Jules Lefort: 'Delight of the Parisian salons'

I was wondering, as the sun crept up over the ocean's edge, which of my biographical articles from past years I would decorate and blog today. Herr Angyalfi is a hard act to follow! Well, this one picked itself. I was googling around after a piece of music when I stumbled into wikipedia. Google always, good or bad, gives it first place in its listings, and my latest OS 'update' seems to make it open automatically. Today it opened the listing for the great and grand French singer, Jules Lefort. The listing - you can't call it an article -- is one and a half lines long. And of all his famous romances it lists one which hardly made a ripple, but has a buzzword lyricist. Why do people post wikipedia articles on subjects of which they know nothing? The credibility of the whole organisation suffers. Anyway, I thought I should rescue the admirable Jules from this insult and ignominy ... so here is my brief 5000+ words on his subject ...

LEFORT, Jules [François René] (b Paris 27 January 1822; d 10 Boulevard Emile Augier, Paris 7 September 1898)

The most celebrated of all French drawing-room singers of the Victorian age, Jules Lefort was a lion of the private salons of the rich and aristocratic, and of the fashionable public concert rooms, on both sides of the English Channel, for something like thirty years.

 

Oddly, however, he does not seem to have made his way into any musical dictionary or encyclopaedia that I have, and I was able to find very little in the way of biographical material on him, apart from a suggestion (since backed up by documents) that he was born in Paris in early 1822. I discover, now, that he was born into a family originally from Laboissière, Oise. 

Even more strange than this neglect, however, is the dichotomy which exists when it comes to describing his voice. In the days of his early career he was variously described as a tenor and as a baritone, in his elder years he sang bass music. It is a not unfamiliar progression – from high baritone to topless baritone – and many a vocalist has followed it. But it is the quality and size of the voice on which contemporaries, oddly, don’t seem able to agree. One moment the press is referring to his ‘large and beautiful’ organ, and the effects which he is able to make with it, and the next (and this frequently) referring to the fact that this elegant performer had ‘more style than voice’. At the other extreme, the Austrian critic Hanslick referred to him as ‘stimmlose’.

 

There is no doubt that Jules Lefort was a very clever artist, able to interpret the romances and songs of his age with delicacy and point, with intelligence and expression, in a manner which was highly effective, even under the close scrutiny of a knowledgeable drawing-room audience. Time and again, the critics held him up as a shining example of a veritable artist of the world of the chanson, time and again, he was hailed as the outstanding male singer of romances and ballads in Paris and in London, but – although I imagine him as a lightish baritone-to-tenor of charm, something in the same vein as Alexander Reichardt in the German Lied – it is evident that not everyone heard him as such. He was known to have sung bass roles.

 

The first mention I can trace of Jules Lefort as a vocalist is in the pages of the newspaper Les Coulisses of 23 January 1842, where, under a paragraph devoted to the Paris Opéra, is written: ‘On s’occupe beaucoup d’un nouveau ténor découvert par la direction et qui, dit-on, n’est pas sans mérite. Ce jeune homme, qu’on nomme M Lefort, a été entendu ces jours-ci, dans un concert particulier. On a recensé, conformément aux prévisions, que la belle voix de M Lefort ayant aujourd'hui la caractère du baryton, inclinerait au ténor par le travail et par l’éducation musicale du sujet..’ Already, the precise nature of Lefort’s voice is under question, although, at nineteen years of age, he has already alerted the musical world to his existence.

 

However, the young man did not force his way immediately into the limelight, nor on to the stage of the Opéra. Over the following years, I spot him only episodically on the concert platforms of France – in 1844 at the Salle Erard with Louis Lacombe, chez Mons Bernhard with the veteran vocalist Hippolyte Huet, at the Salle Montesquieu duetting Le Barbier de Seville with Mlle Ousselin, at Sens ‘très applaudi’ in a song called ‘Ma Go[e]llette’, and at a charity concert at the Salle Herz where, alongside Octavie Morize, he ‘a fort bien chanté l’air du baryton de Maria de Rohan et deux romances…’. 

'Ma Goelette' was the work of Alfred Quidant, who would supply Lefort with many a song over the years to come.

I see our man rather more frequently in the first months of 1845, notably at an aristocratic salon, giving Victoria Arago’s new songs ‘Le Hamac’ and ‘Amours de l’Arabe’ which ‘admirablement dramatisés par la belle et large voix de M Lefort ont produit un effet immense’. ‘M Lefort a chanté deux delicieuses romances de Mme Victoria Arago avec une chaleur et un âme qui le placent, dès ce moment, aux premiers rangs de nos barytons’, reported another journal, predicting that the winter would not pass without this young singer becoming a flower of the salons of the aristocracy. Shortly after, he is singing for Mlle Morize at the Salle Herz (‘une romance d’Alfred Quidant’), later for Julie Vavasseur and alongside Julie Dorus-Gras and Levassor at the Italiens concert-room, and on 29 March, ‘M Lefort le jeune baryton, qui jouit en ce moment d’un grand faveur dans les salons, annonce pour dimanche prochain le 9 mars un matinée musicale dans la salle Henri Herz’. His guests were Emilie Sabatier and Mlle Vavasseur.

 

By the next season, when he again ventured at the Salle Herz (29 March), he was quite simply referred to in the musical press as the ‘baryton en vogue’. That vogue was evidently principally in the private sector, and it was there that, in November 1846, he made what seems to have been his first venture in another field in which he would become pre-eminent, the ‘opéra de salon’.  Private performances of operas and musical comedies in the homes of the aristocracy and the wealthy were a favourite pastime of the period, and the Walter-Scottish Alice of Friedrich von Flotow and Count Honoré de Sussy had been first seen played at the home of Comte Jules de Castellane, nearly a decade earlier. This time, the leading players were Mme Henri Potier (née de Sussy) of the Opéra-Comique, and Mons Jules Lefort.

I note him in public performances in Paris (Paul Henrion's 'Le roi des régates', Lepine’s ‘Marine', Quidant and Guérin's ‘Ma Barque’, Gibby le cornemuse air) in 1847, at Orléans and Rouen, in the company of Mme Sabatier, ‘the lark of the salons’, and in March 1850, even the English press took notice when he sang at Henriette Sontag’s concert at the Paris Conservatoire: The Morning Chronicle reported ‘M Jules Lefort a young French baritone, with a magnificent organ, sang ‘La Monastère’ and other pieces with distinguished effect’. England would very soon have the opportunity to judge Mons Lefort for itself, for three months later the young vocalist made his first visit to London.

