Harry Rickards

Manchester-born Lilian Tree (soprano) was a well-known vocalist in, particularly, Australia, at the end of the nineteenth century.

I bumped into her, ‘prima donna [leggiera] of the Carl Rosa’, this week and thought, I don’t really know anything much about this lady, except that she sang the lead in A Moorish Maid, New Zealand’s early attempt at a light opera. Well, as you who have read my reams of discoveries about Victorian vocalists will know, I can't let pass by one of the species without at least having a go at identifying her or him... so I started.

I started in the middle, which is a good way of finding beginning and ends. Sometimes.

On 10 October 1888 a Mrs. Tree (aged 39) and a Miss L. Tree (18) arrived at Adelaide. She had been hired by Martin Simonsen, along with a selection of Italian(ate?) vocalists for an ‘Australian’ opera company. The press assured that she had ‘sung for some nine months with Carl Rosa’. ‘Miss Tree’s voice, which is remarkable for its fulness and flexibility, embraces three octaves extending to F in alt. Besides this she is pretty, charming, graceful—and only twenty’. Twenty, eh?

Well name and date were both fictional. The name was easily unveiled, for she had made her first appearances under the name of Lily Crabtree. But she was not to be found in the British birth records as such. Nevertheless, she turned up for me at 16 Shakespeare St, Ardwick, Lancashire in the 1871 census. Father Alexander Crabtree, corn merchant from Oswaldwistle aged 41, wife Ada b. Sheffield aged 30, Alexandrina aged 6, Alexander jr aged 3...  so, the future Miss Tree was not born in 1870, or even 1868, but in 1864. And there she is... Alexandrina Crockett, born Salford...  Crockett?

However, by the time she was christened, 19 years later, she was known as ‘Lily’. And Crabtree. And her father was named as Alexander Crabtree. And he was deceased.

OK. This was not, it seemed, going to be straightforward. It wasn’t, but I got there. Ada Amelia Bendelow (b. Doncaster), a dressmaker from Sheffield, had been, since 1857, the wife of one Edwin Crockett and the mother of a little Bertha Eliza Crockett (1861).

Alexander Crabtree was also a father and had been, from 1848 until sometime before Lily’s birth, a married man. His wife, Hannah née Graves, may even have been the one who died in Manchester in January 1864. His daughter was Harriet Eleanor Ann Crabtree (ka Ellen), born in Liverpool 3 March 1849, who became the wife of schoolmaster Thomas Kilner in 1870. Ada Amelia was her witness.

Then came the history! Alexandrina was born in December 1864. Indubitably to widower Alexander, and the married Mrs Crockett. And, some months later, the parents were wed...

Ada Amelia was, unsurprisingly, slightly unsure of her surname. She was pretty surely no widow.

Alexander wasn’t sure either. As witness another marriage …

Why? How? It all came to court, with Alexander charged with bigamy …

He was declared... not guilty! Why?

Small wonder that daughter Lily grew up with a healthy disdain for the state of legal marriage.

Alex continued to cohabit with Ada, Jane sued for divorce. Ada had a son (6 May 1867) and, in 1875 (9 March), a daughter, Catherine Rhoda. And then Alexander died (17 June 1877). Ada took on the running of the Lloyd Hotel in Chorlton-cum-Hardy where she can be seen in 1881 with Lily (‘age 16’) and Alexander jr ..

And then the music started. In 1883 Miss Lily A. Crabtree, aged 18, of Manchester ‘a pupil of Charles Halle’ won a piano scholarship to the brand new Royal College of Music. She studied singing there, too. She was cast as Countess Almaviva in the college production of The Marriage of Figaro.

In April 1886, she took out the prestigious Parepa Rosa Scholarship at the Royal Academy of Music where she continued her piano studies with Randegger and her vocal ones to such effect that later that year she was engaged by Nelson Vert for the ‘London Symphony Concerts’ at St. James’s Hall (Meistersinger quintet). And got herself hired, though still a student, by Carl Rosa.

Alberto Randegger, 1880s. Photo by Elliott & Fry, London.

National Portrait Gallery, London

Joseph Joachim, c.1890. Photo by W. & D. Downey.

National Portrait Gallery, London

Lily Crabtree made her debut, as Micaela, to the Carmen of Marie Roze, at the Liverpool Royal Court, where she also sang at the Halle concerts alongside Joachim, being well received on both stage and platform. She later affirmed that she also sang in Nordisa, which I do not find.

In 1888 I see her at the Halle Concerts again, taking on no less a program than ‘Ocean, thou mighty monster’, ‘Non mi dir’ and ‘Volte la terra fronte’ in another program with Joachim, and at de Jong’s Free Trade Hall concerts, before she returned to the Rosa. Micaela was now sung by her erstwhile understudy, Kate Drew, and Lily was cast as Donna Anna in Don Giovanni, as Countess Almaviva...

And then she was gone. Why?, I wonder. With a pretty good English career in view, why did she exile herself to deepest Australia and a company where the manager’s wife was the prima donna? I guess we'll never know. Although Lily would go into versions of the subject at length in later years.

Anyhow, she and mama set sail... and lost a few years of age during the transit of the seas. Lillian (as she was now known) shrunk from 23 to 18. Mamma shrank from 44 to 39. ‘Mrs. Tree is a lady of means and she and her daughter have come more for the trip than anything else’ spake the Australian gossip columns. Ah! Journalism. Mrs. Tree was a pubkeeper.

She sang The Rose of Castile, The Bohemian Girl, Il Guarany, Rigoletto, Maritana, Faust, Satanella, Carmen (yes, Micaela again!) before it all fell to pieces, and Lilian rushed to the press with long stories about how she hadn’t wanted to come anyway, and was talked into it... (Sydney Telegraph, 30 January 1889). Her engagement was, however, enlivened by the attentions of the Italian baritone Achille Ettore Torquato (ka Attilio) Buzzi (b. 1850; d. 27 June 1909). Buzzi, who had created the role of Shylock in Pinsuti’s operatic Merchant of Venice in 1878 was one of those brought out by Simonsen in 1886. Lilian soon declared she and he would settle in Melbourne... they were ‘engaged’. Lily got ‘engaged’ quite a lot.

Lilian Tree, c.1890. Photo by Emil Riisfeldt & Co., Newtown.

State Library New South Wales, Sydney

Lilian Tree, c.1890. Photo by Falk Studios, Sydney.

Falk Album, Falk 152/4, Theatre Heritage Australia

Through 1889 she (and he) appeared in frequent concerts, and contracted with John Solomon for a season at the New Opera House, where they appeared in The Bohemian Girl (with interpolations), Der Bettelstudent (Laura, ‘a perfect dream'’), Kowalski’s Moustique (Queen Venus), Maritana, Martha, La Sonnambula, Faust, The Sultan of Mocha, Nemesis, The Beggar’s Opera...

Mother was still there, so was Buzzi, but Lilian—who had gathered loving reviews in the highly popular lighter works of the repertoire—was flinching. She ‘contracted typhoid fever’, was ‘off’ a lot, and would, she announced, return to England in the new year. But come the new year, she was still in Australia, playing the repertoire with what had now become Henry Bracy’s company. That company finally closed in mid-1890, and Lilian returned to the concert platform. I see her in October 1890 singing in The Seasons. Baritone: Signor Buzzi. 

Finally, she did head for Europe. Where mother had seemingly gone before. Back to hotel management at Gregg’s Hotel in Darwen. Buzzi didn’t. ‘After a short rest [she] journeyed to Milan where she stayed eleven months, [studying with Blasco] appeared on the stage there, and in February [1892] made an appearance with the Carl Rosa at Liverpool’ in the title part in Aida. Georgina Burns had been forced out of the role through illness, Marie Roze had taken her place... but on 19 February Lilian ‘who has kindly undertaken the part at a few hours notice’ stepped in. ‘Her first appearance this season’.

She gave a second performance at a matinee 25 February while Mme Rose sang Trovatore in the evening and seemingly a third before the Rosa Liverpool season ended. And so did Lilian’s Rosa career.

In May 1892 she sailed back into Sydney, from Naples, on the Oruba. With a husband. An Australian husband. Or ‘husband’. The not-long widowed Dr. Arthur John Vause was the wealthy owner of the private mental asylum at Bay View, Tempe, and the couple, it seems, had met shipboard. The marriage or ‘marriage’ lasted some two years. Her absence from the platform was of no length at all (Stabat Mater, Her Majesty’s Sydney, 31 March 1893) but that from the stage, in spite of perpetual rumours, was to be longer.

In 1894 she was touted to visit America ‘engaged for the Metropolitan Opera House’. But she didn’t. Then, or any of the other times similar rumours were propagated. What she really did was scarper from Australia with a major (married) local personality, Dr. Harman Tarrant.

According to her, she travelled with him through Europe, where she sang Aida at ‘the Grand Opera, Milan’, then at Genoa, Naples, and Cracow, over a period of two years. I can’t quite fit ‘two years’ in here, and I have yet to exhume those soi-disant European performances from any source. Anyhow the couple ended up in England.

Dr. Harman Tarrant

Australian Men of Mark, Vol. 1

E.C. Hedmondt

Stadtgeschichtliches Museum Leipzig

Lilian appeared in the Halle concerts (‘her first appearance since her successful Australian tour’), and then got involved in E.C. Hedmondt’s ambitious season of opera at Covent Garden, where she was cast as Brünnhilde in The Valkyrie and Santuzza in Cavalleria Rusticana. Her reception was diverse: one paper described her as ‘stout’ another as ‘pretty and petite’. Her acting, some opined, left something to be desired. Her physique was clearly not in her favour. And though the voice seemed to have been excellently maintained, and was generally described in favourable terms, one journo described her Santuzza as ‘not up to the average of an English provincial one’. It’s just a suspicion, but I think her ‘manager’, Dr. Tarrant may have been getting up some people’s noses. But other writers make Lilian the villain in the tale of a relationship which was pretty well ended before Tarrant’s death, in poverty and alcohol, 10 September 1900. The international press was favourable: ‘une belle voix, une jolie femme, et une artiste consciencieuse’.

One other important person, however, liked her performance. Augustus Harris hired her for his opera company at Drury Lane, and her Santuzza, there, was perfectly well received, although one paper worried that it was hard to imagine the tragic Santuzza ‘when uttered by such a bright, cheerful and handsome prima donna’. She sang Venus in Tannhäuser(‘sang with grace and refinement, looking the part of Venus to the very letter’) and repeated her Brünnhilde (‘deserved success’) where, once again it was noted ‘Miss Tree cannot be blamed because Nature has not endowed her with an Amazonian figure’ but her ‘excellent singing and dramatic feeling’, it was judged, made up for lack of Teutonic butchness. When Harris produced Hansel and Gretel, Lilian sang the mother, Gertrude. A range of parts which would seemingly have fitted her usefully into any major opera company.

