An American A in altissimo: Evangeline Florence

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In the later nineteenth century, if the words 'an American soprano' appeared, in European music-press paragraphs, you knew what, not always (vide Durand, Escott et al), but most often, it meant. The Continental music press knew what it and they meant whe they wrote it, anyhow. A lass with a light, often extravagantly high, mobile, voice, but, all too often, little or nothing more. Scores of such young ladies passed through the schoolrooms of such well-publicised teacher-agents as Mathilde Marchesi, a decidedly reduced proportion of them got to the operatic stage, a few made some sort of career ... most, finally realising that height was not everything, went home disappointed and poorer, to give their G in alt to hometown concerts. But not all. The cream, as it does, did float to the top. From the days of the earliest, outstanding New York coloratura soprano, Laura Harris, onwards ...

Which brings us, decades on, to the tale of Evangeline Florence Houghton. A part of the cream. Who did not fall into the hands of the Italian and French 'star-makers', who did not sing Amina at Rimini, Lucia at Valetta, and then go back to Massachussetts ... but who made a fine, long career doing what she, as her excellent (American) teacher had done, did so well. A in alt in her baggage. On the concert platform. 

Here's my extract of her grand career ...

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FLORENCE, Evangeline [HOUGHTON, Florence [Ev]angeline] (b Cambridge, Mass 12 December 1867; d Kensington, London 1 November 1928)

Stratospheric American soprano who made her career and life in Britain.

‘Miss Florence’ was born in Massachusetts. Her birth was registered in Cambridge, she always said she was born in Cambridge, yet the family seems to have lived in Charlestown, where they can be seen in the 1870 census. Father Henry, from West Gardiner, Maine, working as a cooper, mother Julia (née Rowell, m 11 December 1858) and their surviving children Ella, Frank, Emma, Angeline, and twins, Albert and Alfred. Julia would manage one last child before her death, aged 30, on 17 November 1871.

‘Evangeline’, of course, being listed in the 1870 census, obviously wasn’t born in 1873 or 1874, as most reference books tell us. She was born in 1867, and we don’t know what her forenames officially were, as she was registered just as a ‘female child’. But she’s Angeline in the 1870 census, and Florence in 1880. By 1880, Henry is listed as a pork-cutter and he has a second wife, Dora R née Jones (m 13 August 1873) …

And the music? Well, we are told in a biographical note that (a) she studied with the fine Boston soprano, Edna Hall, and that (b) she made a debut as Henrietta in Martha at the age of 18, when ‘she created a sensation by her singing of ‘The Last Rose of Summer’ an octave higher than originally written’. Well, you would think that something as vulgarly catchpenny as that would surely have made the press, but I haven’t yet found it. Of course, ‘aged 18’ could be anywhere between 1886 and 1892. We are also told that she was ‘a Worcester girl’ and sang in the local church. I can’t find that either. But I do spot her, at Wellesley College (14 July 1891), Miss Evangeline Houghton ‘of Worcester, singing’ … oh no! Alabieff’s ‘Nightingale’ already, Bachmann’s ‘Everywhere’, and Ambroise Thomas’s … what?

Imgene Busk from Baltimore had been an earlier dancer on the leger-lines

Parentheses. At this stage, I called for help. My Californian friend, Betsy, waded through the Boston and Worcester press archives (not available to foreigners) and she not only came up with all the answers, but also nailed the odd inaccuracy.

(1) The Boston Herald of 18 March 1888 says that ‘La Sonnambula is to be given at Music Hall on 27th under the direction of Charles R Adams with Rose Stewart, Evangeline Houghton, Carita Benedict, Charles R Adams, Fred Marston, Harry Young, Dr George R Clark.’ (As Lisa, I imagine)

Then, (2) a brief clip in the Boston Journal of 15 March 1889 tells us that Martha was presented in Odd Fellows' Hall at Winter Hill, Somerville, last evening, complimentary to Evangeline Houghton. She was Lady Harriet ‘and was well supported.’ Hm. Scarcely a ‘debut’. And, not unexpectedly, twenty-one, not eighteen.

(3) The Boston Herald, 16 November 1890, said she was to take part in the 12th annual festival of the South Eastern Massachusetts Musical Association, directed by Carl Zerrahn. The sopranos also included Clementine de Vere.

(4) Finally, the Worcester Daily Spy of 22 November 1890, has an ad for ‘Miss Evangeline Houghton, Assisted by Her Three Brothers, Vocalists, and Orchestra of Six Pieces’ at Piedmont Church, Tuesday, November 23. Reserved Seats 50c. Admission 25c.’ Her brothers! Frank the farmer? Albert the plumber? Charley the Insurance Man? Excellent.

Evangeline, as we obviously have to call her, made her London concert debut on 11 May 1892, at a concert given by Marguerite Hall, the singing daughter of Edna. Apparently there had been some advance publicity for her high notes, for the press reacted, without total enthusiasm: ‘the reports concerning the phenomenal compass of her voice proved to be in no way exaggerated. Whether this young lady’s highest notes are absolutely pleasant to listen to is another matter. For our own part, we prefer her singing when she remains within the limits of reasonable compass. All the rest savours too much of claptrap. Her voce is very pleasant in quality and she possesses great ease of execution’. ‘In the cadenza of Alabieff’s Nightingale Song, she proved that she possessed a voice of extreme compass. Otherwise there is nothing remarkable about her voice’.

So, was she to be yet another American soprano, with more height than quality, who would find that, for Europe, top Z above Q, alone, wasn’t enough? No. Because Miss Florence had other attributes. To add to the lightweight vocal gymnastics, she had a sweet and appealing tone of voice and pleasing performance talents, and it was these, rather than her A in altissimo, that was to bring her more than a decade of engagements and success on the world’s concert platforms.

She followed up her ‘debut’ swiftly, with appearance in a number of second-tier London concerts, and then headed to the provinces. Here, there was no pudeur in the advertising: Manchester and Glasgow billed her as ‘the sensational American soprano’, Chester more sagely as ‘the new high soprano’, and, somewhere along the lines, someone advertised her as ‘the Eiffel soprano’ (not, pace Sterling Mackinlay, ‘the Eiffel Tower soprano’, and anyway the embarrasing tag only lasted one campaign). Her ‘birdlike melodies were much enjoyed’. In September she sang at the Eisteddfod.

She was now taking lessons from Georg Henschel, so it was no surprise to see her featured at his London Symphony Concerts, and in other Henschel affairs, for a number of years, but there was an even greater opportunity coming. On 7 December 1892, she appeared, for what I think was the first time, at the Boosey Ballad Concerts. She would sing at many, many more of these. Even if they were no longer in their heyday, the Boosey programmes were still a feature of the London concert scene: and, by the turn of the century, Miss Florence would be the soprano queen of the series. Mind you, like others, she did not stick to what could, even by a stretch of the imagination, be called ‘ballads’. I see her singing Eckert’s frilly ‘Echo Song’ and David’s extravagant Perle du Brésil aria ‘La Chanson de Mysoli’. Even Henschel’s successful new ‘Spring’ (‘charming interpretation’) was scarcely a ballad. But they would come.

‘[She] appeared in the first production of Parry's Job, given by the Highbury Society’ says the biggest press biog. No, wrong again. Job had been premiered at the Gloucester Festival, the Highbury Philharmonic Society merely gave it a London suburban showing, on 16 January 1893. The little part of the shepherd had been cast with a boy soprano, but the laddie fell sick. So, Evangeline sight-read his music.

She sang at the Boosey concerts, at the Albert Hall, at Lane’s Manchester concerts (‘the Eiffel note soprano’) with the most bat-squeaky bit of her repertoire, with the Liverpool Philharmonic Society, and at Chester in Bridge’s cantata, Rudel. She sang the Choral Symphony for Henschel, and at his Wagner concert at St James’s Hall (14 March 1893). I’m not sure if this is the concert where the biog asserts that she sang Elsa’s Dream, but anyhow she didn’t. She sang a piece of the Elsa/Ortrud duet with Marie Brema. Not bad, already. ‘… a voice of wonderful sweetness and purity as well as great range and power’ wrote one scribe after another concert. Power? Really?

