Helen Donaldson (born 14 March 1968 in Rockhampton, Queensland) is an Australian operatic soprano, best known for her performances of the heroines in Gilbert and Sullivan operas.
Donaldson started singing at the age of seven, after winning an eisteddfod. She was trained at the Queensland Conservatorium of Music, Brisbane, and graduated with a Bachelor of Music and a Graduate Diploma in Opera. While at university, she performed in many shows, including Gilbert and Sullivan's Iolanthe as Phyllis.
Her first professional role was as a chorus member and swing in The Phantom of the Opera in 1990. The role that gave her real recognition in the Australian theatre industry was as Mabel in Essgee Entertainment's The Pirates of Penzance. She has performed in several other Essgee shows: The Mikado (as Yum-Yum), HMS Pinafore (as Josephine), A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (as Philia) and The Merry Widow (as Anna, during the Brisbane run of the production, and as Valencienne during the Melbourne, Victoria; Adelaide, South Australia and Perth, Western Australia run of the production).
Donaldson has performed in over twenty operas, including Cinderella's Bad Magic as Cinderella I, a role she created in Russia and the United States. In 2008, she returned to Australia and to Essgee, reprising the role of Yum-Yum in The Mikado .
She has four children, three daughters and a son.
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The Mikado; or, The Town of Titipu is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert, their ninth of fourteen operatic collaborations. It opened on 14 March 1885, in London, where it ran at the Savoy Theatre for 672 performances, the second-longest run for any work of musical theatre and one of the longest runs of any theatre piece up to that time. By the end of 1885, it was estimated that, in Europe and America, at least 150 companies were producing the opera.
Anthony Warlow is an Australian opera and musical theatre performer, noted for his character acting and considerable vocal range. He is a classically trained lyric baritone and made his debut with the Australian Opera in 1980.
The Swing Mikado is a musical theatre adaptation, in two acts, of Gilbert and Sullivan's 1885 comic opera, The Mikado, with music arranged by Gentry Warden. It featured a setting transposed from Japan to a tropical island. The show was first staged by an all-black company in Chicago, Illinois, in 1938. Later that year, it transferred to Broadway. Other changes from the original work included the re-scoring of five of the musical numbers in "swing" style, the insertion of popular dance sequences including The Truck and the Cakewalk, and the rewriting of some of the dialogue in an attempt at black dialect. Other than that, the original dialogue and score of 1885 were used.
Dennis Hans Olsen AM is an Australian singer, actor, director and pianist. He is best known as an exponent of the "patter" roles in Gilbert and Sullivan operas.
Margaret Valerie Masterson, is a retired English opera singer, a lecturer and Vice-President of British Youth Opera. After study in Italy, she began to sing opera in Europe. Returning to England, Masterson performed as principal soprano with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company from 1964 to 1969, becoming popular with audiences and participating in several of the company's recordings, as well as those of Gilbert and Sullivan for All and the BBC.
Hot Mikado is a musical comedy, based on Gilbert and Sullivan's 1885 comic opera The Mikado, adapted by David H. Bell and Rob Bowman. After researching the 1939 Broadway musical, The Hot Mikado, and being disappointed at the amount of surviving material that they could find, Bell and Bowman created a new adaptation, Hot Mikado. "Not much remains, however, of the 1939 show’s African-American emphasis, save the cool hipster style which even then was beginning to be eagerly pre-empted by Americans of every ethnicity."
Leonora Braham, born Leonora Abraham, was an English opera singer and actress primarily known as the creator of principal soprano roles in the Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas.
Geraldine Ulmar was an American singer and actress, best known for her performances in soprano roles of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company.
Helen Florence Roberts, later known as Betty Roberts and by her married name, Betty Walker, was an English singer and actress, best known for her performances in soprano roles of the Savoy Operas with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company.
Marjorie Eyre was an English singer and actress, best known for her performances in the soprano and mezzo-soprano roles of the Savoy Operas. She performed with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company for more than two decades and later performed with the J. C. Williamson Gilbert and Sullivan Opera Company. She married another D'Oyly Carte performer, Leslie Rands, in 1926.
Elsie Griffin was an English opera singer, best known for her performances in the soprano roles of the Savoy Operas with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company.
Emily Owen 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. Beginning as a child actress, she performed for two decades before falling ill on tour and dying at age 33.
Jacqueline Lisa Dark is an Australian operatic mezzo-soprano. She was born in Ballarat and attended the University of Ballarat from 1986 to 1988, receiving a Bachelor of Science (Physics) and a Graduate Diploma of Education in 1989.
Simon Gallaher is an Australian singer, actor, director and pianist.
Sylvia Cecil was an English singer and actress. She began her career in the Gilbert and Sullivan operas with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, with whom she performed, off and on, from 1918 until 1937. She also performed in musical theatre, concerts, music hall and variety from 1921, and broadcast on radio. In the 1940s and 1950s she starred in several musicals by Ivor Novello and Noël Coward.
Essgee Entertainment is a professional performing and publishing company formed in 1981 in Australia. Its founder and chief executive officer is entertainer Simon Gallaher.
Clara Millington Dow was an English operatic soprano and actress of the early twentieth century. After a concert career, she appeared at the Savoy Theatre in the first repertory seasons of Gilbert and Sullivan operas mounted by the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company in 1906–09, under the direction of the author. She is remembered as one of the last principal sopranos personally trained by W. S. Gilbert at the Savoy. In between engagements with D'Oyly Carte, Dow performed in concerts and operetta. After her retirement from the professional stage, she directed amateur productions of the Savoy Operas until she was in her seventies.
Muriel Dickson was a Scottish soprano who was particularly known for her performances in the works of Gilbert and Sullivan. After performing with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company for seven years, she sang for four seasons with the Metropolitan Opera and went on to a concert career. In later years, she taught singing at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama and privately.
The Mikado is a 1939 British musical comedy film based on Gilbert and Sullivan's 1885 comic opera The Mikado. Shot in Technicolor, the film stars Martyn Green as Ko-Ko, Sydney Granville as Pooh-Bah, the American singer Kenny Baker as Nanki-Poo and Jean Colin as Yum-Yum. Many of the other leads and choristers were or had been members of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company.
Elsie Spain, born Elsie Rickets, 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 from 1908 to 1910 and in operettas and Edwardian musical comedies. She was one of the last leading ladies in the Gilbert and Sullivan roles personally trained by W. S. Gilbert. Among her roles in musicals, she originated the part of Princess Mathilde in the long-running The Quaker Girl.