But at the end of the season, it was back to the concert platform—the Queen’s Hall Promenade Concerts (where she sang the ‘Liebestod’, Beethoven’s Egmont, Robert le diable), the Glasgow Sundays, Samson in Edinburgh, more Halle concerts, a concert party tour (‘Mme Lilian Tree and party’) … and finally, in March 1897, she turned up back in London topping the bill at London’s Palace Music Hall. She sang ‘I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls’ and ‘The Children's Garden’. And then she headed back to the Antipodes.

Harry Rickards, c.1895. Photo by Talma, Melbourne.

State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

Philip Newbury

New Zealand Graphic, 7 September 1901

Back ‘home’ she continued her music-hall experience at the Sydney Palace and the Tivoli with Harry Rickards (‘The Song that Reached my Heart’, ‘The Last Rose of Summer’, ‘Robert, toi que j’aime’) and subsequently toured with Rickards’ Biograph Company. She also continued her habit of giving lengthy newspaper interviews which didn’t always tally with verity... ‘I shall be 25 at Christmas’. No, Alexandrina, you will be 33.

She was still, though considerably plumper, a star, and paragraphs regarding the offers she had refused for the Metropolitan Opera, NYC, Covent Garden et al hit the press regularly. As did such earth-shaking news as her sprained ankle, her intention to enter a convent, and the continuing propinquity of Mr. Tarrant.

When tenor Philip Newbury was added to the Rickards company, the Trovatore ‘Miserere’ was added to the program, on which Lilian was now featuring such as ‘Softly Sighs’, ‘Ernani involami’ alongside ‘Come Back to Erin’ and ‘Home, Sweet Home’. Such was her success, that she continued with Rickards through 1898. Then she returned to the stage for John Solomon. The opera was Carmen, and now Lily was no longer Micaela, but ‘a very substantial’ Carmen, supported by Jack Leumane and Ted Farley and a rather second-rate cast. It was agreed that she sang it well, but the bill was soon varied with Maritana and The Bohemian Girl.

At the end of the season, ‘Madame’ Tree advertised for pupils. And Tarrant, who had failed in his efforts to re-establish himself in the eyes of authority, in spite of heavy advertising, died. Back in Italy, Buzzi was said to have joined a Carthusian brotherhood.

Lily, who had not been spared in her paramour’s obituaries, advertised for vaudeville engagements, and soon returned to Rickards. It was not a success. She was no longer the public's darling.

She was sued for debt... interestingly, as ‘Miss Lilian Tree’ spinster... and shortly after quit Australia for, this time, New Zealand, where, in 1903, she was reported to have married one Charles Lund ‘well known in connection with the Lund line of steamships’. The records show that Charles John Gilbert Lund of Wellington married Lilian Margaretta Lancaster... another husband, another name... ? But she would be Mrs. Lund for the next two decades. She remained in Auckland, teaching singing from 15 Grafton Road, and giving concert opera with the locals, until Alfred Hill and J. Youlin Birch brought out their opera A Moorish Maid (26 June 1905). Lilian was starred in the leading role of La Zara at the head of a cast made up largely of amateurs for six nights at Auckland’s His Majesty’s. When the show went further, Lilian did not go with it. She had a ‘serious illness’.

‘Sketches from... A Moorish Maid’

New Zealand Graphic, 8 July 1905

Youlin Birch

New Zealand Mail, 11 October 1905

In 1906 Mr. and Mrs. Lund voyaged to England. All sorts of rumours as to grandiose offers filtered back to the Australasian press, including one that she had been offered the role of Lady Jane in Patience. I see her only, in 1910, at a short-lived Brighton Festival singing Lola in Cavalleria Rusticana and the Verdi Requiem (4 February) alongside Watkin Mills...

Lilian was now chopping 15 years off her age. And Charles was a... hatter? What happened to the shipping line?

Come the war, he joined the airforce, and revealed his birthdate. 28 May 1886. That can’t be right. Married at 17? Elsewhere its 1881. Married at 22. Oh! Alexandrina! Now we see why you are shrinking your age so drastically!

Charles Lund died at Epsom, Surrey 1 September 1926 ‘aged 45’. He left £146.12.3d to his wife Lilian Margarita Lund of Furnival Mansions, 25 Wells Street, Marylebone.

I imagine that Lily was the Lilian Lund who died in Paddington in 1933. Admitting to 52 years of age. She was 68.

So, that tidies up the bits and ends of Miss Alexandrina Crockett ka ‘Lilian Tree’. There are a few left to sort out, but this is a pretty fair start. And I’m thinking what might have happened had she stayed in Manchester, with Halle, the Carl Rosa et al. A lady who could sing the Liebestod one minute, and ‘Robert toi que j’aime’ the next. But I suppose she did extremely well as a big fish on the other side of the pool. And had a good few ‘adventures’.

First published in Kurt of Gerolstein blog, 16 May 2023.

In my childhood in England in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the golden years of music hall were already long gone. Of course there were vestiges that remained―occasionally on the wireless, more regularly at pantomimes and in ‘variety’ shows at still-functioning end-of-the-pier theatres. These featured former stars of the post-First World War decline. Then at the start of the 1960s came Joan Littlewood’s Oh! What a Lovely War, which debunked the nationalistic patriotism which drove so many young men to sign up and give their lives so unceremoniously. It was packed full of music hall songs, several of them popularised by Florrie Forde.¹ 

Young Florrie FordeWhile from a young age getting to know so many of Florrie’s songs, I had no idea that she was Australian―although in fact she had featured her origins strongly in her initial years in Britain before the turn of the century. Nor did I realise that she had been such a major star and that she performed continuously between her debut in Sydney in 1892 and her death in Scotland in 1940―just two years short of a half-century on the stage.

Florrie Forde was born Flora Flannagan, probably at 88 (now 122) Gertrude Street in Fitzroy, Melbourne, on 16 August 1875. Her father, (Francis) Lott Flannagan, was previously a stonemason but by then a publican, born in Ireland.² And in Florrie’s birth certificate, her mother Phoebe Cahill (née Simmons) is said to have been born in the USA. Before Flannagan, whom she married in Melbourne in 1876, Phoebe had been married to Daniel James Cahill (since 1861). With Cahill she had several children, then Lott and Phoebe together had a further nine, only four of whom survived beyond early childhood (Emily b.1868, Francis b.1872, Hannah (Nan) b.1874, Flora b.1875). Flora, the last of the survivors, was named after a sister who had predeceased her.

While her first two husbands were of Irish heritage, Phoebe herself seems to have been Jewish, born in 1846 the daughter of Barnett Simmons and Susan Solomans. Her relationship with Lott Flannagan seems to have been over by the end of the 1870s and in 1883 she married for a third time, declaring herself to be Phoebe Cahill (although Lott Flannagan was still alive―by that time living as a publican in Sydney―and possibly Daniel Cahill too). This time she married a Melbourne-based theatrical and society costumier, Thomas Henry Snelling Ford, who was to take over in 1888 his stepfather’s business (Ford and Son) in Russell Street, Melbourne. Phoebe and Thomas were to have more offspring. While Thomas had a ‘proper job’ in Melbourne, he also moonlighted, playing the banjo in the music halls.³ He also played other stringed instruments―fiddles (which he made) and zithers among them.

That her stepfather played on the halls seems not to have been noticed until recently and it is important in that it will have provided Flora with a practical introduction to the genre. From the start of her performing career, she styled herself Florrie Ford (after her stepfather but initially without an e, which was to be added within six months).

Florrie says that she first went to school at St Peter’s (presumably Eastern Hill), then at St Mary’s Convent (Carlton Gardens). She emphasises that the ‘family’ was as many as nineteen (including all the surviving children of Phoebe’s three marriages) and it has been suggested that several of them (including Flora) were ‘parked out’, so the convent, taking boarders, looks a good bet. And the costumier’s business will have generated the necessary fees.

Florrie will most likely have left school at fourteen―and she writes that she then spent time in her stepfather’s costumier business in Russell Street, where she learned to design dresses―a skill she took into her future performing career.

Clearly, she showed real promise as a singer from childhood. She wrote:

Once I had heard a song I seemed to record the tune in my memory with the precision of a phonograph record.

She described her young voice as contralto, but her mother, having risen in the world, did not see ‘actress’ in her talented daughter’s future. Phoebe insisted that she learn the piano, but Florrie hated it and stopped. ‘Singing made me happy’, she declared.

It is interesting that her first public performances (at 14–15) were to sing for her stepfather’s marionette theatre (another of his talents).

In the latter part of 1891 Florrie left home in Melbourne at just fifteen, travelling to Sydney, intent on a career in the music halls, where she stayed with her older sister Nan (Hannah), recently married to Navy man Alfred Tiltman in Melbourne. Nan and Alfred later transferred to live at the Devonport naval base in southwest England and she and Florrie were to remain close until she died there at 38 in 1912.⁴ 

Apprenticeship in Australia

Florrie Forde spent the first five years of her performing life (aged 16 to 21) ―all of it in Australia―fundamentally learning her trade. These years were mainly spent in seasons of three to six months, alternating between Sydney and Melbourne, with one season each in Brisbane and Adelaide, before travelling to try her luck in London. The majority of these engagements were as a music hall singer―one of a list of performers including all sorts of vaudeville entertainers―appreciated by audiences and critics but rarely headlining. Then Florrie extended her experience―as a singing actress in pantomime and musical comedy.

While much of our knowledge of Florrie’s performing career, both in Australia and in Britain, comes from contemporary newspaper reports, she also wrote a series of memoir pieces for publications, the most wide-ranging of them being ‘My Life Story’, told on a weekly basis in seven parts for Thomson’s Weekly News from 16 February 1916. Particularly revealing are the parts dealing with her early performing years in Australia.

While music hall in Britain had grown up in the second half of the nineteenth century in venues principally developed from pubs, in Australia, it had followed suit, but mostly was situated in theatres with proscenium arches. As a consequence, while every town and city in Britain, indeed many suburbs, had a music hall, in Australia it was mostly confined to the major metropolises.⁵ 

Many reports on the early performances of Florrie Ford (without the e) have 1 February 1892 as the date of her debut – at the Polytechnic Music Hall underneath the Imperial Arcade in Pitt Street, Sydney―and this was the occasion put out in her lifetime in press reports. Yet by the beginning of February that year, Florrie had already performed (from 9 November 1891) with Arthur Gordon’s Grand Variety Entertainments in the ‘middle of Sydney Harbour’ on the SS Alathea. She was one of twenty ‘artistes’ providing entertainment as they went on a ‘grand trip round the harbour’.

