Amy Evans
Encyclopedia
Amy Evans was a Welsh
soprano and actress known for her performances in oratorio, recitals, and opera. She also made some music recordings beginning in 1906. In 1910, she played the leading role of Selene in W. S. Gilbert
's last opera, Fallen Fairies
and sang at the Royal Opera House
the same year and thereafter. She played Princess Helena in A Waltz Dream at Daly's Theatre
in 1911.
After Evans married Scottish
baritone
Fraser Gange in 1917, the two frequently performed together in concert and on tour, moving to the United States in 1923. In 1975, at age 91, Evans gave her last performance. Living to the age of 98, she was one of the last surviving cast members of a W. S. Gilbert production.
or nearby Tonypandy
, Wales
. While not of upper-class descent, Evans came from a home less humble than accounts of her ancestry often suggest. The usual description of her father, Thomas Vaughan Evans, as a coal miner, although not altogether inaccurate, somewhat understates his standing; he was an official in the Naval Colliery Company. Moreover, Amy was the product of a musical household in which singing was valued, as her mother, Leah, and her grandmother both were active and recognized as church singers.
Besides general studies at her local board school, Evans had some early singing lessons with Ivor Foster. In 1896, she began vocal studies with David Lloyd, organist and choirmaster of St. Andrew's Church in Tonypandy and a recognized pianist in South Wales. In recognition of Evans's musical promise, local benefactors inaugurated a fund to further her musical education. In 1899, at age 14, Evans won the soprano prize at the Welsh National Eisteddfod in Cardiff
, Wales for a performance of "Hear ye, Israel" from Mendelssohn's
Elijah
. Presenting her with the award was the celebrated Welsh tenor
Ben Davies
, who described her as "a great natural singer" and foretold a stellar future for her, assuming "proper training".
wrote of one of her recitals, "Miss Evans's clear, high soprano
voice was admirably suited" to the songs. The soprano
's scanty documented recording career began in 1906, when she made a few cylinders for Edison Bell and began a series of vertical cut discs for Pathé
. The latter included the first roughly complete recording of Gilbert and Sullivan
's opera The Yeomen of the Guard
, in which she sang the roles of Elsie and Kate.
This early Savoyard association would prove prophetic: on 3 January 1910, Evans replaced Nancy McIntosh
in the leading role of Selene in W. S. Gilbert
's unsuccessful last opera, Fallen Fairies
, with music by Edward German
, which Charles Workman
's company had premiered on 15 December 1909 at the Savoy Theatre
in London. Although Evans received favourable notices, McIntosh's dismissal provoked an acrimonious dispute among Gilbert, German, and Workman. Gilbert forbade Workman ever again to appear in one of his works in the United Kingdom, and neither Gilbert nor German would write another work for the musical stage. The Musical Times
wrote:
After further concert appearances, she was next at the Royal Opera House
in Siegfried
in at the end of April 1910 playing Waldvogel. Also in 1910, Thomas Edison
's National Phonograph Company
issued the last documented commercial recordings by Evans, a group of four-minute cylinders.
In 1911, Evans played Princess Helena opposite Lily Elsie
in a revival of A Waltz Dream at Daly's Theatre
. Thereafter, she returned to her concert career, although she had brief associations with Covent Garden
and the Philadelphia-Chicago Grand Opera Company in the years leading up to World War I. For example, she was Micaela in Carmen
at Covent Garden in 1912, and in Chicago she joined Rosa Raisa
, then at the outset of her career, as one of the flower maidens in Parsifal
during the 1913-1914 season.
On 3 July 1917, Evans married Scottish
baritone
Fraser Gange (1886–1962). From that point forward, while Evans continued to sing solo engagements, such as her participation in the premiere of the Delius
Requiem on 23 March 1922, she frequently performed together with her husband in concert, as when the couple undertook a 187-performance tour of Australia from March to December 1920 and a tour of the British provinces in 1921 and 1922. In 1922, Herman Klein
from The Musical Times wrote, "Mrs. Amy Evans, Mr. Fraser Gange and Mr. Harold Samuel
were heard together with the band of the Grenadier Guards
under Lt G.F. Miller, at a charity concert at Queens Hall, and it is an opportunity to praise Miss Evans as one of the best of our sopranos. She allies sonorous tone with a ringing delivery and her voice is even throughout its range."
in New York City. Indeed, within four months of their arrival in New York, the couple on 5 March 1924 sang a public joint recital there at the Lotus Club. They again toured Australia and New Zealand during a six-month period in 1928. Around that time, Evans made her last, and only electric, recordings, none released, for Columbia Records
. On 27 March 1932, Evans sang in Bach's
Mass in B Minor with the Boston Symphony Orchestra
, conducted by Serge Koussevitzky
, together with Gange, Margarete Matzenauer
and Richard Crooks
. This was Gange's last appearance with the orchestra, with which he had formed a regular association. Evans also pursued her solo career in the United States. For instance, on 9 March 1930, she was the first woman to sing at the Harvard Club of New York
in New York.
