Blanche Roosevelt
Encyclopedia
Wisconsin
Wisconsin is a U.S. state located in the north-central United States and is part of the Midwest. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake Michigan to the east, Michigan to the northeast, and Lake Superior to the north. Wisconsin's capital is...
.
Early life and opera career
Born Blanche Roosevelt Tucker in Sandusky, OhioSandusky, Ohio
Sandusky is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Erie County. It is located in northern Ohio and is situated on the shores of Lake Erie, almost exactly half-way between Toledo to the west and Cleveland to the east....
(some sources say she was born in Virginia
Virginia
The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...
), she traveled to Europe with her mother for vocal studies in Paris and Milan.
As Mlle. Rosavella, she made her singing debut at the Royal Italian Opera House, Covent Garden
Covent Garden
Covent Garden is a district in London on the eastern fringes of the West End, between St. Martin's Lane and Drury Lane. It is associated with the former fruit and vegetable market in the central square, now a popular shopping and tourist site, and the Royal Opera House, which is also known as...
, in 1876 as Violetta in La Traviata
La traviata
La traviata is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi set to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave. It is based on La dame aux Camélias , a play adapted from the novel by Alexandre Dumas, fils. The title La traviata means literally The Fallen Woman, or perhaps more figuratively, The Woman...
. She was the first female American performer to sing Italian opera there. She went on to sing in concerts in Milan, Belgium, Holland, and Paris. She also worked as a special correspondent from Paris in 1875 for newspapers in Chicago and London.
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...
heard the soprano while on holiday in the south of France in the summer of 1879. In September 1879, Roosevelt joined the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company and made her debut at the Opera Comique
Opera Comique
The Opera Comique was a 19th-century theatre constructed in Westminster, London, between Wych Street and Holywell Street with entrances on the East Strand. It opened in 1870 and was demolished in 1902, to make way for the construction of the Aldwych and Kingsway...
, as a replacement for Josephine during the original run 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 H.M.S. Pinafore
H.M.S. Pinafore
H.M.S. Pinafore; or, The Lass That Loved a Sailor is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and a libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It opened at the Opera Comique in London, England, on 25 May 1878 and ran for 571 performances, which was the second-longest run of any musical...
. She was then chosen 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...
, Sullivan, and Richard D'Oyly Carte
Richard D'Oyly Carte
Richard D'Oyly Carte was an English talent agent, theatrical impresario, composer and hotelier during the latter half of the Victorian era...
to play Josephine for American audiences in the first authentic D’Oyly Carte Pinafore at New York’s Fifth Avenue Theatre
Fifth Avenue Theatre
Fifth Avenue Theatre was a Broadway theatre in New York City in the United States located at 31 West 28th Street and Broadway. It was demolished in 1939....
, beginning on December 1, 1879. On December 31 of that year, in the same theatre, she created the role of Mabel in The Pirates of Penzance
The Pirates of Penzance
The Pirates of Penzance; or, The Slave of Duty is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. The opera's official premiere was at the Fifth Avenue Theatre in New York City on 31 December 1879, where the show was well received by both audiences...
, playing the character in New York and on tour until March 1880, when she left the Company.
Later that year she formed her own opera company, appearing in unsuccessful productions of Alfred Cellier
Alfred Cellier
Alfred Cellier was an English composer, orchestrator and conductor.In addition to conducting and music directing the original productions of several of the most famous Gilbert and Sullivan works and writing the overtures to some of them, Cellier conducted at many theatres in London, New York and...
’s The Sultan of Mocha (Union Square Theatre, New York, September 1880) and B. C. Stephenson
B. C. Stephenson
Benjamin Charles Stephenson or B. C. Stephenson was an English dramatist, lyricist and librettist. After beginning a career in the civil service, he started to write for the theatre, using the pen name "Bolton Rowe". He was author or co-author of several long-running shows of the Victorian theatre...
and Cellier’s grand opera
Grand Opera
Grand opera is a genre of 19th-century opera generally in four or five acts, characterised by large-scale casts and orchestras, and lavish and spectacular design and stage effects, normally with plots based on or around dramatic historic events...
adaptation of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was an American poet and educator whose works include "Paul Revere's Ride", The Song of Hiawatha, and Evangeline...