In Sydney, young Florrie was most impressed by the English burlesque actress Billie Barlow, learning to imitate her songs and even her walk. Around the same time, Florrie was introduced to (and auditioned with) the Canadian dancer-impresario, Dan Tracey, who gave her a job as a ‘chair-warmer’, a chorus girl, in Tracey’s company at the School of Arts, Pitt Street. This was to turn into a real solo booking with Tracey some months later.

Florrie’s debut at the Polytechnic was not on 1 February 1892, but in fact six weeks earlier (Saturday 19 December 1891), when she sang a ‘serio-comic’ song, ‘Don’t you believe it’―a ‘great attraction’―and later a duet as the Ford Sisters (‘Florrie and Carrie’), ‘See us dance the polka’.⁶ Was ‘Carrie’ her sister Nan, who later in England was a dance teacher, or someone else entirely? Someone else, says Florrie, but who?⁷ 

Florrie Forde with her sister, Photo by Stewart and Co, Melbourne

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

‘See me dance the polka’

At the supposed Polytechnic debut on Saturday I February, Florrie sang with Amy Olive, together as the Bowery Sisters (no more Ford Sisters, it seems), but in fact she also made another debut on the Sunday―with Steve Adson’s promenade concert at the Port Jackson Pavilion at Chowder Bay.⁸ For one shilling, the customers were ferried to that bay, together with a brass band on board, the concert itself being free. In order to ward off the wowsers, these Sunday concerts were labelled ‘Sacred and Classical’ and Florrie was to be a featured performer at them through the following months until early June, while continuing on Saturdays, a ‘great favourite’ with the Polytechnic. Again, on Sundays in early June, Florrie sang in the ‘Sacred and Classical Concerts’ at the Centennial Hall in Walker Street, North Sydney.

However, learning of her daughter’s theatrical exploits in Sydney, Florrie’s mother was devastated and sent Florrie’s brother (was this Francis?) up to Sydney to persuade her to cease and desist before bringing the family into disrepute. According to Florrie, mother thought of theatre folk as ‘poor lost souls, not fit for the society of respectable, decent folk.’ Florrie went home immediately to Melbourne in order to try to persuade Phoebe, and ‘[mother] bravely determined to cast aside all her foolish prejudices’, and be proud of her daughter’s success, if that were to come.

At some point that year, Florrie reports, she was approached by the American co-leader of the Montague-Turner Opera Company, impresario and tenor Charles Turner, who had heard Florrie sing and tried to persuade her to abandon the music hall stage and join his opera company. The Montague-Turner company was regularly on tour through Australia and New Zealand, always seeming to be short on resources, human and financial. Florrie turned him down.

While Florrie was back in Sydney, her mother Phoebe died at forty-six at her home with Thomas Ford in Bourke Street.⁹ Unreported in the Australian press, Florrie performed in a minor role (as a fairy) with Billie Barlow in June 1892 at Her Majesty’s in Sydney in the pantomime-burlesque Randolph the Reckless.¹⁰  This was produced by George Rignold, who was to play such a crucial role in Florrie’s development as a singing actor in 1894–95.

The young Florrie Forde

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

Billie Barlow, 1892, photo by Falk/H. Walter Barnett

Pantomime was to become a major factor in Florrie’s career, although in the future always in lead roles. Born in London in 1863, Billie Barlow had made her name in the operettas of Gilbert and Sullivan in London and New York before touring in Australia (in musical comedy, pantomime and music hall) three times―initially in 1891–93. Florrie was so besotted by Barlow that she took care of Billie’s wigs through the run of Randolph and its successors.

Florrie performed at the Gaiety until mid-August. In late June of 1892, Florrie returned to Melbourne to perform, booked to headline at the Gaiety Theatre with Dan Tracey’s company, opening on Monday 27 June.

On 10 September, Florrie was back in Sydney, this time with Dan Tracey’s other Gaiety company (at the School of Arts in Pitt Street). As before, Florrie juggled two employers―performing for Tracey in the week, while on Sundays going to sing at the Coogee Aquarium, an arrangement that continued through to March 1893. At Coogee, Florrie sang with the Alabama Minstrels ‘in her male impersonations and in her original character “Bubbles”’.

Florrie was married on 2 February 1893 to Walter Bew, an English-born water policeman, at the Mariner’s Church on the Rocks in Sydney. In the New South Wales official register of marriages, Florrie gave her name as Flora Flanagan. And the event was reported in the Free Lance newspaper in Melbourne three years later (on 30 April 1896). They seem not to have co-habited for any length of time, if at all, and the marriage was not mentioned in Florrie’s memoirs of 1916.¹¹ 

There was a special benefit at the Opera House in Sydney (corner King and York Streets) on Friday 3 March 1893 for the manager of the Vaudeville Minstrel and Specialty Company, Alf Hazlewood, featuring some 70+ performers, ‘six shows in one’ according to the advertisement in the Sydney Morning Herald, but in the event, it was Florrie who particularly caught the attention of the Evening News’s reporter:

Miss Florrie Forde sang a witty topical song full of allusions to our late Governor and political situation.

The late Governor of New South Wales was the genial Earl of Jersey, recently returned to London after a somewhat uneventful governorship.

In April Florrie switched to the new vaudeville company at the Alhambra Music Hall (George Street Haymarket), with whom she was to perform over a six-month period until September. Many of the songs she sang at the Alhambra were noted as winners, among them: ‘The Wrong Man’ (sung in England by Marie Lloyd), ‘Oh! Mr Chevalier’, ‘Dear Little Girls’, ‘One of the Light Brigade’ and ‘Life’s Highway’ (sung by Jenny Hill in England). 

By October 1893 Florrie was back in Melbourne with the Alhambra Palace of Varieties at the Opera House. The Lorgnette noted: ‘Miss Florrie Forde at the Alhambra is a worthy successor of Miss Billie Barlow on the Melbourne stage.’

On 21 November, The Sportsman, reported on Florrie’s progress in Melbourne:

There may be nothing very elaborate in the music of ‘After the Ball’, but no one can deny that it is ‘catchy’, very catchy. Since Miss Florrie Forde sang it at the Alhambra Theatre all the lads are whistling it―a sure sign of popularity.

The Melbourne public’s response to ‘After the Ball’ was a sign of things to come for Florrie Forde. Composed by Charles K. Harris, it had been published in America the previous year and is said to have sold over a million copies of the sheet music. She was to record it in London forty-one years later (in 1934).

‘After the Ball’

Harry Rickards

Florrie returned to Sydney in January 1894, this time, for the first time, to perform at Harry Rickards’s Tivoli Theatre. Florrie was introduced in publicity in the Sydney Morning Herald as a ‘serio-comic and descriptive singer and impersonator’, terms not so easy to uncode at this distance, but serio-comic was a regular descriptor for singers who were said to combine (as the phrase implies) the weighty with the humorous.

Born in London in 1843, Harry Rickards was initially a comic singer in the London music halls before travelling to perform successfully in Australia for the first time in 1871. He returned to London in 1876, where he built a reputation as a ‘lion comique’. He was back in Australia in 1885, where in 1893 he was to purchase the Garrick Theatre in the Haymarket, renaming it the Tivoli and establishing himself as its impresario. From 1894 until the time Florrie left Australia for London, Rickards was to be a major influence on her career.

Florrie continued with his company at the Tivoli in Sydney until June 1894 and, as they did not open on Sundays, she returned to perform on those days at the Coogee Aquarium. On 30 April the Tivoli company went to the Theatre Royal in Brisbane, giving a one-off benefit there for Florrie. The Brisbane event was some kind of try-out and Florrie was to return to the Theatre Royal there for a season a year later (opening on Monday 1 April 1895).

In August 1894 Florrie moved on from the Rickards company at the Tivoli to open with Harry Barrington’s Variety and Burlesque Company at the School of Arts in Pitt Street, remaining there through September and early October, before returning to Melbourne with the Cogill Brothers company at the Oxford Theatre.

However, in December 1894 Florrie for the first time took a major role as a singing actress ― in a Christmas pantomime at Her Majesty’s Theatre (at that time Sydney’s finest)―George Rignold’s The House that Jack Built with Florrie as Jack (the first of many Principal Boys to come). In the cast was a soprano who was to become a regular performer with Florrie both in Australia and England―Melbourne-born soprano Florence Esdaile (a pupil of Lucy Chambers). The role was a breakthrough for Florrie―treating her for the first time as a star commodity―and complimentary cabinet photos of her in role were offered to patrons. Reviewing the opening night (22 December), the Australian Star wrote:

Miss Florrie Forde sang and acted splendidly as Jack, and when she had anything to say she spoke her lines well. Miss Forde has a powerful voice and every item she rendered during the interpretation of a very severe part was encored.

George Rignold was a Birmingham-born Shakespearean actor who had been involved in the building of Her Majesty’s Theatre in Sydney in 1887―and was the lessee and impresario until 1895. Florrie was able, working with him on theatrical productions, to develop her nascent acting skills. She also befriended the famous English actress Kate Bishop, who was temporarily retired from the stage in order to bring up her talented young daughter Marie Lohr.¹² Bishop designed Florrie’s costume as Jack.

George Rignold

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

The young Marie Lohr, 1903, photo by H. Walter Barnett

Following the pantomime, she was retained to perform in a double bill at Her Majesty’s in February 1895: the drama Black Eyed Susan by Douglas Jerrold, followed by a burlesque, Susan with Two Lovely Black Eyes. In the drama George Rignold played the seaman William, a role he had acted extensively in London, while Florrie was to play the same role in the burlesque. The Sydney Morning Herald reported:

Miss Florrie Forde’s confidence and aplomb enabled her to act cheerily and well as William, and she was very properly encored for the rattling song (with chorus), ‘At Four O’Clock in the Morning’.

However, the Herald critic’s praises did not extend to Florrie’s singing: ‘… she must learn to modulate her voice and to sing from the head, as the chest fortissimo throughout an entire piece is apt to become monotonous.’ Was this the first negative feedback for Florrie on her vocal capabilities? And perhaps the last? It was certainly not something she took to heart, her many later recordings being dominated by her distinctive chest voice.

