Dora Labbette
Encyclopedia
Dora Labbette was an English soprano. Her career spanned the concert hall and the opera house. She conspired with Sir Thomas Beecham
to appear at the Royal Opera House
masquerading as an Italian singer by the name of Lisa Perli. Away from professional concerns she had an affair with Beecham, with whom she had a son.
, the daughter of a railway porter. She studied at the Guildhall School of Music
, where she won the Melba scholarship, the Knill challenge cup for the best student of the year, and the Heilbut scholarship. She also studied with Liza Lehmann
, who took her to sing to the music publisher and impresario William Boosey, who gave her a contract to sing songs published by his company, at "Ballad concerts, Promenades and Sunday evening concerts". She made her Wigmore Hall
début in 1917, and in April 1918 married a soldier, Captain David Strang of the Royal Engineers
. He wanted her to abandon her musical career, but she refused and left him after nineteen months of marriage to continue singing. She had a long recital and oratorio
career in which she appeared in London and in the provinces. She was the soprano soloist at the first performance of Delius
's Idyll in 1933.
After making her operatic debut in Oxford
in 1934, in Rameau
's Castor et Pollux
Labbette took the role of Mimì in La bohème
at Covent Garden
in 1935, using the mock-Italian name "Lisa Perli", after her birthplace, Purley. The press and public were not long deceived by the pseudonym, and she was rapidly accepted as an opera singer. When the hoax was revealed, The Gramophone
published a short verse which included the lines:
In a later interview, Labbette explained that she had found it impossible to break out of the concert and oratorio repertoire into opera. "As for the Messiah
, the Creation and Elijah
, I must have sung the leading soprano parts in these oratorios hundreds of times, until I felt I would shriek if I were asked to do them again.... But it seemed quite hopeless and against all tradition that a singer who had been identified with the concert platform should desire to appear on the operatic stage." The critic Neville Cardus
wrote of her, "Lisa Perli is the best of our Mimis. She has a genius for diminutive pathos and in the closing scene she can bring moistness to the throat of the hardened critic."
After this operatic success, she went to Paris and studied Debussy's Pelléas and Mélisande
, subsequently singing Melisande at Vichy
and Bordeaux
and at Covent Garden the following summer. In the autumn of 1937 she sang Mimì in La Bohème at Berlin, Munich
and Dresden
. After the first performance in Berlin, she was engaged to sing Mignon
in German. Her other operatic roles included Desdemona in Otello
, Juliette in Roméo et Juliette
, and Marguerite in Faust
.
The New Grove Dictionary of Opera said of her. "Her voice was true, pure and youthful, and she was an outstanding actress." Labbette made many gramophone records, including the first complete Messiah
, conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham
, with whom she had an affair lasting thirteen years, which produced a son, Paul.
World War II
cut short her London career, and her last operatic performances were on tour with the Carl Rosa Opera Company
. Among her last concert performances was in The Creation, with Beecham, in Sydney in 1940.
Thomas Beecham
Sir Thomas Beecham, 2nd Baronet CH was an English conductor and impresario best known for his association with the London Philharmonic and the Royal Philharmonic orchestras. He was also closely associated with the Liverpool Philharmonic and Hallé orchestras...
to appear 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...
masquerading as an Italian singer by the name of Lisa Perli. Away from professional concerns she had an affair with Beecham, with whom she had a son.
Biography
Labbette was born Dorothy Bella Labbett in the London suburb of PurleyPurley, London
Purley is a place in the London Borough of Croydon, England. It is a suburban development situated 11.7 miles south of Charing Cross.The name derives from "pirlea", which means 'Peartree lea'. Purley has a population of about 72,000....
, the daughter of a railway porter. She studied at the Guildhall School of Music
Guildhall School of Music and Drama
Guildhall School of Music and Drama is an independent music and dramatic arts school which was founded in 1880 in London, England. Students can pursue courses in Music, Opera, Drama and Technical Theatre Arts.-History:...