On 1 July 1893 she sang on Llandudno pier, and a few days later sailed for America. But it was only an out-of-season visit. She was soon back in Britain giving the north her ‘Russian Nightingale’ with the A in alt, ‘Spring’, Handel’s Alessandro aria and a song, ‘Butterflies’, by the pianist-songwriter Felix Corbett. She would revisit Middlesborough for Corbett annually, and promoted several of his songs. (‘Her style is exquisite and her voice of great clearness and purity’).

She sang with the Scottish Orchestra Company under Henschel, at a number of northern ‘ballad concerts’ (‘Spring’, the Viardot-Chopin ‘Aime-moi’, Couplets de Mysoli), and was back in town for the Boosey concerts, and a host of other Queen’s Hall concerts, in the early months of 1894. She also put in an appearance at the Crystal Palace (‘Hirt am Felsen’, Mireille waltz ‘Non muta il core in me’), before returning north to sing, less conventionally, Goring Thomas’s The Sun Worshippers and Walthew’s The Pied Piper of Hamelin with Ben Davies at Sunderland, The Spectre Bride at Middlesborough and give ‘Butterflies’, ‘Spring’ the Mireille or the Perle du Brésil couplets, from Cardiff to Llandudno Pier.

In September, she took a part in the Three Choirs Festival at Hereford, singing the first performance of Bridge’s The Cradle of Christ with Charles Santley (too low...'), the high-set role of the Angel in the Christmas Oratorio, and joining Anna Williams and Edward Lloyd in the Lobgesang.

Then she popped off to America again. With a purpose. On 17 October 1894, Miss Houghton married America-based Scotsman Alexander Crear, ‘West Africa merchant’, in Somerville.

Back in Britain, in November, she took up the concert rounds again. If the Boosey concerts and the annual series of northern concerts staged by Percy Harrison made up, as they would for much of her career, the bases of her season, there was some variety in performances such as Felix Mottl’s Wagnerian concert, in which she joined Minna Fischer and Agnes Janson as a Rhinemaiden, alongside Marie Brema’s Brünnhilde. At the concerts, she featured Madame Gassier’s famous Venzano Waltz, Solveig’s Song, Cowen’s ‘Love lies asleep in the Rose’, the Dinorah Shadow Song, and, still and always, her Mireille and Perle du Brésil as well as the hardy ‘Butterflies’. A new song, ‘The Nightingale’s Courtship’, fashioned for her by Corbett didn’t catch on. 

Hull gasped ‘the gifted lady’s voice is of a range rarely heard in a concert room’, ‘exceptional compass and light and flexible in quality’ nodded Birmingham when she gave Goring Thomas’s The Swan and the Skylark.

In 1895, Evangeline made a scheduled 30-concert trip to Australia, under the management of C J 

Stevens and P A Howells of Adelaide, in a party with contralto Lily Moody and pianist Mark Hambourg. They opened at Adelaide, 8 August, and over the following weeks progressed to Melbourne and Sydney to an excellent reception. ‘Miss Evangeline Florence's voice is wonderfully beautiful, a perfectly-trained, pure soprano’. Evangeline, of course, trotted out her Mireille, her Perle du Brésil,‘Aime-moi’, ‘Butterflies’, the Alessandro aria, Eckert’s Swiss Echo Song, The Russian Nightingale, Solveig’s Song, the Shadow Song and the other staple items of her repertoire, but also gave songs by Chaminade, Schumann, Rubinstein, Anna Kinnison’s ‘Love Song of the Mavis’, Henschel’s setting of ‘I Once had a Little Doll, Dear’ and, contrastingly, the Mad Scene from Thomas’s Hamlet. The tour was a decided success, before, on 5 October, the team returned to London.

Back in London, it was into the Boosey concerts and the Harrison concerts – Cowen’s ‘The Swallows’, Delibes’s ‘Les Filles de Cadix’, Bishop’s florid ‘Lo, here the Gentle Lark’, an ancient Pastorella (‘Meco verrai su quella’ ‘arranged by A L’) from the 1744 opera, Rosalinda, by Francesco Maria Veracini, which would become a frequently-sung regular -- Henschel’s London Symphony concerts (Choral Symphony), a visit with Hambourg to the Crystal Palace …

In September, she featured in the Queen’s Hall Promenade Concerts with the most familiar of her standard coloratura arias and songs, and she made a venture into oratorio with The Golden Legend at Crystal Palace and The Creation at the Queen’s Hall. She ‘sang very sweetly’ but was soon back on the concert platform with ‘The Swallows’, her Veracini, and a new Corbett ballad, ‘Blossoms’.

However, another new piece was to have a much longer life than the not unsuccessful ‘Blossoms’. At the Monday Pops of 14 December 1896, a new song cycle for four voices was given its first public performance. Liza Lehmann’s Omar Khayyam cycle In a Persian Garden had been performed in private, with Albani in the soprano role; for the Pops, it was Evangeline who was teamed with Marian MacKenzie, Ben Davies and Thomas Meux. The men had the gems of the set, but the whole cycle was a great success. Davies and she were also the soloists for another novelty, Erskine Allon’s The Oak of Geismar, mounted the following month by the Highbury Philharmonic Society, but not destined for a future.

The Boosey concerts continued, with their quota of songs new(ish) – Stanford’s ‘The Calico Dress’, Burns’s ‘Thou hast left me ever, Jamie’, German’s ‘Who’ll buy my lavender’ -- and old – ‘Who is Sylvia’, ‘The Swallows’, the Veracini – and, at the same time, she gave Handel’s ‘Caro selve’ at the Pops, the Brahms Requiem at Henschel’s concerts … and then she was off again. Not on a concert tour this time, but for ‘a year in the Black Forest’ ‘studying in France and Germany’.

Well, it wasn’t a year. More like six months; from April to September. And I have not found any indication of with whom she is supposed to have studied in Europe. Suffice it that, in October 1897, she was back, engaged for a small appearance behind Albani and Brema at the Birmingham Festival (King Arthur), and for another round of Harrison concerts.

On 4 February 1898, Evangeline Florence mounted a concert of her own at St James’s Hall. It was not a concert of the old stuffed-full-o’-stars Benefit type, but a recital, in which she was joined by Mark Hambourg. Neither was it a tiresome salvo of As in alt. She sang Mozart, Brahms, ‘Mein Herz ich will dich Fragen’, ‘Caro selve’, ‘Fairest Isle’ (King Arthur), ‘Orpheus with his lute’, ‘Fleur des alpes’, Godard’s ‘Reveillez-vous’. And then it was back to the Harrison circuit, until the Queen’s Hall called again. On 26 February she sang in the London showing of Michele Esposito’s Irish cantata Deirdre.

During the year she sang her usual round of Boosey concerts – with material from the inexhaustible Perle du Brésil to Liza Lehmann’s ‘You and I’ and ‘The Minuet’. She had, apparently, now become part of the Lehmann music-factory: and was taking lessons from Mrs Amelia Lehmann. She sang at the opening of London’s latest concert room, the Salle Erard, ‘sweetly warbled’ Cowen’s music at his concert, visited Brighton for Wilhelm Kuhe, trekked to Ireland for a little more oratorio, and north for more Harrison concerts. Dundee sighed ‘her voice retains its wonderful flute-like clearness and purity of tone and [her] range is as marvellous as ever… [she] sang with even more charm of manner and grace and expressiveness of style than when we last heard her’. 

 

In late 1898 and the early part of 1899, she gave a series of concerts on the Continent, under the management of Alexander Rosé, with pianist Carrie Townshend (Vienna, Graz, Lemberg, Cracow, Brünn, Budapest), visited Paris to sing at Jean ten Havé’s concert (21 April Handel, Henschel and … Veracini) and an Orphanage concert, with the Clara Butts (2 May) and many Baroness patronesses, and in September returned to Worcester, Mass, to sing The Creation in the city’s 42nd Music Festival. In between times, Boosey and Harrison continued to call upon her frequently and she delivered her Venzano, her Veracini, her Eckert, her Viardot ‘without her exceptionally high notes’ as well as such ditties as Alicia Adelaide Needham’s ‘The Fairy’s Lullaby’ and ‘Little Orphant Annie’, to audiences round the country. Maybe, in fact, the exceptionally high notes were gone because the newest American high Q above Z exponent – Miss Ellen Beach Yaw – was in town, purveying her Q sharp.

