success.
His first venture into the field seems to have been on no less a stage than Drury Lane, with a sort of a remake of Rossini’s Il Turco in Italia as Turkish Lovers (1 May 1827) in which Braham, Fanny Ayton, Horn, Mrs Geesin – and Harley and Miss Kelly in two invented comic characters – took part. ‘The drama was as heavy and inane as any it has ever been our fortune to sit out’ bewailed The Times. Lacy persisted, however, with versions of several of Scribe’s plays, including the little La Vieille, for which he fabricated a Rossinian score, arranged and composed by himself, and which, as Love in Wrinkles, proved a happier vehicle for Braham. Over the next few years, he flung himself into compiling a series of semi-pasticcio operatic spectaculars, scoring notable success with The Maid of Judah, a compound of Scott’s Ivanhoe, its French stage adaptation and music from a selection of often lesser-known Rossini works (Semiramide, Le Comte Ory, Torvaldo e Dorliska, Maometto, Armide et al) and a Cinderella, or the Fairy and the Little Glass Slipper which glued together a version of the preferred English pantomime version of Perrault’s tale (thus the fairy and the glass slipper) with another Rossini pastiche, centred around the principal pieces of his Cenerentola. If this latter drew the horrified thunders of some more knowledgeable music critics, it proved extremely successful with the public, and was long and widely played on English stages, in preference to the original opera.
He also committed versions of Robert le diable, Der Freischütz, Le Serment and Fra Diavolo, and put together a scriptural stage spectacle around a mixture of Rossini and Handel entitled The Israelites in Egypt, or The Passage of the Red Sea ‘an oratorio consisting of sacred music, scenery and presentation’ (22 February 1833) which caused a certain stir. He reappeared in the area as late as 1849, by which time his style of piece was less acceptable, with an unsuccessful Auber pasticcio entitled The Blind Sister.
Another of his later projects which failed to come off was the promotion of his daughter, Catherine, as the prima donna of the era.
Quite how good, or not, Catherine Lacy (‘Miss Delcy’) was as a vocalist we shall probably never know, as the figure of her father – publicising, proselytising and posturing -- seems to get in the way at every turn of her effortful half-dozen years as an operatic vocalist. The press, which through that time reviewed her performances with violently opposing and extreme appreciation or ridicule, appears to have taken sides almost from the outset, or maybe even before. There seems little doubt that Lacy heavily overdid the puffing of his prefabricated prima donna, and, while some papers were willing to go along with his designs, others reacted vigorously against them.
‘Miss Delcy’ was brought out at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, on 12 November 1839, in her father’s most famous opus, the English Cinderella, in the company of Frazer, Leffler, Morley, Hammond, Misses Betts and Collett and Mrs Alban Croft. ‘She scarcely seemed more than seventeen…’ reported The Times. She almost certainly was. But I can’t be exact. In the 1851 census (the first in which I find them), Lacy says he is 47, his wife Sarah is 50, and his daughters, Catherine and Sarah (both ‘born Liverpool’), are 26 and 25. Lacy was, of course, something like a decade older than that. The girls probably were too. I suspect Miss Delcy may have been twenty-ish on her official first night.
For some noticed that it wasn’t her first night at all. ‘She has been for some years past known in the northern provinces and was, so we understand, a favourite at York and Hull’ reported The Analyst in explanation of her poised performance, going on to comment ‘Her voice is strong, piercing and extensive in the upper part of the scale … [she] will therefore be a useful, although, we apprehend, not a highly attractive singer’.
And, six months earlier, The Age had copied a paragraph from the Doncaster Gazette,which claimed she had sung in Yorkshire, two years past, but had not yet been seen in London because terms and standards had not been acceptable.
And they were perfectly correct. I have before me a set of reviews from December 1836 and January and February 1837, of the Hull Theatre Royal, where Miss Delcy ‘pupil of Mr Rophino Lacy’ (why? asked the good Hull critic, not simply ‘Miss Lacy’?) is appearing to a volley of praise, supported by the members of the stock company, among whom Creswick, in Cinderella and Der Freischütz. And even that was evidently not a debut, for the reviewer speaks of ‘report’ (apparently from York) which has already spoken so highly of Miss Delcy’s abilities…’. She went on to play in Fra Diavolo, and The Barber of Seville opposite Binge, but cancelled The Marriage of Figaro through influenza, during a two-month engagement littered with farewells, indispositions and Benefits.
