Zélie de Lussan
Encyclopedia
Zélie de Lussan was an American opera singer of French descent who was successful in her native country but made most of her career in England. The wide range
of her voice allowed her to sing both mezzo-soprano
and soprano
roles. Among de Lussan's most famous roles was the title role in Georges Bizet
's Carmen
, which she performed 2,000 times. She appeared with Sir Thomas Beecham
's opera companies, at Covent Garden
and with the Carl Rosa Opera Company
. After retiring from the stage she made her home in London, where she continued to teach singing for many years.
. The young Zélie first appeared on stage at the age of nine but her parents forbade her to embark on a professional musical career. The Swedish singer Christina Nilsson
heard her sing and persuaded the de Lussans to change their minds. After training with her mother, de Lussan made her operatic début in 1884 in Boston, Massachusetts, as Arline in Balfe
's The Bohemian Girl
, in which she was an immediate success. Augustus Harris
engaged her to appear in the first season under his management at Covent Garden
, London, and as Carmen she made the part "peculiarly her own." Some critics compared her favourably to Emma Calvé
, then the leading interpreter of the role. The Times
wrote of her début, "This young lady, like most modern prime donne, comes from America; but she is an American with a difference, being ... partly French and partly Spanish ... her movements are lithe and graceful, almost snake-like; and, in brief, we have here an interesting and attractive Carmen, who makes her audiences not only applaud but think." Later, George Bernard Shaw
was less enthusiastic: "the performance was slipshod and perfunctory. Melba
, De Reszke
, Lasalle and Miranda sang in French; Ciampi and the chorus sang in Italian; and Miss de Lussan sang in whatever language seemed to have the best of it for the moment." Shaw nevertheless acknowledged de Lussan's prominence: "Last Wednesday I was told that Siegfried
was to be produced that evening at Covent Garden. I was incredulous, and asked my informant whether he did not mean Carmen, with Miss Zélie de Lussan in the title part."
In London her successes included Zerlina in Don Giovanni
, and, in 1897, Musetta in London's first performances of La bohème
. Her singing greatly impressed Queen Victoria
, and she was more than once invited to sing at Balmoral
and Windsor Castle
s. In 1894 she made her début at the Metropolitan Opera
as Carmen, and appeared there for three seasons in roles including Nannetta (Falstaff
), Zerlina, and Nedda (Pagliacci
). In 1910 she sang Cherubino in The Marriage of Figaro
in Thomas Beecham
's Mozart season at His Majesty's Theatre
. The Times observed, "The wide range of her voice, which combined the rich timbre of a mezzo-soprano
and a bright ringing tone in the head register, permitted her to do justice to many parts." She appeared regularly at Covent Garden between 1890 and 1910, and also appeared in France, Spain and Portugal. She also worked with smaller companies such as the Carl Rosa
and Moody-Manners Opera Company, with whom she sang until 1913. The Manchester Guardian reported, "At one period she sang for three years without a single week's rest, the Carl Rosa, Covent Garden and Drury Lane
seasons filling up the whole year."
in what was only the second recording session for domestically-published records for Victor's exclusive "Red Seal". Her recording of the Habanera
from Carmen
from this session is the earliest operatic aria
recorded on a Red Seal disc. In 1906, she made another four records on the Beka
label.
described her as "inimitable ... she dominates the stage". In the same year she gave her 2,000th performance as Carmen.
After her husband died in 1918 she continued to make her home in London. According to Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, "She taught for many years in England, retaining the vitality and charm of her personality well into old age. Her recordings are few but show something of her rich voice and lively temperament." She died in London three days short of her 88th birthday.
Vocal range
Vocal range is the measure of the breadth of pitches that a human voice can phonate. Although the study of vocal range has little practical application in terms of speech, it is a topic of study within linguistics, phonetics, and speech and language pathology, particularly in relation to the study...
of her voice allowed her to sing both mezzo-soprano
Mezzo-soprano
A mezzo-soprano is a type of classical female singing voice whose range lies between the soprano and the contralto singing voices, usually extending from the A below middle C to the A two octaves above...
and 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...
roles. Among de Lussan's most famous roles was the title role in Georges Bizet
Georges Bizet
Georges Bizet formally Alexandre César Léopold Bizet, was a French composer, mainly of operas. In a career cut short by his early death, he achieved few successes before his final work, Carmen, became one of the most popular and frequently performed works in the entire opera repertory.During a...
's Carmen
Carmen
Carmen is a French opéra comique by Georges Bizet. The libretto is by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, based on the novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée, first published in 1845, itself possibly influenced by the narrative poem The Gypsies by Alexander Pushkin...