Around February/March 1895 rumours started to circulate (doubtless prompted by her) that Florrie was planning to ‘go home’―to try her luck in London. In the event, two years were to pass before she was to leave, the months filled with more performing work, principally in Sydney and Melbourne, but also taking a season each in Brisbane and Adelaide.

She opened on Monday 1 April 1895 at the Theatre Royal in Brisbane with the Concert Variety and Ballad Company, the season running for some six weeks. One of her colleagues there was a singer with a famous five-octave range (contralto-mezzo-soprano extending up to top F), Ada Colley. Born at Parramatta, and with a career that started in opera but migrated to the music hall, Ada made the journey to England a few months before Florrie, in January 1897. 

Ada Colley

Florence Esdaile

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

In May and June 1895 Florrie sang with Frank M. Clark’s Empire Company at the Bijou Theatre in Melbourne, but by the end of June she had returned to Sydney and Harry Rickards’s company at the Tivoli, where a colleague was Florence Esdaile again. In October she moved with Rickards’s Tivoli company to his Melbourne theatre, the Opera House.

That Christmas, Florrie took a major role with Charles B Westmacott’s company at the Theatre Royal in Sydney as a Gaiety Girl in Pat, or the Bells of Rathbeal―not so much a panto, more a musical comedy―the score originating from half a dozen different composers, the play by Harry Monkhouse. This extended her skills as an actress once more and led on to more theatrical work with that company, Florrie taking the role of Jenny Wibbles, a coster girl, in The Work Girl, a melodrama with songs from London, which was followed by The Enemy’s Camp, where she had a smaller role, Clairette. The latter transferred in April to the Theatre Royal in Melbourne. The dancing in both shows was choreographed and led by Beanie Galletly (wife of baritone Hamilton Hill), who was to become a close friend and business associate of Florrie in England.

In the remaining ten months before she embarked for London, Florrie worked continuously in Harry Rickards’s Tivoli companies―in Melbourne, touring in Ballarat, Bendigo and Geelong, then Sydney and then (with Wybert Reeve’s company) at the Theatre Royal in Adelaide. On Tuesday 22 December 1896 there was a Tivoli benefit for Florrie at the Opera House in Melbourne, the star attraction (aside from her) being the ‘White Eyed Kaffir’, G.H. Chirgwin. Born in London in 1854, Chirgwin was a star performer, combining the black-faced minstrel fashion with cockney material. He and Florrie performed on the same Tivoli bill in Melbourne and Sydney through January to early March.

G.H. Chirgwin

SS Gulf of Bothnia

Her apprenticeship complete, it seems that Florrie left Australia (from Sydney or Melbourne?) in the second half of March 1897. She had been encouraged to take this step both by Rickards and by Chirgwin. She tells us that she sailed on the Gulf of Bothnia, mainly a cargo ship with a handful of passengers, arriving in London on 19 May 1897. As Australian poet Victor Daley put it:

They leave us – artists, singers, all―
When London calls aloud,
Commanding to her Festival
   The gifted crowd.¹³

What would the future hold for Florrie Forde?

Getting established in Britain (and Ireland)

While the exodus of talented Australians―principally to London, but also to Paris, Leipzig, Vienna and elsewhere in Europe―had been going on for decades, with musicians and singers, artists and writers, the flood increased dramatically after Nellie Melba’s triumph in 1887 in Brussels. Among them were other pupils of Mathilde Marchesi in Paris, including Frances Saville, Amy Sherwin, Ada Crossley, Amy Castles, Florence Young, Frances Alda and Evelyn Scotney; plus pupils of other singing teachers in Paris and London, including Lalla Miranda, Margherita Grandi, Peter Dawson and Walter Kirby; among pianists, the best went to Leschetizky in Vienna, the finest violinists to Ševčík in Prague.

But Australian singers who came to ply their trade in Europe were not solely working in the opera houses and concert halls. Many were clearly destined for the more egalitarian music halls, which were overwhelmingly located in Britain.

The Australians who rose to stardom in British music halls in the first decade of the new century included comic singers Albert Whelan and Billy Williams, the ‘living statue’ La Milo (Pansy Montague), champion swimmer Annette Kellermann, ‘the world’s greatest liar’ Louis de Rougemont and (above them all) Florrie Forde.

La Milo, photo by Bassano, London

Louis de Rougemont, 1898, photo by H. Walter Barnett

But there were also classically-trained Australian singers who, unable to get regular work in classical venues in Britain, turned successfully to the halls, including Alice Hollander, L’Incognita (Violet Mount) and baritone Hamilton Hill, and four others who had performed with Florrie on bills in Australia―Syria Lamonte, Ada Colley, Florence Esdaile and her sister Stella Esdaile, all sopranos. Many of them were to feature in Britain on the same bills as Florrie.¹⁴

Florrie carried with her on the voyage to London a letter of introduction to Mr Charles Morton. Morton, often called ‘the father of the halls’ had transformed the Canterbury Arms in Westminster Bridge Road into a music hall in 1852-54, later taking over the Palace Theatre at Cambridge Circus.¹⁵ His programs were by earlier pub standards high quality and Morton introduced ballet and opera into his bills.

Charles Morton

Not wasting time, Florrie went to see Morton the Monday after she landed and had an audition with him at the Palace two weeks later. Unusually, performing for an audience of one, Florrie was afflicted with stage-fright. But Morton reassured her and asked her to start again. He liked her but was clear that her style was not suited to his theatres and she should go try her luck with ‘syndicate halls’.

She did just that and was about to audition with Harry Lundy, when Harry Rickards, on one of his regular trips from Australia, met up with Lundy and was surprised to learn that he was about to audition Florrie. ‘Is she any good?’ Lundy wanted to know. Any good? ‘She’s the Marie Lloyd of Australia,’ said Rickards. The outcome was that Florrie was given a contract at £8 a turn, starting with an opening night in London at three different ‘syndicate’ halls on the evening of August Bank Holiday.

Previously published summaries of the performing career of Florrie Forde assert that she made her debut in London on Monday 2 August 1897 (August Bank Holiday) at three different music hall venues in the capital―the South London Palace, the London Pavilion and the Oxford. And this is indeed the case. But not mentioned is that she had performed through the previous month in Britain―first at Oswald Stoll’s Empire Theatre in Cardiff (from 2 July) and then (from 10 July) at the Star Palace of Varieties at Barrow-in-Furness in the far north-west of England.

Oswald Stoll

Harry Lauder

Of her Cardiff debut, the Music Hall and Theatre Review reported that it had been an unusual evening. The audience ‘could not cease applauding … there was more applause on Monday than I have ever heard at Mr Stoll’s splendid hall.’ And he/she went on to note:

Florrie Forde, an Australian vocalist, sang a couple of songs in capital style, they were catchy songs, and the refrains were taken up most enthusiastically.

On the same bill in Cardiff was the celebrated Scottish singer-comedian Harry Lauder. The Era reported more modestly that the audience at Barrow had given Florrie a ‘flattering reception’. Altogether a highly encouraging start to Florrie’s new life in Britain―and with her famous three London debuts in one evening yet to come.

The three London debuts on August Bank Holiday 1897 were: the London Pavilion (on the corner of Shaftesbury Avenue and Coventry Street at Piccadilly Circus) with Dan Leno, James Fawn and Vesta Victoria; the Oxford (corner of Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road (again with Dan Leno); and the South London Palace (London Road, Lambeth). Two venues in the heart of the West End of London (theatreland) and one in Cockneyland. All went well. The Daily Telegraph reported on her turn at the Oxford:

Miss Florrie Forde from Australia … has a fascinating appearance, good enunciation and a finished style.

The Oxford Music Hall, Oxford Street

The London Pavilion, Piccadilly Circus

An accolade for the still twenty-one-year-old. In reality, Florrie had a cold and was afraid that she would be unable to perform, something that doesn’t happen in Australia, according to her. Anyway, ‘cold or no cold, they gave me a good reception.’ It must have been good enough as Florrie was given a five-year contract with the Moss and Stoll circuits.

She continued at the three London music halls through August and September before opening on the south coast at the Empire Theatre in Brighton, returning to the capital in October, this time to Norton’s Canterbury Theatre, south of the river on Westminster Bridge Road. On the same bill at the Canterbury were G.H. Chirgwin, the White-Eyed Kaffir (who had encouraged her move to London when they performed together in Australia), comedian R.G. Knowles (who will have seen Florrie perform there), Charles Godfrey and the young George Robey. Alongside the Canterbury, Florrie also appeared at the Paragon Theatre in the Mile End Road in the East End of London.

Florrie’s re-acquaintance with R.G. Knowles was fortuitous in that he agitated on her behalf, recommending her for the pantomime he was about to appear in at Birmingham. However, this was not to be―Moss and Stoll held her to her contract with their music halls―so she had to wait a year before making her debut in Britain in pantomime.

Several of the London halls that Florrie had performed in between August and November 1897 were controlled by ‘the syndicate’, managed by George Adney Payne (1846–1907)―the London Pavilion, the Oxford, the South London Palace, the Metropolitan, the Canterbury and the Paragon in the Mile End Road.

George Adney Payne

Well-established by this time in London, Florrie returned to major regional cities, opening first in late November in Liverpool at the New Empire Theatre in Lime Street (owner Edward Moss) with coster comedian Gus Elen, followed by Glasgow (with her Australian colleague Florence Esdaile), Newcastle, Hull, Sheffield and Birmingham.

At the end of January 1898, Florrie came back to London, again appearing at several music halls―the Hammersmith Theatre of Varieties, the London Pavilion (again), the Oxford (again), the Metropolitan (in the Edgware Road, Paddington) with the great Marie Lloyd, and the London Theatre at Shoreditch with Katie Lawrence.

Marie Lloyd

Gatti’s Hungerford Palace of Varieties: Second Turn of Miss Katie Lawrence, Walter Sickert, 1887-88

Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney 

Altogether Florrie Forde’s first six months in Britain had started with a bang and had steadily built her reputation as a promising top-flight music hall artist, both in London and in several major towns and cities of England and Wales. In a piece that was to foreshadow so much of Florrie Forde’s emerging career, the Echo in London (on 11 March), reviewing her recent appearances, observed:

This week at the Oxford she celebrates on the virtues of the worker’s daughter. The song in question is unambitious, but it boasts of a good chorus. And Miss Florrie sings it with gusto, and in her blue tights makes as gallant a figure as Miss Harriet Vernon.¹⁶ 

In the remaining months of the century―from April 1898―Florrie established a pattern that was to serve her well going forward. She toured outside London for several months, followed by months back in the capital, where she performed nightly at three or even four halls. And over the Christmas season, she was ‘principal boy’ in a major pantomime either in London or in the regions.