, where she won the Melba scholarship, the Knill challenge cup for the best student of the year, and the Heilbut scholarship. She also studied with Liza Lehmann
Liza Lehmann
Liza Lehmann was an English operatic soprano and composer, known for her vocal compositions.-Biography:She was born Elisabetha Nina Mary Frederica Lehmann in London. Her father was the German painter Rudolf Lehmann and her mother was Amelia Chambers, a music teacher, composer and arranger...
, who took her to sing to the music publisher and impresario William Boosey, who gave her a contract to sing songs published by his company, at "Ballad concerts, Promenades and Sunday evening concerts". She made her Wigmore Hall
Wigmore Hall
Wigmore Hall is a leading international recital venue that specialises in hosting performances of chamber music and is best known for classical recitals of piano, song and instrumental music. It is located at 36 Wigmore Street, London, UK and was built to provide London with a venue that was both...
début in 1917, and in April 1918 married a soldier, Captain David Strang of the Royal Engineers
Royal Engineers
The Corps of Royal Engineers, usually just called the Royal Engineers , and commonly known as the Sappers, is one of the corps of the British Army....
. He wanted her to abandon her musical career, but she refused and left him after nineteen months of marriage to continue singing. She had a long recital and oratorio
Oratorio
An oratorio is a large musical composition including an orchestra, a choir, and soloists. Like an opera, an oratorio includes the use of a choir, soloists, an ensemble, various distinguishable characters, and arias...
career in which she appeared in London and in the provinces. She was the soprano soloist at the first performance of 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...
's Idyll in 1933.
After making her operatic debut in Oxford
Oxford
The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...
in 1934, in Rameau
Jean-Philippe Rameau
Jean-Philippe Rameau was one of the most important French composers and music theorists of the Baroque era. He replaced Jean-Baptiste Lully as the dominant composer of French opera and is also considered the leading French composer for the harpsichord of his time, alongside François...
's Castor et Pollux
Castor et Pollux
Castor et Pollux is an opera by Jean-Philippe Rameau, first performed on 24 October 1737 at the Académie royale de musique in Paris. The librettist was Pierre-Joseph-Justin Bernard, whose reputation as a salon poet it made. This was the third opera by Rameau and his second in the form of the...
Labbette took the role of Mimì in La bohème
La bohème
La bohème is an opera in four acts,Puccini called the divisions quadro, a tableau or "image", rather than atto . by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, based on Scènes de la vie de bohème by Henri Murger...
at 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...
in 1935, using the mock-Italian name "Lisa Perli", after her birthplace, Purley. The press and public were not long deceived by the pseudonym, and she was rapidly accepted as an opera singer. When the hoax was revealed, The Gramophone
The Gramophone
Gramophone is a magazine published monthly in London by Haymarket devoted to classical music and jazz, particularly recordings. It was founded in 1923 by the Scottish author Compton Mackenzie...
published a short verse which included the lines:
- Dora Labbette! Dora Labbette, O!
- We rather like our pocket prima donna,
- Who sings as well as any twenty-tonner.
- Will Perli last? Will she become a habit,
- Or dwindle back into Miss Dora Labbette?
In a later interview, Labbette explained that she had found it impossible to break out of the concert and oratorio repertoire into opera. "As for the Messiah
Messiah (Handel)
Messiah is an English-language oratorio composed in 1741 by George Frideric Handel, with a scriptural text compiled by Charles Jennens from the King James Bible and the Book of Common Prayer. It was first performed in Dublin on 13 April 1742, and received its London premiere nearly a year later...
, the Creation and 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....
, I must have sung the leading soprano parts in these oratorios hundreds of times, until I felt I would shriek if I were asked to do them again.... But it seemed quite hopeless and against all tradition that a singer who had been identified with the concert platform should desire to appear on the operatic stage." The critic Neville Cardus
Neville Cardus
Sir John Frederick Neville Cardus CBE was an English writer and critic, best known for his writing on music and cricket. For many years, he wrote for The Manchester Guardian. He was untrained in music, and his style of criticism was subjective, romantic and personal, in contrast with his critical...
wrote of her, "Lisa Perli is the best of our Mimis. She has a genius for diminutive pathos and in the closing scene she can bring moistness to the throat of the hardened critic."