However, the most interesting engagement of her professional year of 1899 was that for the North Staffordshire Musical Festival in Hanley. Evangeline, Herbert Grover and Andrew Black gave Paradise and the Peri, and, on 26 October, premiered Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s The Death of Minnehaha, the second leg of his Hiawatha trilogy. Although nowhere near as successful as the first, it nevertheless won repeat performances, and Evangeline was called upon to repeat her ‘creation’.

Through 1900, she interleaved the usual concert engagements with performances of The Light of the World, Mackenzie’s The Dream of Jubal, The Creation and Hiawatha and a second engagement at the Birmingham Festival behind Albani, Esther Palliser and Marie Brema. Her share of the Festival’s soprano work included Parry’s De Profundis, Byrd’s Mass and the Brahms Requiem with David Bispham. Albani sang Hiawatha. Following the Festival, she took part in the Farewell Tour of the great tenor, Edward Lloyd. She sang the ‘Voce di primavera’ of Strauss, Mrs Needham’s ditties, the inepuisable Venzano waltz, and Leicester voted ‘no more beautiful soprano ever charmed the ears of a Leicester audience’.

Ellen Beach Yaw

The high notes had, incidentally, Miss Yaw or no Miss Yaw, not disappeared wholly from Evangeline’s repertoire. She revived the brilliant Arditi Waltz, ‘L’Ardita’ (‘with much lightness and grace’) at the Boosey concerts, interpolated an F in alt into ‘Lo, Here the Gentle Lark’, ended her Mireille on an F sharp in alt ... and when, in 1902, she went with Antoinette Sterling on that lady’s Farewell tour, she brought out La Perle du Brésil, yet again.

Her work and travel-loads had now, however, largely decreased. She gave the odd Messiah and even an Elijah, she turned out in concert. or in a work such as Cowen’s The Sleeping Beauty or Hiawatha, and she made up a party presenting Lane Wilson’s song cycle Flora’s Holiday, and then his less successful Dorothy’s Wedding Day. And she had time out with peritonitis.

But she was still visible, although the notices were not quite what they had been. When she sang at a Halle concert, giving ‘Zeffiretti lusinghieri’ and an aria from Graun’s Passionmusik, the Manchester critic wrote: ‘she has a voice of no great volume and of a somewhat colourless character, but the possession of a very considerable range, especially upwards, and a facile vocalisation enable her to give prettily effective rendering …’

She toured with old colleague, contralto Ada Crossley – but now it was Ada who was in the large print while Evangeline did her ‘dainty vocalising’ behind – and again with Carmen Hill, Lloyd Chandos and Ivor Foster. She sang at the Savoy Theatre – offstage – the soprano music in Marie Brema’s inventive staging of L’Allegro, she turned out for the Lehmanns, and at Kensington Town Hall singing the ballad, ‘The Slumber Tree’, composed by a young man named Ivor Novello …

In 1911 she topped the less than exciting bill for the 45th season of the Boosey Ballad Concerts, now at the Albert Hall.

By now, Evangeline Florence was more likely to be heard on record or radio than she was in the flesh, but she continued to appear in pieces such as dancer Ruby Ginner’s Love and the Dryad and Harrison Frewin’s Pan and the Woodnymph (1914), and, in 1916, she was announced to appear … in opera. Mr Thomas Harrison Frewin’s Opera Company was not bulging with known names, but it did not lack ambition. The repertoire included La Juive, Tannhäuser, La Traviata … and Evangeline Florence in Faust and Rigoletto.

Madame Florence had been, for some time, teaching, and the occasional pupil from her lists made the concert reports, while she herself continued to be heard by the medium of the radio. 

Her husband died in 1921, and she in 1928, but she was still to be heard on the airwaves. And, to this day, on you-tube, there are her rusty recordings of ‘Lo, here the gentle lark’ and the Couplets de Mysoli , which seems to exist solely for their high notes. But I think, for quite a while there, she was more than just a something-or-other-in-alt.

Nota bene: full biographies of Laura Harris, Marie-Louise Durand and Lucy Escott, America's greatest sopranos of the nineteeth century, are included in my book, Victorian Vocalists (2017). Miss Busk didn't make the cut, evidently, but I have her article in my files, should anyone be interested.

The Prima donna of San Francisco

FABBRI, Ines or Inez [aka FABBRI-MULDER and FABBRI-MüLLER] [SCHMID[T], Agnes] (b Vienna 26 January ?1831; d San Francisco 30 August 1909)

‘Madame Fabbri’ has been much reference-booked and writ-around. Often, more than a little incorrectly. The details of her early life and career have been comically telescoped, years have been subtracted, at various times, from her life and work, and several prestigious works of reference insist that she died in 1873, before, in fact, much of her career was done. Some – such as Kutsch and Riemens – have sorted the most of the nonsense from the truth but, thanks to various articles in the press, some of the nonsense still survives, enshrined mid the fictions of the world wide web.

Agnes Schimdt

So let’s start at the beginning. The most lavish 1860s article, full of real-sounding family detail about a father, a velvet-maker, a big family including a deaf-mute brother, lack of money and the consequent need for Agnes to leave school and go on the stage, sounds convincing, if conventional, enough. But it says she was born in 1845! That is, self-evidently, real nonsense, but her birth year is (as far as I know) documentarily unproven: we only know that she ‘celebrated’ her 72nd birthday in 1904, she died in 1909 at the given age of eighty, and, over the years, her birthdate was given at a whole range of dates, from which the wiser part of the world seems to have settled on 1831. Maybe. But round about then anyhow.

The article tells us she sang first in church choirs, from where she was talent-spotted by a theatre manager and, two weeks later, made her debut at Kassa/Kaschau/Kosice as Lucrezia Borgia in 1847. Aged 16? A quick learner! Yes, there she is – at least, I presume it is she -- at the Königlisches Städtischestheater, Kassa: ‘Agnes Schmid’, billed for ‘zweite Sopranoparthieen’, behind Dlle Passera and Madame Strampfer (‘first coloratura and high soprano parts’). Lucrezia is a ‘supporting’ part?

I notice a Dlle Rosa Schmidt listed as a chorus singer. Sister?

Well, I’m not entirely sure of the truth of the tale, all the same. Who, then, is the Fräulein Agnes Schmidt playing a Gastspiel in the comedy Ich bleibe ledig with the company at the Berlin Königstadt-Theater in 1846-7? The same Agnes of a different one. There are heaps of Demoiselle Schmidts around in the German theatre of those years, even if not many soprano Agneses. In Berlin. In 1846.  So… is she, then, the ‘Frln Schmidt, Schülerin der Frau von Hasselt-Barth’ singing at Pest in early 1847…? Presumably she’s not the young Anna Schmidt at the Hofburgtheater in 1847, or the fine contralto Frl Schmidt at Dresden, or the one who is prima donna at Graz … yes, the Pest trail looks good to me … so, before the alleged Lucrezia bit?

The i story, which, of course, just may be true (I guess, maybe, Mrs Strampfer could have had a sudden sickie?), but in which I, personally, have little faith, is muddied further by a whole series of biographical notes (including Wikipedia) which insist that, in that opera, on that occasion, she played the role of Abigail. In Lucrezia Borgia? Sorry, there is no such part. There is only one female (plus one travesty) part in the entire opera! Oh! copiers!

Agnes appears to have stayed in various parts of then-Hungary for some time – the Berliner Musikzeitung would insist, a decade on, that she had spent her first nine years at Olmütz -- but it is 1854 before I provenly pick up her traces. She is at the Pest Stadt-Theater in Ofen, playing Gabriele in Das Nachtlager in Granada (3 January) and taking a Benefit as Agathe in Der Freischütz (24 February), in parallel to an engagement at the local Deutsches-Theater (9 and 11 February) singing Adalgisa to the Norma of … Hasselt-Barth. Plus, at either or both venues, more Das Nachtlager, First Lady to the Queen of Agnes Büry in Der Zauberflöte, Zerlina to the Donna Anna of Hasselt-Barth (2, 5 March), Camilla in Zampa (21 March) ... However, when Lucrezia Borgia was played, she had a night off, while various other ladies, including no less a star than Rosza Csillag, took the role. Hmm.