In 1949, Evans and Gange moved from New York to Baltimore, Maryland, where Gange, who by now had developed a successful academic career, taught full-time at the Peabody Conservatory. In 1975, a 91-year-old Evans gave her last documented performance, when she sang before the Welsh Women's Clubs of America, although by that time she was undoubtedly long retired.
When she died at age 98 in Baltimore, Evans was one of the last surviving cast members of a W. S. Gilbert production and possibly the last surviving player in an original run of a Gilbert production.
. The first Evans recordings were cylinders issued by Edison Bell as part of its Welsh series in 1906. The titles included the following:
In the same year, and carrying on into 1907, Evans recorded six individual center-start disk record sides for Pathé. The only solo was "Angels Ever Bright and Fair" from Handel's
Theodora
. Another recording was the trio from Gounod's
Faust
with tenor
Alfred Heather and baritone Bantock Pierpoint. The rest were duets with baritone Francis Ludlow:
The second year of that association with Pathé included her participation as Elsie Maynard and Kate in the first nearly complete recording of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Yeomen of the Guard. Other cast members were Bantock Pierpoint, Ben Ivor, Francis Ludlow, and Emily Foxcroft; like Evans, all but Ivor assumed multiple roles. Substituting for the orchestra was the Band of the Scots Guards, reflecting common practise among recording companies, as technology of the day captured wind instruments far better than strings. Of six sides on which she appeared, only one featured Evans in a solo, "The Prisoner Comes", from the Act I finale.
Evans returned to the studio, and to cylinders, once more in 1910, when she recorded four solo numbers for Edison on four-minute cylinders: Thomas Moore
's "The Last Rose of Summer
", Guy d'Hardelot
's "The Dawn", James Lyman Molloy's "The Kerry Dance", and Hermann Lohr's "I Wish I Were a Tiny Bird." No further recording sessions involving Evans are known in the acoustic era, although at some unknown time she recorded at least one cylinder for Edison in the earlier two-minute format: "Within a Mile of Edinboro Town" by James Hook
.
In August and November 1926 and January 1927, Evans made recordings for Columbia using the new electric recording technology. None of them saw release. According to Evans, the masters were destroyed when the truck in which they were traveling overturned, but in approximately 2001 a private collector found three test pressings from the series. In all her earlier recordings aside from the Yeomen set, her accompaniments, as was common practice at the time, would have been by anonymous studio musicians, but information on the labels may suggest the identity of her piano accompanist in the test pressings. Each is inscribed by hand with the name Bergh, probably a reference to Arthur Bergh
, then an active studio accompanist for Columbia who accompanied Fraser Gange in some of his recordings. Appropriately for the woman who would one day be the last surviving Savoyard, one song was by Arthur Sullivan
, "My Dearest Heart". The other two were "A Brown Bird Singing" by Hayden Wood and "I Wonder if Love Is a Dream" by Dorothy Forster.
Wales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...
soprano and actress known for her performances in oratorio, recitals, and opera. She also made some music recordings beginning in 1906. In 1910, she played the leading role of Selene in W. S. Gilbert
W. S. Gilbert
Sir William Schwenck Gilbert was an English dramatist, librettist, poet and illustrator best known for his fourteen comic operas produced in collaboration with the composer Sir Arthur Sullivan, of which the most famous include H.M.S...
's last opera, Fallen Fairies
Fallen Fairies
Fallen Fairies; or, The Wicked World, is a two-act comic opera, with a libretto by W. S. Gilbert and music by Edward German. Premiering at London's Savoy Theatre on December 15, 1909, it failed miserably, closing after just 50 performances...
and sang at the Royal Opera House
Royal Opera House
The Royal Opera House is an opera house and major performing arts venue in Covent Garden, central London. The large building is often referred to as simply "Covent Garden", after a previous use of the site of the opera house's original construction in 1732. It is the home of The Royal Opera, The...
the same year and thereafter. She played Princess Helena in A Waltz Dream at Daly's Theatre
Daly's Theatre
Daly's Theatre was a theatre in the City of Westminster. It was located at 2 Cranbourn Street, just off Leicester Square. It opened on 27 June 1893, and was demolished in 1937.-Early years:...
in 1911.
