Anna Russell, née
Anna Claudia Russell-Brown (27 December 1911 – 18 October 2006) was an English–Canadian singer and comedienne. She gave many concerts in which she sang and played comic musical sketches on the piano. Among her best-known works are her concert performances and famous recordings of
The Ring of the Nibelungs (An Analysis) – a humorous 30-minute synopsis of
Richard WagnerWilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
's
Der Ring des NibelungenDer Ring des Nibelungen is a cycle of four epic operas by the German composer Richard Wagner . The works are based loosely on characters from the Norse sagas and the Nibelungenlied...
– and (on the same album) her
parodyA parody , in current usage, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...
How to Write Your Own Gilbert and SullivanGilbert 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...
Opera.
Early life
Russell was born in
Maida ValeMaida Vale is a residential district in West London between St John's Wood and Kilburn. It is part of the City of Westminster. The area is mostly residential, and mainly affluent, consisting of many large late Victorian and Edwardian blocks of mansion flats...
,
LondonLondon is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, England, though some sources say her birthplace was
LondonLondon is a city in Southwestern Ontario, Canada, situated along the Quebec City – Windsor Corridor. The city has a population of 352,395, and the metropolitan area has a population of 457,720, according to the 2006 Canadian census; the metro population in 2009 was estimated at 489,274. The city...
,
OntarioOntario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....
. She was educated at St Felix School at Southwold, Suffolk, at Harrogate College and in
BrusselsBrussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...
and
ParisParis is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
. She studied at the
Royal College of MusicThe Royal College of Music is a conservatoire founded by Royal Charter in 1882, located in South Kensington, London, England.-Background:The first director was Sir George Grove and he was followed by Sir Hubert Parry...
. She had a difficult childhood, and particularly a difficult relationship with her mother, who often shipped her off to live with other relatives for some time. Russell was twice married and divorced, first to John Denison and second to artist Charles Goldhamer. In her "Who's Who" entry she described herself as single.
Russell's early career included a few engagements in opera (including a disastrous appearance as a substitute Santuzza in a British touring production of
Cavalleria rusticanaCavalleria rusticana is an opera in one act by Pietro Mascagni to an Italian libretto by Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti and Guido Menasci, adapted from a play written by Giovanni Verga based on his short story. Considered one of the classic verismo operas, it premiered on May 17, 1890 at the Teatro...
, where she clumsily tripped on a set piece and pulled it down – an event later used in her comedy) – as well as appearances as a folk singer on
BBCThe British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
radio in 1931. Russell's mother was Canadian, and the family returned in 1939 to
TorontoToronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...
, after her father's death, where she began to appear on local radio stations as an entertainer. By 1940, she was beginning to find success as a soloist on the concert stage in Canada. Russell's first one-woman show as a parodist was sponsored by the Toronto Imperial Order of the Daughters of the Empire in 1942, though it was the Canadian conductor Sir
Ernest MacMillanSir Ernest Alexander Campbell MacMillan, CC was an internationally renowned Canadian orchestral conductor and composer, and Canada's only "Musical Knight". He is widely regarded as being Canada's pre-eminent musician, from the 1920s through the 1950s...
who really set her on her international career as a "musical cartoonist", when he invited her to take part in his annual burlesque Christmas Box Symphony Concert in 1944. Russell made her
New York CityNew York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
debut in her one-woman show in 1948, which she toured throughout
North AmericaNorth America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
, Britain, Australia and the rest of the English-speaking world.
Peak years
In her first major successful season, 1952–53, she performed in 37 cities in the United States and Canada before an estimated 100,000 listeners. Her recording
Anna Russell Sings? became a best seller. She wrote the lyrics and music for
Anna Russell's Little Show (1953) and sang the role of the Witch in an animated film of the opera
Hansel and Gretel in 1954, also singing that role at
New York City OperaThe New York City Opera is an American opera company located in New York City.The company, called "the people's opera" by New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, was founded in 1943 with the aim of making opera financially accessible to a wide audience, producing an innovative choice of repertory, and...
the same year and with the Cosmopolitan Opera in San Francisco in 1957.
She took
Anna Russell's Little Show to
BroadwayBroadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
in 1953 and also appeared on Broadway in
All by Myself in 1960. In 1963, with Robert Paine Grose and Joan White, she founded Grow Productions, Inc., which presented
Lady Audley's SecretLady Audley's Secret is a sensation novel by Mary Elizabeth Braddon published in 1862. It was Braddon's most successful and well known novel. Critic John Sutherland described the work as "the most sensationally successful of all the sensation novels." The plot centers on "accidental bigamy" which...
at the
New York World's FairThe 1964/1965 New York World's Fair was the third major world's fair to be held in New York City. Hailing itself as a "universal and international" exposition, the fair's theme was "Peace Through Understanding," dedicated to "Man's Achievement on a Shrinking Globe in an Expanding Universe";...
in 1964. She also played a leading role in
Noël CowardSir Noël Peirce Coward was an English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what Time magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise".Born in Teddington, a suburb of London, Coward attended a dance academy...