But, back to the ‘official’ debut. There was no doubt that ‘the undertaking was arduous’, following Mary Ann Wood in ‘one of her greatest parts’, but the first night – if the press can be believed – went off pretty well. ‘We have rarely seen a debut for which less allowance was needed’, ‘A favourable impression was at once made by her singing the little opening ballad; her low notes were excellent and though her voice was trembling with anxiety the purest taste and the most delicate feeling were manifest. The high notes appeared at times rather forced and it was natural to think that the middle and low notes, which were beautifully clear and full, were alone of the first quality. However, the finale to the first act immediately dissipated all doubts as to any capabilities of her voice; her first nervousness was broken through, her high notes became rich and sweet and in the full flow of melody which she poured forth, the correctness of her intonation, the infusion of soul, and the quiet commanding facility of her execution gained the whole audience…’ (Times)
‘The debutante is young, apparently about seventeen or eighteen, girlish, with small features, and a merry, expressive, dark eye. As is generally the case in England, she has been hurried upon the stage rather prematurely and therefore we must speak of her great promise rather than her finished performance …’ ‘She has an organ of great power and compass,.. The lower and middle notes are excellent and it was only when she strained her voice to the highest pitch that it became harsh and unpleasing... we have seldom witnessed a debut of one so young from which we could augur a more brilliant future... [she] bids fair to be one of the chief musical ornaments of our stage..’ (Literary Gazette)
Father didn’t stay in the background. He came on with the young singer on her first night when she took her calls.
Miss Delcy followed up in Lacy’s versions of Freischütz and Fra Diavolo and the response seemed positive: ‘she has all the requisites by nature to make a fine singer. Her appearance is prepossessing, her enunciation clear and distinct, and her voice powerful, well toned and of large compass. As Agatha … she was loudly and deservedly applauded.’ ‘If this young lady will not fancy herself already a first-rate singer we have great hopes of her becoming such’.Report had it that ‘Mr Lacy is getting up one of Boieldieu’s operas for his daughter…’ but it didn’t happen. Mr Hammond’s management went belly up, and Miss Delcy’s starring season came to an end.
In June, Miss Delcy was seen in a pasticcio entertainment staged for Mr Dowton’s Benefit, but she was almost immediately thereafter heard of in France. Painfully prepared paragraphs were floated back to the London papers: [‘Miss Delcy] has created no little sensation in the musical world … The most distinguished judges here (M Berlioz among the number) place this lady’s voice at once amongst the very finest of the day, and pronounce her style from its breadth, musician-like purity and dramatic expression, as altogether unrivalled in France since the regretted retirement of Mademoiselle Falcon…’
‘Elle a chanté avec grand succès pendant la dernière saison a Drury Lane’ echoed Le Gazette Musicale de Paris assuring that ‘elle fait sensation dans le monde musicale’. The ‘sensation’ doesn’t seem to have left too many traces.
I spot her at 1843 – ‘Signora Caterina Delci, pupil of Pasta’ – billed, and widely paragraphed, to sing in La Sonnambula with Gardoni at La Scala, but ‘La rappresentazione nella quale doveva cantare la signora Delci fu protratta per ignoti cagioni’. Embarrassingly, the British newspaper Brother Jonathan reported her as a ‘great sensation’ in the part. In 1844, she shows up (or was announced, at least) at the Teatro Filarmonico, Verona (Il Barbiere di Siviglia) and Venice … where, The Liverpool Post agreeably printed, she apparently somewhere showed ‘a versatility unknown since Malibran’. But it doesn’t say where and how. Elsewhere, it was paragraphed that she had become ‘the favourite pupil of Pasta’. The Italian press said she had studied ‘several months’ with Pasta.
In 1844, the Lacys returned to Britain, and on 1 October Miss Delcy again took to the Drury Lane stage, this time under the management of Alfred Bunn, as Cinderella. The response was not enthusiastic: ‘[She] has been absent for three years in Italy and now returns to play one of her old characters scarcely as well as ere she left her native country’. She followed up again with Freischütz and Fra Diavolo, but was no competition for The Bohemian Girl or for Balfe’s new The Daughter of St Mark. After a few performances, Miss Delcy was seen no more.
