Alice May

Gilbert & Sullivan's First Prima Donna

Adrienne Simpson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• ISBN:
  9781135949846
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Opera Music

This biography tells the story of Alice May, a touring prima donna in the nineteenth century who travelled from England to Australia, New Zealand, India and the US, taking part in pioneering performances of the popular light operas of the day. Along the way she took part in many premieres, including the first production of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Sorcerer and the first authorised American production of The Mikado. This colourful life story will appeal to theatre historians, fans of the melodrama, burlesque, and the musical stage.

Chapter 1: The Mysterious Miss May

Early on the morning of Saturday June 4, 1870, the clipper Suffolk slipped quietly into Port Philip Bay at the end of a 15,000 mile voyage to Melbourne, capital of the most important British colony on the Australian continent, Victoria. The ship had left its homeport of London barely eleven weeks earlier, so it had completed the journey in excellent time. This was only to be expected. The firm of Money, Wigram & Sons boasted a fine fleet of well-sailed vessels that were renowned for making safe and speedy passages to the colonies. The Suffolk’s trip had been particularly uneventful. No storms had been encountered en route, there had been no births aboard, and the only death was that of a man already suffering from tuberculosis before the voyage began. The greatest danger the passengers had faced was boredom. On such a long journey the novelty of shipboard life soon palled. Books, card games, impromptu entertainments, and even the production of a weekly ships gazette could do little to alleviate the tedium. Apart from a distant glimpse of Trinidad, the Suffolk’s passengers had seen nothing but ocean from the time they left their last English port-of-call, Plymouth, on March 18 until they sighted the Cape Otway lighthouse, which marked the entrance to Bass Strait and the final leg of their journey. The first smells of land, encountered some ninety miles out from the Coast of Victoria, were a welcome tonic to flagging spirits.

When the Suffolk entered Port Philip Bay, those on board saw Melbourne only as a hazy jumble of shapes in the distance. The forest of masts in the foreground were clustered around the maritime villages of Sandridge and Williamstown, which lay some fifteen minutes by train from the central city. Between them they handled all the passengers and cargo destined for the colony’s capital. The Suffolk was assigned to Sandridge (now Port Melbourne), but such was the density of shipping that she had to lie at anchor for some time, waiting for a berth at a dock to become free. The passengers were taken off in small boats, but not until the following Monday was the Suffolk herself piloted alongside the Railway Pier to begin unloading her cargo.

The arrival of a ship from England was no longer a novelty to the people of Melbourne, but it was still a matter of great importance. Reliable telegraph links between the Australian continent and the outside world had yet to be established, so ships from Europe and America were the colonists’main source of information about events happening elsewhere. The proprietors of Melbourne’s daily newspapers always sent reporters to meet incoming vessels. Their first task was to check through the overseas mail and make sure that any major news stories reached the presses as quickly as possible. They also interviewed the captains of larger ships to get an account of their voyage and details of any interesting passengers or cargo. A sharp-eyed reporter writing in a Melbourne daily, the Argus, on June 8, 1870, noticed that the Suffolk’s cargo included “a fine vixen,” which was certain to be “of great interest to the areas s hunt clubs.” He also saw, on the list of fourteen first-class cabin passengers,

the name of Mr.G.B.Allen, and we understand that this eminent composer intends remaining for a time in Melbourne for professional purposes, principally as a teacher of singing, in which branch of musical art he has achieved much success…. Mr.Allen’s ballad “Who Can Tell” happens just now to be one of the most popular ones in Melbourne, and many of his anthems are sung in our churches. It is stated that he intends to produce his opera “Castle Grim,” which was performed for 40 consecutive nights in London, as an opera da camera.

The news that a musical celebrity from London had arrived on the Suffolk appeared in several other Melbourne newspapers and journals over the next few days. Some reporters also mentioned that Mr. Allen was accompanied by his wife, but beyond the fact that she was a singer known as Alice May, none of them could offer any further information about her. This did not stop them from dutifully expressing confidence that she would be an asset to the musical life of the community.