After Evans married Scottish
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
baritone
Baritone
Baritone is a type of male singing voice that lies between the bass and tenor voices. It is the most common male voice. Originally from the Greek , meaning deep sounding, music for this voice is typically written in the range from the second F below middle C to the F above middle C Baritone (or...
Fraser Gange in 1917, the two frequently performed together in concert and on tour, moving to the United States in 1923. In 1975, at age 91, Evans gave her last performance. Living to the age of 98, she was one of the last surviving cast members of a W. S. Gilbert production.
Biography
The birthplace of Amy Evans is variously given as YnyshirYnyshir
Ynyshir , meaning "Long Island" in English, is a village and a community located in the Rhondda Valley, within Rhondda Cynon Taf, South Wales. The village takes its name from a farm in the area, falling within the historic parishes of Ystradyfodwg and Llanwynno . The community of Ynyshir also...
or nearby Tonypandy
Tonypandy
Tonypandy is a town in the county borough of Rhondda Cynon Taf, within the historic county boundaries of Glamorgan, Wales, lying in the Rhondda Fawr Valley. A former industrial coal mining town, today Tonypandy is best known as the site of the Tonypandy Riots....
, Wales
Wales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...
. While not of upper-class descent, Evans came from a home less humble than accounts of her ancestry often suggest. The usual description of her father, Thomas Vaughan Evans, as a coal miner, although not altogether inaccurate, somewhat understates his standing; he was an official in the Naval Colliery Company. Moreover, Amy was the product of a musical household in which singing was valued, as her mother, Leah, and her grandmother both were active and recognized as church singers.
Besides general studies at her local board school, Evans had some early singing lessons with Ivor Foster. In 1896, she began vocal studies with David Lloyd, organist and choirmaster of St. Andrew's Church in Tonypandy and a recognized pianist in South Wales. In recognition of Evans's musical promise, local benefactors inaugurated a fund to further her musical education. In 1899, at age 14, Evans won the soprano prize at the Welsh National Eisteddfod in Cardiff
Cardiff
Cardiff is the capital, largest city and most populous county of Wales and the 10th largest city in the United Kingdom. The city is Wales' chief commercial centre, the base for most national cultural and sporting institutions, the Welsh national media, and the seat of the National Assembly for...
, Wales for a performance of "Hear ye, Israel" from Mendelssohn's
Felix Mendelssohn
Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Barthóldy , use the form 'Mendelssohn' and not 'Mendelssohn Bartholdy'. The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians gives ' Felix Mendelssohn' as the entry, with 'Mendelssohn' used in the body text...
Elijah
Elijah (oratorio)
Elijah, in German: Elias, is an oratorio written by Felix Mendelssohn in 1846 for the Birmingham Festival. It depicts various events in the life of the Biblical prophet Elijah, taken from the books 1 Kings and 2 Kings in the Old Testament....
. Presenting her with the award was the celebrated Welsh tenor
Tenor
The tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...
Ben Davies
Ben Davies (tenor)
Ben Davies was a Welsh tenor singer, who appeared in opera with the Carl Rosa Opera Company, in operetta and light opera, and on the concert and oratorio platform...
, who described her as "a great natural singer" and foretold a stellar future for her, assuming "proper training".
Early career
Evans began a concert career, and The TimesThe Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
wrote of one of her recitals, "Miss Evans's clear, high soprano
Soprano
A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...
voice was admirably suited" to the songs. The soprano
Soprano
A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...
's scanty documented recording career began in 1906, when she made a few cylinders for Edison Bell and began a series of vertical cut discs for Pathé
Pathé Records
Pathé Records was a France-based international record label and producer of phonographs, active from the 1890s through the 1930s.- Early years :...
. The latter included the first roughly complete recording of Gilbert and Sullivan
Gilbert and Sullivan
Gilbert and Sullivan refers to the Victorian-era theatrical partnership of the librettist W. S. Gilbert and the composer Arthur Sullivan . The two men collaborated on fourteen comic operas between 1871 and 1896, of which H.M.S...