's comedy
Blithe SpiritBlithe Spirit is a comic play written by Noël Coward which takes its title from Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem "To a Skylark" . The play concerns socialite and novelist Charles Condomine, who invites the eccentric medium and clairvoyant, Madame Arcati, to his house to conduct a séance, hoping to...
. Other stage shows included
Quality StreetQuality Street is a comedy in four acts by J. M. Barrie, written before his more famous work Peter Pan. The story is about two sisters who start a school "for genteel children"....
in 1965 at the
Bucks County PlayhouseThe Bucks County Playhouse is the State Theater of Pennsylvania, and is located in New Hope, Pennsylvania.When the Hope Mills burnt in 1790, the grist mills were rebuilt as the New Hope Mills by Benjamin Parry. ....
in
PennsylvaniaThe Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...
. Russell appeared on
The Ed Sullivan ShowThe Ed Sullivan Show is an American TV variety show that originally ran on CBS from Sunday June 20, 1948 to Sunday June 6, 1971, and was hosted by New York entertainment columnist Ed Sullivan....
and in a number of plays and television episodes. She performed her concerts at New York's
Carnegie HallCarnegie Hall is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States, located at 881 Seventh Avenue, occupying the east stretch of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street and West 57th Street, two blocks south of Central Park....
and London's
Royal Albert HallThe Royal Albert Hall is a concert hall situated on the northern edge of the South Kensington area, in the City of Westminster, London, England, best known for holding the annual summer Proms concerts since 1941....
. In 1977, she played the Duchess of Crackenthorp in the
Canadian Opera CompanyThe Canadian Opera Company is an opera company in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is the largest opera company in Canada and the third largest producer of opera in North America. The COC performs in its own opera house, the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts.-History:For 40 years until...
production of
Daughter of the RegimentLa fille du régiment is an opéra comique in two acts by Gaetano Donizetti. It was written while the composer was living in Paris, with a French libretto by Jules-Henri Vernoy de Saint-Georges and Jean-François Bayard.La figlia del reggimento, a slightly different Italian-language version , was...
, a role which she later recreated for
Tulsa OperaThe Tulsa Opera, located in Tulsa, Oklahoma, is the 18th oldest opera company in the United States and is ranked among the top 10 regional opera companies in the nation. The company produces three opera productions each season performed at the Tulsa Performing Arts Center...
in a production with Erie Mills and
Giorgio TozziGiorgio Tozzi was for many years a leading bass with the Metropolitan Opera, as well as playing lead roles in nearly every major opera house worldwide.-Career:Tozzi was born George John Tozzi in Chicago, Illinois...
.
Russell became known for her deadpan humour, including her disbelieving emphasis of the absurd in well accepted stories and her mockery of pretension. For example, in her humorous analysis of Wagner's Ring cycle, she began by noting that the first scene takes place in the River Rhine: "
In it!!" After pointing out that a character in the Ring Cycle is the first woman that Siegfried has ever met who is not his aunt, she pauses and declares, "I'm not making this up, you know!" This phrase also became the title of her autobiography, published in 1985. At the end of her monologue she sings the Rhinemaidens' leitmotif and declares, "You're exactly where you started, 20 hours ago!" Besides her Ring and
Gilbert and SullivanGilbert 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...
parodies, Russell was famous for other routines, including "Wind Instruments I Have Known", and parodies of lieder ("Schlumpf"), French art song ("Je ne veux pas faire l'amour" and "Je n'ai pas la plume de ma tante"), English folksongs ("I Wish I Were a Dicky-Bird" and "Oh How I Love the Spring"), and English music-hall songs ("I'm Only A Faded Rose"); even stretching to quasi-jazz ("I Gave You My Heart").
She composed, wrote, and performed her own material for
Columbia RecordsColumbia 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...
, was the author of
The Power of Being a Positive Stinker (1955) and the
Anna Russell Songbook (1958), and was the President of the B & R Music Publishing Company. She received the Canadian Women's Press Club Award in 1956 as the best Canadian comedy writer of the year. Giving advice on how to be a successful singer, she quipped that although a glorious voice was important, "it helps to be an independently wealthy, politically motivated, back-stabbing bitch."
Later years
Russell retired to Unionville, Ontario, Canada, in the late 1960s, living on a street named after her, but she went on several "farewell" tours in the 70s and 80s, parodying opera divas who did the same. In 1980 she played Helga ten Dorp opposite
Charles DennisCharles Dennis is a Canadian actor, playwright, radio actor, journalist, author, director, and screenwriter.-Background:...