18 June 1850

He seems to have made his debut on the London platform at a concert given by his compatriot, the harpist Félix Godefroid, at Willis’s Rooms 15 June 1850, alongside Valérie de Rupplin, Sophia Schloss, Brignoli and Ciabatta, and the young Catherine Browne, soon to become fatally ‘Miss Crichton’. By 2 July, when he sang, in wholly continental company, at the concert of the German pianist, Mme Belleville d’Oury, The Times was able to describe ‘a French barytone [who] has produced an agreeable sensation in several concerts this season. He has a very agreeable voice, full-toned and flexible, and his singing, which is remarkably unaffected, has all the beauties with none of the ordinary defects of the French school’. Within days, the music publishers Rousselot and Arban of Conduit Street, had ‘Le Petit Enfant’ (Quidant/Boudin), ‘Loin de ma mère’ (Henrion) and ‘Ma barque’ (Quidant) ‘sung with so much success by M Lefort at Mme Oury’s concert’ in the music shops.

 Lefort returned to Paris, but in October he again visited London to take part in a series of concerts dubbed ‘Grand National Concerts’, under the baton of Balfe at Her Majesty’s Theatre. ‘M Jules Lefort, who last season produced a very favourable effect at many private and public matinees..’ featured for a month on Balfe’s programmes, giving not only the romances which had captured London’s imagination (‘Ma barque’, Adam’s ‘Cantique de Noel’, Adhémer’s ‘L’Abordage’), but a series of operatic duets and solos (‘Il sangue tinto’ and Masaniello with Gustavus Geary, ‘Se un istanto’ with Sophia Messent, ‘A te, o cara’ with Mrs Alexander Newton, ‘Léonore, mon amour’, ‘Questo dunque’, ‘Cruda funeste’).

 In spite of his undoubted success in Britain, Lefort did not return for the next two seasons. He apparently stayed in France, where I notice him at the Concerts Marmontel (‘M Jules Lefort a chanté deux délicieuses romances de M Pasdeloup, ‘L'aube naît’ and ‘Comment disait-il’’), at the Salle Pleyel (Jeane d’Arc, Joseph) and Salle Herz (‘Le roi solitaire’, ‘Ne me regardes plus’, Nibelle's 'Rêve d'enfant', Quidant's 'Chantez, gais matelots'), but in May 1853 he again crossed the Manche, preceded by an advertisement: ‘romances françaises: Mons Jules Lefort, whose singing in this particular branch of the art was so highly patronised during his last visit to London, three years ago, begs to inform the nobility and his friends that he has just come back for the season ... 4 Audley Street, Grosvenor Square’.

 

His first re-appearance was at the fashionable concert of Madame Puzzi (30 May), who would be one of his most sturdy patrons over the decades to come. 

He was welcomed back firmly: ‘one of the most finished of those romance singers who are at present the delight of the Parisian salons’, ‘Nothing could be more tasteful than his execution of a couple of the current popular French songs of the day – Quidant’s ‘Petit enfant’ and Adolphe Adam’s ‘Noel’’, ‘One of the best features of the concert was the very artistic singing by M Jules Lefort of two romances…’. A steady stream of concert engagements followed, as Lefort brought out amongst other ‘Le petit mousse noir’ (Pierre-Jacques Chéret/Marc Constantin), ‘Le Muletier de Calabre’ (Victor Massé/Joseph Vimeux), ‘Tais-toi, mon coeur’ (Paul Henrion/Michel Tissandier), the latest romances of Jacques Blumenthal and an aria, ‘Champs paternels’, from Méhul’s Joseph. He ventured just occasionally into the operatic, as at Signor Puzzi’s Benefit or that of Mrs Arthur Stone, where he joined the Beneficiare in ‘La ci darem’, but it was his French songs that London wanted and, largely, that is what Lefort gave to the city. And, at the end of the season, Manchester. And, ultimately, with the publication in London of an album, Jules Lefort’s collection of romances and scenes, the whole country.

 

In what would become a regular annual routine, he progressed from London to some of Europe’s favourite watering places, before returning to Paris for the winter season.

I spy him there, more often than not in the company of Mme Gaveaux-Sabatier (concerts of Etienne Arnaud, Salle Herz etc), giving such pieces as the romance from Donizetti’s Il Castello di Kenilworth or ‘La nuit du bûcheron’, and duetting an Ambroise Thomas morceau from La Tonelli. 

 

In April, with the Paris season done, the expected announcement appeared: ‘we understand that this distinguished vocalist after a most successful season in Paris will shortly arrive in London...’ And he duly did, equipped with all his old favourites and a few new ones, including a topical ‘Hurrah pour la France et pour l’Angleterre’ (Huilier/Méry), Hippolyte Audeval and Blumenthal’s ‘Pour ma mère’, Rosenhain’s ‘Je veux oublier’ and G Muratori’s ‘Le Prisonnier’ to the now regular appraisal ‘one of the best French chamber singers that ever visited this country’, ‘he has a good tenor voice and sang skilfully and with fine judgement’.

In the next seasons, Lefort – now thoroughly established, alongside Mme Gaveaux-Sabatier, as one of the most fashionable vocalists of his era – led a busy career on both sides of the Channel. In September 1854, he sang before Prince Albert at Boulogne, performing two pieces which would become staples of his repertoire: Luigi Bordese’s ‘David chantant devant Saul’, and the comical duet on ‘Au Claire de la lune’ from Boieldieu’s Les voitures versées. 

Marie Cabel

On this occasion, his coloratura partner was Marie Cabel, but later he would perform the same duet with a bouquet of well-known sopranos including Mme Gaveaux-Sabatier, Mme Lefébvure-Wély, Delphine Ugalde, Marie Rieder, Louisa Pyne or Helen Lemmens-Sherrington. 

He introduced Alfred Dufresne’s patriotic ‘En avant les zouaves’ with words by a certain Jules Verne, Emile Durand’s ‘Un rayon de soleil’, Jules Couplet’s ‘L’oiseau de Berthe’ and ‘Pourquoi rêver’, and on the occasion of the Inauguration of the statue of Jeanne d’Arc at Orléans, he joined Alexis Dupont and Mlle Montigny as the soloists in Adolphe Nibelle’s occasional choral symphony. In 1856, he appeared with Mme Gaveaux-Sabatier before the Emperor and Empress ‘at home’, in one of the little ‘operas di camera’, which would become a feature of their work in the 1850s and 1860s, Tout est bien qui finit bien (J-B Weckerlin/Jules Malherbe) and, a few months later, with Johanna Wagner, Reichardt and Jenny Ney, before the British Queen, at her palace (‘David chantant devant Saul’, ‘Le petit mousse noir’, Henrion’s ‘Tais-toi, mon coeur’, ‘Une fièvre brillante’ from Richard Coeur de Lion). When the celebrated comic Levassor visited Britain and gave one of his ‘concerts bouffes’, it was Jules Lefort who joined him to play Offenbach’s two-handed Les deux aveugles. 

On the same occasion, Levassor performed a burlesque piece entitled Le voyage aérien of which Lefort was advertisedly the author. But what Britain loved most was 'those delicious little French ballads in which he is quite unequalled'.