In February 1855, when she appears in a concert given by pianist Herr Schulhoff, in Berlin, singing ‘O luce di quest’ anima’ she is tagged as ‘a member of the company at Kroll’s Theater’. Yes. She does did indeed sing there a few times (Sonnambula) before it burned down. In April, she gave a couple of performances at Glogau and in May, she turns up playing a Gastspiel at the Hoftheater in Dresden (La Fille du régiment, Martha) where she is billed, as we know to be true, as being ‘from the Deutsches Nationaltheater, Pesth’. In June, she can be spotted singing Mathilde in an act of William Tell, with Radwasser and Raberg, at Berlin’s Friedrich Wilhelmstädtisches Theater, in October she appeared at Kracow …

In March 1856, I see her being sadly farewelled from the theatre at Kassa (has she really been singing there for nine years?) and heading for Königsberg (‘dramatische Gesangsparthien’). In November, I spot her singing Kücken melodies in concert in Berlin, in April 1857, she is giving her Norma and her Lucia at Olmütz, to ‘übervolle Häuser’. After which we are told she continued to Potsdam, and then to Hamburg Stadttheater (Les Huguenots), and there Frln Agnes Schmidt would give her last performances before her transformation, after, apparently, a decade of career, into ‘Madame Fabbri’.

And here begins part two of the story. Enter Richard Mulder (b Amsterdam 31 December 1822; d 654 Folsom Street, San Francisco 21 December 1874), pianist, composer and striving impresario. Our article tells us that he was wandering South America, mourning his dead wife, when the Emperor asked him to put together a troupe for his new Opera House. Just like that. Well, apparently Emperors in South America did that sort of thing. So, Mulder went to Hamburg, saw Miss Schmidt, bought her out of her contract, turned her into Inez Fabbri (an Italian approximation of Aggie or Nellie Smith), brought her to South America, married her ….

Not. Well, at least one fact is a lie, which gives you shaky faith in the others. Mulder wasn’t mourning any dead wife. Madame Cécile Lia Pauline Mulder Duport of the Paris Opéra was well and truly alive, back in France, teaching singing at 29a rue de la Fontaine-Molière. She was alive when her husband ‘married’ (6 November 1858) Agnes-Inez, and she was still alive, at my last count, in 1866 when her father, the playwright Nicolas Paul Duport (1798-1866), died.

Anyway, Agnes-Inez and Mr Mulder and the rest of his company -- the experienced Anna Widemann (b 1815; d Paris 24 February 1864) (née Marie Anna Jung, ex-of the Paris Opéra, New Orleans and a sometime collaborator of Mme Mulder I), the tenor Sesto Benedetti, another experienced ‘American’ and husband of soprano Teresa Truffi, the bass Lorenzo Domenech and Mlle Léonie Bardon from the Paris Conservatoire (who became Mme Domenech in 1862), and the baritone Francolini – all arrived in Chile, on the clipper Eugénie, in May 1858.

The Chilean, Brazilian, Peruvian and Argentinian Archives will doubtless reveal what they played there (they were scheduled to open with Nabucco ... maybe this is where she played Abigail?) but, apparently, whatever the facts, the company won a fine success and in the South of America Agnes-Inez found her fortune  She was hugely admired, in the Latin lands, both as a dramatic vocalist and as a talented actress; there, she was compared, as a star, to Anna Lagrange and Emmy LaGrua, and thus, in 1860, Max Maretzek whisked her north, hired as a prima donna for a season in New York.

Desdemona

‘Madame Fabbri’ (billed thus) made her first appearance in New York at the Winter Gardens in April, as La Traviata, with Achille Errani and Achille Ardavani in the other principal roles, and she scored a veritable hit -- ‘one of the most powerful voices we have recently heard from any soprano ... very expressive, and she understands what that stage requires better than most professional singers’, ‘immense sonority in the upper register’ -- and raves for her acting of the final act and its death scene. The New York Times labelled her ‘the best Violetta we have had in this city’. She followed up with Ernani, with the German tenor Stigelli, to even more remarkable notices: ‘better than it has been done in New York for years’, ‘Her full powerful passionate voice, her fine dramatic intensity of acting and singing found full scope’, ‘She electrified the audience repeatedly…’, although one writer commented, ungallantly, ‘she has a wonderful voice and is the greatest actress we have had in opera. The drawback on her is that she is ugly’.

Recha in La Juive

The season progressed with Fabbri in Stradella, La Juive opposite Stigelli, and Nabucco, varied by some Sonnambula from Madame Gassier or Trovatore from Frezzolini, before the company moved on to Philadelphia, to the strains of ‘The Fabbri Waltz’, composed by the utilitarian Charles Fradel.

Soon, however, she was back in New York, this time at the Academy of Music with Errani, Ferri, Susini, Pauline Colson and ‘la petite Patti’. A lot of silly operatic posturings were the order of the day, as singers flitted from one company to another, but Ines/Inez managed to get in some performances of Lucrezia Borgia, La Juive, Nabucco, Don Giovanni, Robert le diable (with Stigelli and Formes) etc. Part of the silliness of the situation was that the nominal managers were, very often, not the veritable owners of the company, and when a November season at the Academy of Music by the ‘Formes-Fabbri company’– in which she had played Martha, Agathe, Valentine, Marie, Elvira in Masaniello and Rachel to the Eudoxie of Anna Bishop -- collapsed, it was revealed that it was the prima donna who was paying the bills.

She set out West on a concert tour, then North into Canada, ‘billed as ‘the great lyric tragedienne’ and accompanied by tenor Charles Adams and a ‘Mlle An[i]na Rosetti’, with programmes including costumed operatic excerpts, and with Mulder supplying musical direction and piano solos. The tour continued on to Puerto Rico and Surinam before the Americas adventure came to an end, and the couple headed back to Europe.

Elvira in Ernani

Inez-Agnes’s first engagement seems to have been a series of concerts for the Felix Meritis Society in Amsterdam (28 November 1862), the Hague and Utrecht before – we are told -- she moved on to an array of other cities. I have confirmedly spotted her, at the end of 1862, singing Les Huguenots, Lucrezia Borgia and Don Giovanni (Donna Anna) in Berlin ‘als Gast’, then at Posen in February 1863, repeating her Lucrezia Borgia, Ernani, Trovatore and Norma. The American press reported that she was singing at Florence, but I can’t confirm that. At Easter 1863, she was engaged for a year, ‘als Gast’, at the Vienna Hofoper, at an advertised 12,000 florin fee. During her stay in Vienna she sang in Trovatore, La Juive, Les Huguenots, Don Giovanni, Robert le Diable, Le Prophète, Der Freischütz and, with particular éclat, Oberon, alongside such artists as Wachtel, Rokitansky and Peschka-Leutner.

Oberon

During this time, she also made guest appearances at Frankfurt (Linda di Chamounix, Norma, Huguenots, Ernani, Don Giovanni), and at Prague, spent a month at Mainz, at Homburg and doubtless at other theatres which I have not unearthed. She’s supposed to have gone to Riga at some stage.

Selika in Frankfurt

From Vienna, she moved to Frankfurt and, in the years to come, I see her guesting at Darmstadt, Dessau, Cassel, Rotterdam et al, with roles such as Selika in L’Africaine, Elisabeth in Tannhäuser and Frau Fluth in The Merry Wives of Windsor varying her standard repertoire.

In 1871, she was engaged for the Italian opera at London’s Covent Garden, and she made her first appearance there, 9 May, singing Donna Anna to the Don of Cotogni, the Elvira of Miolan-Carvalho and the Zerlina of Adelina Patti. The press cooed ‘Like other Donna Annas, Madame Fabbri has left the prime of her powers behind her, but she sings like an artist and with much dramatic vigour’ and ‘She has good stage presence, evident experience as an actress and declaims with considerable dramatic power. The best part of the voice is the middle … excessive tremolo …’. Some snooted ‘a not very impressive first performance’.