In April she made her debut in Scotland at the Empire Palace in Edinburgh (with the famous beauty Lily Langtry, a mistress of the Prince of Wales, also on the bill),¹⁷ followed by Empire Theatres at Newcastle and Liverpool (with Langtry again), and Empire Palaces at Sheffield and Birmingham. All of these theatres were part of the burgeoning provincial network run by Edward Moss.

Back in London in May, Florrie made a return south of the Thames to the Canterbury, where a star-studded cast included Dan Leno, Lily Langtry and her Australian compatriot Florence Esdaile. On the same nights she was at the Tivoli (with Leno, Vesta Tilley, Eugene Stratton, George Robey and the ‘Jersey Lily’), and at the Paragon in the Mile End Road and (later) the London in Shoreditch. Of Florrie at the Paragon, the Era reported:

Miss Florrie Forde, looking very handsome in a principal boy’s costume, sang in an interesting fashion of the humble love of a coster, of a girl who is quite good enough for him.

At the turn of the century, the infinite gradations of the British class system were still being rehearsed in East End music halls. Notices in newspapers started to appear regularly stating that Florrie was fully booked until 1900.

In mid-August, Florrie left London again, briefly this time, for more Empire theatres belonging to Moss―at Nottingham and Cardiff (where she had made her UK debut), But in September she was back in London at the three theatres where she had made her London debut: the Oxford, the South London and the London Pavilion. Sharing the bill with her was a galaxy of music hall stars, including Dan Leno, George Robey, Charles Coborn, and two she had previously shared the bill with, in Australia, Billie Barlow and G.H. Chirgwin.

Remaining in London in October, Florrie performed with Marie Lloyd at the Collins, and also at the Metropolitan in Edgware Road, before leaving for the Palace Theatre at Manchester and the Empire Palace at Leeds. Booked for the first time in Britain as principal boy for a major pantomime, Cinderella, at the Shakespeare Theatre in Clapham, she started rehearsals in mid-December, where she was to be ‘sprightly and charming’.

Cinderella at the Shakespeare

The South London Press, 28 January 1899, p.5

However, Cinderella at Clapham was not the bed of roses she might have anticipated. Handed the script, she learned her part as principal boy and was disappointed that it contained only three rather indifferent songs. And she was not thrilled with her costumes. It gradually became apparent to her that both the management of the theatre and her performing colleagues regarded her as an untried beginner―a potential dud―and worked effectively to sideline her. In the event, of course, she was triumphant and over time she was given more and better songs and dialogue.

The last year of the century continued the pattern for Florrie. Cinderella at Clapham closed early in February, followed by a week at the Lyric in Dublin, ‘storming all hearts’, her debut in Ireland. Did she make play of her (part) Irish ancestry there?

Then came four months in London, playing at most of the top music hall venues with the greatest stars of the day. First came the Collins, the Metropolitan and the London at Shoreditch, then the Tivoli, the Canterbury and the Paragon, and finally the London Pavilion, the Oxford and the South London―she was back to where she had started. The Era reported of Florrie at the Pavilion that she ‘proclaims in song her intention of becoming a society lady.’ Some hope! Regular co-performers on her bills were Dan Leno, George Robey, G.H. Chirgwin and Bransby Williams.

And on 9 May 1899 a special performance was given at the Oxford to greet the touring Australian cricketers – with Alma Obrey, Florence Esdaile, Billie Barlow and Florrie all performing.¹⁸ The St James’s Gazettereported: ‘… as a mark of honour most of the performers wore the Australian colours―green and old gold.’

From July to early October Florrie returned to a demanding weekly regime through Moss’s northern circuit of Empire Theatres―Edinburgh, Glasgow, Newcastle, South Shields, Leeds, Hull, Bradford, Liverpool, Birmingham, Sheffield and Manchester.

However, in October 1899 the Boer War broke out in South Africa and music hall programs were adapted to reflect patriotic priorities―sometimes with the inclusion of a recitation of Kipling’s specially written poem, ‘The Absent-Minded Beggar’.¹⁹  Florrie was now back in London at her usual venues, before starting rehearsal in December for her next pantomime―Cinderella again, but this time at the Grand in Newcastle.

In December, Edward Moss and Oswald Stoll merged their chains of theatres, many of them at that time outside of London, forming a virtual monopoly of regional music halls and its emerging mutation, ‘variety’. Stoll was to run the business, Moss Empires Ltd, which in time expanded its London presence and overall had more than 50 venues.

To be continued...

Endnotes

1. I saw the film when it came out in 1969; Oh! What a Cast: Maggie Smith, Dirk Bogarde, John Gielgud, John Mills, Kenneth More, Laurence Olivier, Jack Hawkins, Corin Redgrave, Michael Redgrave, Vanessa Redgrave, Ralph Richardson, Ian Holm, Nanette Newman, Phyllis Calvert, Edward Fox, Susannah York, John Clements …

2. Lott Flannagan sold his stonemasons business in Williamstown in 1872, taking the United Service Club Hotel in Gertrude Street Fitzroy with its ten rooms; he had been declared insolvent in 1869 and was again in 1882, by which time he was lessee/publican at the United Service Club Hotel at Castlereagh Street in Sydney

3. Table Talk (Melbourne), 12 February 1903, p.14

4. The Royal Australian Navy only became independent from the Royal Navy in 1901 (the year of federation)

5. It has been estimated that in 1875 there were 375 music halls in London and 384 in the rest of England; in 1888 there were 473 in London

6. The managing director at the Polytechnic was John Saville Smith, who had previously been the husband and manager of soprano Frances Saville; she took his name, having been Frances Simonsen

7. A likely candidate is another beginner on the halls, contralto Carrie Ford

8. On the same bill at Chowder Bay was the ‘serio-comic’ singer Alma Obrey (and husband Bob Baxter), who was to reappear frequently with Florrie in Australia and Britain; Obrey had arrived in Melbourne from London in late 1889 and returned to London in 1896

9. Was Phoebe pregnant again?

10. Florrie revealed her role in Randolph the Reckless in a brief memoir in The People’s Journal, 21 March 1914; the epithet was later used to characterise the Australian writer Randolph Bedford

11. Perhaps Florrie suspected that Bew’s former wife Eleanor Jane Rogers from 1882 (Harrison, p.11) was still alive?

12. This writer saw Marie Lohr as Lady Bracknell in Half in Earnest at the Belgrade, Coventry in 1958

13. ‘When London Calls’ by Victor Daley: first published by The Bulletin, 8 December 1900

14. Another Antipodean who appeared in Britain with Florrie was New Zealand-born siffleur (whistler) Borneo Gardiner

15. Currently home to Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

16. Harriet Vernon was a veteran music hall and pantomime artist, famous for her figure in tights

17. Or was she Langtry’s fake music hall double?

18. 1899 was the first cricket tour of England by Australia to include five test matches; the Australian team included Victor Trumper (his test debut), while for England the first test at Trent Bridge saw the last appearance of W.G. Grace and the first of Wilfred Rhodes

19. ‘The Absent-Minded Beggar’ was written by Kipling in October 1899 as a patriotic piece with the specific aim of raising funds for British soldiers and their families.

Bibliography

Alomes, Stephen, When London Calls: The Expatriation of Australian Creative Artists to Britain, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1999

Anderson, Gae, Tivoli King: Life of Harry Rickards Vaudeville Showman, Allambie Press, Sydney, 2009

Bailey, Peter (ed.), Music Hall: The Business of Pleasure, Open University Press, Milton Keynes, 1986

Bratton, JS (ed.), Music Hall: Performance and Style, Open University Press, Milton Keynes, 1986

Brisbane, Katharine (ed.), Entertaining Australia: The Performing Arts as Cultural History, Currency Press, Sydney, 1991

Brownrigg, Jeff, The Shamrock and the Wattle: Florrie Forde The World’s Greatest Chorus Singer, National Film and Sound Archive, Canberra, 1998 (CD booklet)

――, ‘Melba’s Puddin’: Corowa, Mulwala and our Cultural Past’, Papers on Parliament 32, Canberra, 1998

――, Florrie Forde (1875–1940), Australian Dictionary of Biography, Supplement, 2005

Cheshire, D.F., Music Hall in Britain, Farleigh Dickinson University Press, Cranbury NJ, 1974

Colquhoun, Edward and Nethercoate-Bryant, KT, Shoreham-by-Sea: Past and Present, Sutton Publishing, Stroud, 1997

Dawson, Peter, Fifty Years of Song, Hutchinson, London, 1951

Disher, M. Willson, Winkles and Champagne: Comedies and Tragedies of the Music Hall, Batsford, London, 1938

Djubal, Clay, ‘Florrie Forde’, Australian Variety Theatre Archive, forde-florrie-23122012.pdf (ozvta.com), 2012

Felstead, S. Theodore, Stars who made the Halls, T. Werner Laurie, London, 1946

Gaisberg, F.W., Music on Record, Robert Hale, London, 1947

Green, Benny (ed), The Last Empires: A Music Hall Companion, Pavilion/Michael Joseph, London, 1986

Harrison, Keith, Florrie Forde: The World’s Greatest Chorus Singer, The City of London Phonograph and Gramophone Society, London, 2022

Irvin, Eric, Dictionary of the Australian Theatre 1788–1914, Hale & Iremonger, Sydney, 1985

Kilgarriff, Michael, Sing Us One of the Old Songs: A Guide to Popular Song 1860–1920, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1998

Laver, James, Edwardian Promenade, Edward Hulton, London, 1958

Macqueen-Pope, W., The Melodies Linger On: The Story of Music Hall, W.H. Allen, London, 1950

Mander, Raymond and Mitchenson, Joe, British Music Hall: A Story in Pictures, Studio Vista, London, 1965

Martin-Jones, Tony, ‘Florrie Forde: Her Early Life in Australia’, Florrie Forde: her time in Australia (apex.net.au), 2020

Martland, Peter, Recording History: The British Record Industry 188801931, Scarecrow Press, Plymouth, 2013

Neill, Roger, Melba’s First Recordings, Historic Masters, London, 2008

――, ‘Going on the Halls’, unpublished, part of uncompleted dissertation, Goldsmiths College, London, 2013

――, ‘Re-discovering Syria Lamonte: Pioneering Recording Artist’ (online), Re-discovering Syria Lamonte: Pioneering Recording Artist - Theatre Heritage Australia, 2023