In the mid 1850s, Jules Lefort had reached the pinnacle of his fame in France and in Britain, and in regular summer visits to, in particular, Baden, delivering such pieces as Monpou’s ‘L’Air de Piquillo’ (‘lui a permis d’étaler une voix large et sympathétique qu’il pourrait cependant conduire avec plus de méthode’), Nadaud’s ‘Cheval et cavalier’, Zampi’s ‘Le Chant du foyer’, de Beauvais’s ‘Le Testament divin’, Clémentine Batta’s ‘Hymne à la vierge’ and 'Juanita', ‘Comme à vingt ans’ (ly: Emile Barateau) and ‘Le Biniou’ (ly: Hippolyte Guérin) by Emile Durand, Henrion’s ‘Que je voudrais avoir de ailes’, Beranger's 'Le vieux caporal', Lamartine's 'L'Hirondelle', Gustave Héquet's 'Sans nommer' or items from Felicien David’s L’Eden, Spontini’s Milton, Le Maître de Chapelle, La Chaste Suzanne, Catrufo’s Félicie, Ma Tante Aurore, Les Dragons de Villars and others of the opéra-comique kind. Yet I spot him delivering the Les Huguenots duet, with Pauline Lauters as well! The French press had little need to record ‘Sa voix est belle, bien posée, son accentuation est parfaite, les milles nuances de l’expression, il les saisit à merveille’, and the British press, when he sang at Hortense Parent’s concert at Cambridge House, at ‘the most brilliantly attended concert of the season’, recorded that he sang with ‘astonishing verve’ going as far to assure that ‘he sang in a style worthy even of Duprez’.

He also brought out further opéras de salon, three of them Suzanne, Ariel and L’Esprit du foyer composed by Salvator Collin. Others included L’Héritier sans le Savoir of Pauline Thys, Les Deux Princesses by Emilien Pacini and Comte Wilfrid D’Indy, a piece by Mesigny and Massa (aristocrats both), and Jules Beer’s En état de siège (text: Cléon Galoppe d'Onquaire). Suzanne almost got him into bother, for the composer took to playing it without reference to his librettist, Prosper Mignard, who promptly sued all concerned for royalties and when he got only 50 francs, put a block on further performances.

In November 1858, Lefort introduced what would be one of his most memorable creations in the scena ‘Le Paradis perdu’ composed by Théodore Ritter to the words of Baron Darou de Coubaltes. The Paris press recorded, of the concert at the Sorbonne, in aid of the Société de Bienfaisance de la Monnaie: ‘Jules Lefort … excellent baryton a deployé des resources vocals qu’on ne le connaissait pas encore. Les deux la bémol [A flat] de poitrine qu’il a donné ont presque fait crouler les voûtes sous les bravos. Chaque strophe a été chaudement applaudie et a la fin du morceau un bis formidable sorti de deux mille bouches a obligé Theodore Ritter, qui l’accompagnait, a se rasseoir et Jules Lefort de redire ‘Le Paradis perdu’. C’est un succès aussi grand que merité…’

1859 was the year of ‘Le Paradis perdu’. Wherever Lefort went, his hit scena went with him, hailed as ‘le succès vocale de la saison’, from the concert of M and Mme Deloffre (‘artiste indefatigable ... voix des plus sympathétiques ... longuement applaudi dans une belle scène de M Th Ritter’) to Hector Berlioz’s concert at the Opéra-Comique. The authors attempted to follow up with a piece entitled ‘Le Réveil de l’Italie’, which the press compared favourably to ‘La Marseillaise’, but which didn’t have the same enduring capability.

During his London season, however, he introduced at his own matinee (30 June 1859, with long-time associate Louis Engel) yet another opéra de chambre, written by Galoppe d’Onquaire and composed by Paul Bernard under the title Bredouille. He played Fernand, Pauline Vaneri was his partner, and the result was another hit song. ‘Ça fait peur aux oiseaux’, one which would live on (with its credits and origins often befuddled), into the 21^st century, the repertoire of Felicity Lott and the days of youtube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=SMG-6WTqJpA

Soon after, Lefort was involved in yet another ‘creation’, which would also survive to these days. When Hector Berlioz first tried out a few portions of his Les Troyens, in the rooms of the Parisian Beethoven Society (where Lefort was a member of the staff), Lefort and Anne Charton-Demeur gave the demo. 

Anne Charton

And when, on 29 August 1859, Berlioz introduced ‘fragments d’un opéra inédit en cinq actes’ as part of a concert during the Fêtes de Baden, Lefort sang the ghostly Chorèbe to the Cassandre of Pauline Viardot Garcia, and shared with her  the Dido/Aeneas ‘O nuit d’ivresse’, in the first public performance of those portions of the opera. Insurance had, however, been taken in the case of public disinterest. On the same programme Viardot gave ‘Nacque all’affano’ and Lefort … ‘Le Paradis perdu’.

 

From opera, Lefort returned to his round of romances and opéras de salon, supporting the evergreen ‘Le paradis perdu’ with such items as Nadaud’s ‘L’Insomnie’, Martini’s ‘Plaisir d’amour’, Durand's 'Comme à vingt ans', Ernest Boulanger’s ‘La Main du seigneur’, Pergolesi’s ‘Tre giorne’, Massé’s ‘Carnaval de Venise’, Louis Engel’s ‘Comment est-ce arrivé’ and the production of Edmond Hocmelle and Jenny Sabatier’s 1-acter Un Service d’ami, alongside his habitual operatic partner, Mme Gaveaux-Sabatier. Appreciation was as high or higher than ever, and when he gave his own concert in Paris in April 1861 he was greeted: 'M. Jules Lefort n’a pas manqué non plus d’appréciateurs de son charmant talent. Un auditoire brillant l’a chaleureusement accueilli. J. Lefort est du petit nombre de barytons qui chantent. Il ne pousse pas la voix, en lui donnant ce timbre de taureau si irritant, si insupportable, qu’on subit trop souvent dans les théâtres; il la laisse sortir tout simplement, et la conduit sans peine en lui donnant les plus douces inflexions. Sans doute l’énergie n’est pas sa qualité principale, mais les avantages qu’il possède ne sont pas de ceux qu’on rencontre aisément et auxquels il faille préférer la sonorité violente. M. Lefort vient d’être engagé pour trois ans, à de très belles conditions, par le directeur du Théâtre-Lyrique.’

It was true. At nearly forty years of age, the vocalist who had made his fame in drawing rooms and concert rooms, had been signed to make an operatic debut under the management of the Théâtre Lyrique. The vehicle chosen was the 3-act opera-ballet Le Neveu de Gulliver, the work of Henri Boisseaux and Théodore de Lajarte, with Lefort in the title-role. It opened on 22 October 1861. Lefort was by no means a failure. He was, as always, charming and sang delightfully. The Revue des deux mondes reported: ‘M Jules Lefort, un chanteur agréable de salon qui possède une voix de baryton aspirant au tenor par quelques notes flûtées avec lesquels il a tant soupiré la plaintive romance, s’est produit pour la première fois dans Le Neveu de Gulliver,ou il represente le héros de la légende. M Lefort a du goût, un physique convenable, et une certain habitude de la scène, qui lui ont merité un acceuil favourable. Tout donne lieu a éspèrer que M Jules Lefort se fera remarquer avec avantage dans une carrière aussi difficile que celle de chanteur dramatique’.