Her second role, was however, not at Covent Garden, but at the New Philharmonic concerts. The whole of Idomeneo was given, and Mme Fabbri sang the role of Elettra to the Ilia of Therese Titiens. But that was it.

At some stage, Mulder and Fabbri had become attached to a baritone named Jacob Müller, and to a childish mezzo-soprano by the name of Anna [Dorothea] Elzer, allegedly, at this stage, twelve years old. Was she a child of their dubious union? Professedly not. At some stage, she passed as a ‘niece’. I see that she was already singing in Frankfurt ‘aged 13’ in 1870, so probably not daughter. He was ‘a pupil of Mulder’. The little ?12-year-old girl appeared in private concert during the London stay, having apparently lost a year in age crossing the channel, singing the Freischütz duet with Inez.

In any case, both Jacob and Anna were part of the ‘Mulder-Fabbri German Opera Company’ which, in 1872, opened at the Stadt-Theater in New York, as was one Katie Mora, apparently the teenage daughter of one of Inez’s sisters. Karl Formes was with them again, as was the indecipherable Anna Rosetti of a decade ago, and the performances included The Merry Wives, Ivanhoe, L’Africaine, Der Freischütz, Don Giovanni, Moses in Egypt and Faust. Anna played a juvenile Zerlina as they moved on to the Grand Opera House, adding Trovatore, Das Nachtlager in Granada et al to their pieces, and then to the country. And they came to rest in California.

They began their San Francisco life giving concerts (6 September 1872) at the Pacific Hall on Bush Street – the foursome and a tenor named Eisenbach – to an enthusiastic response, before moving up to do operatic selections, and, finally, operas, at Maguire’s Opera House. Lucrezia Borgia came first, with a couple of locals recruited to make up the lower regions of the male cast, followed swiftly by Ernani, Norma and La Traviata, before they crossed to the California Theatre. Martha, Faust, Il Trovatore, Ernani and Lucia di Lammermoor were put on the stage, with more weighty support from such as Pietro Baccei and Mme Bianchi, and later from Fulvio Rigo and Carmini Morley.

The team rolled on merrily into 1873, as Don Giovanni, Belisario, La Juive, Masaniello, The Merry Wives, La Favorita and a performance of the Rossini Stabat Mater raced off the Fabbri production line, and they paid visits to San Jose, Sacramento, Los Angeles, Vallejo … The California Theatre became subtitled the German Stadttheater, then it was announced the Platt’s Hall would be turned into the Fabbri Opera House. That didn’t happen, but they played there anyhow. As the operas and the concerts followed one hard upon the other, the Fabbri-Mulders made themselves into the city’s own operatic company, and Madame Fabbri was metamorphosed into California’s prima donna.

But, then, the little group started to disintegrate. In July 1873, Müller left, and, in December 1874, Richard Mulder died. But Inez Fabbri steamed on, whether at the California Theatre, or Platt’s Hall, or Wade’s Opera House, opera followed opera – Die schöne Galathée, La Dame Blanche, Lucia di Lammermoor, Lucrezia Borgia, The Merry Wives, Il Trovatore, Martha, La Traviata, The Postillon de Lonjumeau. Rigoletto, Fra Diavolo, Der Freischütz, The Mason [and the Locksmith], La Sonnambula, Robert le diable, Fidelio, Faust, The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, Les Huguenots, Joseph in Egypt (with live camels), William Tell, L’Africaine, Lohengrin, Tannhäuser, Stradella, The Barber of Seville, La Juive and The Magic Flute all came to the stage in San Francisco under her management in 1875-6.

Tannhäuser

Madame no longer took all the star roles. Anna played Rosina in The Barber of Seville, local singers Ida Valerga, Helene Dingeon and Bertha Roemer all took a turn. In The Magic Flute, she played Papagena and 1st Lady, and when Carmen eventually came along, she tactufully forebore to play the title-role.

1876 marked the departure of Anna Elzer, but it also marked the return of Jacob Müller. Müller would stay, and sing, and he would also marry the ‘widow’ Mulder as the operas, oratorios (Esther the Beautiful Queen) and concerts carried on, with such outstanding guest stars as Wachtel and Ilma di Murska taking part, and, for a full season, Eugenie Pappenheim. On 29 October 1877, Inez announced a performance of Norma to celebrate her 25 years on the stage … in 1902, she would revise her counting, and feted her 55th year in the theatre.

Eugenie Pappenheim

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By then, of course, she had been more than 20 years off the stage, but she continued as an operatic and concert manager to a great age. She also, as she long had, took in pupils for singing and for acting, at 1374 Hayes Street.

In spite of all her work, however, she did not prosper. When the diabetic Müller was in his last illness, in 1901, she was forced to go to the press, admit that they were destitute, and beg for aid. A Benefit concert was arranged for 3 March, and, on that same day, her husband died in San Francisco’s German Hospital.

‘Dear, loving and ever young’ Agnes Schmidt died in 1909, at the home of her niece, Kate Jacoby (née Mora), only months after the last of the many ‘birthday’ concerts (Emma Abbott sang) to celebrate her … 78th birthday. So I suppose it was 1831 after all.

Inez Fabbri’s papers and scrapbook are to be found in Berkeley Music Library. I imagine they will have been consulted by the several writers on San Francisco and opera who have penned larger and longer pieces on the lady and her local achievements, such as John Emerson on Madame Inez Fabbri: Prima Donna Assoluta, and the Performance of Opera in San Francisco in the 1870s...

Perhaps some of the missing bits (and I’m sure that amongst the torrent, I have missed some that are factual and not just anecdotal) are there. But be careful.

An 1883 History of San Mateo County, written when Agnes-Inez was very much alive, includes biographies of both her and of Müller. It cuts five years off her career, but has some jolly bits, including the following which partly fills in my South American gap:

‘At the close of the opera season, Madame Fabbri, in company with her husband, undertook a journey quite remarkable for an artiste. Having arrived in Chile, via Cape Horn, from Europe, and won laurels in Santiago and other cities, she went overland to the Argentine Republic. The crossing of the Cordilleras necessitated the service of twenty persons and forty mules and horses. The various adventures, the serious and often comic occurrences of the trip, the sublime scenery viewed during this wild pilgrimage, made lasting impressions upon the susceptible mind of the young artiste. In ten days they reached Mendoza, and after several day's rest they continued their journey through the Pampas to Buenos Ayres. Here traveling costumes were laid aside for theatrical robes, and for thirty nights the Teatro Colon had not space to admit the crowds who flocked to hear the new operatic star. This success was particularly flattering, as her arrival was shortly after that of De La Grange and Lagrua, who had the prestige of continental reputation. Montevideo, Rio Janeiro and Pernambuco vied with each other in ovations to Madame Fabbri, and, by express request of the royal family of Brazil, she sang at the royal gala at Pernambuco’.

Anna de la Grange

The same piece also has her losing her all in the great fire at Mayagüez. But the great fire took place in 1841. A less great one in 1861. According to me, she didn't arrive there until 1862. Be careful.

Finally, it says that Jacob Müller was born in Frankfurt, 12 November 1845. Which is, very likely, true.

Anna Elzer went back to Europe, sang around here and there, ended up at Königsberg and married violinist Max Brode (1850-1917). There were seemingly other Mrs Max Brodes, so I don’t know if she died or just divorced.

Katie Mora married Conrad Jacoby, a successful newspaper editor in California, had five children, was widowed …

Lia Mulder Duport had a daughter, Adele Pauline Jeanne Boutin, who made a career as a high soprano vocalist (I see her concertising in 1873-4, 1875 at Amsterdam and Salle Herz, and in 1877 with Léonce Valdec) and singing teacher, under the name of Pauline Boutin. She became Mme Lenglé and her daughter, in turn, became a music teacher (violin) .. On her daughter’s marriage certificate, in 1890, Lia listed her (late) husband’s name as Jacques. More complications. Ah! what’s this? A Parisian records entry for Lia Adèle Cécile Mulder, 30 September 1867. Marriage to, ah, I see, Jacques Boutin. Oh well it takes two to bigamise…

It has been enjoyable following Agnes-Inez on her operatic voyages between the new world and the old. I'll keep my eyes open for her as I follow others on the same route, and maybe I can add some wee bits and pieces to her tale. I hope so.