After this operatic success, she went to Paris and studied Debussy's Pelléas and Mélisande
Pelléas and Mélisande
Pelléas and Mélisande is a Symbolist play by Maurice Maeterlinck about the forbidden, doomed love of the title characters. It was first performed in 1893....
, subsequently singing Melisande at Vichy
Vichy
Vichy is a commune in the department of Allier in Auvergne in central France. It belongs to the historic province of Bourbonnais.It is known as a spa and resort town and was the de facto capital of Vichy France during the World War II Nazi German occupation from 1940 to 1944.The town's inhabitants...
and Bordeaux
Bordeaux
Bordeaux is a port city on the Garonne River in the Gironde department in southwestern France.The Bordeaux-Arcachon-Libourne metropolitan area, has a population of 1,010,000 and constitutes the sixth-largest urban area in France. It is the capital of the Aquitaine region, as well as the prefecture...
and at Covent Garden the following summer. In the autumn of 1937 she sang Mimì in La Bohème at Berlin, Munich
Munich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
and Dresden
Dresden
Dresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area....
. After the first performance in Berlin, she was engaged to sing Mignon
Mignon
Mignon is an opéra comique in three acts by Ambroise Thomas. The original French libretto was by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré, based on Goethe's novel Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre. The Italian version was translated by Giuseppe Zaffira. The opera is mentioned in James Joyce's The Dead,...
in German. Her other operatic roles included Desdemona in 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....
, Juliette in Roméo et Juliette
Roméo et Juliette
Roméo et Juliette is an opéra in five acts by Charles Gounod to a French libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré, based on The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare. It was first performed at the Théâtre Lyrique , Paris on 27 April 1867...
, and Marguerite in 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...
.
The New Grove Dictionary of Opera said of her. "Her voice was true, pure and youthful, and she was an outstanding actress." Labbette made many gramophone records, including the first complete Messiah
Messiah (Handel)
Messiah is an English-language oratorio composed in 1741 by George Frideric Handel, with a scriptural text compiled by Charles Jennens from the King James Bible and the Book of Common Prayer. It was first performed in Dublin on 13 April 1742, and received its London premiere nearly a year later...
, conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham
Thomas Beecham
Sir Thomas Beecham, 2nd Baronet CH was an English conductor and impresario best known for his association with the London Philharmonic and the Royal Philharmonic orchestras. He was also closely associated with the Liverpool Philharmonic and Hallé orchestras...
, with whom she had an affair lasting thirteen years, which produced a son, Paul.
World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
cut short her London career, and her last operatic performances were on tour with the Carl Rosa Opera Company
Carl Rosa Opera Company
The Carl Rosa Opera Company was founded in 1873 by Carl August Nicholas Rosa, a German-born musical impresario, to present opera in English in London and the British provinces. The company survived Rosa's death in 1889, and continued to present opera in English on tour until 1960, when it was...
. Among her last concert performances was in The Creation, with Beecham, in Sydney in 1940.
External links
- 1922 recording of Dora Labbette singing Arthur SullivanArthur SullivanSir 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...
's setting of Shakespeare's "Orpheus with his lute". Orchestra conducted by Albert KetèlbeyAlbert KetèlbeyAlbert William Ketèlbey , born Ketelbey, was an English composer, conductor and pianist.-Biography:...
. - 1927 recording of Dora Labbette singing the conclusion to Handel's I Know That My Redeemer Liveth. Orchestra conducted by Sir Thomas BeechamThomas BeechamSir Thomas Beecham, 2nd Baronet CH was an English conductor and impresario best known for his association with the London Philharmonic and the Royal Philharmonic orchestras. He was also closely associated with the Liverpool Philharmonic and Hallé orchestras...
. - 1938 recording of Dora Labbette singing Frederick DeliusFrederick DeliusFrederick 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...
's Klein Venevil. With the London Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Beecham.