A few months later, Mr Lacy made one more throw as a star-maker. In August, he and Catherine, along with Liverpudlian tenor Fred Gardner, who had played supporting parts with them at Drury Lane, set out for America. Once again, the puff flew high, and once again – and with even more vigour than in Britain – the press split into pro-Delcy (‘This debut will be one of the most brilliant ever witnessed in this city’ puffed the New York Herald) and anti-Delcy camps. Lacy apparently had the New York Herald firmly behind him: which automatically meant that he would find opposition elsewhere. And poor Miss Delcy? She just went on and sang.
She sang first on 15 September at the Park Theatre in La Sonnambula with Gardner as leading tenor and William Brough as Rodolfo. ‘One of the most successful debuts on record’, trumpeted The New York Herald, at the head of the approving press. When that press reached England, the Musical World reacted: ‘If this be true of Miss Delcy, then is Miss Delcy another Miss Delcy that the Miss Delcy who appeared at Covent Garden as Zerlina in Fra Diavolo? We shall be glad to hail her back to England thus wonderfully advanced beyond her former self’. Lacy (who took the baton for the Delcy performances, and apparently, thus, put up the backs of another section of the press and performers) followed up with Cinderella and the rest of his repertoire, and then continued on to Philadelphia (Chestnut Street Theatre) and Baltimore for opera and concerts ‘with pretty good success’ reported the Herald ‘they gave a concert in Baltimore which was numerously and fashionably attended’.
On 17 November, they reopened in New York, with a new attraction: America’s first Lucia di Lammermoor. This time, the press controversy really moved into high gear, and some of the pro- papers deserted the camp. The Broadway Journal, which had allowed the prima donna to be ‘young, showy and attractive in her manner besides being a singer of no ordinary merit’, now howled: ‘The performance of Lucia di Lammermoor was as good a specimen of musical murder as we have witnessed’. The New York Heraldpersisted ‘a very select and fashionable audience… Miss Delcy has much improved during her southern tour and sings the music of Lucia with taste and feeling ... a rich mezzo-soprano voice and great artistical skill’.
Catherine’s final role in New York appears to have been that of Rosetta in Love in a Village, which she played on 3 December 1845 for William Brough’s Benefit, and on the 5 December she appeared for her own Benefit as Lucy of Lammermoor (sic), before 'her final performances in America' at the Howard Athenaeum, Boston, from 16 December, where she sang Der Freischütz, still supported by Mr Gardner ‘principal tenor from Drury Lane Theatre, London’… and still puffed extravagantly … ‘Miss Delcy’s first evening at the Athenaeum will not fail to crowd the hall with a large audience even for that popular lace of resort, and as far as may be judged from the reputation of this accomplished artiste …’
The Lacys returned to England, where Miss Delcy’s ‘first appearance since her return from America’ was billed on 4 May 1846 at the Theatre Royal, Dublin. She played The Maid of Judah to Fred Gardner's Ivanhoe and Lucia di Lammermoor to his Edgar and continued on for a series of performances at the Liverpool Adelphi (La Sonnambula).
There don’t seem to have been many more.
Lacy put on some lecture concerts (‘Handelian opera concerts’) at the Hanover Square Rooms in May 1847 in which Catherine sang the illustrations with Maria Hawes, Charles Manvers and Henry Phillips … but, thereafter, she seems to have left the public arena.
By the 1851 census she is ‘a music teacher’. In 1861, with her parents and her sister, at 7 Euston Rd, she is ‘teacher of music and languages’.
Things did not, thenceforth, go well for the Lacy family, it seems. Before Rophino Lacy died, on 20 September 1867, they were reduced to advertising in the press for financial help.
Catherine and Sarah can be seen in the 1871 census at 51 Great Russell Street – an address later more famous as the home of Pear’s Soap, and nowadays, less famously, as a Starbucks coffee house – but, after that, I see them no more.
It seems that Sarah Groenima Lacy died in 1878. And Catherine is the ‘Catherine Josefa Lacy’ listed in the Pancras death records for 1889. If those records are correct, at 71 years of age, she was a tiny bit older even than I guessed.
‘Miss Delcy’ did not entirely vanish from the musical world after her abandonment of the stage. A handful of songs have survived for which she provided words (to her father’s music) and/or music. ‘By the dark mountainside’, ‘Whither, whither away’, ‘Somebody’s waiting’ and ‘Children of the earth, farewell’ by ‘C J D’ or ‘Catherine J Delcy’ did not make her any more fame than her stage exploits. But at least they were not puffed out of existence.
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