Elsewhere, one was gently positive ‘Le Neveu de Gulliver sous la figure sympathétique de Lefort a eu un veritable success ... dans le monde feminine surtout. C’est une pièce juste aimable qu’on écoute sans effort … Lefort a detaillé avec beaucoup de goût la charmante romance de Gulliver au 1er acte ‘Dans ses regards parlants’… ‘Son talent est toujours le même que les salons et les concerts applaudissent l’an dernier, un talent soigneux, parfois meme minutieux, il dit avec un goût exquis, qui lui est naturel, et un style excellent, ou on sent la méthode de son maitre del Sarte, c’est surtout un chanteur gracieux, le comédien est un peu naïf, mais avec l’intelligence de Lefort l’habitude de la scene viendra bientôt …’ The Revue contemporaine was less happy, referring to the ‘chanteur favori des salons et concerts qui, peut-etre, eût été sage de s’en contenter …’

To all evidence, the Revue contemporaine was right. Le Neveu de Gulliver was not a success, and Lefort went off to the London concert season where he gave ‘David chantant devant Saul’, the Joseph aria, the Voitures versées duet, Faure’s ‘Les Rameaux’ and Nadaud’s ‘Le Nid abandonné’, and the soon-to-be-famous Gounod serenade, ‘Quand tu chantes’, originally composed for Mme Lefébvure-Wély to words by Victor Hugo. He even performed Les Noces de Jeannette with Mme Miolan-Carvahlo in private theatricals at the home of Lady Molesworth.

He did, however, return to the Théâtre Lyrique, where he appeared as the King of Cocagne in Pauline Thys and Deforges’ Le Pays de Cocagne (24 May 1862, ‘Un soir j’errais’) for the two performances of its existence. And, in one more operatic outing, on 11 August 1862, when Berlioz’s Béatrice et Bénédict was created at Baden, Lefort played the supporting role of Claudio, alongside Montaubry and Mme Charton-Demeur. The operatic experience, however, was one that Lefort, sagely, acknowledged to have been a step out of his defined area, and after this he returned to the world where he was supreme, the world of the French romance and the French comic-operatic duet, for the decade of active career that remained to him, a career in which he kept up his triple presence in France, England, and the fashionable watering-places of Europe (where he was hailed as ‘un des grand barytons du temps’) whilst making periodic side trips to other European countries.

In 1866 he can be seen singing at the Royal Palace and other lofty venues in Berlin in the company of such as Lucca, Wachtel, Anna Regan and Désirée Artôt, giving the faithful ‘Cantique de Noel’, Membrée’s ‘Page, Ecuyer, Capitaine’, 'Ma barque', Panseron's 'Au revoir, Louise'  and duetting a duo espagnole by Yradier with Mme Artôt. 

Later the same year he is in Spain, praised for his ‘unique style and expressive voice’. He also made a long tour in a concert party organised by the American impresario Ullman, teamed with Carlotta Patti, the violinist Vieuxtemps, the cellist Alexandre Batta, and pianist Eugene Ketterer, which set out from Nantes in the autumn of 1866. His contribution to their concerts included Gounod’s ‘Le Vallon’, songs of Nadaud, and the Barbiere di Siviglia duet with Mlle Patti.

Vieuxtemps

In 1867, his London season included an appearance at Queen Victoria’s state concert on 18 June, at Buckingham Palace. Gounod was called upon again for the ‘Chanson de printemps’, the old Voitures versées duet came out again (with Louisa Pyne), the popular Alsatian duet from Offenbach’s Lischen et Fritzchen was given by Lefort and Amélie Deméric-Lablache, and he joined in the Cosi fan tutte quintet, ‘Di scrivermi ogni giorno’, which completed the programme.

The Lischen and Frizchen duet was henceforth advertised as ‘sung at Buckingham Palace by..’ and Lefort repeated it with other partners (Mme Vera-Lorini &c) during the season, along with ‘Le Vallon’ (‘with perfect taste’), Blumenthal’s ‘Le Chemin du paradis’, the unfailing ‘David chantant devant Saul’,  and his usual ration of duets with lady concert-givers – Roméo et Juliette with Mathilde Enequist, ‘Legères hirondelles’ with Eleanor Armstrong  -- before terminating his London season and heading off, again under the aegis of Mister Ullmann, for Vienna. He evidently pleased Ullmann, for, following another full London season (Alsatian duet with Mme Anichini, Berlioz’s or Benedict's‘Ange adoré’, Sainton-Dolby’s ‘Out on the rocks’, Hamlet duet with a certain Mme Rouhaud de Cournon etc), the impresario sent him out on a second long tour with Carlotta Patti in 1868 (‘Quand tu chantes’, Barbiere duet), alongside Vieuxtemps, comic singer Berthelier and the same Félix Godefroid with whom he had sung in London, nearly 20 years earlier.

By this time, Lefort had already established himself as a teacher and pundit on singing. His book L’Emission de la voix was published in 1868, and it would later be followed by his Méthode de Chant (1874), but he had still a number of years as an active singer to fulfil, and he was still collecting accolades such as ‘[he] stands alone as a singer of French songs’ or the more craintive ‘perhaps the best singer of French songs the English public are in the habit of meeting with’.  When he sang at Mons Paque’s concert in London, 24 May 1869, it was still thought worthwhile to dilate a little in the press on the talents of a man some twenty years a star of the British platform, and a presumably young or new journalist wrote nicely: ‘M Lefort is not so ecstatic as some of his contemporaries and refuses to tear a passion to tatters under any consideration. The same degree of forbearance is not always exercised by those who undertake to give French songs’. The nail was hit on the head. Mons Lefort may not have been, as the French press once exclaimed ‘the French delle Sedie’, but he had taste and judgement to resell, and, at nearly fifty years of age, his art meant that his voice was still in as good a shape as ever.

 

In March of 1871 he even made a first appearance at London’s august Philharmonic Society.

And his career as a drawing-room performer, too, was far from finished. If his fruitful association with Mme Gaveaux-Sabatier had been, now, some years of the past, there was a new partner in the offing. But, for the meanwhile, he paired with Mathilde Enequist in Les Noces de Jeannette, revived the old Tout est bien qui finit bien at one of Mme Puzzi’s now less glamorous concerts, whilst delivering Reichardt’s ‘J’aime, je suis aimé’, the ‘Mandolinata’, which was regarded as the province of Gardoni, Gounod’s ‘Ce que je suis sans toi’, or Panseron’s ‘Adieu [Au revoir], Louise’ to his untiring fans.

