D’Oyly Carte Personalities - Aileen Davies: 1920s Soubrette
|
Main Menu
|
D’Oyly Carte
Personalities Series 3:
Aileen Davies:
1920s Soubrette
By Tony Joseph
ISBN 09507992 5 4; 92pp;
Price £7.00 (£1.00 p&p)
Published by
Bunthorne Books,
55 Brynland Avenue,
Bristol, BS7 9DX.
Following on from the first two volumes in the D’Oyly Carte Personalities Series, on Frederick Neebe and Charles Goulding, comes the latest volume: Aileen Davies, who joined the D’Oyly Carte in 1923 and performed with the company for a period of five years, initially in the chorus and as an understudy, then playing small parts, before eventually progressing to play the soubrette roles. Published in trade paperback size, the monograph maintains the high quality of production established by the previous two volumes in the series, with the advantage of being perfect bound rather than stapled. It is printed on good quality paper and is well illustrated, the modest increase in price from the previous volumes accounted for by a significant increase in page count.
The biography covers her early life from 1902 to 1923, the two years she spent as a chorister and understudy and her time as principal soubrette, examining her performances in the provinces, in central London and the tour of Canada. With few surviving primary sources available to a researcher it is not an easy task to reconstruct details of a performer’s life. Sources which have been available to the author include contemporary press reviews, and a diary kept by Davies during her time in the company, as well as the reminiscences of her son, who also provided a number of the illustrations and photographs. From comparatively little to go on, Joseph is still able to paint a vivid picture both of Davies herself and the D’Oyly Carte company itself during the time that she was a member, alongside the likes of Henry Lytton, Bertha Lewis, Leo Sheffield, Darrell Fancourt and all the other stars of the “Golden Age” of the D’Oyly Carte. From the date of her birth through to her appointment with the company, a period covering 21 years, is covered in only eight pages of text. Following her departure from the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company in 1928 the majority of her lifetime in squeezed into little more than a further eight pages of text dealing with her marriage and subsequent life until her death in 1981, only a few months before the demise of the original D’Oyly Carte Opera Company itself. There are many times when one is left wanting to know more, about Davies herself, the performances she gave and her feelings towards her fellow performers, the latter of which Joseph only makes suggestions about.
One of the most interesting pieces in the whole booklet is Joseph’s analysis of the development of the soubrette roles in the Gilbert and Sullivan operas. With so much existing commentary on the Savoy Operas being readily available it might be seen as being difficult to provide fresh insight, but, far from being simply a role-by-role description of each of the soubrette parts, Joseph provides a detailed examination and fresh insight into the development of these roles, and it is refreshing to see that he is not afraid to comment adversely on performers such as Jessie Bond.
This series of booklets is developing along excellent lines and it is to be hoped that further publications will compliment the existing issues. All three subjects have so far been selected due to their personal interest for the author and no doubt there are subjects in more than sufficient numbers to choose from. Selecting an appropriate subject from so many possible choices is never going to be an easy task, but it is hoped that the series will continue to develop with coverage of some of the other major players in the history of the company.