Description

FRANCES SAVILLE (SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA, USA, 6 JANUARY, 1862 – BELMONT, CALIFORNIA, USA, 8 NOVEMBER, 1935)

She had a noted turn-of-the-century career in both America and Europe. Born Fanny Martina Simonsen to an operatic family, she was raised in Australia from an early age and taught to sing by her mother. Taking the name “Saville” from a brief early marriage to her father’s secretary, she first sang in public at an 1882 presentation of Michael Balfe’s Satanella. In the late 1880s, she had a busy recital career in Sydney and Melbourne before departing for Paris to study with mezzo-soprano Mathilde Marchesi. Fanny made her formal operatic debut on September 8, 1892, at La Monnaie, Brussels, as the tragic title heroine of Charles Gounod’s Romeo et Juliette. She soon took on the role of Marguerite in the same composer’s Faust and then appeared in Russia, Berlin, and Warsaw, along the way enhancing her repertoire with Violetta in Verdi’s La Traviata and the doomed title lead of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor. Fanny added two of Verdi’s heavyweight parts, Leonora in Il Trovatore and Desdemona in Otello, which she sang in Monte Carlo opposite Tamagno, to her list before returning to America for her November 18, 1895, Metropolitan Opera debut as Juliette. While in New York, her assignments included Violetta, Micaela in Georges Bizet’s Carmen, Elsa in Wagner’s Lohengrin, Zerlina in Mozart’s Don Giovanni, the lead heroine in Jules Massenet’s Manon, Gutrune in Wagner’s Götterdämmerung, and Alice Ford in Verdi’s Falstaff. Beginning in 1898, Fanny was a regular at the Vienna Court Opera (then the Hofoper), where she became a favorite of music director Gustav Mahler. For a while, she divided her time between New York and Vienna, but by 1903, she was wealthy and retired to Vienna after giving her final performance on May 9th in Prague as Violetta. Forced from Austria by the onset of World War I, she lived in Australia for a time before relocating to Northern California, where ill health relegated her to a nursing facility in her final years.

Chronology of some appearances

1892 Brussels Théâtre de la Monnaie Romeo et Juliette (Juliette)

1895 New York Metropolitan Opera Romeo et Juliette (Juliette)

TRACKLIST

1. Contes d’Hoffmann (Offenbach) Puppenarie 43240 951x G&T, Wien 1902
2. Heidenröslein (Schubert) 43300 2439B G&T, Wien 1902
3. Ich hätte nicht daran gedacht (Meyer-Helmund) 43185 2376B G&T, Wien 1902
4. Lohengrin (Wagner) Euch Lüften 43241 952x G&T, Wien 1902
5. Maman, dites-moi (old French) 33333 955x G&T, Wien 1902
6. Manon (Massenet) Arie, act 1 (Auftritt der Manon) 43280 873x G&T, Wien 1902
7. Manon (Massenet) Folget dem Ruf (Gavotte) 43224x 874½x G&T, Wien 1902
8. Martha (Flotow) Letzte Rose 43277 956x G&T, Wien 1902
9. Morgens send’ ich dir die Veilchen (Meyer-Helmund) 43285 876x G&T, Wien 1902
10. Ninon (Tosti) 43287 954x G&T, Wien 1902
11. Wiegenlied (Brahms) 43184 2375B G&T, Wien 1902