The partners of Jules Lefort’s final years as a performer were, in fact, two. One for the concert stage, another for the opéra de salon. In 1871, he teamed up with Helen Lemmens-Sherrington and her husband, for a major concert tour. Sherrington’s sister, Jose, tenor Nelson Varley and the violinist Alexandre Cornelis made up the party, which toured widely, with Lefort performing much the same role that he had alongside Carlotta Patti. The tour was notably successful, and the Lemmenses and Lefort worked together for several seasons (‘Pinsuti’s ‘I heard a voice’, ‘Adieu, Louise’, Lemmens’s ‘Mina’, Le petit chaperon rouge aria, ‘The Singing Lesson’, Le Maître de Chapelle duet, Lucia di Lammermoor duet, Toreador and L’Ombre ensembles). Part of their repertoire was a performance of the Rossini Stabat Mater in which Lefort took the bass role.

Marie Dumas

His dramatic partner of the era was Marie Dumas, a drawing-room performer of some fame with her ‘saynètes de salon’. The two of them came together to play a little piece which Dumas had written, under the title Une soirée perdue, and had set to music by Pauline Viardot Garcia. It was played at Lefort and Mme Conneau’s concert in London in June 1872, but the presence of French royalty meant that the social audience paid little heed to the piece. Lefort showed his staying power however, by going on to sing ‘Le Muletier’ in duet with Gardoni, and the Philemon and Baucis duet, ‘Du repos’, with Mme Conneau. Mlle Dumas staged a matinée of her own, later in the 1872 season, and the pair this time performed a piece entitled Le Rêve d’Yvon.

Lefort put in a season of 1873 as full-blooded as any he had ever played, and the British press insisted: ‘We have never heard this accomplished French tenor sing better’, ‘a couple of French romances given to complete perfection’ He gave Une soirée perdue and performances of Prince Poniatowski’s Au travers du mur during the London season, and then on 1 July came out in ‘his Farewell Concert’, ‘on which occasion he will sing the romance in which he has met with such success during his former visits to London, ‘J’aime je suis aimé’’. In fact, he sang ten of his favourite chansons. Mlle Dumas recited, and Jose and Grace Sherrington, Florence Lancia, Lizzie Purdy, Rizelli, Tito Mattei and Teresa Castellan took part, but it was Lefort who gathered the crits: ‘a rare treat… M Lefort is facile princeps among his countrymen in the same branch of art, and he holds that dignity by right of gifts and acquirements far beyond the common order’.

Of course, it wasn’t quite farewell. He appeared a few more times in London, including his last British operatic appearance, at St George’s Hall, in a repeat of Au travers du mur, before saying Farewell to the provinces, in one more round with the Sherringtons. At Bristol, the press noted: ‘the basso [was] unusually strong, M Lefort, veteran as he is, being as effective as ever’.

Jose Sherrington

Back in Paris, he gave a soirée at his headquarters in the Rue de Batignolles, playing La soirée perdue with Mlle Dumas, and duetting ‘Per valli, per boschi’ with Anna Lagrange, a few months later, he was still in town, performing at the concert of Therese Castellan and with old colleague Carlotta Patti …

 

But by 1875 the mentions of Jules Lefort in the music magazines are all:

‘L’ECOLE DE CHANT DE M JULES LEFORT. Méthode basée sur la prononciation. Les cours ont lieu deux, trois et six fois par semaine chaque séance de deux heures ne comprend que huit eleves. S’inscrire jusqu’a midi chez M Lefort, 29 Boulevard des Batignolles ..’

 

Jules Lefort became a very successful singing teacher, and his method was even picked up overseas. In London, a Miss Louisa Bellamy advertised vigorously that her singing coaching was ‘après la méthode de M Jules Lefort’. 

 

In 1891 he published another book on voice, Grammaire de la parole.

 

He died in Paris, at the age of 76.

 

Lefort, along with his fellow musician, Lefébure-Wély, also took a very active interest in the burgeoning world of photography. The pair were associated with Adrien Tournachon in the 1850s and Lefort is mentioned, in this connection, in a 1980 book on the photographer Nadar, Tournachon’s brother, where the obviously unmusical author describes the outstanding chamber singer of his generation as ‘un ténor médiocre’. It is thus that ‘history’ is made.

 

Lefort was married to Charlotte Jeanne Judlin, 7 October 1848. Their son, [Pierre Louis] Adrien Lefort (‘Robert Charvay’) (b Paris, 5 March 1856; d Paris, 30 December 1925), became a journalist (Echo de Paris) and writer of plays (notably Mademoiselle Josette, ma femme, L’enfant du miracle) and opérettes (Le fiancé de Thylda, Le Voyage avant la noce).

Charvay

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Lost Angel or, where did my Hungarian basso profondo go ...?

I've decided it's about time I put some of my Victorian Vocalist articles ('in progress' for a decade) out into the world. Somebody just might see them, and fill in any gaps. This one definitely lacks a beginning and an end, but it sure has a healthy middle!

ANGYALFI, Alexander [aka ENGELSMAN[N], Adolf] [b Hungary, c 1839]

On 29 June of the year of 1866, the short-lived Kingdom of Hannover fell to the armies of Prussia, and its blind King George, a grandson of Britain’s King George III and a cousin of Queen Victoria, fled with his family to Austria. But some of his household, it seems, were ahead of him in their exodus, and some of these made Britain their immediate destination. Among them were several members of his court opera, including husband and wife singing team Galiza and Arthur Szepessi, who billed themselves as ‘prima donna and chief baritone to the court of Hannover’, a soprano named Mdlle Ulrich ‘from the Hannoverian capital’, and the Austro-Hungarian singer Adolf Engelsman, otherwise known by the Hungarian version of his German name as Angyalfi, and claiming, similarly, to be ‘principal baritone to the court of Hannover’.

Quite when ‘Alexander Angyalfi’ arrived in Britain I am unsure, but he was still in Vienna in January 1865, listed in the Fremden-Blatt as ‘opernsänger von Prag’, then cited as newly engaged for the Pest Nemzeti Szinház in February. He did a 2-performance Gastspiel at the Breslau Sommertheater, played at Königsberg, Hamburg and in October 1865 he is making a debut at the Woltersdorff Theater in Berlin: ‘Seiner Stimme und Gesangbilding sind viel Rühmliches nachgesagt’. And, yes, Wilhelm Tell at Hannover. This from Breslau:

Well, he was provenly in London as early as 24 June 1866, for on that date, at Old Church, St Pancras, Adolf Engelsman Angyalfi (sic), son of the late Markus Angyalfi, musician, was married to a Prussian bride, Hedwig Frederika Valeska Bauermeister, the teenaged daughter of lawyer Alexander Carl Bauermeister and his wife Anna Alberta Schuhardt (x 3 May 1848 ‘Jerusalem [Kirche], Berlin Stadt, Brandenburg’). The newlyweds’ first child, Katharina, was born in Hammersmith the following year (6 August 1867), so it seems reasonable to suppose that it was there that the couple settled, but apparently – unless I am missing something -- Angyalfi made his first British appearance as a performer rather further north than the suburbs of London.