's opera The Yeomen of the Guard
The Yeomen of the Guard
The Yeomen of the Guard; or, The Merryman and His Maid, is a Savoy Opera, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It premiered at the Savoy Theatre on 3 October 1888, and ran for 423 performances...
, in which she sang the roles of Elsie and Kate.
This early Savoyard association would prove prophetic: on 3 January 1910, Evans replaced Nancy McIntosh
Nancy McIntosh
Nancy McIntosh was an American-born singer and actress who performed mostly on the London stage. Her father was a member of the notorious South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, which had been blamed in connection with the 1889 Johnstown Flood that resulted in the loss of over 2,200 lives in...
in the leading role of Selene in W. S. Gilbert
W. S. Gilbert
Sir William Schwenck Gilbert was an English dramatist, librettist, poet and illustrator best known for his fourteen comic operas produced in collaboration with the composer Sir Arthur Sullivan, of which the most famous include H.M.S...
's unsuccessful last opera, Fallen Fairies
Fallen Fairies
Fallen Fairies; or, The Wicked World, is a two-act comic opera, with a libretto by W. S. Gilbert and music by Edward German. Premiering at London's Savoy Theatre on December 15, 1909, it failed miserably, closing after just 50 performances...
, with music by Edward German
Edward German
Sir Edward German was an English musician and composer of Welsh descent, best remembered for his extensive output of incidental music for the stage and as a successor to Arthur Sullivan in the field of English comic opera.As a youth, German played the violin and led the town orchestra, also...
, which Charles Workman
Charles H. Workman
Charles H. Workman was a singer and actor best known as a successor to George Grossmith in the comic baritone roles in Gilbert and Sullivan operas. He was sometimes credited as C. Herbert Workman or C. H...
's company had premiered on 15 December 1909 at the Savoy Theatre
Savoy Theatre
The Savoy Theatre is a West End theatre located in the Strand in the City of Westminster, London, England. The theatre opened on 10 October 1881 and was built by Richard D'Oyly Carte on the site of the old Savoy Palace as a showcase for the popular series of comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan,...
in London. Although Evans received favourable notices, McIntosh's dismissal provoked an acrimonious dispute among Gilbert, German, and Workman. Gilbert forbade Workman ever again to appear in one of his works in the United Kingdom, and neither Gilbert nor German would write another work for the musical stage. The Musical Times
The Musical Times
The Musical Times is an academic journal of classical music edited and produced in the United Kingdom. It is currently the oldest such journal that is still publishing in the UK, having been published continuously since 1844. It was published as The Musical Times and Singing Class Circular until...
wrote:
- "The part of 'Selene', the fairy queen, in the Gilbert-German opera 'Fallen Fairies' is now being played with great success by Miss Amy Evans, a young singer who has made a name on the concert and Eisteddfod platforms in Wales, but who is new to the stage. She sings a new song, the words of which are by Sir William Gilbert and the music by Edward German. This song has been the subject, first of an injunction, and then of a mysterious law suit brought by Sir William against the Savoy management. It is now restored to the performance by mutual consent." The Times noted, "She has a delicate but beautiful voice. Her high notes, both fortissimo and pianissimo are of very pure quality.... As an actress, she has a good deal to learn [but] there is... a kind of gentle sincerity that fits the part well".
After further concert appearances, she was next at the Royal Opera House
Royal Opera House
The Royal Opera House is an opera house and major performing arts venue in Covent Garden, central London. The large building is often referred to as simply "Covent Garden", after a previous use of the site of the opera house's original construction in 1732. It is the home of The Royal Opera, The...
in Siegfried
Siegfried (opera)
Siegfried is the third of the four operas that constitute Der Ring des Nibelungen , by Richard Wagner. It received its premiere at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus on 16 August 1876, as part of the first complete performance of The Ring...
in at the end of April 1910 playing Waldvogel. Also in 1910, Thomas Edison
Thomas Edison
Thomas Alva Edison was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. In addition, he created the world’s first industrial...
's National Phonograph Company
Edison Records
Edison Records was one of the earliest record labels which pioneered recorded sound and was an important player in the early recording industry.- Early phonographs before commercial mass produced records :...
issued the last documented commercial recordings by Evans, a group of four-minute cylinders.