The ignorance about Alice May’s origins and early career shown by Melbourne’s newspaper columnists in 1870 has not been dispelled by the passage of time. No convincing evidence as to her real identity has ever been found; nor have any letters, diaries, or other personal documents come to light. Despite the best efforts of genealogists and historians, her life before she sailed on the Suffolk has remained largely a mystery. What can be stated with near certainty is that she was not—either then or at any time in the future—Mrs. G.B.Allen. Exhaustive searches in England and in every other country where the couple lived and worked have revealed no trace of a marriage. De facto liaisons were so common in the world of the nineteenth-century theatre that they were seldom remarked upon. Alice and Allen arrived in Melbourne calling themselves man and wife and this status was accepted at face value. If some later suspected that it was not the truth, no hint of doubt was ever expressed in the colonial or the British press. The social codes of the day ensured that a discreet silence was almost always maintained concerning what were euphemistically termed “theatrical marriages.”

Just two articles containing references to Alice s early years were published during her lifetime. The first was in the May 15, 1875, issue of the Australasian Sketcher, published in Melbourne. The second appeared in the London periodical the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News for October 20, 1877, and was subsequently reprinted in other publications. A few additional snippets of biographical material surfaced in the obituaries and tributes published after her untimely death in 1887.All these sources have to be treated with caution. Nineteenth-century performers were notorious for fictionalizing aspects of their biographies to make themselves appear younger, better born, more interesting, or more successful than they actually were. The phrase “gilding the lily” could have been invented to describe much of what was printed in supposedly factual articles about the stage stars of the day.

All the existing sources of information about Alice s early life agree that she came from the English county of Yorkshire, although no specific town is mentioned. She was probably born around 1847; this conjecture is based primarily on reports that she was forty years old at the time of her death. Birth dates have always been a remarkably elastic commodity in theatrical circles, especially among prima donnas, but further evidence in favor of 1847 can be found on the Suffolk’s passenger list which states that she was twenty-two at the time of embarkation. Because she was so much younger than Allen (who passed himself off as thirty-eight but was actually a decade older), she would have had little reason to understate her age when she boarded the ship. Assuming that she did not turn twenty-three until after the Suffolk sailed, she must have been born sometime between the beginning of March and the end of December 1847.

Alice May, pictured shortly after her arrival in Melbourne in 1870. Courtesy La Trobe Picture Collection, State Library of Victoria.

Extensive genealogical sleuthing has failed to locate an Alice May born in Yorkshire around this period. This raises the possibility that May was not her original surname. It was, however, a name well known in musical and theatrical circles. The costume designer Mrs. May, theatrical goods suppliers Samuel May & Son, and the musical instrument sellers Munro & May were all prominent in London at the time. None of them has so far revealed Yorkshire associations or a family member named Alice. Could she have called herself May for stage purposes, simply because the name was a well-respected one in the profession? If so, then there would be no way of tracing her in the records without some clue as to her real surname.

The other biographical details contained in the two articles published during her lifetime have provided little help in solving the mystery of her birth and upbringing. According to the 1877 article in the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News, Alice “was a member of a remarkably musical family, related to the late Cipriani Potter.” Assuming that May was her real rather than her stage name, there was a “remarkably musical family” called May that could fit the bill, although it was almost entirely London-based. Its most distinguished representative was Edward Collett May, a composer, organist, and singing teacher of great repute. His daughter, Florence, was a popular concert pianist, and several other members of his extended family were professional musicians. He had paternal relatives in Yorkshire, but combing through his family tree has not yet revealed a likely Alice. Nevertheless, the possibility that she was a distant relation cannot be dismissed out of hand. In his youth, Edward Collett May had been one of the favorite pupils of the noted English composer Cipriani Potter, and the two remained close until Potter’s death in 1871. All genealogists can quote instances where longstanding friends of a family have been assumed, mistakenly, to be relatives.

Potter was a lovable, generous man: the very epitome of an unofficial uncle. He had studied in Vienna in his youth and become friendly with Beethoven. His cleverer pupils, who included the young Arthur Sullivan, believed that his musical thinking had remained firmly rooted in the Beethoven era ever since, but they could not help liking him despite this failing. He was a prodigious composer of instrumental and orchestral music and an influential teacher during his reign as principal of London’s Royal Academy of Music (1832–59). Attempts to trace a possible Alice among the members of the Potter clan have been as unavailing as the efforts to link her with the family of Edward Collett May. Unless some new and more productive evidence comes to light, her early origins seem destined to remain a mystery.