――, The Simonsens of St Kilda: A Family of Singers, Per Diem Projects, King’s Sutton, 2023

Short, Ernest, Fifty Years of Vaudeville, Eyre & Spottiswoode, London, 1946

Upward, Penelope, Florrie Forde: The Girl from Fitzroy (play), unpublished, nd

Van Straten, Frank, Tivoli, Thomas C. Lothian, Melbourne, 2003

――, Florence Young and the Golden Years of Australian Musical Theatre, Beleura, Mornington, 2009

――, ‘Fabulous Florrie Forde’, Stage Whispers, Fabulous Florrie Forde | Stage Whispers, 2013

Wilmut, Roger, Kindly Leave the Stage: The Story of Variety 1919–1960, Methuen, London, 1985

Woollacott, Angela, To Try Her Fortune in London: Australian Women, Colonialism and Modernity, Oxford University Press, New York, 2001

Acknowledgements

Thanks (for help of various kinds) to Christine Davies and colleagues (Templeman Library, University of Kent), Elisabeth Kumm, Tony Locantro, Tony Martin-Jones, Penelope Upward, Sophie Wilson

Harry Rickards, c.1895. Photo by Talma, Melbourne. State Library of New South Wales, Sydney.On Christmas Eve 1896, George Adams opened his little vaudeville theatre in Pitt Street, Sydney, amongst much fanfare. ‘With regard to decorations, the theatre has no equal in Australia, and possibly it is superior to any building of its kind in London’, wrote one paper. Scenic artist Phil Goatcher, who designed the auditorium in a spectacular Indian style, was also the first lessee. But lack of experience as a theatre manager and arguments and law suits with his business partner, spelled disaster for the enterprise. ‘For a few nights it drew large audiences, and then a bit of a frost set in.’¹

After only six weeks, Goatcher’s lesseeship of the Palace Theatre came to an abrupt end. George Adams turned to Harry Rickards, striking a three-year lease with Australia’s undisputed King of Vaudeville. For Rickards this was an opportunity to secure a monopoly in this class of business, look at expanding his empire, and at the same time fend off any competition. But could Sydney support two variety theatres?

Without any interruption to programming, Goatcher’s company made their final appearance on 29 January 1897, and the following evening, Harry Rickards’ company took over the stage, with Rickards’ brother John C. Leete as General Manager.

While a couple of Goatcher performers joined the ranks of the new company, most were drawn from Rickards other theatres, the Sydney Tivoli and Melbourne Opera House.

Grand Opening Night on Saturday, 30 January 1897, was a great success and boded well for the new venture. ‘Mr Harry Rickards has reason to feel satisfied with the result of his initial performance at this bright little playhouse on Saturday night’, wrote the Evening News. ‘From a financial as well as artistic standpoint it was a gratifying success.’²

Carl Hertz, c.1897

Falk Album, Theatre Heritage Australia, Falk 075/8

Florrie Forde, c.1897

Gordon Ireland Album, State Library Victoria, Melbourne

The line up boasted a number of popular artists, seen before at the Tivoli, including American illusionist Carl Hertz, supported by his wife Mdlle D’Alton, and champion whistler Frank Lawton in his ‘The Whistling Waiter’ sketch. Other artists were Australian serio-comic Florrie Forde (singing ‘Oh Harris, Ain’t it Nice in Paris’ and ‘I am an Innocent Dickie Bird’); grotesque dancers and acrobats The Three Delevines; American sketch duo Albert Bellman and Lottie Moore; mandolin artists, the Winterton Sisters; child serio-comic and dancer Little Alma Gray; and Ada Colley, the Australian Canary. Of the newcomers, there was Edgar Granville, an English character comedian who delighted audiences with several songs, including ‘I Haven’t Got it Out Yet’ and ‘This Life is But a Derby’, and ‘Tiddle-ee-wink, what d’ye Think of Me’, which he sang, dressed in widow’s weeds!

Three weeks later, armed with photos of his new theatre, Rickards left for England and Europe to recruit enough new talent to fill the bills at his three theatres.

Vaudevillian all-rounder Will Crackles, c.1897

Gordon Ireland Album, State Library Victoria, Melbourne

C.H. Chirgwin, aka ‘The White-Eyed Musical Kaffir’, c.1897

Gordon Ireland Album, State Library Victoria, Melbourne

Over the next three months, the programme at the Palace changed, with new artists joining the bill. From England came vaudevillian all-rounder Will Crackles; C.H. Chirgwin (‘The White-Eyed Musical Kaffir’); serio-comic and dancer, Jessie De Grey; and comedian Harry Shine. Among the locals there was soprano Florrie Esdaile; dancers Lucy Cobb and Millie Osborne; and ‘the clever contralto’ Hettie Patey.

The vaudeville season closed on 3 April 1897 ‘pending the new engagements now being made by Mr Rickards in Europe and America’.³

While waiting for his brother to return with the new artists, John C. Leete oversaw a varied programme of entertainment at the Palace. From 17–30 April 1897, star violinist Ovide Musin gave a series of concerts, and from 1 May, John Gourlay and Percy St John’s Musical Comedy Company presented a short season of plays, including Gourlay’s musical farcical comedy Skipped by the Light of the Moon. With the conclusion of the Gourlay season on 29 May, the Palace closed, and remained so until Rickards’ return from overseas in August 1897.

Rickards’ plan was to run the Palace along new lines from the Tivoli, with completely different entertainments at his two Sydney theatres. During the break, the Palace stage was enlarged by six feet to accommodate some of the new acts.

Among the novelties secured by Rickards was the Biograph—an early motion picture projector—billed as the ‘very latest and most wonderful invention’ and the ‘marvel of the Nineteenth Century’. Rickards was said to have paid £3,000 to secure the sole Australian rights for six months. In an interview, he described it as being ‘a great advance upon Lumière’s Cinematographe’, which Carl Hertz had introduced to Tivoli audiences in 1896.⁴

Made and operated by the American Biograph Company, the projector was the invention of Herman Casler (1867-1939). Unlike Edison’s Kinetograph, which used 35 mm gauge film, Casler’s Biograph employed 68/70 mm sprocket-less film which produced an exceptionally large and clear image. From September 1896 it was being presented at vaudeville houses in America, and in March 1897 it was included on the bill at the Palace Theatre of Varieties in London for the first time. It would remain an attraction at the London Palace until 1902.

Rickards’ Biograph-Vaudeville Company re-opened the Palace on Monday, 23 August 1897. The first night programme comprised twelve short films including ‘President McKinley Receiving the Result of His Election, ‘Union Square New York, ‘The Falls of Niagara’ and ‘The Horseless Fire Engine’. This last named film, which showed a New York fire engine ‘snorting out volumes of smoke and raising clouds of dust’ as it races off to a extinguish a fire, was one of the most popular and repeated on subsequent nights by popular demand.⁵

Sheet music for ‘The Little Tin Gee-Gee’, one of the songs introduced at the Palace by Fanny Wentworth in 1897

National Library of Australia, Canberra

Fannie Liddiard, c.1897

Gordon Ireland Album, State Library Victoria, Melbourne

The Biograph was just one of the highlights of a packed programme. Opening night also saw the first Australian appearance of Fanny Wentworth, an English pianist, vocalist and character entertainer, who introduced the song ‘The Little Tin Gee-Gee’; the return of Lilian Tree, an operatic prima donna, who had previously been seen in Australia with the Simonsen Opera Company; Master Arthur Sherwood, a boy mezzo-soprano; illusionist Professor Charles Marritt; and Australian popular favourite, operatic and character vocalist Fanny Liddiard. The Biograph-Vaudeville combination ran until 30 September 1897.

Scene from A Bunch of Keys, 1897, with Addie Conyers centre right. Stereo glass plate negative by an unknown photographer.

Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences, Sydney

A season of American musical comedies by Charles H. Hoyt followed on 2 October with A Bunch of Keys, featuring another of Rickards’ recent acquisitions, Addie Conyers, supported by Fannie Liddiard, Lottie Moore, Albert Bellman and George Lauri. This was not Conyers first Australian appearance, she had been seen in 1892–93 as a member of the London Gaiety Burlesque Company.

Binks the Photographer followed on 20 October, with William Gourlay, Addie Conyers, Minnie Everett, Marietta Nash and George Lauri, but it lasted only a week. It seems American plays were not a popular choice and audiences stayed away. The musical comedy season came to an abrupt end on 26 November 1897—and with it, Harry Rickards’ lease on the Palace.

With audience numbers at the Tivoli in decline, Rickards soon realised that Sydney couldn’t profitably support two vaudeville houses. He reluctantly decided, after eleven months, to give up his lease on the Palace and devote his energies to the management of the Tivoli and the Opera House in Melbourne.

With Rickards’ early departure, George Adams’ representative Harrie Skinner was given the task of finding a suitable tenant for the theatre, and soon communications were being issued to leading English, American and European agents and managers.

In order to keep the ‘lights on’ between seasons, the theatre was made available to amateur groups such as the Lotus Club and Sydney Comedy Club.

Oscar Eliason aka Dante the Great, c.1898

Gordon Ireland Album, State Library Victoria, Melbourne

‘Dante the Great’ poster, 1898

Will Alma Conjuring Collection, State Library of Victoria, Melbourne

From 8 October 1898–9 December 1898, the theatre played host to an extended season by the 29-year-old American magician Dante the Great, who was making his first appearance in Australia. Hailed as ‘the greatest magician living’, Dante lived up to the hype and enthralled audiences with his ‘original experiments in sleight-of-hand’. He also performed a number of elaborate tricks including ‘The Marvellous Bicyclist’, wherein his assistant Mdlle Edmunda (the stage name of his wife Virginia Eliason] ‘cycles through the air, upside down, in and out, backwards and forwards, in complete defiance of all the laws of gravitation’. In another trick, ‘The Beggar’s Dream’, Mdlle Edmunda, wearing rags, is placed under a canopy on a platform, and almost immediately her rags vanish and she is wearing a magnificent evening dress. Dante kept audiences spellbound for two months.⁶

Skinner’s next big coup was the engagement of Orpheus Myron McAdoo, an American singer and minstrel impresario, who was making a return visit to Australia.

McAdoo was a big draw card, having cemented a position as a favourite with Australian concert-goers since his first trip in 1888 with Fisk’s Jubilee Singers. He made a second extended visit with Fisk’s company in 1892 and remained on until 1895 with his own company, McAdoo’s Jubilee Singers. McAdoo had a deep voice, described as an ‘A-flat basso profundo’.