, which she performed 2,000 times. She appeared with 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...
's opera companies, 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...
and 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...
. After retiring from the stage she made her home in London, where she continued to teach singing for many years.
Early years
Zélie de Lussan was born in Brooklyn, New York, to French parents, Jean de Lussan and his wife, a professional sopranoSoprano
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...
. The young Zélie first appeared on stage at the age of nine but her parents forbade her to embark on a professional musical career. The Swedish singer Christina Nilsson
Christina Nilsson
Christina Nilsson, Countess de Casa Miranda, was a Swedish operatic soprano. She possessed a brilliant bel canto technique and was considered a rival to the Victorian era's most famous diva, Adelina Patti...
heard her sing and persuaded the de Lussans to change their minds. After training with her mother, de Lussan made her operatic début in 1884 in Boston, Massachusetts, as Arline in Balfe
Michael William Balfe
Michael William Balfe was an Irish composer, best-remembered for his opera The Bohemian Girl.After a short career as a violinist, Balfe pursued an operatic singing career, while he began to compose. In a career spanning more than 40 years, he composed 38 operas, almost 250 songs and other works...
's 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 which she was an immediate success. Augustus Harris
Augustus Harris
Sir Augustus Henry Glossop Harris , was a British actor, impresario, and dramatist.-Early life:Harris was born in Paris, France, the son of Augustus Glossop Harris , who was also a dramatist, and his wife, née Maria Ann Bone, a theatrical costumier...
engaged her to appear in the first season under his management 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...
, London, and as Carmen she made the part "peculiarly her own." Some critics compared her favourably to Emma Calvé
Emma Calvé
Emma Calvé, born Rosa Emma Calvet , was a French operatic soprano.Calvé was probably the most famous French female opera singer of the Belle Époque. Hers was an international career, and she sang regularly and to considerable acclaim at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, and the Royal Opera...
, then the leading interpreter of the role. The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
wrote of her début, "This young lady, like most modern prime donne, comes from America; but she is an American with a difference, being ... partly French and partly Spanish ... her movements are lithe and graceful, almost snake-like; and, in brief, we have here an interesting and attractive Carmen, who makes her audiences not only applaud but think." Later, George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
was less enthusiastic: "the performance was slipshod and perfunctory. Melba
Nellie Melba
Dame Nellie Melba GBE , born Helen "Nellie" Porter Mitchell, was an Australian operatic soprano. She became one of the most famous singers of the late Victorian Era and the early 20th century...
, De Reszke
Jean de Reszke
Jean de Reszke, born Jan Mieczyslaw, , was a Polish tenor. Renowned internationally for the high quality of his singing and the elegance of his bearing, he became the biggest male opera star of the late 19th century....
, Lasalle and Miranda sang in French; Ciampi and the chorus sang in Italian; and Miss de Lussan sang in whatever language seemed to have the best of it for the moment." Shaw nevertheless acknowledged de Lussan's prominence: "Last Wednesday I was told that Siegfried
Siegfried (opera)
Siegfried is the third of the four operas that constitute Der Ring des Nibelungen , by Richard Wagner. It received its premiere at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus on 16 August 1876, as part of the first complete performance of The Ring...
was to be produced that evening at Covent Garden. I was incredulous, and asked my informant whether he did not mean Carmen, with Miss Zélie de Lussan in the title part."
In London her successes included Zerlina in Don Giovanni
Don Giovanni
Don Giovanni is an opera in two acts with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and with an Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte. It was premiered by the Prague Italian opera at the Teatro di Praga on October 29, 1787...
, and, in 1897, Musetta in London's first performances of 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...
. Her singing greatly impressed Queen Victoria
Victoria of the United Kingdom
Victoria was the monarch of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death. From 1 May 1876, she used the additional title of Empress of India....
, and she was more than once invited to sing at Balmoral
Balmoral Castle
Balmoral Castle is a large estate house in Royal Deeside, Aberdeenshire, Scotland. It is located near the village of Crathie, west of Ballater and east of Braemar. Balmoral has been one of the residences of the British Royal Family since 1852, when it was purchased by Queen Victoria and her...
and Windsor Castle
Windsor Castle
Windsor Castle is a medieval castle and royal residence in Windsor in the English county of Berkshire, notable for its long association with the British royal family and its architecture. The original castle was built after the Norman invasion by William the Conqueror. Since the time of Henry I it...
s. In 1894 she made her début at the 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...
as Carmen, and appeared there for three seasons in roles including Nannetta (Falstaff
Falstaff (opera)
Falstaff is an operatic commedia lirica in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi, adapted by Arrigo Boito from Shakespeare's plays The Merry Wives of Windsor and scenes from Henry IV. It was Verdi's last opera, written in the composer's ninth decade, and only the second of his 26 operas to be a comedy...
