We all have a fear of the unknown what one does with that fear will make all the difference in the world. The windswept wishes a Happy Birthday to Lillian Russell (born December 4, 1860) was an American actress and singer. She became one of the most famous actresses and singers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, known for her beauty and style, as well as for her voice and stage presence. Russell was born in Iowa but raised in Chicago. Her parents separated when she was eighteen, and she moved to New York with her mother. She quickly began to perform professionally, singing for Tony Pastor and playing roles in comic opera, including Gilbert and Sullivan works. She married composer Edward Solomon in 1884 and created roles in several of his operas in London, but in 1886 he was arrested for bigamy. Russell was married four times, but her longest relationship was with Diamond Jim Brady, who supported her extravagant lifestyle for four decades. In 1885, Russell returned to New York and continued to star in operetta and musical theatre. For many years, she was the foremost singer of operettas in America, performing continuously through the end of the 19th century. In 1899, she joined the Weber and Fieldss Music Hall, where she starred for five years. After 1904, she began to have vocal difficulties and switched to dramatic roles. She later returned to musical roles in vaudeville, however, finally retiring from performing around 1919. In later years, Russell wrote a newspaper column, advocated womens suffrage and was a popular lecturer. Russell was born Helen Louise Leonard in Clinton, Iowa. Her father was newspaper publisher Charles E. Leonard, and her mother was the feminist Cynthia Leonard, the first woman to run for mayor of New York City. Her family moved to Chicago by 1865, where she attended the Convent of the Sacred Heart (from age 7 to 15) and the Park Institute. Her father became a partner in the printing firm of Knight & Leonard, and her mother became active in the womens rights movement. Russell, called Nellie as a child, excelled at school theatricals. In her teens, she studied music privately and sang in choirs. In December 1877, she performed in an amateur production of Time Tries All at Chickering Hall in Chicago. When Russell was eighteen, her parents separated, and she and her mother moved to New York City. She soon became engaged to Walter Sinn, but broke off the engagement when she immediately found some success in the chorus of the Brooklyn Park Theatre. She studied singing under Leopold Damrosch. In November 1879, she made her first appearance on Broadway at Tony Pastors Theatre, billed as an English Ballad Singer. Pastor, known as the father of vaudeville, was responsible for introducing many well-known performers. She joined the chorus of a touring production of Gilbert and Sullivans comic opera H.M.S. Pinafore in 1879 and two weeks later married the orchestra leader Harry Braham after she found she was pregnant. She gave birth to a son, also named Harry, but the baby died after being stuck with a diaper pin by his nanny; the pin penetrated his stomach In 1881, she played the leading soprano role of Mabel in a burlesque of The Pirates of Penzance at Pastors theatre. She next played at the Bijou Opera House on Broadway as Djenna in The Great Mogul and with the McCaull Comic Opera Company played Bathilda there in Olivette. She also played the title role in Gilbert and Sullivans Patience and Aline in The Sorcerer in 1882 at the Bijou. From Wikipedia, Love History? Please Share and do give our page a LIkE. Thank you. ;)
Posted on: Thu, 04 Dec 2014 04:02:05 +0000
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