"Wonderfully opinionated, outrageously frank, and always sensible"

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Yes, that was me. I suppose it still is ... but in 1991 book reviewers had balls (and column space). I guess this is one of my favourite notices of my all-time, so thank you Charis Gray ...

I had no intention of writing a book of 'opinions'. I was, and am, an historian. My business is Facts. But my editor at the -- then joyful -- firm of Basil Blackwell had begun a series of books about recordings. I think it had started with Country Music, or Folk Music on Record. He knew that Ian and I had an unparalelled collection of musical-theatre recordings, so he asked ... and there went the next umpteen months of my life: listening to records. How many My Fair Ladys? How many Die lustige Witwes ... how many dreadful vanity discs ...

It was an odd time in the world of the 'record'. The 'vinyl' recording of all our youthful passions had just been (temporarily?) superseded by the CD. So, although I didn't realise it, I was arriving at the end of an era, and more or less, writing its epitaph. I frantically tried to get up-to-date at the last moment, and included CD references ... I shouldn't have. This is a history and summary of musical theatre recordngs on vinyl. And if I reissue it, that is what it will be called.

I may reissue it. It has, amazingly, been one of my most popular books. I (and my editor) expected, quite honestly, when it came out, a torrent of scorn mail from musical-theatre ultra-devotees who didn't agree with my choices. You know the type of 'ultras' I mean. Hand on heart, I had NOT ONE. Though I did hear of one gentleman in Baltimore who swished his copy back to the bookshop, complaining that I failed to mention some part-record of Roberta. 

The exercise, alas, had its downside. After so many months of listening to end-to-end show recordings (the many shelves of the records concerned are now enshrined at Harvard's Theatre Library), I became glutted. For years thereafter, I could not listen to a show disc. Even now, I find it hard. But I had done my task, and, unbelievably, two decades later, I still get messages from folk who have read and enjoyed the book ... that's reward enough ...

Goodness, what else is in this folder. Many memories, I think ...

BATTLING THE TURKEY, or fighting drug dependency ...

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Yes, me.

And no; I haven’t been sniffing heroin or drinking cocaine … but if what I am going through now is the same thing that folk trying to wean themselves off such drugs suffer, I understand and pity their their plight.

It is HELL.

So, how did I get to be in this position?

Nine years ago, next month, I suffered a stroke. I fought my way back to a reasonable physical state – my right hand refused to recover, and is pretty useless (although it looks quite normal), my right leg is weak. No more mountain climbing. If I go out in the dark, the wet, or on unfamiliar underfoot ground, I need a walking stick. My face is almost back to ‘normal’.

The only treatment of any successful consequence that I underwent was regular acupuncture. Physiotherapy as practiced here gave me a frozen shoulder, and nobody seemed to know what to do to help. I suppose once a stroke has occurred, it has occurred, and all you can do is try to mitigate the effects. Well, I tried for a while … even several months regular gym work in Berlin … now it has all become too hard, and other ageing processes are kicking in as well … 

And now this …

When I went to my doctor, for the first time after the stroke, he, not unexpectedly, rejiggled my pill intake. Nothing major, just blood-pressure thingies and cholesterol thingies … and a new one. Citalopram. A what? An anti-depressant? Me? The least depressive person in the colony! He explained that the drug was not only an anti-depressant, but had other post-stroke benefits. So, I took it, and all was well. I took it for nine years.

This winter, in Australia, I suffered from bad oedema and problematic water-retention. Grotesquely inflated ankles. Vast weight gain (25 kilos). On my return to Rangiora, I hied me to the GP (a new one) once more. She fiddled with the medicaments again and wow! The ankles returned to their pristine size. I was full of joy: there was nothing wrong with me! So I said ‘surely I don’t need this citalopram any more, nine years on ...’. We started to wean me off … gradually … one week, one month .. gone!

All was going, seemingly, fine. Then, one day, some people working on our property reneged on the important (to me) arrangements I had made, and they had agreed to, for the coming months: throwing my whole life-timetable, my plans for my eagerly looked-forward-to comfort-time, out of kilter. And I exploded. I shouted, I shrieked … it was as if someone had pulled out a stopper and let every bit of anger, hurt and fury out of me. I was aggressive, defensive (I am SICK of being taken advantage of! I am not going to be nice, easygoing Kurt any more!). For the past weeks I have been fighting these feelings … trying to control them, for the sake of those around me … with less success, I think, rather than more … even though Paul is soothing and rationalising my boiling heart and brain, with good sense and science, from far-off Germany …

As I sit here, now, writing this, in the blessed peace and total calm of my little office, I can feel something huge pressing, rising up in my chest. I shall scream … Don’t come near me …! Stop that noise! SHUT UP! I don't want to see ANYONE ... HEAR anyone ..

I remember, once, many years ago, Ian telling me of a friend, the well-known Australian author Alan Moorhead (The White Nile etc), who had suffered a stroke. Maybe there was no citalopram in those days. He became a ‘monster’, with a total personality change. Is this what is happening to me, or will this dreadful situation ease off? Can I brave my way through it?

Or will I have to start taking the bloody drug again? I desperately don’t want to ... but I can’t live like this. How could anybody …?


PS Thank you, those folks who have directed me to https://www.verywellmind.com › ... › Depression › Treatment › Medication. I may be a bit slow on my recovery, as I may have been a little fast in my exit, but it is good to know that I am not condemned to this ghastly state for life.

An American Musical Comedy: 1886

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I stumbled on this, earlier in the week ..

It's a programme for the Theatre in Toledo, Ohio for the last week of May 1886. A quick glance down the names involved showed very few that rang a bell. If you don't count The Mikado, Adonis, Ned Harrigan et al whose works were plundered for what passed as a score for the entertainment. Just .. yes, surely .. Joseph Arthur, credited with being the author of the piece, is surely the same fellow who later wrote the hilarious melodrama Blue Jeans ... you know the one: 'and the buzz saw crept ever closer, and ..' (end of reel).

I haven't delved very deeply into the folk involved in this semi-legitimate form of 'musical comedy' entertainment, except when tracking the career of Australo-Canadian Willie B Gill -- the author of Adonis -- for my biography of said Willie in the Forgotten Stars series

so I thought, lets dig a little into this unfamilar portion of musical theatre history. Three days later: Oh, good heavens, what a muddle ... I will not be digging there again.  What a hotch-potch of tuppeny-ha'penny entertainments passed for coherent shows in nineteenth century America. Incoherent they were, consisting of movable parts of chat (little or no plot), borrowed songs, fall-about, Dutch, Irish and Nigger Minstrel comedy played by an often quickly changing cast ... nothing but a variety bill (nothing so structured as a Minstrel Show!) ...

Let us look at A Cold Day. The programme from Toledo is from year two of the title's peregrinations. You can see that the artists involved had snaffled numbers from The Mikado, Adonis, The Leather Patch and May Loftus's repertoire, for the musical part of the show. This particular week. But when A Cold Day had started it would have been different. Each artiste simply did his or her turn. And in between .. there weren't even dancing girls to bring on. But an entertainment bearing the name A Cold Day, or The Laplanders, in its various shapes and forms, would wander round America for something like a decade in shrunken versions ..

So. The title. It seems to have had something to do with a politician or advertising. Theatrically, it made its first appearance in lateish 1884, when provincial minstrel, comic and song-and-dance man Frank Girard (b Brooklyn 7 July 1840; d 1 November 1900), whose claim to fame was having been saved from a shipwreck, advertised that he was to tour, with Frank Wills and Charles Burke, a piece under that title written by Charles Gayler (d Brooklyn 28 May 1892), one of the better current writers of the sort of entertainments, farce-comedies, musical-comedy-melodramas which flooded American theatres. Around the same time, Mr Girard also announced that he and Burke were going to tour a piece called Two Old Cronies by F G Maeder. Then their backer (probably at the thought of what he hat himself in for) died. So Two Old Cronies was off. I see it finally came out a few years down the track (2 September 1887, played by the Wills family!)

