Ellen Beach Yaw
Encyclopedia
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
coloratura
Voice type
A voice type is a particular kind of human singing voice perceived as having certain identifying qualities or characteristics. Voice classification is the process by which human voices are evaluated and are thereby designated into voice types...
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...
, best known for her concert singing career. She had an extraordinary vocal range and could produce unusually high notes. Known as "Lark Ellen" or "The California Nightingale," she was reportedly the only known soprano of her era who could sing and sustain the D above high D. She was also able to trill
Trill (music)
The trill is a musical ornament consisting of a rapid alternation between two adjacent notes, usually a semitone or tone apart, which can be identified with the context of the trill....
in major third
Major third
In classical music from Western culture, a third is a musical interval encompassing three staff positions , and the major third is one of two commonly occurring thirds. It is qualified as major because it is the largest of the two: the major third spans four semitones, the minor third three...
s or fifths (trills usually involve rapidly alternating notes over an interval of a minor
Minor second
In modern Western tonal music theory a minor second is the interval between two notes on adjacent staff positions, or having adjacent note letters, whose alterations cause them to be one semitone or half-step apart, such as B and C or C and D....
or major second
Major second
In Western music theory, a major second is a musical interval spanning two semitones, and encompassing two adjacent staff positions . For example, the interval from C to D is a major second, as the note D lies two semitones above C, and the two notes are notated on adjacent staff postions...
).
Life and career
Yaw was born in the small town of BostonBoston, New York
Boston is a town in Erie County, New York, United States. The population was 7,897 at the 2000 census. The town is named after Boston, Massachusetts....
, near Buffalo, New York
Buffalo, New York
Buffalo is the second most populous city in the state of New York, after New York City. Located in Western New York on the eastern shores of Lake Erie and at the head of the Niagara River across from Fort Erie, Ontario, Buffalo is the seat of Erie County and the principal city of the...
(not Boston, Massachusetts, as is often stated), the daughter of Ambrose Yaw, who manufactured cow and sheep bells. Her family moved to Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
when she was very young, but her father died when she was a small child, and the family was very poor. Yaw began singing and composing songs as a child. She studied singing in America, first with her mother; then with Mrs. Torpadie, the wife of tenor Theodore Bjorksten; and then with Ernesto delle Salle. Yaw sang in concerts, beginning as a child in the 1880s, to make money to pay for singing lessons. Tours of the southern United States, California, England, Switzerland, and Germany followed, and on her return to America she gave a concert in Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall
Carnegie 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....
in 1896. Yaw raised enough money through these concerts to study in Paris with Mathilde Marchesi
Mathilde Marchesi
Mathilde Marchesi was a German mezzo-soprano, a renowned teacher of singing, and a proponent of the bel canto vocal method.-Biography:...
and later coached with Alberto Randegger
Alberto Randegger
Alberto Randegger was an Italian-born composer, conductor and singing teacher, best known for promoting opera and new works of British music in England during the Victorian era and for his widely-used textbook on singing technique.-Life and career:Randegger was born in Trieste, Italy, the son of...
. She also sang several opera roles in the late 1890s, including Ophelia in Ambroise Thomas
Ambroise Thomas
Charles Louis Ambroise Thomas was a French composer, best known for his operas Mignon and Hamlet and as Director of the Conservatoire de Paris from 1871 till his death.-Biography:"There is good music, there is bad music, and then there is Ambroise Thomas."- Emmanuel Chabrier-Early life...
' Hamlet in Nice
Nice
Nice is the fifth most populous city in France, after Paris, Marseille, Lyon and Toulouse, with a population of 348,721 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Nice extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of more than 955,000 on an area of...
in 1897.
The Rose of Persia
In 1898 and 1899, Yaw was singing in private concerts in London, and at one of these, at the home of Mrs. Fanny RonaldsFanny Ronalds
Mary Frances "Fanny" Ronalds , was an American socialite and amateur singer who is best known for her long affair with the composer Arthur Sullivan in London in the last decades of the nineteenth century....
, she so impressed Sir Arthur Sullivan that he prevailed upon the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company
D'Oyly Carte Opera Company
The D'Oyly Carte Opera Company was a professional light opera company that staged Gilbert and Sullivan's Savoy operas. The company performed nearly year-round in the UK and sometimes toured in Europe, North America and elsewhere, from the 1870s until it closed in 1982. It was revived in 1988 and...
to cast her as the Sultana Zubedyah in his comic opera The Rose of Persia
The Rose of Persia
The Rose of Persia; or, The Story-Teller and the Slave, is a two-act comic opera, with music by Arthur Sullivan and a libretto by Basil Hood. It premiered at the Savoy Theatre on 29 November 1899, closing on 28 June 1900 after a profitable run of 211 performances...
, which opened on November 29, 1899 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. Sullivan went so far as to write a special high cadenza
Cadenza
In music, a cadenza is, generically, an improvised or written-out ornamental passage played or sung by a soloist or soloists, usually in a "free" rhythmic style, and often allowing for virtuosic display....
for her song "'Neath My Lattice," a cadenza that only she could sing. Yaw's first two nights were shaky, though the reviews were mixed, and both the music director, Francois Cellier
François Cellier
François Arsène Cellier , often called Frank, was an English conductor and composer. He is best known for his tenure as music director and conductor of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company during the original runs and early revivals of the Savoy operas.-Life and career:Cellier was born in South Hackney,...
, and Mrs. Carte advocated for her replacement. Sullivan at first agreed, writing in his diary on 2 December, "I told [Cellier] I was afraid [that Yaw] would not improve, that she hadn’t got it in her.... I don’t quite see what it’s all about — Miss Yaw is not keeping people out of the theatre as Cellier and the Cartes imply."