Orpheus Myron McAdoo, c.1898. Photo by Talma, Melbourne.

Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University Library, New Haven, USA

‘An Evening with the Jubilee Singers’ by Bert Levy

Sydney Mail, 21 January 1899, p.151

McAdoo’s Jubilee Singers, during the 1890s. McAdoo is in the back row, second from left, with Mattie Allen McAdoo on his right. Photo by Talma, Melbourne.

National Library of Australia, Canberra.

Flashlight photograph of a scene from The Sea Nymphs, an operetta performed by the Lands Department Draftsmen’s Association on 10 May 1899

State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

The McAdoo company opened at the Palace on Saturday, 17 December 1898, for an initial three weeks, but ended up staying for two-months. The company specialised in singing plantation songs, jubilee choruses and glees. Favourite songs included ‘Steal Away to Jesus’, ‘The Lord’s Prayer’ and ‘Hear Dem Bells’. In addition to McAdoo, the principal members of the company were Mattie Allan McAdoo (Mrs McAdoo), billed as ‘the only lady tenor’—her rendition of ‘Come into the Garden, Maude’ was warmly encored; and Susie B. Anderson—described as ‘America’s Black Melba’—who sang the ‘Queen of the Night’ aria from The Magic Flute.

The current season ended on 28 January 1899 and in March 1899, McAdoo departed for America to organise a full-size African-American minstrel troupe. He placed recruitment advertisements in the Indianapolis Freeman informing prospective artistes: ‘The Palace Theatre, Sidney [sic], is the handsomest and most complete vaudeville house in the world.’⁷

During McAdoo’s absence, the Lands Department Draftsmen's Association gave a performance of Farnie and Lecocq’s operetta The Sea Nymphs on Friday, 10 May 1899. The following night, Dante returned for a four-week season (11 March 1899–8 April 1899), bringing with him a raft of new illusionistic wonders.

In June 1899, McAdoo returned with his new company, the Georgia Minstrels and Alabama Cakewalkers. They opened at the Palace on the seventeenth of the month. The first part of the entertainment resembled an ordinary minstrel show, ‘but the numbers introduced were greatly above those in the usual minstrel show’, including comic songs and dances. One of his leading recruits was the singer Flora Batson, known as the ‘coloured Jenny Lind’. Another was William Ferry, a rubber-boned performer known as ‘The Human Frog’. The second part of the bill introduced the ‘Cakewalk’, which saw the complete company strutting about the stage amid ‘rousing roars of laughter’ from the audience.⁸

Two weeks into the season, a rival minstrel company opened at the nearby Criterion Theatre. The presence of two similar outfits in Sydney proved challenging for McAdoo, and after struggling on for a further fortnight, he closed his season at the Palace on 12 July 1899 and embarked on an extended tour of the regions.

Programme for the week commencing 28 October 1899. Richards’ recycled the front covers of his Tivoli programmes for his shows at the Palace.

Mitchell Library Performance Program Collection, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

Programme for the week commencing 28 October 1899. The reverse side of the programme is headed Palace Theatre and lists the acts.

Mitchell Library Performance Program Collection, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

In the early hours of Monday morning on 11 September 1899, fire broke out in Harry Rickards’ Tivoli Theatre in Castlereagh Street. The building was entirely gutted, destroying valuable sets, costumes and personal belongings. Rickards had only recently purchased the freehold of the building, having leased it since 1893. Fortunately the theatre was insured, but only for half its value. Though Rickards was in England at the time of the fire securing new acts, manager Leete lost no time in finding a new venue and the following day the company re-opened at the nearby Palace at a matinee performance. As one journalist put it:

The pretty little Palace Theatre—one of George Adams’ white elephants—will now have a chance to return the owner some interest on the outlay in its construction and elaborate decoration, which was carried out on a scale that no one but a ‘sweep promoter’ could stand.⁹

Rickards’ company remained at the Palace for five months, while the Tivoli Theatre was being rebuilt. To save costs, they reused the Tivoli programme covers.

Pages from a scrapbook showing Palace Theatre programmes from 1899

Author’s collection

Pages from a scrapbook showing Palace and Tivoli theatre programmes from 1899

Author’s collection

Little Alma Gray, c.1899. Photo by Talma, Melbourne.

Gordon Ireland Album, State Library Victoria, Melbourne

Polish juggler Paul Cinquevalli, c.1900. Photo by London Stereoscopic.

National Portrait Gallery, London

Artists who appeared at the Palace at this time included the London comedian and raconteur G.W. Hunter; the world renown Polish juggler Paul Cinquevalli (said to be one of the highest-paid entertainers ever engaged by Rickards); opera singer Signor Jesse Brandani (who interrupted his walking tour of the world to appear for a few nights); character vocalist Tom Costello; and the Russian specialty performers the Newsky Family; along with numerous old favourites such as Little Alma Gray.

The Tivoli company gave their last performance at the Palace on 19 January 1900. As the new Tivoli was still not complete, Rickards relocated his company to the Criterion Theatre pending the launch of his new variety theatre on 12 April 1900.

With Rickards out of the way, Adams had big plans for the Palace.

To be continued

Endnotes

1. Clarence and Richmond Examiner (Grafton, NSW), 6 April 1897, p.4.

2. Evening News (Sydney), 1 February 1897, p.3.

3. Daily Telegraph (Sydney), 5 April 1897, p.6.

4. Daily Telegraph (Sydney), 17 August 1897, p.6.

5. Sydney Morning Herald, 30 August 1897, p.3.

6. Daily Telegraph (Sydney), 10 October 1898, p.9.

7. Bill Egan, African American Entertainers in Australia and New Zealand, p.72.

8. Sydney Morning Herald, 19 June 1899, p.8.

9. Kalgoorlie Western Argus, 5 October 1899, p.24.

References

Gae Anderson, Tivoli King: Life of Harry Rickards, Vaudeville Showman, Sid Harta Publishing, Glen Waverley, Vic, 2008.

Bill Egan, African American Entertainers in Australia and New Zealand: A history, 1788-1941, McFarland & Company, Jefferson, North Carolina, 2019.

Frank Van Straten, Tivoli, Thomas C. Lothian, South Melbourne, Vic, 2003.

Charles Waller, Magical Nights at the Theatre, Gerald Taylor Productions, Melbourne, 1980.

Newspapers

Australian Town and Country Journal (Sydney, NSW); Clarence and Richmond Examiner (Grafton, NSW), Daily Telegraph (Sydney, NSW); Evening News (Sydney, NSW); Kalgoorlie WesternArgus (WA), Sydney Morning Herald (NSW); Table Talk (Melbourne, Vic)

Acknowledgements

John S. Clark, Mimi Colligan, Bill Egan, Frank Van Straten

Syria Lamonte. Photo by Hana, London. Thanks to John Culme for restoring this cabinet card.

So little seemsto have been known about this pioneering recording artist. In his memoirs of 1947, Fred Gaisberg, the American recording engineer who had come over to set up the first London studio—at 31 Maiden Lane, Covent Garden, in 1898, for The Gramophone Company—wrote:

The autumn of ’98 saw me making the first records in London … As [the music hall artists’] rendezvous was Rules in Maiden Lane, next door to the premises we had taken as a recording studio, [Bert] Sheppard brought his companions to us to be amused and this served to give us contact with the greatest artists of the then flourishing music-hall world.¹

Then in a later conversation (in 1949) with Brian Rust, Gaisberg added:

I remember Syria Lamonte. She was an entertainer: I suppose she must have served drinks—in Rules, the pub next door to the first recording studio in Maiden Lane. She was the first artist I recorded, I’m sure of that… she had a big voice, and that was what we wanted.²

So what does that tell us about her? A “barmaid” at Rules? A singer who had made one of, possibly the earliest studio recordings in Europe? At some stage it was suggested that she was Australian. But was she really? Who exactly was this mystery woman?

In July 2009, the search for Syria Lamonte was set in motion by an email from Rob Morrison in Melbourne. Attached was a letter he had received from the doyen of Australian collector-researchers, Peter Burgis. In the course of one paragraph on Lamonte, Burgis refers to her as a “Melbourne soprano” and also a “Sydney soprano”. And in a letter to For the Record magazine (Spring 2008), Peter Adamson of St. Andrews University asks, “So was Syria Lamonte perhaps Australian?”

Quite quickly a group of interested individuals³started the search for her. Given the growth of the online newspaper database, TROVE, by the National Library of Australia, assembling her early career turned out to be a relatively straightforward matter.⁴She first appears in March 1892, performing with the touring theatre company from England of Mrs Bernard Beere in Melbourne. Then singing the coloratura aria “Regnava nel silenzio” from Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor and Trotère’s “In Old Madrid” at the first of several concerts at the Rotunda Hall, Bourke Street.

By March the following year she was touring Victoria and South Australia (venturing as far as Broken Hill in New South Wales) with Gourlay, Walton and Shine’s Musical Comedy Company in G.R. Sims’s Skipped by the Light of the Moon, the singing of Syria Lamont (without the e) “much admired”. By September she was back in Melbourne performing at a benefit for the unemployed stagehands of Melbourne theatres.     

By January 1894 Syria Lamont was a leading member of the Melbourne-based touring Austral Opera Company, recently formed by two English-born singers, tenor Charles Saunders and baritone William D’Ensem. Initially they gave Benedict’s The Lily of Killarney and Dibdin’s The Waterman, interspersing these performances with “sacred recitals”. Later in their tour of Victorian towns, the company introduced Balfe’s Dolores (with Lamont in the title role). Throughout that tour, Syria Lamont was praised by local newspapers as young, beautiful and an excellent singer.

Harry Rickards, c.1893. Photo by Falk Studios, Sydney.

Falk Album, Falk 126/7, Theatre Heritage Australia

Oxford Music Hall, London,  c.1900

Theatres Trust, London

Early in 1895, Syria performed at Melbourne Opera House in a benefit for Mrs Edouin Bryer and by April she was making her debut season in Sydney (with William D’Ensem) in vaudeville for Harry Rickards at the Tivoli. By this time, Miss Lamont had become Lamonte. In June she sang at another benefit, this time a farewell, at the Lyceum for the celebrated English singer who had settled in Sydney, Emily Soldene (1838-1912). The audience included most of the great and good of the city.

By August Syria Lamonte had left the Rickards company at the Tivoli and had joined Williamson and Musgrove’s Royal Comic Opera Company, initially performing in Brisbane in Ross and Leader’s musical comedy In Town. They followed this up at the Lyceum in Sydney with Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado, Syria Lamonte as one of the “little maids”, but by January the following year she was back in Melbourne with Harry Rickards’s company at the Opera House.

