Annie Kemp Bowler

Annie Kemp Bowler was a stage actress and singer who performed during the latter half of the nineteenth century, appearing on Broadway and in opera productions across the United States and England. She died on August 21, 1876.

Born Annie Kemp, she had established herself in operatic performance on both sides of the Atlantic before her most celebrated American engagement. Advertisements for her 1866 Broadway appearance identified her as "Miss Annie Kemp, Prima donna Contralto from Covent Garden, London, her first appearance in America in six years," indicating prior experience at that prominent London venue. Among her earlier documented performances was a production of Linda di Chamounix in New York in 1861, and an 1863 London appearance in F.C. Burnand's Acis and Galatea, in which she took the role of Acis.

Her most prominent Broadway credit was the original cast of The Black Crook in 1866, in which she played the role of Stalacta. She subsequently appeared in The White Fawn in Boston in 1868 and Fra Diavolo in New York in 1870. She also performed with the Richings company and other opera companies during her career, and later married English tenor Brookhouse Bowler. In 1874, she appeared as Hecate in a production of Macbeth at Booth's Theatre that served as the farewell performance of Charlotte Cushman. Her rendition of Auld Lang Syne at the close of that evening was noted at the time.

Bowler died from injuries sustained in a fall five days before her death, which occurred while she was rehearsing the transformation scene of The Black Crook for a production at Philadelphia's National Theater. She was buried at Mount Moriah Cemetery in Philadelphia.