), Zerlina, and Nedda (Pagliacci
Pagliacci
Pagliacci , sometimes incorrectly rendered with a definite article as I Pagliacci, is an opera consisting of a prologue and two acts written and composed by Ruggero Leoncavallo. It recounts the tragedy of a jealous husband in a commedia dell'arte troupe...
). In 1910 she sang Cherubino in The Marriage of Figaro
The Marriage of Figaro
Le nozze di Figaro, ossia la folle giornata , K. 492, is an opera buffa composed in 1786 in four acts by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, with Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte, based on a stage comedy by Pierre Beaumarchais, La folle journée, ou le Mariage de Figaro .Although the play by...
in 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...
's Mozart season at His Majesty's Theatre
Her Majesty's Theatre
Her Majesty's Theatre is a West End theatre, in Haymarket, City of Westminster, London. The present building was designed by Charles J. Phipps and was constructed in 1897 for actor-manager Herbert Beerbohm Tree, who established the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art at the theatre...
. The Times observed, "The wide range of her voice, which combined the rich timbre of a mezzo-soprano
Mezzo-soprano
A mezzo-soprano is a type of classical female singing voice whose range lies between the soprano and the contralto singing voices, usually extending from the A below middle C to the A two octaves above...
and a bright ringing tone in the head register, permitted her to do justice to many parts." She appeared regularly at Covent Garden between 1890 and 1910, and also appeared in France, Spain and Portugal. She also worked with smaller companies such as the Carl Rosa
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...
and Moody-Manners Opera Company, with whom she sang until 1913. The Manchester Guardian reported, "At one period she sang for three years without a single week's rest, the Carl Rosa, Covent Garden and Drury Lane
Theatre Royal, Drury Lane
The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane is a West End theatre in Covent Garden, in the City of Westminster, a borough of London. The building faces Catherine Street and backs onto Drury Lane. The building standing today is the most recent in a line of four theatres at the same location dating back to 1663,...
seasons filling up the whole year."
Recordings
On May 17 1903, de Lussan recorded five songs for the Victor Talking Machine CompanyVictor 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 what was only the second recording session for domestically-published records for Victor's exclusive "Red Seal". Her recording of the Habanera
Habanera (aria)
In the form of habanera, there is a famous aria from the opera Carmen by Georges Bizet. It is sometimes referred to as "L'amour est un oiseau rebelle." . Its score was adapted from the habanera "El Arreglito," originally composed by the Spanish musician Sebastián Yradier...
from Carmen
Carmen
Carmen is a French opéra comique by Georges Bizet. The libretto is by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, based on the novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée, first published in 1845, itself possibly influenced by the narrative poem The Gypsies by Alexander Pushkin...
from this session is the earliest operatic aria
Aria
An aria in music was originally any expressive melody, usually, but not always, performed by a singer. The term is now used almost exclusively to describe a self-contained piece for one voice usually with orchestral accompaniment...
recorded on a Red Seal disc. In 1906, she made another four records on the Beka
Beka Records
Beka Records was a record label based in Germany, active from about 1903 to 1925. Before World War I, Beka also made gramophone records for the United Kingdom market under the Beka-Grand Records label. The company became a subsidiary of the Carl Lindström Company which was sold to the Columbia...
label.
Later years
After her marriage in 1907 to the pianist Angelo Fronani, she gradually retired, though she played Carmen as late as 1915. In 1914, The Manchester Guardian commented, "Though it would be flattery to say that she is as good as ever, her Carmen is still the best (with the exception of her own) that we have ever heard." In 1915 she again played Cherubino, in which role Samuel LangfordSamuel Langford
Samuel Langford was an influential English music critic of the early twentieth century.Trained as a pianist, Langford became chief music critic of The Manchester Guardian in 1906, serving in that post until his death...
described her as "inimitable ... she dominates the stage". In the same year she gave her 2,000th performance as Carmen.
After her husband died in 1918 she continued to make her home in London. According to Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, "She taught for many years in England, retaining the vitality and charm of her personality well into old age. Her recordings are few but show something of her rich voice and lively temperament." She died in London three days short of her 88th birthday.
Reference
- Laurence, Dan H. (ed) (1989). Shaw's Music – The Complete Musical Criticism of Bernard Shaw. vol. II, London: Max Reinhardt. ISBN 0-370-30249-4