Rosina Brandram

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Rosina Brandram, from an advertisement for The Emerald Isle in The Sketch, April 24, 1901.

Rosina Brandram (July 2, 1846 – February 28, 1907) was an English opera singer and actress primarily known for her work in the Gilbert & Sullivan comic operas with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company.

1 Life and career
2 Reference
3 External links

[edit] Life and career

[edit] Beginnings

Brandram was born Rosina Moult in London. She joined the Comedy Opera Company (predecessor to the D'Oyly Carte) in 1877 as a chorus member and understudy to Mrs. Howard Paul as Lady Sangazure in the first production of The Sorcerer at the Opera Comique, a role she filled briefly in December of that year. She played Lady Sangazure on a provincial tour in 1878, returning to the Opera Comique where, the following year, she stepped in as Little Buttercup in H.M.S. Pinafore briefly in August 1879.

She then accompanied W. S. Gilbert, Arthur Sullivan, and Richard D'Oyly Carte to New York, where she created the role of Kate in The Pirates of Penzance. She toured America as Kate (and possibly, at times, as Edith) in Pirates. She also gave at least one performance as Little Buttercup while in America.

Upon returning to England in 1880, she continued playing Kate. During the first run of Patience (1881–82), she appeared in two one-act companion pieces, as Margery Daw in Uncle Samuel, and Mrs. Bowcher in Mock Turtles. She also filled in on occasion for Alice Barnett as Lady Jane in Patience . During the run of Iolanthe at the Savoy Theatre (1882–84), she continued to play her roles in the curtain-raisers (Mrs. Bowcher again, followed by Mrs. Frumpington in A Private Wire) and in September 1883 filled in for Jessie Bond as Iolanthe. Brandram was the only principal to appear in every original Sullivan production at the Savoy Theatre.

[edit] Principal contralto

Beginning with Lady Blanche in Princess Ida (1884), Brandram assumed the principal contralto roles at the Savoy in every Sullivan opera for the next seventeen years. She played Lady Sangazure in the first London revival of The Sorcerer (1884) and created the roles of Katisha in The Mikado (1885–87) and Dame Hannah in Ruddigore (1887). She then appeared in the first London revivals of Pinafore (as Little Buttercup, 1887), Pirates (as Ruth, 1888), and The Mikado, as Katisha. She then created the parts of Dame Carruthers in The Yeomen of the Guard (1888) and the Duchess of Plaza-Toro in The Gondoliers (1889). She toured as the Duchess briefly in 1890, then returned to the Savoy.

Brandram had no role in The Nautch Girl at the Savoy, but she appeared as Widow Jackson in the curtain-raiser, Captain Billy (1891–92). When a revised version of Grundy and Solomon's The Vicar of Bray was produced at the Savoy (1892), Brandram played Widow Merton. She then created the roles of Lady Vernon in Haddon Hall (1892), Miss Sims in Jane Annie (1893), Lady Sophy in Utopia Limited (1893), the Marquise de Montigny in Mirette (1894), and Inez de Roxas in The Chieftain (1894). A revival of The Mikado followed in 1895. She created the role of Baroness von Krakenfeldt in The Grand Duke (1896), followed by another revival of The Mikado (1896).

Next, Brandram played Dame Carruthers in the first revival of Yeomen in 1897, and in 1898, she played the Duchess of Plaza Toro in the first revival of The Gondoliers, created the role of Joan in The Beauty Stone and played Lady Sangazure in The Sorcerer, followed by Little Buttercup in Pinafore in 1899. Brandram then created the part of Dancing Sunbeam in The Rose of Persia (1899–1900), after which she appeared in revivals of Pirates (1900) and Patience (1900–01). She created the role of the Countess of Newtown in Sullivan's last opera, The Emerald Isle, later in 1901. She next took the part of Wee-Ping in the original version The Willow Pattern, which played for just sixteen performances in November 1901, and then appeared in a revival of Iolanthe.

Two original works by Basil Hood and Edward German followed, and Brandram had prominent roles in both — as Queen Elizabeth I in Merrie England (1902–03) and Nell Reddish in A Princess of Kensington (1903). She then toured in A Princess of Kensington for few months, until the touring company disbanded, marking the end of Brandram's D'Oyly Carte career.

[edit] Later years and last illness

Brandram appeared infrequently on stage thereafter. In 1903 she was at the Adelphi Theatre as the Sea Witch and the Queen in Hood and Walter Slaughter's fairy pantomime Little Hans Andersen, and in 1904 she appeared as Emerance Countes de Champ Azur in Véronique at the Apollo Theatre with Isabel Jay.

Brandram suffered from pulmonary disease in her last years and was unable to attend the December 1906 O.P. Club dinner in celebration of the London revival of the Savoy Operas. W. S. Gilbert in his remarks that evening paid special tribute to Brandram:

“

Rosina of the glorious voice that rolled out as full-bodied burgundy rolls down; Rosina whose dismal doom it was to represent undesirable old ladies of sixty-five but, who, with all the resources of the perruquier and the make-up box, could never succeed in looking more than an attractive eight-and-twenty (it was her only failure).

”

She died in Southend, Argyllshire, Scotland.