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Then A Cold Day was announced again, but this time Gayler's name was not mentioned. When it went on the road on what seems to have been 5 January 1885 at Williamsburg, the credit (?) for its authorship was given to 'Mr Joseph Arthur'. It was apparently not the same Cold Day credited to Gayler. Mr Arthur had had a piece called A Plot - a Play briefyl produced at the Third Avenue Theatre, to hand, and in need of a title ($1000 reward), so the Third Avenue play snitched the previously announced title, and away they went ..

Mr Arthur. He was Mr Arthur H Smith (b c 1849; d 20 February 1905) from Indiana. Father had been a methodist preacher until he gave up preaching to become and agent for an Insurance Company, elder brother George was a store clerk, 'Joseph' worked as a conductor on the railways. However, he had stagestruck notions, and in his early twenties he begn working in any branch of the theatre that would have him. He penned a piece entitled Colorado played by Fayette Welch, he joined the Hicks Georgia Minstrels, he advertised as 'author and songwriter', promoted himself as a female impersonator (Widow Coldslaw in Our Eating House) in which capacity he joined up, in 1878, with Frank Wills to play a sketch in which he was Brother Tom in Petticoats. At some stage, he claimed to have sung comic opera in Britain, voyaged to India and the East, got divorced, penned The Nightmare, played in a forepiece with Willie Edouin's company at London's Avenue Theatre ... and then came A Cold Day. But he finally hit paydirt when his melodramas The Still Alarm and the oh-so-burlesqueable Blue Jeans proved to the taste of a certain 'popular' public. But that was not yet. Arthur actually made it to the pages of Gerald Bordman's American Theatre ... although Gerry didn't pick up that A Play - a Plot was the same 'comic musical conglomerie' as A Cold Day. .. so I guess that firms up his place in American theatre history.

Next: the 'play' or 'conglomerie'. Gerry says that the original was about 'a comic photographer who snaps a picture of a passing trolley, just as the trolley is jolted to a halt, throwing some young girls into the laps of strange gentlemen'. Well, there IS a photographer in the dramatis personae, so maybe that was the very skinny original skeleton of the show. Oh! Graunccccch! subtitle 'The Laplanders'. Anyhow, the show was 'reconstructed' after a few months, and a review affirmed 'there is no plot -- it is unnecessary. It is written to make you laugh.' Others confirmed 'the singing and specialities made it a success', 'many new and taking specialities were introduced'.

Apart from Girard and Burke (another of the minstrelling-comico brethren) and Frank M Wills (ditto) -- Burke and Wills together - an alarming teaming for Australians! -- I don't know exactly who was in the original cast of either A Play or A Cold Day. Richard Norton's encyclopaedic work blanks the show, undoubtedly with reason, and I have found no other playbill or clue till, after visits to Boston and Easton Pa,  when the show stopped as 14th Street Theatre, NYC, 26th January, for its one week of imprimatur. The three girls are listed as being played by Hattie Arnold, a solid comic opera soprano, the well-known Fanny Wentworth and a Lizzie Hight. It is also recorded that the 'play' lasted 2 1/2 hours. And look, here is an ambitious ad from the trades, following New York! Miss Wentworth gone, already, to be replaced by the durable soubrette, Gracie Emmet and her ?brother with their speciality 'The Emmet Guards'..

By April, Girard and Burke had jumped ship, all sorts of other speshs had taken longer or shorter turns in the 'cast', the management had changed ... but the piece, in some sort of shape (and with a seemingly reduced cast) rumbled on ...

Wills seems to have lasted the longest at the head of affairs, but, by 1886, he had been joined by one Mr Perkins D Fisher (b Smyrna, Delaware, c 1860?; d 12 September 1930). Mr Fisher, son of a German immigrant, had started with grand ideas in te theatre. As an amateur he gave New York his Othello. But he went on to appear in the Boston musical Sancho Pedro, and then he and his nice bartione voice found themselves a starring role in farce-comedy. Mr Fisher had a fine, long, career in minstrelsy and variety's soft middle-belly, latterly in an act with this wife.

The rest of the cast in our playbill (except for Mr Hugh Angler and E Fisher, whom I know not at all) were solid touring players, and included two married couples: Warren W Ashley from Dickson, Ill, and soubrette Marie Heath, of Gatesburg, Knox; and Frank D Nelson from Erie and vocalist Essie Barton, who was starring in minor comic operas into the 20th century.  I suppose Nellie Sheldon was the wife of the better-known A H Sheldon. George Murray 'the noisy Dutchman' seems to have alternated between Germanica and blackface.

The week at Toledo played 'to crowded houses', the 'recostruction' seems to have pleased, and the reduced cast (9-10), travelling in a railways car, where they all slept and ate and whatever together, covered America, leaving little in the way of memories behind them, but making a reasonably honest (I doubt they paid any royalties!) living ...

Life in the musical theatre wasn't all Les Cloches de Corneville and Erminie ...

PS Specialists in this field, if there are any, please send me any corrections or improvement that may be needed ... I'm hastening back to an area where I am more at home ...!

1994: when Yours Truly was worth half-a-page in "The Times"

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My study/library is starting to look nicely bare. If the folk who say they want certain things, and then don't come for them, or send postage, would do so .. it would be even better. But I'm getting there ...

However, sometimes I find little bits among the stacks that ... well, yes, I've decided that I can throw them away. Because I'll put them on here, and then I don't need pages of yellowing paper, in thrice-used folders ...

The folder that I investigates, today, originally held father's papers on the Federated Mountain Clubs of New Zealand. In the 1990s, after his death, it got recycled ... well, a folder cost $1, and in those days we weren't into throwing away a dollar's worth. And today, probably for the first time this century, I opened it ... and at the top of the stuff inside was this

2 May 1994. I share a rubrique with Ayrton Senna, Dusty Springfield, Lord Monty de Beaulieu, Michael Palin ... I giggled as I realised I probably got the best write-up of any of us (well, you don't count post-mortem eulogies) and, so, I posted this picture on facebook ...

I liked the sub-editor's blurb 'succeeded where others have failed' (I hope Wikipedia caught that!). It was perfectly true, but youngish, unknownish writers don't usually get allowed such an accolade, especially in The Times ... 

Well, of course, the next item in the file was nothing else but page 29. And the article on my book filled half a page. Even Senna only got a quarter of a page. And the dreaded Churchill is reduced to a bulldog thumbnail!  Half a page of The Times is too big to fit my scanner, so I photographed it and hope it is lisible...

When you write a large book, on a subject so large that no one has ever taken the time to research it coherently and properly (from primary sources), you are ripe for the slings and arrows of those self-appointed 'experts' on the subject, or parts of the subject, who have been 'going to write that book', for decades, but ... well, somehow didn't and couldn't. I was lucky. I had the most knowledgeable of the genuinely knowledgeable of these fellows, Andrew Lamb, on my team, soon followed by Sheridan Morley. Poor, dear Mander and Mitchison were a bit piqued ... but, what!

This review was by Benny Green. Anyone old enough to remember the later 20th century in London theatre will remember Benny Green. He was the guy who radio or TV dragged out, mostly, when there was something musical-theatreish to be commented on. He'd tried his hand at the odd show himself. He didn't pretend to be an expert, but until Sheridan and A J Lerner hoisted their historical flags (and we wont even mention that hysterical fake, Mark Steyn) it was mostly Benny. I think we may have met once, but my memory is not great these days. Anyway, he it was that The Times, not unreasonably, selected to review me and mine.

Well, good one you, Benny. It's a thoroughly sensible write-up. Yes, its peppered with a thick dose of the little semi-fictional anecdotes that you loved to tell, and with the errors you helped perpetuate (Clifford Grey never went near a bobsled, it was a homonym; Edgar Smith was NOT HB's brother, you spelled Deslys wrongly ..) but, well, I've straightened them out, and you're dead .... .  I do have a quibble with the Times picture editor: why illustrate a piece on the history of the musical theatre, which specifically excludes flops, with a vast snap from a (deservedly) egregious failure which was NOT one of the 300 illustrations in the book? Did they know, perhaps, that I had cast that flop. Which is another story that I will tell, one day ...