The first engagement that I can find for him, some two months after his marriage, is in Leeds. And not in any royal opera house, but in a common or garden music-hall. On 27 August 1866, Alexander appeared at Thornton’s Music Hall, Leeds, performing operatic excerpts in a team with the house’s current prima donna, the Warwickshire music-hall soprano, Marie Tressillian. He was greeted as ‘a splendid singer, and his duets and operatic selections with Miss Marie Tressillian are really beautiful and a great treat’. When Miss Tressillian’s stint at Thornton’s was done, she was replaced by another allegedly Prussian import, a lady named Carlitza Schenning, ‘late of the Italian opera Berlin, Brussels, Hannover and recently of Her Majesty’s Theatre, London’ (but, I note, more recently of Vance’s concerts, Hull and the Alexandra Music Hall, Manchester) and then by a Thornton’s regular, a certain Miss [Agnes] Milnes. 

Angyalfi ended up staying for more than two months on the bill at Thornton’s. From Leeds, he progressed to Edinburgh and the Southminster Music Hall and, there, he paired once again with Frln Schenning. ‘Each evening introduces certain operatic selections which, being rendered with much spirit and no small amount of musical skill, meet with deserved applause’. He continued from Edinburgh to the Royal Music Hall in Glasgow, and the local Era critic waxed lyrical: ‘With that laudable desire to introduce a superior class of entertainment to his patrons which Mr Brown has many times shown himself to be possessed of, he some few weeks ago engaged (no doubt at considerable expense) the services of a Signor Angyalfi, said to be principal baritone to the deposed King of Hannover, and Madame Schenning, the German soprano, and, we are glad to say, he has no reason to regret having taken such a step, as the attendance has been most satisfactory since the commencement of the engagement. Their entertainment is principally composed of short selections from Italian opera, Verdi’s Il Trovatore having been their choice for last week. Madame Schenning has a very fair soprano voice, full in tone and with considerable power, but really, without at all deprecating the lady’s ability, it must be acknowledged Signor Angyalfi’s splendid voice and vigorously dramatic style of singing are the strong features in the entertainment. With the addition of appropriate dresses and suitable scenic effects the entertainment is undoubtedly far superior to anything ever brought out at the Glasgow Music Hall.’

In March the two proceeded to Birmingham and Holder’s Music Hall: ‘A great treat has been given to the lovers of singing by the engagement of Signor Angyalfi, baritone, and Mlle Schenning, an accomplished soprano… in the selection from Il Trovatore [they] have produced such an impression that they have been re-engaged ... Signor Angyalfi and Mlle Schenning the favourite operatic vocalists are in high favour’.

By the time he got to the Alexandra Hall, Manchester, in February 1867, he had dropped the double-act, and was simply billed as 'the prince of baritones', alongside George Leybourne and Fanny Harrison 'serio comic'.

My first sighting of Herr Angyalfi (the provincial ‘Signor’ having been thankfully dropped) in London is also at a music hall, on February 11 1867, on the occasion of Messrs Loibl and Sonnenhammer’s Benefit at the London Pavilion. The only review I have seen makes no comment about his newness, so maybe he had indeed been seen in town before. But, for this occasion, he dropped the operatics, and gave instead Willoughby Weiss’s famous bass song ‘The Village Blacksmith’.

In March and April he appeared on the bill at the Marylebone Music Hall, and it was, apparently, here that he achieved the hitherto unheard-of feat of introducing German Lieder, in the original language, to an audience more used to comic singers, saucy soubrettes and the odd acrobat. It must have gone down all right, for after a first stint of more than a month he was briskly re-engaged. And all this time, the German registers have him listed as a member of the company of the Hoftheater, Hannover, the Centralhalle, Hamburg (md: Mr Wheeler), in Königsberg ..!

Then, on 7 May 1868, at the Store Street concert rooms, Alexander Angyalfi launched himself with a concert of his own. ‘Herr Alexander Angyalfi who, some time ago, did his best to civilise a Music Hall audience by singing to them the songs of Franz Schubert, gave a concert at the Store Street Rooms on Wednesday last. Against Herr Angyalfi’s voice and musical knowledge we having nothing to say, in fact he sings German songs in a sound and artistic way, but why he should have surrounded himself with such an array of eccentric vocalists and instrumentalists passes comprehension.’ Indeed, the bill he had put together was one containing barely a recognisable name, and the only person of pretension, the experienced Mme d’Anterny (English, née Miss Condell) ‘of the Paris Opera’ who delivered ‘Una voce poco fa’, sang it to her own accompaniment after hearing ‘the elephantine efforts’ of the official pianist.

By August, he was on the bill at the top music-hall in London, the Oxford, with the topm music-hall performers of the time: Charlotte Russell, the Miss Fitzhenry who would become Emily Soldene, Kate Santley, Félix Bury ... and The Era commented, when he gave 'Der Wanderer' at the Pavilion 'A bass singer, one Herr Angyalfi, has recently joined the London Pavilion company. We can pay this gentleman no higher compliment than to call him an artist, and sincerely acknowledge his courage and true feeling for music in introducing Franz Schubert's song 'The Wanderer' to the audience of an English Music Hall. Such a song is an oasis in the barren desert the London and Provincial Public are content to traverse from year's end to year's end. Herr Angyalfi has, peradventure, to learn that the exquisite compositions of a musical genius are thrown away on the frequenters of London Music Halls', going on to paint a picture of a superannuated floozie chattering to her Lothario through the song. 

But he still appeared in regular concert. On a very 'bass' bill at the Pimlico Rooms, while Joseph Lander gave 'O ruddier then the cherry' and 'The Star that lights the sailor home', Alexander 'of the Royal Opera, Hanover' gave Zaccaria's aria, 'D'Egitto la sui lida', from Nabucco and .. 'The Village Blacksmith'.

It was musical director August Manns who was largely responsible for Alexander Angyalfi’s change of direction. Away from the halls and onto the conventional concert platform. In October of 1868, the director of the Crystal Palace Saturday concerts hired the singer for his 24 October concert. It was a classy bill. Helen Lemmens-Sherrington sang ‘Robert, toi que j’aime’ and the waltz song from Roméo et Juliette (‘she has never sung more brilliantly’), Vernon Rigby gave ‘real expression’ to an Italian romanza by Benedict and a ballad by Frank Mori, but the palm – perhaps, just a little, because of the novelty element -- went to Herr Angyalfi ‘a fine bass voice with a sonorous lower E that any singer might envy. In the quaint song of Schumann upon Heinrich Heine, with its odd burden of the Marseillaise, Herr Angyalfi accompanied by Mr Beringer obtained an encore.’ The song was Schubert’s ‘Die beiden Grenadiere’, and the low E came in the bass singer’s veriest warhorse, Mozart’s ‘In diesen heil’gen Hallen’. He repeated 7 November ('einem tiefen Ungarsichen Bassist') alongside the deep Bavarian conralto of Anna Drasdil.