In 1911, Evans played Princess Helena opposite Lily Elsie
Lily Elsie
Lily Elsie was a popular English actress and singer during the Edwardian era, best known for her starring role in the hit London premiere of Franz Lehár's operetta The Merry Widow....
in a revival of A Waltz Dream at Daly's Theatre
Daly's Theatre
Daly's Theatre was a theatre in the City of Westminster. It was located at 2 Cranbourn Street, just off Leicester Square. It opened on 27 June 1893, and was demolished in 1937.-Early years:...
. Thereafter, she returned to her concert career, although she had brief associations with Covent Garden
Royal Opera House
The Royal Opera House is an opera house and major performing arts venue in Covent Garden, central London. The large building is often referred to as simply "Covent Garden", after a previous use of the site of the opera house's original construction in 1732. It is the home of The Royal Opera, The...
and the Philadelphia-Chicago Grand Opera Company in the years leading up to World War I. For example, she was Micaela in Carmen
Carmen
Carmen is a French opéra comique by Georges Bizet. The libretto is by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, based on the novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée, first published in 1845, itself possibly influenced by the narrative poem The Gypsies by Alexander Pushkin...
at Covent Garden in 1912, and in Chicago she joined Rosa Raisa
Rosa Raisa
Rosa Raisa was a Polish-born, Italian-trained, dramatic operatic soprano. In 1926 she created the role of Turandot at La Scala, Milan.-Career:...
, then at the outset of her career, as one of the flower maidens in Parsifal
Parsifal
Parsifal is an opera in three acts by Richard Wagner. It is loosely based on Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival, the 13th century epic poem of the Arthurian knight Parzival and his quest for the Holy Grail, and on Chrétien de Troyes' Perceval, the Story of the Grail.Wagner first conceived the work...
during the 1913-1914 season.
On 3 July 1917, Evans married Scottish
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
baritone
Baritone
Baritone is a type of male singing voice that lies between the bass and tenor voices. It is the most common male voice. Originally from the Greek , meaning deep sounding, music for this voice is typically written in the range from the second F below middle C to the F above middle C Baritone (or...
Fraser Gange (1886–1962). From that point forward, while Evans continued to sing solo engagements, such as her participation in the premiere of the Delius
Frederick Delius
Frederick Theodore Albert Delius, CH was an English composer. Born in the north of England to a prosperous mercantile family of German extraction, he resisted attempts to recruit him to commerce...
Requiem on 23 March 1922, she frequently performed together with her husband in concert, as when the couple undertook a 187-performance tour of Australia from March to December 1920 and a tour of the British provinces in 1921 and 1922. In 1922, Herman Klein
Herman Klein
Herman Klein was an English music critic, author and teacher of singing. Klein's famous brothers included Charles and Manuel Klein...
from The Musical Times wrote, "Mrs. Amy Evans, Mr. Fraser Gange and Mr. Harold Samuel
Harold Samuel
Not to be confused with Harold Samuel, Baron Samuel of Wych Cross Harold Samuel was a distinguished English pianist and pedagogue. He was one of the first pianists of the 20th century to focus purely on the works of Johann Sebastian Bach, and was known for his academic and cerebral approach...
were heard together with the band of the Grenadier Guards
Grenadier Guards
The Grenadier Guards is an infantry regiment of the British Army. It is the most senior regiment of the Guards Division and, as such, is the most senior regiment of infantry. It is not, however, the most senior regiment of the Army, this position being attributed to the Life Guards...
under Lt G.F. Miller, at a charity concert at Queens Hall, and it is an opportunity to praise Miss Evans as one of the best of our sopranos. She allies sonorous tone with a ringing delivery and her voice is even throughout its range."
Later years
Evans and Gange continued performing together after moving to the United States in 1923 and enjoyed success in major concert venues, such as Town HallThe Town Hall
The Town Hall is a performance space, located at 123 West 43rd Street, between Sixth Avenue and Broadway, in New York City. It seats approximately 1,500 people.-History:...
in New York City. Indeed, within four months of their arrival in New York, the couple on 5 March 1924 sang a public joint recital there at the Lotus Club. They again toured Australia and New Zealand during a six-month period in 1928. Around that time, Evans made her last, and only electric, recordings, none released, for Columbia Records
Columbia Records
Columbia Records is an American record label, owned by Japan's Sony Music Entertainment, operating under the Columbia Music Group with Aware Records. It was founded in 1888, evolving from an earlier enterprise, the American Graphophone Company — successor to the Volta Graphophone Company...
