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Reaching the Operatic Stage: The Geographical and Social Origins of British and Irish Opera Singers, c.1850–c.1960
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 July 2018
Abstract
The backgrounds of opera singers have received little systematic study and this article attempts to help redress this situation through analysis of a collective biography of 344 British and Irish-born performers active in the century from 1850. It argues that certain areas, notably London and Wales, made a particularly significant contribution to the operatic profession and notes that certain other patterns of regional under- and over-production are discernible. While singers from a broadly defined middle class were numerically dominant within this sample, this study stresses the unexpectedly strong contribution from those born into the lower-middle and working classes. Such performers were able to build on skills honed in the amateur musical sphere partly as a result of an expanding state-funded higher education system, but also due to an extraordinary variety of forms of patronage. The ‘popular’ social tone of singers, however, is shown to have done little to challenge perceptions of opera as an elitist cultural form.
- Type
- Research Article
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- Copyright
- © Cambridge University Press 2018
Footnotes
*
Dave Russell, Independent Scholar; d.russell158@btinternet.com. I would like to thank the journal’s two anonymous referees for their extremely thorough and thoughtful comments on the initial submission.
References
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5 A full list is provided in the Appendix. Counties, sub-regions or nearby towns or cities are recorded alongside birthplace where the latter has deemed to be beyond a reasonable knowledge of British geography.
6 Rutherford, ‘Voices and singers’, 128–9.
7 Era (8 August 1900), Yorkshire Herald (29 November 1895), Era (27 July 1899). His wife, Adah, was a fellow Moody-Manners chorister.
8 All census data referred to in this study have been taken from schedules provided by Ancestry at www.ancestry.co.uk. The 1881 census took place on 3 April, and singers have been matched to companies and destinations via advertisements and reports in Era (2 and 9 April 1881).
9 See Grove Music Online, www.oxfordmusiconline.com/public/book/omo_gmo.
10 These singers are identified by italics in the Appendix.
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13 The Census of England and Wales has been carried out decennially from 1801. Detailed public reports outlining major trends and findings have always been produced by government in the immediate aftermath of a census but personal details pertaining to age, occupation, marital status and so forth only pass into the public domain one hundred years after the census date. Currently, the 1921 census results are due for release in 2022.
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40 Attention, however, must be drawn to Ireland, with its share of the British and Irish population falling from almost 20% in 1861 to 8% in 1961. The number of Irish singers in the survey is too small to allow for detailed analysis but the fact that nine of the twenty-five Irish singers recorded (35%) were born between 1920 and 1945 might suggest that Ireland was significantly increasing its share of singers.
41 The Welsh contribution is even more apparent if account is taken of singers of Welsh parentage born outside of the country. Richard Lewis (b. Manchester, 1914), David Hughes (b. Birmingham, 1925) and Anne Evans (b. London, 1941) are among the most significant examples.
42 Its boundaries were that of the Metropolitan Police District as it stood in 1875 and, with London sprawling across known boundaries, the term became increasingly useful as a means of allowing statistical expression. It had no political manifestation in the period under study. See Waller, P. J., Town, City and Nation. England, 1850–1914 (Oxford, 1983), 24–25 Google Scholar.
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65 At least, the British aristocracy. Euphrosyne Parepa-Rosa (1836–1874), first wife of Carl Rosa, was the daughter of a Wallachian nobleman.
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69 Not all miners were face workers and this group includes those involved as electricians, blacksmiths and stationary engine-drivers.
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74 The Standard (10 March 1894).
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98 Parry Jones (1957) had been a miner; Rita Hunter (1973) was the daughter of a stoker; Alberto Remedios (1976) had been a shipyard welder. Geraint Evans (1984) came from a mining family and Gwynneth Jones (1991) was the daughter of a tinplate worker. Ian Wallace and Kiri te Kanawa were the other opera stars featured on the programme; see www.thisisyourlife.com/.