In the wake of this success, it was now no longer a case of music hall engagements but of classical concerts. He repeated the same two numbers at the Grand Turnverein concert (13 November) alongside the most important German artists in town -- Rudersdorff, Drasdil, Erna Steinhagen – he sang at Mme Collard’s concert at Westbourne Hall billed as ‘the Hungarian bass singer who lately achieved quite a success at the Crystal Palace concerts’, giving Meyerbeer’s ‘The Monk’ alongside Florence Lancia, Vernon Rigby and Signor Caravoglia. ‘The large compass and deep tone of Herr Angyalfi’s voice were heard to great advantage’. In the new year he went out on a concert party tour with Helen Lemmens-Sherrington, the new tenor Nelson Varley and Irish mezzo Jennie Meenan, which covered Britain in the course of three busy months, performing in almost nightly concerts, but also taking the solo roles in Messiahs and other oratorios with the various local provincial societies.

The group returned to town in May, and Angyalfi took part in the opening concert of the new Crystal Palace summer season alongside such veterans of the Palace platform as Mmes Sherrington, Carola and Drasdil and Vernon Rigby. He appeared in a number of the better West End concerts in June, and then, on 1 July 1869, he mounted his first own concert since that rather peculiar one of a year earlier. The difference between the two bills showed the different way in which he was now regarded. The venue this time was the Queen’s Rooms and there was barely an unknown name on the programme; Rose Hersee. Anna Drasdil, Luise Liebhart, the young and glamorous Louise Beverley, Vernon Rigby, Nelson Varley, and a selection of eminent instrumentalists. He sang the buffo aria 'Tell me, good friends' and 'was warmly applauded'.

Alexander Angyalfi was not, however, one to be satisfied with what a British vocalist would have regarded as a conventional career. From Messiahs and Judas Maccabaeuses (with Mme Lemmens), Schubert and Meyerbeer, ‘Der Wanderer’ or ‘The Monk’ in the vastness of the Crystal Palace or St George’s Hall, he turned to an engagement at the Polytechnic. At the Polytechnic, Professor Pepper gave scientific lectures with a popular flair, and he had recently scored the hit of his career with the illusion known as ‘Pepper’s Ghost’. ‘Pepper’s Ghost’ had since been ripped off by half a hundred imitators, but Pepper could always go one better. Now he produced an entertainment called The Mysteries of Udolpho, which not only boasted a display of multiple ghosts but used them to make effects that others could not reach. Music was inevitably a part of the Polytech’s programmes, and the music for Udolpho consisted of suitably ghostly songs between the bits of action, sung by … ‘the justly renowned basso profondo’, Herr Angyalfi.

In December Angyalfi took time off from Udolpho and headed north, to Middlesborough, with Madame Lemmens for a double header of The Messiah and what seems to have been his first Elijah, and then he headed back to town for his first genuine theatrical job since his arrival in Britain. The Mansell brothers had mounted Hervé’s scintillating opéra-bouffe Chilpéric at the Lyceum Theatre, and the show and the genre had become, the one and the other, the rage. The show had now been running for a couple of months, and the gentleman named Lapierre who played the burlesque druid of the piece had come to the end of his time. To replace him, in this very particular role, with its plumbing low notes and its parody of Norma’s Oroveso, someone extremely on-the-ball chose Alexander Angyalfi. The piece could not have suited him better nor he the piece. Angyalfi played Divitiacus the druid for the final two months of the show’s memorable run.

When Chilpéric was over, however, he returned to the world of the ‘entertainment’. This time, however, it was on a slightly larger scale. A Mr Morris was showing at the Holborn Amphitheatre something that he described as the American Ethescope ‘an illusory olio entertainment embracing almost every variety of optical illusion on a much larger, pleasing and effective scale than any heretofore witnessed…’. In other words out-Peppering Professor Pepper. Mr Morris’s subject was Faust and he illustrated his series of scenic effects and illusions with music from Gounod’s opera. Burlesque soprano Sara Nelson of the Nelson sisters was Marguerite, George Loder from the halls was Faust, and Herr Angyalfi sang Mephistopheles. Faust, followed by Lurline and something called Dreamland, lasted in the vastness of the Holborn Amphitheatre for a couple of months.

Then it was back to the concerts. If not quite the best concerts. Westbourne Hall with ‘Madame Dela from the Italian Opera, New York’, Store Street with Curt Schultz’s Grand Zither Concert (‘Much interest lies about Herr Angyalfi whose recent efforts to sing in English have been meritorious’). He sang Schubert’s ‘The Wanderer’ in German and then the Martha drinking song in English, and The Era nodded ‘The Herr’s English is now very good’.

It was the Chilpéric connection (not to forget the Oxford Music Hall) which got Alexander his next job. Emily Soldene, ex-Miss Fitzhenry, who had been connected with the Lyceum during the opéra-bouffe season, was now queen bee at the Philharmonic Music Hall, Islington, and she was staging a potted opéra-bouffe Chilpéric in twenty-five minutes as part of the Phil’s re-opening programme. She, of course, played the King. No-one in London understood opéra-bouffe better than Emily Soldene, and she knew what she was doing when she asked Alexander Angyalfi to play the part of the plotting Siegebert in her production. Unfortunately he didn’t get to play it for long. For the jealous theatre mangers threatened to have the Philharmonic crew hauled into court for illegally playing ‘a stage play’ in non-licensed premises, and producer Charles Morton quickly withdrew Chilpéric. For the moment.

Similar problems had hit the Alhambra, which had had its dancing licence withdrawn and been obliged to cancel its famous ballets. Frederick Strange had fallen back on promenade concerts, but he had found a wrinkle. As the Franco-Prussian war raged, he staged a scena of National songs. ‘La Marseillaise’, ‘Rule Britannia’ ‘Wacht am Rhein’. This presentation caused a patriotic sensation, and half the music-halls in town leaped to follow where Strange had led. Including Charles Morton and the Phil. But Morton gave ‘Wacht am Rhein’ to Charlotte Russell.

Others were wiser. The London Pavilion grabbed Angyalfi and … guess who? … the mysterious re-appearing Fräulein Schenning to be the hissed-and-howled-at Germans in their set of songs, and when the original ‘Wacht am Rhein’ team left the Alhambra, the big-voiced Hungarian bass was taken up to Leicester Square as their replacement. He was also cast in the Alhambra’s big end-of-the-year-1870 pantomime spectacular, a scenic creation called Superba in which he sang and mimed the part of the Mephistophelean villain of the affair. But, again, not for long. The theatre boys jumped on this one as well, and Superba had to be withdrawn.