By December 10, however, he wrote in his diary that Yaw was "improving rapidly" and "sang the song really superbly: brilliant. So I wrote again to Mrs. Carte saying that I thought if we let Miss Yaw go it would be another mistake." It was too late, however, and the next day Yaw stopped at Sullivan's flat to tell him that she had been dismissed summarily by Mrs. Carte (ostensibly on account of illness). She was replaced by Isabel Jay
Isabel Jay
Isabel Jay was an English opera singer and actress, best known for her performances in soprano roles of the Savoy Operas with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company and in musical comedies...
.
Opera and concert career
Yaw made some grand opera appearances thereafter in Monte CarloMonte Carlo
Monte Carlo is an administrative area of the Principality of Monaco....
, including as Ophelia in Thomas' Hamlet in 1902 (her favorite role); Rome, where she sang the title role in Lucia di Lammermoor
Lucia di Lammermoor
Lucia di Lammermoor is a dramma tragico in three acts by Gaetano Donizetti. Salvadore Cammarano wrote the Italian language libretto loosely based upon Sir Walter Scott's historical novel The Bride of Lammermoor....
in 1905 (under the name of Elena Elvanna at the Quirinal Theatre - she was the first American singer to make a successful operatic debut in Rome); Naples
Naples
Naples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples...
; Catalonia
Catalonia
Catalonia is an autonomous community in northeastern Spain, with the official status of a "nationality" of Spain. Catalonia comprises four provinces: Barcelona, Girona, Lleida, and Tarragona. Its capital and largest city is Barcelona. Catalonia covers an area of 32,114 km² and has an...
; and Milan
Milan
Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...
. Yaw sang Gilda in Rigoletto
Rigoletto
Rigoletto is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi. The Italian libretto was written by Francesco Maria Piave based on the play Le roi s'amuse by Victor Hugo. It was first performed at La Fenice in Venice on March 11, 1851...
in London in 1905 and gave a single performance of Lucia di Lammermoor at New York's Metropolitan Opera
Metropolitan Opera
The Metropolitan Opera is an opera company, located in New York City. Originally founded in 1880, the company gave its first performance on October 22, 1883. The company is operated by the non-profit Metropolitan Opera Association, with Peter Gelb as general manager...
on March 21, 1908 (after which she was described by the Met's manager as "the world’s greatest coloratura soprano). She sang a total of about 18 operatic roles. However, she mostly devoted herself to the concert hall, where she had a long and successful career, singing for many of the crowned heads of Europe and for U.S. President William McKinley
William McKinley
William McKinley, Jr. was the 25th President of the United States . He is best known for winning fiercely fought elections, while supporting the gold standard and high tariffs; he succeeded in forging a Republican coalition that for the most part dominated national politics until the 1930s...
. In 1904, the Los Angeles Daily Times wrote, "Miss Yaw's voice is high soprano of crystalline lightness and purity and of a range so extreme in altitude that... it was the wonder of the European continent."
Yaw was much in demand as a recording artist, and her first records were made in May 1899. She made many recordings for the Victor Talking Machine Company
Victor Talking Machine Company
The Victor Talking Machine Company was an American corporation, the leading American producer of phonographs and phonograph records and one of the leading phonograph companies in the world at the time. It was headquartered in Camden, New Jersey....
. In order to display her voice to its best effect, she wrote several songs of her own with titles such as "The Skylark," "The Cuckoo," and "The Firefly." News dispatches from Paris in 1902 reported that the Shah of Persia had engaged Yaw to sing her repertoire into his phonograph. A few of her recordings are still available. Some of her rare KeenoPhone and unpublished Edison and Victor recordings are preserved on a recording that is narrated by her pupil, the 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...
Antonio Altamirano. 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...
, inventor of the phonograph, recorded her voice for mechanical experiments on a visit to his Orange, New Jersey
Orange, New Jersey
The City of Orange is a city and township in Essex County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the township population was 30,134...
laboratories. She sang various songs throughout her range into several machines. Afterwards, Edison said of her voice, "I can see no defects of any kind in this voice. Sweet on lower notes, and mellow. Best high tones yet for the disc machine."
Later life and charitable activities
Covina, California
Covina is a small city in Los Angeles County, California about east of downtown Los Angeles, in the San Gabriel Valley region. The population was 47,796 at the 2010 census, up from 46,837 at the 2000 census...
, for the last thirty years of her life. She taught singing, gave concerts (continuing her tours in Europe until World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
and throughout North America until about 1931), and devoted herself to charitable pursuits -- often her concerts were in aid of these charities. According to her student, Antonio Altimirano, she sang the witch in a production of Hansel und Gretel in later years. She established the "Lark Ellen League" to give concerts in hospitals, homes, and jails; and the "Lark Ellen School for Boys" (she did this early in her career, in the 1890s), later taken over by the Lions Club. Yaw is memorialized in Covina by Lark Ellen Elementary School and Lark Ellen Avenue, one of the main thoroughfares connecting Covina to neighboring West Covina.
She reportedly wrote her memoirs, The Song of the Lark, which Mr. Altimirano reported were finished in 1983, but they were never published. Altimirano died in 1986, and the memoirs have not been found.
Yaw died in Covina, California
Covina, California
Covina is a small city in Los Angeles County, California about east of downtown Los Angeles, in the San Gabriel Valley region. The population was 47,796 at the 2010 census, up from 46,837 at the 2000 census...
, just shy of her 78th birthday.