. On 27 March 1932, Evans sang in Bach's
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...
Mass in B Minor with the Boston Symphony Orchestra
Boston Symphony Orchestra
The Boston Symphony Orchestra is an orchestra based in Boston, Massachusetts. It is one of the five American orchestras commonly referred to as the "Big Five". Founded in 1881, the BSO plays most of its concerts at Boston's Symphony Hall and in the summer performs at the Tanglewood Music Center...
, conducted by Serge Koussevitzky
Serge Koussevitzky
Serge Koussevitzky , was a Russian-born Jewish conductor, composer and double-bassist, known for his long tenure as music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1924 to 1949.-Early career:...
, together with Gange, Margarete Matzenauer
Margarete Matzenauer
Margaret Matzenauer was a mezzo-soprano singer with an opulent timbre and a wide range to her voice...
and Richard Crooks
Richard Crooks
Richard Alexander Crooks was an American tenor and a leading singer at the New York Metropolitan Opera.-Biography:He was born on June 26, 1900 in Trenton, New Jersey...
. This was Gange's last appearance with the orchestra, with which he had formed a regular association. Evans also pursued her solo career in the United States. For instance, on 9 March 1930, she was the first woman to sing at the Harvard Club of New York
Harvard Club of New York
The Harvard Club of New York is a private club in Midtown Manhattan, New York, New York, USA. Anyone who has attended Harvard University may apply to become a member. Incorporated in 1887, it is housed in adjoining lots at 27 West 44th Street and 35 West 44th Street...
in New York.
In 1949, Evans and Gange moved from New York to Baltimore, Maryland, where Gange, who by now had developed a successful academic career, taught full-time at the Peabody Conservatory. In 1975, a 91-year-old Evans gave her last documented performance, when she sang before the Welsh Women's Clubs of America, although by that time she was undoubtedly long retired.
When she died at age 98 in Baltimore, Evans was one of the last surviving cast members of a W. S. Gilbert production and possibly the last surviving player in an original run of a Gilbert production.
Recordings
Few recordings of Evans are known, more than half being of duets or ensembles rather than solos. Aside from a small label's reissue of the Yeomen set described below, none has appeared on compact discCompact Disc
The Compact Disc is an optical disc used to store digital data. It was originally developed to store and playback sound recordings exclusively, but later expanded to encompass data storage , write-once audio and data storage , rewritable media , Video Compact Discs , Super Video Compact Discs ,...
. The first Evans recordings were cylinders issued by Edison Bell as part of its Welsh series in 1906. The titles included the following:
- Y Deryn Pur
- R.S. Hughes: Llam y Cariadau
- Joseph Parry: Hywel a Blodwen (duet with John Roberts)
George Frideric Handel
George Frideric Handel was a German-British Baroque composer, famous for his operas, oratorios, anthems and organ concertos. Handel was born in 1685, in a family indifferent to music...
Theodora
Theodora (Handel)
Theodora is an oratorio in three acts by George Frideric Handel, set to an English libretto by Thomas Morell. The oratorio concerns the Christian martyr Theodora and her Christian-converted Roman lover, Didymus....
. Another recording was the trio from Gounod's
Charles Gounod
Charles-François Gounod was a French composer, known for his Ave Maria as well as his operas Faust and Roméo et Juliette.-Biography:...
Faust
Faust (opera)
Faust is a drame lyrique in five acts by Charles Gounod to a French libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré from Carré's play Faust et Marguerite, in turn loosely based on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust, Part 1...
with tenor
Tenor
The tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...
Alfred Heather and baritone Bantock Pierpoint. The rest were duets with baritone Francis Ludlow:
- Lionel MoncktonLionel MoncktonLionel John Alexander Monckton was an English writer and composer of musical theatre. He was Britain's most popular musical theatre composer of the early years of the 20th century.-Early life:...
: A Country GirlA Country GirlA Country Girl, or, Town and Country is a musical play in two acts by James T. Tanner, with lyrics by Adrian Ross, additional lyrics by Percy Greenbank, music by Lionel Monckton and additional songs by Paul Rubens....
—"Boy and Girl" and The CingaleeThe CingaleeThe Cingalee, or Sunny Ceylon is a musical play in two acts by James T. Tanner, with music by Lionel Monckton, lyrics by Adrian Ross and Percy Greenbank, and additional material by Paul Rubens. It opened at Daly's Theatre in London, managed by George Edwardes, on March 5, 1904 and ran until March...