According to the article in the Australasian Sketcher, Alice was musically inclined from infancy and “when quite a girl was sent to study the elocution of the lyric art under Mrs Wood.” All British and American opera lovers of the time would have heard of the Scottish-born soprano Mrs. Wood, or Mary Anne Paton as she was known before her marriage to the tenor Joseph Wood. She had been a favorite with the public from the moment she made her Covent Garden debut as Susanna in Mozart’s Il nozze di Figaro in 1822. In 1824 she sang Agathe in the first English production of Der Freischütz and two years later created the role of Rezia in Oberon, an opera Carl Maria von Weber wrote specifically for Covent Garden. Wood’s singing was widely praised for its sweetness, brilliance, and power. During her illustrious career, she and her husband made two acclaimed tours of the United States and there were many American critics who considered her the finest singer of her day.

Joseph Wood was a good performer but a better businessman. He invested his wife’s considerable earnings so prudently that the couple were able to buy a country estate at Chapelthorpe, near Wakefield in Yorkshire, where they retired to live comfortably in 1843. Mrs. Wood taught singing in the area for many years, first in Wakefield and then in the nearby city of Leeds. She relinquished this activity only about twelve months before her death in July 1864. If Alice did study with Mrs. Wood in her youth, it implies that her home was somewhere in the vicinity of Wakefield or Leeds and that her family was of reasonable wealth and status. Only the more affluent classes could afford to have their daughters taught such accomplishments as singing. It also suggests that she was particularly talented. Wood taught from interest rather than necessity and could pick and choose her students. The Australasian Sketcher article mentions that Alice “frequently sang en amateur at concerts.” Wood’s obituaries record the names of three of her best pupils, Misses Dobson, Milner, and Pilling, all of whom were already appearing regularly on the concert platform. Years later Alice would briefly star in the same company as the most talented of this trio, Annie Milner. In 1864 she was presumably too young for her singing to have attracted public attention. Her early years remain stubbornly, frustratingly elusive. The shadows of speculation only begin to lift after she comes into contact with G.B.Allen.

By contrast, Allen s life and career before his arrival in Melbourne can easily be documented. George Benjamin Allen was born in London on April 21, 1822. His family lived in Long Acre, the broad street that connects Leicester Square with Covent Garden, and his father was a metal chaser, a skilled artisan who specialized in the decorative metal work that adorned horse-drawn carriages. Allen rose above his parents in social status, thanks to his superior singing voice. It took him first into the choir of the local parish church, St.Martin-in-the-Fields, and then to Westminster Abbey, where he became a chorister in Easter 1834. His Westminster Abbey training gave him not only the skills to earn his living as a musician but also the chance to receive the kind of education usually reserved for the sons of professional men such as doctors and lawyers. When Allen married, however, he chose a girl from his parents’ class, probably the daughter of a family friend. Ann Carter also came from Long Acre and her father was described on the marriage certificate as a “coach ironmonger.” The wedding took place on October 2, 1843, and the young couple left immediately for Ireland, where Allen had obtained musical employment at Armagh’s Protestant cathedral. He would remain there for twenty years.

Allen’s duties included singing for services and helping run the choir school. Although nominally a bass, according to the cathedral archives he generally sang alto and was regarded as having an exceptionally fine voice. He was also very energetic. In his spare time he wrote musical articles for the local Armagh Guardian, traveled regularly to Belfast to conduct the Classical Harmonists, the only major choral society in the area, and began to gain recognition as a composer. His part-songs, ballads, and church music soon found favor with London publishers, and some of his smaller works, for example his four-part song “I Love My Love in the Morning” (1857), became very popular with the public. One of his earliest published songs commemorated the birth of his daughter, Adeline, in 1854. She was one of six children known to have been born to Allen and his wife during their first decade in Ireland.

Allen’s talent for composition lifted him permanently from the ranks of the skilled working class. On November 25, 1852, he was granted a bachelor’s degree in music, called a Mus. Bac. (short for Musicae Baccalaureus) by Oxford University. At this time it was not necessary to attend the university in order to gain a degree. In the case of the Mus. Bac., candidates had to submit a composition in at least four parts with organ accompaniment, or in not more than five parts if with strings. In addition, they had to produce a certificate showing they had been involved in the study and practice of music for at least seven years. If the composition was deemed worthy they were granted matriculation, that is, admission to the university. They could then proceed directly to the final examination, which involved a viva voce, written tests, and a performance of the submitted composition. All this could be done on a brief visit to Oxford. There was a gap of just two days between Allen’s matriculation and the conferring of his degree.

Allen was so proud of his achievement that he obtained special permission from the archbishop of Armagh to wear his academic hood during cathedral services. When he subsequently entered the world of the theatre he routinely put the rubric ‘Mus. Bac.’ after his name in advertisements. However ridiculous this might appear today, it was readily understandable in context. For a young man from an artisan family to graduate from Oxford University, one of the country’s great bastions of privilege, was a remarkable feat in class-ridden, mid-nineteenth century England.

