Medora Henson

Last updated

Madame Medora Henson, in later life known as Mrs Waddington Cooke (1861-1928) was an American-English soprano singer. [1] [2]

Life

Medora Henson was born in Virginia, the daughter of an American clergyman and a Welshwoman. She started her musical career as a pianist. George Henschel heard her sing while he conducted a musical society performance in Chicago which she was accompanying, and advised her to train her voice. [3] Henson studied singing with Henschel and George Sweet in the United States, and continued lessons with Alberto Randegger in London, as well as in Italy, Germany and France. [2] [1] Returning to America, she became a leading oratorio singer. [3]

In 1891 Henson moved to England, and her voice impressed Arthur Sullivan. She occasionally sang the part of Lady Rowena in Sullivan's opera Ivanhoe , [3] alternating with Lucille Hill and Esther Palliser. [1] [4] She subsequently left the stage, and concentrated on oratorio. [3] In 1893 she married the pianist Waddington Cooke (1868-1940). [3] [2]

Medora Henson sang oratorio for the Royal Choral Society and the Bach Festival. She created the soprano part in Edward Elgar's Caractacus, singing it at the Leeds, Gloucester and Sheffield Festivals. In 1898 she toured with Edvard Grieg, singing his songs. When she retired from public performances, she taught privately and at the Royal College of Music and the Guildhall School of Music. [2]

In Christmas 1927 Henson had a serious fall in which she dislocated her left shoulder. [2] She died on 14 April 1928 at her flat in Bedford Court Mansions in London. [1]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Christa Ludwig</span> German mezzo-soprano (1928–2021)

Christa Ludwig was a German mezzo-soprano and sometime dramatic soprano, distinguished for her performances of opera, lieder, oratorio, and other major religious works like masses, passions, and solos in symphonic literature. Her performing career spanned almost half a century, from the late 1940s until the early 1990s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charles Santley</span> English opera singer

Sir Charles Santley was an English opera and oratorio singer with a bravura technique who became the most eminent English baritone and male concert singer of the Victorian era. His has been called 'the longest, most distinguished and most versatile vocal career which history records.'

<span class="mw-page-title-main">George Henschel</span> German-born British baritone, pianist, conductor, and composer

Sir Isidor George Henschel was a German-born British baritone, pianist, conductor, composer and academic teacher. First trained as a pianist, he was a concert singer who sometimes sang to his own accompaniment. He was a close friend of Johannes Brahms. His first wife Lillian was also a singer. He was the first conductor of both the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. He taught at the Institute of Musical Art in New York City.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thérèse Tietjens</span> German opera singer

Thérèse Carolina Johanne Alexandra Tietjens was a leading opera and oratorio soprano. She made her career chiefly in London during the 1860s and 1870s, but her sequence of musical triumphs in the British capital was terminated by cancer.

<i>Ivanhoe</i> (opera)

Ivanhoe is a romantic opera in three acts based on the 1819 novel by Sir Walter Scott, with music by Sir Arthur Sullivan and a libretto by Julian Sturgis. It premiered at the Royal English Opera House on 31 January 1891 for a consecutive run of 155 performances, a record for a grand opera. Later that year it was performed six more times, making a total of 161 performances. It was toured by Carl Rosa Opera Company in 1894–1895 but has rarely been performed since. The first complete, fully professional recording was released in 2010 on the Chandos Records label.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elizabeth Harwood</span> British opera singer

Elizabeth Harwood was an English lyric soprano. After a music school, she enjoyed an operatic career lasting for over two decades and worked with such conductors as Colin Davis and Herbert von Karajan. She was one of the few English singers of her generation to be invited to sing in productions at the Salzburg Festival and La Scala, Milan, as well as at the Metropolitan Opera.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Patricia Leonard</span> English opera singer (1936–2010)

Patricia Leonard was an English opera singer, best known for her performances in mezzo-soprano and contralto roles of the Savoy Operas with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nancy McIntosh</span> American singer and actress

