Emily Soldene

Emily Soldene (30 September 1838 – 8 April 1912) was an English singer, actress, director, theatre manager, novelist, and journalist born in Clerkenwell, London. Her mother was Priscilla Swain Fuller (1812–1900), and she was raised as the daughter of Edward Fuller Solden (1805–1873), though she was apparently the product of a bigamous marriage. In 1859 she married law clerk John Powell (1834?–1881), and after the birth of her first child she began studying singing in 1861 under William Howard Glover.

Soldene made her public debut at a concert organized by Glover in 1862 and subsequently performed in classical music concerts at St James's Hall in London. In 1865 she auditioned for Charles Morton at the Canterbury Music Hall, a meeting that redirected her career from classical music toward music hall, where she performed regularly at the Oxford Music Hall and other venues under the name Miss Fitz-Henry. As English-language productions of French opéra bouffe reached Britain, Soldene established herself as a leading interpreter of Jacques Offenbach and Hervé. The Times observed that her voice, vivacity, and magnetism found their ideal outlet in opéra bouffe, though she had also been admired in oratorio at Exeter Hall. She played the title role in The Grand Duchess of Gerolstein in 1867 with the touring company of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and again in 1870. That same year, at the Lyceum Theatre, she played Marguerite in Little Faust and assumed the title role in Chilpéric, which she subsequently toured in the provinces. In 1871, for Charles Morton at the Islington Philharmonic, she first appeared as Drogan in Geneviève de Brabant, also directing the production, and described the role as her favourite. She starred at the Gaiety Theatre, London, in a further production of Geneviève de Brabant in 1872 and as Mlle. Lange in La fille de Madame Angot in 1873. For several years she also appeared as a principal boy in British Christmas pantomimes.

Her prominence enabled her to form her own company, which undertook an extensive tour of America in 1874–1875, performing the operettas she had made famous in Britain alongside Madame l'Archiduc. Back in England, in January 1876, Trial by Jury transferred by arrangement with Charles Morton to the Opera Comique, where Soldene's half-sister Clara Vesey sang the role of the Plaintiff alongside Fred Sullivan and W. S. Penley, while Soldene and Kate Santley appeared in Madame l'Archiduc. From March 1876, Soldene, Vesey, and Penley appeared together in a revival of Geneviève de Brabant. Between 1877 and 1878 she toured Australasia and returned to America with the English Comic Opera Company, expanding her repertory to include La belle Hélène, Barbe-bleue, Trial by Jury, The Waterman, Poulet et Poulette, Giroflé-Girofla, La Périchole, and La jolie parfumeuse. In 1879 she appeared at the Alhambra Theatre in London as Princess Fanfreluche in La poule aux oeufs d'or and other productions, and later that year she introduced Bizet's Carmen to the British provinces in English for the first time.

Following the death of her husband, Soldene continued her career as a single mother of four children, one of whom, Pip Powell, became a comedian and dancer. In March 1882, while her opera company was touring the British provinces, a train carrying the company narrowly avoided a high-speed collision with an express train; Soldene and fellow performer Alice May were among those slightly injured when a quick-thinking engineer drove a loose engine into their train to push it clear of the oncoming express. An unsuccessful third American tour and a costly venture in theatre management in 1883 reduced her finances considerably. Her first character role came in 1886 at the Drury Lane Theatre in Frivoli, alongside Marie Tempest. She departed that production when American musical manager John McCaull engaged her to perform comic opera, vaudeville, and variety musicals in the United States with his McCaull Comic Opera Company. This engagement brought her to Broadway in 1887, where she appeared as Oudarde in Lorraine, an adaptation of a French melodrama. She subsequently wrote the play Jeanne Fortier, the Bread Carrier, which premiered at Niblo's Garden on 10 June 1889, and from 1890 to 1892 she performed in comic opera at the Tivoli and Orpheum theatres in San Francisco. A return season in Australia in 1892 proved a financial disaster.

With her funds exhausted, Soldene transitioned to journalism after a journalist admirer secured her a position as music and drama critic for the Sydney Evening News. Over the following seventeen years she contributed weekly columns of London gossip to the Evening News, The Sun, and other publications. In 1896 she published both a novel, Young Mrs. Staples, and a memoir titled My Theatrical and Musical Recollections, the latter of which theatre historian Kurt Gänzl described as a high-society literary sensation of the late nineteenth century, owing in part to Soldene's naming of aristocratic and wealthy gentlemen who had conducted liaisons with theatrical women during her earlier years. A benefit performance was held in her honor at the Palace Theatre in 1906. Soldene died of a heart attack at her lodgings in Bloomsbury on 8 April 1912 at the age of 73 and is buried in the graveyard of Shirley Church, London.