Early in 1855 Allen sent the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow a parcel containing musical settings of some of his verses. On October 15, Longfellow graciously replied that he had listened to these “with great satisfaction. They are full of beauty and sentiment, and you have succeeded wonderfully in translating my words into the universal language.” Much later, Allen told an interviewer for Table Talk that “such flattering praise from such a source made him desirous of returning to London.” If so, it took him nearly eight years to make the move. In December 1862 he visited the British capital to conduct his cantata Harvest Home at All Saints’ Church, Kensington. The work was performed again at St. James’s Hall in March 1863 and was favorably reviewed in Britain’s leading theatrical journal, the Era, which described the composer as “a Belfast professor.” The 1862 performance of Harvest Home could have been part of a selection process, because Allen was appointed organist of All Saints’in 1863.

Because of boundary changes, All Saints’ now lies in the London borough of Notting Hill. Built in 1861, it was one of a number of new churches constructed to cater to the rapid increase in population that took place in the city during the second half of the nineteenth century. Allen’s duties as organist allowed him more freedom than he had enjoyed at Armagh and he threw himself into the musical life of London with vigor. At the age of forty-one he seemed determined to make up for the time and opportunities he had lost while working in a provincial backwater. He began teaching singing, became involved with a more distinguished fellow composer,Julius Benedict, in a scheme to create suburban musical academies, and increased his output of published works. Piano pieces, choral music, and, above all, songs flowed from his pen. Several of the latter were settings of verses by his godson,Robert Reece, a stage-struck young man who was unenthusiastically earning his living as a temporary clerk to the emigration commissioners at the Colonial Office.

In 1865 Allen and Reece joined forces to write a comic opera, Castle Grim. The plot was little more than a peg on which to hang an endless supply of puns and bad jokes. It revolved around Charles Ravenswood, the castle s misanthropic owner, who has forbidden his servants to smile or enjoy themselves. Despite this, his valet,David Death, remains an irredeemably cheerful character who spends much of his time in ardent but unavailing pursuit of the housekeeper, Mrs.Tombs. In due course Ravenswood finds himself guardian to a lively seventeen-year old named Flora Skipley. She quickly shakes him out of his self-induced gloom. Tombs and Death agree to marry and Ravenswood succumbs to the fascinating wiles of Flora.

The work was first performed at the New Royalty Theatre in Dean Street, off Oxford Street, on September 2, 1865. It was sandwiched between a farce called Poor Pillicoddy and a burlesque entitled Prince Amabel, as part of a generous triple bill inaugurating the theatre’s first season under the management of a popular star of the day,Fanny Reeves. She took the role of Mrs. Tombs, her husband,Elliot Galer, sang Ravenswood,Death was played by the comedian George Honey, and Flora by a talented young soprano,Susan Galton, who had made her debut just a year earlier but had already amassed considerable experience touring with the company run by her famous aunt, Louisa Pyne. The cast was good and the work achieved a fair success. Much of the credit was due to Allen. He conducted efficiently on his first venture into a theatre pit and his score attracted more favorable comment than Reece’s wafer-thin libretto. The Illustrated London News reported on September 9 that the music was “very pretty, the concerted parts are good and the ballads excellent,” while the Era’s September 3 review praised the cleverly devised finales, especially that to the second act, which “contained a fresh, genial and refined piece of writing in the style of a madrigal.” This was “introduced with excellent judgment and was enthusiastically applauded.”

Castle Grim did well enough to be retained in the repertoire until October 21, a respectable run by the standards of the time, but hardly long enough for the work to be considered a hit. Nevertheless, several numbers from the score found a market when published as individual songs, and Reece and Allen were sufficiently encouraged to try a second collaboration. Their one-act opera A Wild Cherry premiered in Reigate on September 2, 1867, and was briefly toured by the Louisa Pyne company. It roused no great enthusiasm and was quickly forgotten. Castle Grim retained its tenuous place in the history of the British musical theatre principally because it was Reece’s first stage credit. The experience helped set him on a new career path and within a few years he had become one of the country s busiest burlesque writers. The opera also had a significant effect on Allen’s future because it introduced him to a musical world far removed from that of teaching and the church, a world he seems to have found very much to his liking.

At some time after Allen returned to London in 1863 his path crossed that of Alice. They probably first met in the late 1860s, because the earliest documented record of their...