's Sidney Bruhl in
DeathtrapDeathtrap may refer to:*Deathtrap , a 1978 play by Ira Levin which received a Tony Award nomination for Best Play*Deathtrap , a 1982 film based on the Levin play*Deathtrap , a plot device in fiction and drama...
at the Grand Theatre in London, Ontario. In her last years, she moved to
AustraliaAustralia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
, where she lived with her adopted daughter, Deirdre Prussak, in Rosedale near
Batemans Bay, New South Wales- Media :Radio Stations*East Coast Radio 2EC *Power FM NSW South Coast - POWER FM from Nowra can also be received in parts of Batemans Bay on FM 94.9....
, where she died. Prussak was the author of
Anna in a Thousand Cities, a memoir of Anna Russell's life.
Books
- Autobiography: I'm Not Making This Up, You Know (a quote from her Ring of the Nibelungs routine), ISBN 0-8264-0364-6, was published by Continuum in 1985. Edited by Janet Vickers.
- The Power of Being a Positive Stinker / Perpetrated by Anna Russell, New York : Citadel Press, c1955. Reissued by Deirdre Prussak Books, Rosedale NSW 2536, Australia http://www.morning.com.au/annarussell
- The Anna Russell Songbook, New York: Citadel Press, c1960. Includes lyrics and scores of: I Gave My Love a Cherry; Rikki Tikki; Jolly old Sigmund Freud; Old Mother Slipper Slopper; Je N’ai Pas la Plume de Ma Tante; I’m Only a Faded Rose; Two Time Man; How to Write Your Own Gilbert and Sullivan Opera; Advice on Song Selection for Concert Singers: A Square Talk on Popular Music; Anna Russell’s Guide to Concert Audiences
- Anna in a Thousand Cities, Rosedale NSW, Australia; by Deirdre Prussak; ISBN 0-9580819-0-5 http://www.morning.com.au/annarussell: (memoir by Russell's adopted daughter)
Recordings
- Anna Russell Sings? Advice on Song Selection for Concert Singers
- Anna Russell Sings! Again? 1953, Columbia Masterworks, ML4594/ML4733
- Side One: “The Ring of the Nibelungs” (An Analysis)
- Side Two: Introduction to the Concert (By the Women’s Club President); How to Write Your Own Gilbert and Sullivan Opera.
- The Anna Russell Album Sony Music Entertainment, Inc. (combination of Sings and Sings, Again) (reissued on CD, 1991, Sony Masterworks, MDK 47252)
- Anna Russell, Encore? Sony Music Entertainment, Inc.; (Sony Classical #SFK 60316)
- Anna Russell Again? (Sony Classical #SFK60317).
- Anna Russell’s Guide to Concert Audiences
- Anna Russell in Darkest Africa
- A Square Talk on Popular Music
- A Practical Banana Promotion
- Anna Russell at the Sydney Opera House (EMI OASD-7581)
(some of the info above was from
this site)
Filmography
- The Clown Princess of Comedy (1996 listing from Amazon Canada http://www.amazon.ca/dp/B0009MAPHW)
- The (First) Farewell Concert. Video Artists International 69019. VHS Hi-Fi. Running time 1 hour, 25 minutes. Recorded live at the Baltimore Museum of Art
The Baltimore Museum of Art in Baltimore, Maryland, United States, was founded in 1914. Built in the Roman Temple style, the Museum is home to an internationally renowned collection of 19th-century, modern, and contemporary art. Founded in 1914 with a single painting, the BMA today has 90,000 works...
, November 7, 1984. Includes: How to Become a Singer; Wind Instruments I Have Known; On Pink Chiffon; How to Write your Own Gilbert & Sullivan Opera; Analysis of the "Ring Cycle"; Backwards with the Folk Song.
- Hansel and Gretel: voice of the Witch in animated version of the opera by Engelbert Humperdinck, RKO Radio Pictures, 1954 (reissued by V.I.E.W. Video, NYC on DVD http://www.view.com/home-opera.html#VV2421)
- The Gentlemen of Titipu (1973); Arcifanfano, King of Fools; Play, Performance, Perception: The way of the world; Omnibus. TV-Radio Workshop of the Ford Foundation; producer, Robert Saudek.
Quotes and trivia
- Famous quotation: "I'm not making this up, you know!" (from Wagner Ring plot)
- A street in Unionville, Ontario
Unionville is a suburban village in Markham, Ontario, Canada. It is located 33 km northeast of downtown Toronto and 4 km east of southern Richmond Hill. Unionville is located between Woodbine Avenue as the western limit, alongside the Rouge River leading to McCowan Road as the eastern...
, Anna Russell Way, is named after Anna Russell.
External links