In May 1896, Syria Lamonte was reported as having sailed the previous month to London “to complete her musical studies under Marchesi”. Whether her target was Mathilde Marchesi, Nellie Melba’s teacher in Paris, or Mathilde’s daughter Blanche in London, is not clear—and there is no indication (thus far) that this ambition was ever fulfilled.

Arriving in London, she seems to have been offered a part in Wagner’s Lohengrin in Berlin and at the same time a three-year contract with the Tivoli and Oxford music-halls. She seems, not unnaturally, to have taken up the latter, the London Stage reporting that she had “a true, sweet soprano voice of much flexibility and good range, and her singing [of Ganz’s ‘Sing, Sweet Bird’] is something to be enjoyed.” She was in exalted company at these halls, the other artists including Vesta Tilley, Katie Lawrence, R.G. Knowles and James Fawn.

Fred Gaisberg

EMI Archive Trust

George Robey in the early 1890s

National Portrait Gallery, London

Clearly the contract with the Tivoli and Oxford was not too restrictive for her, and by December she had been cast to play the role of Principal Girl in the pantomime Dick Whittington in Birmingham, with George Robey as Idle Jack.

In 1897 Syria Lamonte sailed to South Africa for a three months’ engagement “at £35 a week”. Her return to London in November was not to be a happy experience. Before the voyage from Cape Town, she had met a cattle dealer named Ian Henterick Hugo, who had “conceived a grand passion for the fair Australian”, and showered her with expensive diamond jewels. Unfortunately, on arrival at Southampton together, Hugo was arrested, apparently having obtained money by false pretences, and Miss Lamonte had to relinquish the jewels to the police.

This episode was followed, according to Era in December, by a “severe illness of five months”, from which she was “now on the road to recovery.” What was the nature of her “illness”? Pneumonia? Pregnancy? Imprisonment?   

The Gramophone Company studio, 1898. EMI Archive Trust.

The stint at Rules and the consequent pioneering recordings came in August the following year. In all, she recorded some fourteen sides with Gaisberg (one, a duet, being uncredited). It is probable that it was Gaisberg himself who accompanied her on the piano. The exact dates of all these remain unclear. By October she was back at the Oxford Music Hall, accompanied by Tom Collins, touring with him the following spring.

By 1900 her career had also encompassed continental Europe. November saw her at Ronacher’s in Vienna, where, according to reports, the band one day struck up “God Save the Queen”, Syria leading the singing “with heart and voice, winning much applause”. Vienna was followed by Bucharest and St. Petersburg, and Paris in 1903.

In July 1906 she had emigrated to America, where she appears to have lived and presumably worked in vaudeville for the following years (reportedly making further recordings for Columbia), before returning to Australia in 1912.

She seems to have opened at the Empire in Brisbane in early April, before misfortune overtook her following a train journey between Sydney and Melbourne. Her luggage was lost—including all her performing wardrobe and her jewellery “which she values at £800”. This mishap (the luggage was quite quickly found at Wagga Wagga and restored to her) created the possibility of dramatically raising her profile again in Australia, from which she had been absent for some sixteen years.

However, there are few reports of further performances by Syria Lamonte. Aside from a broadcast in Melbourne in May 1926 and an entertainment at Caulfield Military Hospital in June 1929, she seems effectively to have retired.

But does her long association with Australia mean that she was really an Australian? After all, she could well have come initially from England with Mrs Bernard Beere’s troupe.

This remained a puzzle for quite some time. Exploration of the online births, marriages and deaths indexes of both Victoria and New South Wales revealed plenty of Lamonts of Scottish origin, but no-one who could be our Syria. Eventually it became clear that she was neither a Lamont nor a Syria by birth.

In fact, she was Sarah Cohen, daughter of Morris Cohen and Rachel née Isaacs, born 12 March 1869 at Elizabeth Street, Sydney. Father Morris was 23 and a clerk, mother Rachel just 18. Both had been born in London and were married in the gold-rush city of Ballaarat in Victoria in 1868. Morris Cohen was later described as a “commission agent”. Exactly when the Cohens moved from Sydney to live in Melbourne is not clear, but it was most probably in 1873. Sarah, the eldest, was to have at least six siblings.  

It is clear from newspaper reports in the 1890s that Sarah Cohen’s singing teachers had been Lucy Chambers and Pietro Cecchi. These were arguably the finest teachers in the city, their work reflected in the good reviews that Lamonte received throughout her performing careers in Australia and England. The contralto Chambers was born in Sydney in 1840 and studied under Manuel Garcia jnr in London, then with Romani and Lamperti in Italy. Following a successful career in Europe, she returned to Australia in 1870 with Lyster’s Italian Opera Company. She was often described as the “Australian Marchesi”, her successful pupils including Amy Sherwin and Florence Young. The Italian tenor Cecchi was Nellie Melba’s main teacher in Melbourne prior to her move to study with Marchesi in Paris.

In February 1889, at nineteen, Sarah Cohen married Joseph Pearl, a Melbourne jeweller. He strongly opposed her performing ambitions, but she persisted. There were two offspring of the marriage, both dying in childhood. The marriage was dissolved in 1900, when Syria was living in London, following her “desertion and misconduct with one J.J.A. McMeckan.”

She next married Anton Vincent Jonescu, an electrical engineer, in London in April 1905, presenting herself grandly on the marriage certificate as Syria de Lamonte Cowane. Whether or not he went with Syria to America the following year remains unclear, but he supposedly died in 1908.

As Syria Jonescu she married a third time in June 1924—in Melbourne, to George Arthur Senior, a master butcher. She was 55, he 59. Sarah/Syria Cohen/Pearl/Lamont/Lamonte/de Lamonte Cowane/Jonescu/Senior died at St. Kilda, Melbourne, aged 67, on 8 April 1935, eight months after her last husband.

While she was by no means a major star, nevertheless Syria Lamonte was an admired performer with a thriving career in light opera, musical comedy and music hall, and was an important pioneer in the fledgling recording industry—not someone to be a mere footnote in musical history.

Having listened to several of her recordings in 2009, Tony Locantro, veteran of EMI, concluded: “I would say that Syria’s voice had a firm and well supported lower register that enabled her comfortably to sing in the mezzo range but a bright top and a good technique to do the more showy soprano pieces. And I was quite impressed with her trills—would that more of today’s songbirds could do as well!”

Postscript

When I wrote about Syria Lamonte in 2014, I was convinced that she had been the first Australian singer to be recorded—by Berliner in London—on 28 August 1898. Now I believe that particular garland belongs to Frances Saville, who recorded ‘Caro nome’ from Rigoletto on cylinder for Bettini in New York in 1896/97.

Endnotes

1. F.W. Gaisberg, Music on Record, Robert Hale, London, 1948, pp.28/42

2. Jerrold Northrop Moore, A Voice in Time: The Gramophone of Fred Gaisberg 1873–1951, Hamish Hamilton, London, 1976, pp.241–242

3. The group, which corresponded mostly by email, included Peter Adamson, Anton Crouch, Kurt Gänzl, Andrew Lamb, Tony Locantro, Peter Martland, Rob Morrison, Roger Neill and Frank Van Straten. Andrew Lamb wrote up the results in an article for On Stage (Summer, 2010) in Australia and Call Boy (2010) in Britain.

4. Australian newspapers consulted include: The Argus (Melbourne); Bendigo Advertiser; The Advertiser (Adelaide); South Australian Register; Barrier Miner (Broken Hill); Euroa Advertiser; Riverine Herald; Horsham Times; Camperdown Chronicle; Colac Herald; Bairnsdale Advertiser; Traralgon Record; Morwell Advertiser; Warragul Guardian; Sunday Times (Sydney); Sydney Morning Herald; Evening News (Sydney); Brisbane Courier; North Melbourne Gazette; Daily News (Perth); Chronicle (Adelaide); Referee (Sydney); West Australian (Perth); Kalgoorlie Miner; Queensland Figaro (Brisbane); The Register (Adelaide); Williamstown Chronicle

Discography

Syria Lamonte’s Berliner recordings

The Gramophone Company, 31 Maiden Lane, London, with piano

A Geisha’s Life (The Geisha, Jones)
E3000 28 August 98

Star of Twilight
E3001 no date

The Holy City (Adams)
E3002 no date

Sing, Sweet Bird (Ganz)
E3003 no date

Si tu m’aimais (Denza)
E3004 no date

Il Bacio (Arditi)
E3005 1 September 98

Il Bacio (Arditi)
E3005X 7 September 98

Tell Me My Heart (Bishop)
E3006 not seen

Comin’ thro’ the Rye (trad)
E3007 2 September 98

Jewel of the East (sic) (The Geisha, Philp)
E3008 7 September 98 (unissued)

The Cows are in the Corn (Harding)
E3009 no date

Roberto tu che adoro (Roberto il diavolo, Meyerbeer)
E3010 7 September 98

Listen to the Band (= “Soldiers in the Park”, A Runaway Girl, Monckton)
E3011 27 September 98

The Jewel of Asia (The Geisha, Philp)
E3012 27 September 98

They always follow me (The Belle of New York, Kerker)
E3013 27 September 98

Dear Bird of Winter (Ganz)
E3014 27 September 98

Home, Sweet Home (Bishop)
E3015 3 October 98

The Poor Little Singing Girl (A Runaway Girl, Caryll)
E3016 3 October 98

A Streamlet full of Flowers (duet, uncredited)
E3017 not seen

When a Merry Maid Marries (The Gondoliers, Sullivan)
E3018 3 October 98

The Amorous Goldfish (The Geisha, Jones)
E3020 3 October 98

Listen to Syria Lamonte singing ‘Comin’ thro’ the Rye’, as featured on From Melba to Sutherland: Australian Singers on Record (Decca Eloquence):

This article was first published in The Record Collector, March 2014. Republished with permission.

English music hall performer & manager. Né Benjamin Henry Leete. Born 4 December 1843, Stratford, Essex, England. Married (1) Carrie Tudor (actress), (2) Lottie D'Aste (gymnast) (de facto), (3) Kate Roscow (actress), 24 November 1880, Manchester, England. Died 13 October 1911, London, England. Father of Noni Rickards (actress).

Cockney music hall singer; visited Australia several times prior to founding the Tivoli circuit in 1893, and establishing himself as Australia's King of Vaudeville.

Riley/Hailes Scrapbook, pages 137, 206.