Nancy Isobel McIntosh was an American-born singer and actress who performed mostly on the London stage. Her father was a member of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, which had been blamed in connection with the 1889 Johnstown Flood that resulted in the loss of over 2,200 lives in Johnstown, Pennsylvania.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ruth Vincent</span> English opera singer and actress (1873–1955)

Ruth Vincent was an English opera singer and actress, best remembered for her performances in soprano roles of the Savoy Operas with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company in the 1890s and her roles in the West End during the first decade of the 20th century, particularly her role as Sophia in Tom Jones.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Giulia Warwick</span>

Giulia Warwick was an English opera and concert singer and professor of music in the last quarter of the 19th century. She is best known for roles with Richard D'Oyly Carte's Comedy Opera Company and with the Carl Rosa Opera Company.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ben Davies (tenor)</span> Welsh tenor singer

Ben Davies was a Welsh tenor singer, who appeared in opera with the Carl Rosa Opera Company, in operetta and light opera, and on the concert and oratorio platform. He was spoken of as a successor of Edward Lloyd, as a leading British tenor, and retained something of his style and repertoire in concert performance.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Barton McGuckin</span>

Barton McGuckin was an Irish tenor singer of renown, who made his career principally in Britain with the Carl Rosa Opera Company, but also gained a wide success in oratorio and concert. Richard Ellmann put him forward as the model for Bartell D'Arcy in James Joyce's story "The Dead", but this identification has been questioned in recent years.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eugène Oudin</span> American opera singer

Eugène Espérance Oudin was an American baritone, composer and translator of the Victorian era.

Marjorie Gwendolen Thomas was an English opera and oratorio singer for almost three decades. She sang at the Royal Opera House and was a regular performer at the Promenade Concerts and the Three Choirs Festivals and, for many years, a professor of singing at London's Royal Academy of Music. A favourite soloist of Sir Malcolm Sargent's, she also participated in a number of recordings of Gilbert and Sullivan operas.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sims Reeves</span> British opera singer

John Sims Reeves was an English operatic, oratorio and ballad tenor vocalist during the mid-Victorian era.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Clytie Hine</span> Australian singer

Clytie May Hine, was an Australian-born operatic soprano who became a renowned voice teacher in New York.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carrie Tubb</span>

Caroline Elizabeth Tubb was an English soprano of the early 20th century, and later a teacher of singing at the Guildhall School of Music. She made her debut at London's Royal Opera House in 1910, where she appeared in such works as Elektra and Hänsel und Gretel. With Thomas Beecham's opera company at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, she sang in Die Fledermaus, The Marriage of Figaro and The Tales of Hoffmann. Later, she mostly appeared on the concert platform, including at 54 Prom concerts and at the major British music festivals. She also made some early recordings. Around 1930 she retired from singing and began teaching. On her hundredth birthday she was made a Fellow of the Royal College of Music.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Caroline Hatchard</span> British soprano, musical theatre and opera singer

Caroline Gertrude Hatchard was a British soprano, musical theatre and opera singer of the 20th-century who was the first English-born and trained soprano to be engaged by the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden where she played Sophie in the British premiere of Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier on 29 January 1913 with Thomas Beecham conducting.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Evangeline Florence</span> American-born concert soprano

Evangeline Florence was an American-born soprano who built a successful concert career in Great Britain.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mary Hissem De Moss</span> American singer

Mary Hissem De Moss Lyon was an American concert and oratorio singer, based in New York, and known as the "Festival Soprano" for her many appearances at music festivals across the United States and Canada.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 'Mme. Medora Henson', The Manchester Guardian , 16 April 1928.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 'Mme Medora Hanson', ' The Times , 16 April 1928, p. 21.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 The Musical Festival, Evening Express, 17 September 1895.
  4. Theatre programme: "Ivanhoe", Royal English Opera, undated, naming Henson as Rowena.