’s The Masque of Pandora (Boston Theatre, January 1881). Through her personal friendship with Longfellow, Roosevelt was able to secure the poet's permission for the adaptation. Soon afterwards, Roosevelt retired from the stage, largely at behest of her husband, an Italian, Signor Macchetta, who had succeeded to the title of Marquis
Marquis
Marquis is a French and Scottish title of nobility. The English equivalent is Marquess, while in German, it is Markgraf.It may also refer to:Persons:...
d’Alligri, and devoted herself instead to journalism and literature.
Writing career
Roosevelt became acquainted with important figures in the world of literature and the arts, including (in addition to Wadsworth, Giuseppe VerdiGiuseppe Verdi
Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi was an Italian Romantic composer, mainly of opera. He was one of the most influential composers of the 19th century...
, Victorien Sardou
Victorien Sardou
Victorien Sardou was a French dramatist. He is best remembered today for his development, along with Eugène Scribe, of the well-made play...
, Wilkie Collins
Wilkie Collins
William Wilkie Collins was an English novelist, playwright, and author of short stories. He was very popular during the Victorian era and wrote 30 novels, more than 60 short stories, 14 plays, and over 100 non-fiction pieces...
, Gustave Dore
Gustave Doré
Paul Gustave Doré was a French artist, engraver, illustrator and sculptor. Doré worked primarily with wood engraving and steel engraving.-Biography:...
, and Guy de Maupassant
Guy de Maupassant
Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant was a popular 19th-century French writer, considered one of the fathers of the modern short story and one of the form's finest exponents....
, whose mistress she became in 1884. Roosevelt's first books were The Home Life of Henry W. Longfellow, (1882), Stage-struck, or; She would be an Opera Singer (1884 - a novel), and The Life and Reminiscences of Gustave Dore (1885, for which she was reportedly the first American woman honored by the French Academy), and The Copper Queen (1886 - a novel).
She had earlier worked as a special correspondent from Paris in 1875 and later took up a similar assignment in Milan during the weeks surrounding the premiere of Verdi’s Otello
Otello
Otello is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Arrigo Boito, based on Shakespeare's play Othello. It was Verdi's penultimate opera, and was first performed at the Teatro alla Scala, Milan, on February 5, 1887....
in February 1887. Her dispatches were collected in book form as Verdi: Milan, and Othello, published later that year and dedicated to Collins: "... When I left England for Italy, you said, 'Do write me all about Verdi, Milan, and the new opera Othello.' I have taken you at your word; only the letters, like most feminine epistles, have stretched away into limitless pages, and from a few vagabond sheets have grown into a volume. I am sure you will never again ask a woman to write to you, even from Paradise; but in the mean time, here is the result of your amiability...."http://www.wilkie-collins.info/dedications_to.htm
Later books by Roosevelt, then referred to as the Marchesa (all published posthumously), included Elisabeth of Roumania - a study (1891), Hazel Fane (1891 - a novel), Familiar faces - Victorien Sardou: a personal study (1892), and a Riviera romance entitled Rien ne vaplus (1899).
Later life and fatal accident
Monte Carlo
Monte Carlo is an administrative area of the Principality of Monaco....
that overturned when the horses bolted, killing the driver and seriously injuring the Marchesa. She never recovered from her injuries, dying the next year in London at the age of 45.
Roosevelt is buried in Brompton Cemetery
Brompton Cemetery
Brompton Cemetery is located near Earl's Court in South West London, England . It is managed by The Royal Parks and is one of the Magnificent Seven...
, where there is a great statue of her at her tomb.