—"You and I" - André MessagerAndré MessagerAndré Charles Prosper Messager , was a French composer, organist, pianist, conductor and administrator. His stage compositions included ballets and 30 opéra comiques and operettas, among which Véronique, had lasting success, with Les p'tites Michu and Monsieur Beaucaire also enjoying international...
: VéroniqueVéronique (operetta)Véronique is an opéra comique or operetta in three acts composed by André Messager. The French libretto was by Georges Duval and Albert Vanloo...
—"The Donkey Duet" and "Swing Song"
The second year of that association with Pathé included her participation as Elsie Maynard and Kate in the first nearly complete recording of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Yeomen of the Guard. Other cast members were Bantock Pierpoint, Ben Ivor, Francis Ludlow, and Emily Foxcroft; like Evans, all but Ivor assumed multiple roles. Substituting for the orchestra was the Band of the Scots Guards, reflecting common practise among recording companies, as technology of the day captured wind instruments far better than strings. Of six sides on which she appeared, only one featured Evans in a solo, "The Prisoner Comes", from the Act I finale.
Evans returned to the studio, and to cylinders, once more in 1910, when she recorded four solo numbers for Edison on four-minute cylinders: Thomas Moore
Thomas Moore
Thomas Moore was an Irish poet, singer, songwriter, and entertainer, now best remembered for the lyrics of The Minstrel Boy and The Last Rose of Summer. He was responsible, with John Murray, for burning Lord Byron's memoirs after his death...
's "The Last Rose of Summer
The Last Rose of Summer
The Last Rose of Summer is a poem by Irish poet Thomas Moore, who was a friend of Byron and Shelley. Moore wrote it in 1805 while at Jenkinstown Park in County Kilkenny, Ireland...
", Guy d'Hardelot
Guy d'Hardelot
Guy d'Hardelot was the pen name of Helen Rhodes , a French composer, pianist, and teacher.- Biography :...
's "The Dawn", James Lyman Molloy's "The Kerry Dance", and Hermann Lohr's "I Wish I Were a Tiny Bird." No further recording sessions involving Evans are known in the acoustic era, although at some unknown time she recorded at least one cylinder for Edison in the earlier two-minute format: "Within a Mile of Edinboro Town" by James Hook
James Hook (composer)
James Hook was an English composer and organist.-Life and musical career:He was born in Norwich, the son of James Hook, a razor-grinder and cutler. He displayed a remarkable musical talent at an early age, playing the harpsichord by the age of four and performing concertos in public at age six...
.
In August and November 1926 and January 1927, Evans made recordings for Columbia using the new electric recording technology. None of them saw release. According to Evans, the masters were destroyed when the truck in which they were traveling overturned, but in approximately 2001 a private collector found three test pressings from the series. In all her earlier recordings aside from the Yeomen set, her accompaniments, as was common practice at the time, would have been by anonymous studio musicians, but information on the labels may suggest the identity of her piano accompanist in the test pressings. Each is inscribed by hand with the name Bergh, probably a reference to Arthur Bergh
Arthur Bergh
Arthur Oscar Bergh was an American composer, conductor and accompanist. He performed on the piano, violin and organ.- Biography :...
, then an active studio accompanist for Columbia who accompanied Fraser Gange in some of his recordings. Appropriately for the woman who would one day be the last surviving Savoyard, one song was by Arthur Sullivan
Arthur Sullivan
Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan MVO was an English composer of Irish and Italian ancestry. He is best known for his series of 14 operatic collaborations with the dramatist W. S. Gilbert, including such enduring works as H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado...
, "My Dearest Heart". The other two were "A Brown Bird Singing" by Hayden Wood and "I Wonder if Love Is a Dream" by Dorothy Forster.
External links
- Information and photo about a 1911 postcard of Evans
- Advertisement for 1929 Evans-Gange recital at New York's Town Hall
- Notice of a 1932 performance with the Harvard Glee Club and the Radcliffe Choral Society
- Photos of Lily Elsie and Evans in A Waltz Dream
- Programme, dated 3 January 1910, from Fallen FairiesFallen FairiesFallen Fairies; or, The Wicked World, is a two-act comic opera, with a libretto by W. S. Gilbert and music by Edward German. Premiering at London's Savoy Theatre on December 15, 1909, it failed miserably, closing after just 50 performances...
, showing Evans as Selene
