Camille D'Arville

Camille D'Arville, born Cornelia "Neeltye" Dykstra on June 21, 1863, in the province of Overijssel, Holland, was a Dutch-born light opera singer, vaudeville performer, and Broadway actress. The daughter of Cornelius Dykstra, a merchant, she began vocal training in Amsterdam at the age of twelve and gave her concert debut there at fourteen. She subsequently pursued further training in Vienna before making her opera debut in London, at which point she adopted the stage name Camille D'Arville.

In London, D'Arville became associated with the Gaiety Theatre, where her appearances included La Vie, Chilperic, Rip Van Winkle, Falka, Mynheer Jan, Carina, and Cymbria. She relocated to the United States in 1888, and her American stage career encompassed roles in The Queen's Mate (1888), Venus (1893), A Daughter of the Revolution, The Bohemian Girl, Robin Hood, Madeleine, The Highwayman, and The Mascotte. She was a member of The Bostonians light opera company, with which she was associated for a number of these productions. In 1894, she established the Camille D'Arville Light Opera Company. D'Arville was particularly recognized for so-called cavalier parts, roles in which female characters appeared in masculine costume — hat, tunic, boots, and tights — for portions of the performance.

Her Broadway career spanned from 1896 to 1907. She starred in Oscar Hammerstein I's Santa Maria in 1896 and appeared in The Belle of London Town in 1907. She retired from the stage after 1908, though she had expressed an intention to leave the profession as early as 1900, stating her belief that a woman who continued in a career after marriage would make a failure of it.

In her later years, D'Arville worked behind the scenes with the Reginald Travers Company as a financial patron and artistic advisor, and she served as president of the San Francisco Light Opera Company. In 1913, she purchased a prune ranch near Los Gatos, California. During World War I, she served as president of the Stage Women's War Relief branch in San Francisco.

D'Arville married twice. Her first husband was Andrew Wilson Lyons, an acrobat; they married in 1879 and divorced in 1899. She subsequently married businessman Ernest Willard Crellin and settled in San Francisco. She died there on September 9, 1932, at the age of sixty-nine, survived by Crellin, her son Louis Lyons Wilson, and her sister Lena Dykstra.