Come Easter, Angyalfi moved on to the Cambridge music hall where he delivered the operatic bits and pieces he’d purveyed in the provinces, five years earlier, in the company of a durable music-hall prima donna by the name of ‘Ada Hermine’, and then, in June, he got another splendid opportunity. Alfie St Albyn, cast in the roaring lead tenor role of Falsacappa in the London version of Offenbach’s opera-bouffe Les Brigands was forced to drop out of the show by illness. Angyalfi replaced him. He replaced him for all of a fortnight. Then the American baritone who insisted he was ‘Signor Bordogni’, and who had also been a part of the Alhambra war songs, took over. Why? I’d love to know. Obviously it was vocally a weird bit of casting, a basso Falsacappa!, but Bordogni was not a tenor either. Why? For after that, Alexander Angyalfi is no more to be seen on English shores. Where did he go?

Arthur, Hilde and Kate

We know that, during his years in England he did return to Germany. His second child, a son, Arthur, was born in Breslau 23 October 1868. And another, Irene, 17 June 1872. I see him, again, guesting in Hamburg, and on 27 April Madame Gayette-Georgens of the ‘Angyalfi’schen Concertgesellschaft’ is singing in Berlin. His third child, Hildegarde, was born back in Hammersmith on 13 February 1870. Another, Rosa Berta, 31 January 1876, in Berlin. Did he go there now? It looks like it. In March 1873, I find him back at the Nemzeti Szinház singing the title-role in Der Fliegende Holländer to the Senta of Frau Balasz. The local press notes he has been ‘engaged since last September, but only now appears’. In August 1874, he is singing at Gleichenberg with Frln Marietta [von] Erdelyi, in 1875 he shows up in the Gross-Becskerek (‘Seit einigen Tagen weilt der vom Budapester National-Theater rühmlichst bekannte Opernsänger Herr Alexander Angyalfi in unserer Mitte. Abgesehen davon, daß ihm ein so guter Ruf begleitet …’), later in Königsberg, and in Göthenburg billed as ‘from Budapest’ (1877). I pick him up again in September, when the British press notes that ‘the world-renowned Schubert singer’ is in town for a short while (c/o Cramer). But I don’t see that Cramer got him any work.

Then something strange happens. The 11 July 1880 Era carries an advertisement for Mr A[lexander] Rudolf, the celebrated basso profundo from the Moore and Burgess Minstrels. He is finishing a three-year contract with the troupe in September and is advertising for engagements in tandem with a soprano calling herself ‘Miss Katy Amigo’ (Miss Amigo is ‘an English lady’) Who, in Olympus, is SHE? Anyway, it’s our man. The address confirms it. Moore and Burgess Minstrels, eh?, ‘Rudolf’s Black and White Harmonic Company’ musical director C W Horton advertises ‘the whole year round in and around London. I don’t know about that, but on Boxing Day the show opened at the Crystal Palace … It was a veritable Black and White Minstrel Show (blacked men, white girls) with Adolf as its star. He sang his arias from Die Zauberflöte and Das Nachtlager in Granada, the rest of the company of fifty joined the selections and also sang some of his compositions. I’m not sure for how long. But by April Madame Amigo and Mr Rudolf were advertising for work again. I see that they performed ‘a sentimental duet which was sung in good style’ in John H Stokes’s Benefit at the Queen’s in Poplar.

In May 1881 he turns up under his usual name again. He’s billed for the opera company at the Alexandra Palace with Blanche Cole as prima donna, and the brothers Furneaux and Aynsley Cook as the basso department. I see he played the part of Bide-the-Bent in Lucia di Lammermoor alongside Miss Cole, Frederick Packard and James Sauvage. But when Faust was done, John Furneaux Cook got to play Mephistopheles. In July 1881, I spot him at the Athenaeum, Goldhawk Road, with Katy, tenor Reed Larwill and locals, giving a Benefit Concert (for him). He sang ‘It is enough’, duetted Die Zauberflöte and trio-ed Das Nachtlager, while a Madame something sang his ‘Dearest Home’. And then, nothing. Except that his home at 36 Cathnor Road is up for auction, with all its furniture on 11 August.

1881 in London is, of course, census time and, if you can decipher what the IGI insists is Angqualfe, you can see Adolf-Alexander living at the said 36 Cathnor Road, off the Goldhawk Road, with his three children – Kathy, Arthur and Hilde – and his wife. Named Jenny, aged 28, and born in Pickhill, Yorkshire. ‘Katy Amigo’? We seem to have lost Hedwig. He’s still a ‘vocalist’.

Hedwig in 1890

I think little Hedwig (5ft 1in) is in Berlin, with her youngest child. Anyway, she lived on, for her descendants have posted a photo of her as an old lady, with the adult and married Irene. And the Hamburg shiplists show her, in 1912, aged 64, voyaging to New York from her home in Berlin. I wonder if she was the Frau Hedwig Angyalfi of Friedrichstrasse 123, ‘der erste weibliche Fremdenführer in Berlin’ (1888ssq)! Holidays for Ladies and families. Or the Witwe Hedwig Angyalfi in a flat in Sigismundstrasse in 1920. It is definitely she at 12 Lutherstrasse, ‘Zeitschrift ‘Ich dien’’ in 1916 and in 1915 at Friedenau. Not yet a Witwe. Or is she, as I strongly suspect, all of them. Which signifies that, barring fibs, our errant basso died somewhere between 1916 and 1920. Oh, I see she was already claiming 'widow' in 1912. 

1895 ad from a medical magazine

Alexander Angyalfi, by any other name, may have ended up in America. All the children did. Their details are enshrined in the IGI and on ancestry.com, with spouses and children, and photographs in a splendid tree by Susan Chilcutt, and the Sheet Music Warehouse’s catalogue even vouchsafes that Arthur (b Breslau 23 October 1868; d NYC 4 June 1937) tried his hand as a writer and a songwriter. In the 1910 census he was a ‘newspaper printer’. He also got mixed up in a rather shady affair, promoting from Berlin a directory of the high society of America. You had, of course, to pay to be in it.

Arthur

But Alexander? Well, the same IGI tells us that a Frank R Angyalfi was born in Hoboken 14 January 1882, of a father Alex R Angyalfi born in Hungary and aged 44, and an English mother … unreadable (but definitely not Hedwig, maybe Jenny?) … could it be him (Alex R is probably Alexr = Alexander but maybe Alexander Rudolf?). I would very much like to know what became of him. And more about what he did in those years when the British musical scene knew him not. He was a genuine character of the Victorian vocal scene in London, even if he stayed there for far too short a time.

Daughter Katharina

Daughter Hildegarde

PS: I am not the only one to have lost him. His name appears in the Fahndung nach Verbrechern und vermissten Personen at the Landesarchiv Baden-Württemburg.

And the poste restante of The Era in 1891 asks for "Herr Rudolph Angyalfi".

And when daughter Irene died, in 1943, her death certificate confirmed ... last heard of in America ... one lost Angel-man ..