Bella Goodall
Encyclopedia
Isabella Goodall was an English soubrette
Soubrette
A soubrette is a female stock character in opera and theatre. The term arrived in English from Provençal via French, and means "conceited" or "coy".-Theater:...
of the Victorian
Victorian era
The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...
theatre. She made her name on the stage in her native city, Liverpool
Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
, and later became a star of the London theatre, both in burlesque and comic plays.
Biography
Goodall was born in LiverpoolLiverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
. By 1865, she was a star at the city's Theatre Royal, Williamson Square
Williamson Square
Williamson Square is in the city centre of Liverpool, England. It was initially laid out as a residential square in the middle of the 18th century....
. In February 1865 she was granted a benefit performance in which she acted and sang. Works played on that occasion included Dion Boucicault
Dion Boucicault
Dionysius Lardner Boursiquot , commonly known as Dion Boucicault, was an Irish actor and playwright famed for his melodramas. By the later part of the 19th century, Boucicault had become known on both sides of the Atlantic as one of the most successful actor-playwright-managers then in the...
's burletta
Burletta
A burletta , also sometimes burla or burlettina, is a musical term generally denoting a brief comic Italian opera...
A Lover by Proxy. She also starred in productions in other Liverpool theatres at about this time. The author and journalist William Henry Rideing
William Henry Rideing
William Henry Rideing was an American author with strong connections to England.-Biography:Rideing's father was an officer in the service of the Cunard Line. After the death of his mother, Rideing went to Chicago, Illinois, where he remained until 1870.He early began writing for the press, and...
reminisced in 1912 about his boyhood in Liverpool, where he remembered Goodall as the reigning soubrette: "Then the orchestra would tune up and Miss Goodall, smiling and bowing, would open the most beautiful mouth in the world .... It bowled me over."
She made her London debut in April 1865 at the Prince of Wales's Theatre in J P Wooler's The Winning Hazard, attracting favourable reviews from The Era
The Era (newspaper)
The Era was a British weekly paper, published from 1838 to 1939. Originally a general newspaper, it became noted for its sports coverage, and later for its theatrical content.-History:...
, London's leading theatre journal, and The Daily News. In July of the same year, also at the Prince of Wales's, she made a success as a comic Lancastrian
Lancashire
Lancashire is a non-metropolitan county of historic origin in the North West of England. It takes its name from the city of Lancaster, and is sometimes known as the County of Lancaster. Although Lancaster is still considered to be the county town, Lancashire County Council is based in Preston...
housemaid in a new farce, The Mudborough Election. In December 1865 she was cast in pantomime
Pantomime
Pantomime — not to be confused with a mime artist, a theatrical performer of mime—is a musical-comedy theatrical production traditionally found in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Jamaica, South Africa, India, Ireland, Gibraltar and Malta, and is mostly performed during the...
in King Chess at the New Surrey Theatre
Surrey Theatre
The Surrey Theatre began life in 1782 as the Royal Circus and Equestrian Philharmonic Academy, one of the many circuses that provided contemporary London entertainment of both horsemanship and drama...
.
Over the next two years she continued to establish herself as a leading West End
West End theatre
West End theatre is a popular term for mainstream professional theatre staged in the large theatres of London's 'Theatreland', the West End. Along with New York's Broadway theatre, West End theatre is usually considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English speaking...
player in comic plays and burlesques. In 1866 she was cast as one of two "squabbling schoolgirls intent on marriage" in H. J. Byron's One Hundred Thousand Pounds. Her subsequent performances in this period included Byron's classical burlesque, Pandora's Box, Magic Toys at the Prince of Wales's with Marie Wilton, La Vivandière
La Vivandière (Gilbert)
La Vivandière; or, True to the Corps! is a burlesque by W. S. Gilbert, described by the author as "An Operatic Extravaganza Founded on Donizetti's Opera, La figlia del regimento." In the French or other continental armies a vivandière was a woman who supplied food and drink to troops in the...
by 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...
and the farces, Mr and Mrs White and The Rendezvous. In pantomime she was "a very dashing and prepossessing Princess Eglantine" in Valentine and Orson for the 1867 Christmas season, and she successfully took a travesti (male) role in Boucicault's The Flying Scud at the Holborn Theatre, playing Lord Woodbie, followed by another trousers role, the valet Max, in Gilbert's burlesque, The Merry Zingara
The Merry Zingara
The Merry Zingara; Or, The Tipsy Gipsy & The Pipsy Wipsy was the third of W. S. Gilbert's five burlesques of opera. Described by the author as "A Whimsical Parody on The Bohemian Girl", by Michael Balfe, it was produced at the Royalty Theatre, London, on 21 March 1868.As in his four other operatic...
, a parody of The Bohemian Girl
The Bohemian Girl
The Bohemian Girl is an opera composed by Michael William Balfe with a libretto by Alfred Bunn. The plot is loosely based on a Cervantes tale, La Gitanilla.The opera was first produced in London at the Drury Lane Theatre on November 27, 1843...
.
In 1868 she joined the company of the Strand Theatre
Royal Strand Theatre
The Royal Strand Theatre was located in Strand in the City of Westminster. The theatre was built on the site of a panorama in 1832, and in 1882 was rebuilt by the prolific theatre architect Charles J. Phipps...
in the burlesque The Field of the Cloth of Gold and appeared with the company mainly in London but also on tour during the next four years. In 1870 she appeared as "a spirited St Patrick" in F. C. Burnand's Sir George and a Dragon, in which her dancing was "a marvellous tour de force – perhaps more vigorous than graceful, but her Irish jig is decidedly one of the most attractive features in the burlesque." During her time with the Strand company the repertoire mixed burlesques and straight plays, including comedies such as Up in the World, by Arthur Sketchley, in which she appeared in 1871 as a riotous page-boy.
She was evidently not only a practitioner of the theatre but also a teacher. In November 1868, The Era reported, "Miss Ada Arnold, a pupil of Miss Bella Goodall, made a successful debut at the Holborn Theatre on Saturday last in the burlesque of Lucrezia Borgia
Lucrezia Borgia
Lucrezia Borgia [luˈkrɛtsia ˈbɔrʤa] was the illegitimate daughter of Rodrigo Borgia, the powerful Renaissance Valencian who later became Pope Alexander VI, and Vannozza dei Cattanei. Her brothers included Cesare Borgia, Giovanni Borgia, and Gioffre Borgia...
."