Oh look, the next one is a piece by Clive Hirschorn, another of the more enthusiastic musical-theatre men of the time ...

Chuckle. Some nice quotes to be culled from there. I like 'massive hit'. But, er, Clive, I never could dance. And I don't think we ever met. Shame.

'But all that', to quote a musical, the name of which I now forget, 'was a very long time ago'. In the days of real journalism in the arts ...

Strangely, it wasn't, actually, my heyday. Although I became, with my 'beautiful voice', for a while, very BBC-able. Stories to tell there, as well.

As Benny suggested I should, in 2001, I brought out a 3-volumed, hugely improved, beautifully produced version of the Encyclopaedia, from the enormously author-friendly Schirmer (USA) ... but alas, the third edition didn't happen. My lovely, friendly, respectful, easy-to-work-with publishers (hello! Richard Carlin!) were taken over by a multi-national giant which, now, doesn't even respond to my letters. I contacted not a person (blocked) but their - believe it! -- Australian website last year. I am still waiting for a reply. Oh, and for several years of royalties. So. Do I go solo, reclaim the copyright to the text, and go elsewhere for the 21st century edition .... or do I just give up. I mean, copyright in the text ...?  I hear my voice and see my texts (complete with typos) on websites from Shenzen to South Dakota. Even on wikipedia, whose sub-authors are often too coy to admit that they've filched my work holus-bolus. That's fine by me. At least, if they pinch from me, they are getting it correct!!!!!!

Which brings me to another thought. A couple of years ago, I brought out another Big Book. Victorian Vocalists. 

It was published by Taylor and Francis, who had signally failed, by vast overpricing, bad merchandising, and general incomptence to sell a series (edited by yours truly) of biographies by England's, America's and Australasia's best musical-theatre scholars. Like those books, this one got not one single review .. much less half a page in The Times. No, not even one of those, oh-too-frequent modern 'reviews' by some nonentity who clearly has not read the book. Nothing.

I get the feeling the failure is not mine. The publishing and journalistic world, simply, have changed. I am in no way intending to be vain (look at my waistline!), but having been labelled as the world's Numero Uno, wouldn't you expect that I would be asked to review new works in the field? Nope. Hardly ever. Last year .. um ... thrice. But out of those three, I found a gem! Bravo Mirambeau!

Well, cocktail time. Put Dad's file back on the shelf ... ah! that's what it is! It's my (late) proud parents' folder. They saved all these clippings, just as they saved the ephemera of my school and teenage music triumphs and every letter I wrote home once I left New Zealand in 1968. I don't dare get into those ...

Cocktail.

Jack Strachey: a lost piece of music?

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Many years ago, my old and aged friend, Trafford Whitelock, was going through the traditional move down from 'house' into 'room'. As we do, and as I am now doing, he emptied the shelves, cartons, drawers holding the ephemera of his life in showbusiness, and consigned them to the rubbish bin. I salvaged a box of music -- printed and manuscript -- mostly by Australian songwriters, that had been sent to him in his BBC days, evidently in the hope that he would find for them a spot on a radio programme. Well, you know ...

St Paul de Vence 1990. In Room One of the British Musical Theatre Collection

Years later, came my turn to auto-divest. My gigantic British Musical Theatre collection was sold to a Benefactor of Harvard University, various bundles of stuff were gifted to folk who longed for them, other things were abandoned on the way, as I moved from England to France to New Zealand ... but somehow Traffy's songsheets survived on my shelves. They made it to the second-to-last major 'cut'.

No. I didn't burn them. I donated them. Which is, in some cases, and with some instituitions, is almost worse. I have a feeling that this case was one. A decade or more ago, the Music Section of the New Zealand National Library was in the hands of a widely knowledgeable and very nice chappie named Roger Flury. We got to know each other socially, a little, workwise a lot, and I bemoaned the sad decline of National Library. I told him the story of how it had refused my archive (the one which is now in Harvard) because it had 'no Maori content'. Well, it was round that time when Maori was becoming 'fashionable' and PC, and every frantically-liberal, middle-class hostess of either sex had to possess a few phrases to throw, languidly, into his or her conversation. Roger exploded. If I had anything Aus-NZ I wanted to donate to HIS department, it would be accepted gratefully.

So Traffy's music went, with my bound volume of Lyster Opera Company libretti and I forget what else of Australasian interest or origin, to the NZNL, after all. Lord knows where it is now. Roger is gone. The Music department probably too. And my next major bundle of give-away goodies, as a result, headed not to Wellington, but, this month, to Santa Barbara. America has a less insular and less racist view of history. Even unimportant old music and theatre history.

But ... today I found one of Traffy's bits that somehow fell through the throw-out net ... Here it is, with its attached (with a rusty paperclip) note.

So, dating from 1955...

Jack would have been rather 'out of fashion' by then .. which is probably why he was printing and touting his music himself, to old mates ... but he'd had a good career ..

STRACHEY, Jack [STRACHEY, John Francis] (b London, 25 September 1894; d Brighton, 27 May 1972). Composer for a handful of the dancing musicals of the London 1920s.

 An education at Marlborough and Oxford University led Jack Strachey to an early career as a pianist in seaside concert parties before he won his first London credits as the composer of revue material for such shows as The Punch Bowl, Charlot's Revue and The Nine O'Clock Revue. He entered the musical theatre in the early days of the craze for dance-and-comedy shows, sharing the musical credit on Laddie Cliff's early musicals Dear Little Billie and Lady Luck and then, along with H B Hedley, Stanley Lupino et al under the pretendedly American umbrella-name of `Hal Brody', on the highly successful So This is Love and Love Lies.

 He continued to write principally material for revue (Shake Your Feet, The Bow Wows, Charlot's Masquerade, The Chelsea Follies, The Savoy Follies, Spread it Abroad, All Wave, Moonshine, Swinging the Gate, Apple Sauce, New Ambassadors Revue, Sky High, Sweet and Low, Flying Colours, The Boltons Revue, Pay the Piper etc) and had his most notable single song hit with ‘These Foolish Things’.

 Two decades after his last West End dance-and-laughter musical, Strachey returned to the musical stage with a rather different type of score for the costume operetta Belinda Fair (131 performances) which, although not disgraced, did not find the same success as those light-footed shows of the 1920s.

1925 Dear Little Billie (w H B Hedley/Desmond Carter/Firth Shephard) Shaftesbury Theatre 25 August

1926 Lady Letty (w Ernest Longstaffe/Sydney Blow, Douglas Hoare) Empire Theatre, Glasgow 18 January

1927 Lady Luck (w Hedley/Carter/Shepard) Carlton Theatre 27 April

1928 So This is Love (w Hedley et al/Carter/Stanley Lupino, Arthur Rigby) Winter Garden Theatre 25 April

1929 Love Lies (w Hedley et al/Carter/Lupino, Rigby) Gaiety Theatre 20 March

1932 The Compulsory Wife (w Carter, Collie Knox/C Bailey Hick) Theatre Royal, Bath 1 April

1949 Belinda Fair (Eric Maschwitz, Gilbert Lennox) Saville Theatre 25 March. 

Well, here comes the next 'cut' ... for I'm not giving one more thing to the 'racist' New Zealand Library (and not only is this not 'Po kare kare ana', it's not even by an Australasian ...) ... so, home it or bin it ...

STOP PRESS

At this stage in the story, an unexpected limo glid down our drive. I put this article on hold, and went to investigate. It was Richard, NZ's top theatre musical director, bringing a keyboard or two for the use of our next house guest, who has a musical to compose over the month of January. We chatted over a nice cup of tea and  I told him about the piece I was writing today ... and showed him the music. I cannot 'read' music, by eye, and I can no longer play, with my four remaining operative fingers, so I had no idea whether the piece was of quality or just a bit of twiddling...

Richard discovers Jack

Richard has gone home with the music-sheet and its accompanying letter. He says it is 'interesting', 'of quality' and 'worth saving'. Chuckle, maybe it will turn up in a 1940s-50s play one day. Again.

Happy ending! Now, that leaves only a few thousand items to re-home ..