Ellen Beach Yaw

Ellen Beach Yaw (September 14, 1869 – September 9, 1947) was an American coloratura soprano, best known for her concert career and extraordinary vocal range, and for originating the title role in Arthur Sullivan's ''The Rose of Persia'' (1899).

Early life and career

Yaw was born in the small town of Boston, near Buffalo, New York, the daughter of Ambrose Yaw, who manufactured cow and sheep bells. Her family moved to Los Angeles when she was very young, but her father died when she was a small child, and the family was very poor.

Yaw began singing and composing songs as a child. She studied singing in America, first with her mother; then with Hervor Anna Sofia Torpadie, the wife of tenor Theodore Bjorksten; and then with baritone Enrico Delle Sedie. Yaw sang in concerts, beginning as a child in the 1880s, to make money to pay for singing lessons. Tours of the southern United States, California, England, Switzerland, and Germany followed, and on her return to America she gave a concert in Carnegie Hall in 1896.Stone, David
"Ellen Beach Yaw"
Who Was Who in the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, 27 August 2001, accessed 7 September 2017 Yaw raised enough money through these concerts to study in Paris with Mathilde Marchesi and later coached with Alberto Randegger. She became known for her extraordinary vocal range and could produce unusually high notes. Known as "Lark Ellen" or "The California Nightingale," she was reportedly the only known soprano of her era who could sing and sustain the D above high D. She was also able to trill in major thirds or fifths (trills usually involve rapidly alternating notes over an interval of a minor or major second).

''The Rose of Persia''

In 1898 and 1899, Yaw was singing in private concerts in London, and at one of these, at the home of Mrs. Fanny Ronalds, Sir Arthur Sullivan heard her and arranged for her to be cast as the Sultana Zubedyah in his comic opera ''The Rose of Persia'', which opened on November 29, 1899 at the Savoy Theatre in London. Sullivan wrote a special cadenza for her song "'Neath My Lattice" that was so high that only she could sing it. Yaw had difficulty in the role the first two nights of the production, though the reviews were mixed, and both the music director, Francois Cellier, and Mrs. Carte advocated for her replacement. Sullivan wrote in his diary on 2 December 1898, "I told ellierI was afraid hat Yawwould not improve, that she hadn’t got it in her", but noted, "I don’t quite see what it’s all about – Miss Yaw is not keeping people out of the theatre as Cellier and the Cartes imply."Cannon, John
"The Suppressed Saga of Two Savoy Sultanas"
The Gilbert and Sullivan Archive, 15 July 2007, accessed 11 July 2013

By 10 December, however, he wrote in his diary that Yaw was "improving rapidly" and "sang the song really superbly: brilliant. So I wrote again to Mrs. Carte saying that I thought if we let Miss Yaw go it would be another mistake." It was too late, however, and the next day Yaw stopped at Sullivan's flat to tell him that she had been dismissed summarily by Mrs. Carte (ostensibly on account of illness). She was replaced in the role by Isabel Jay.

Opera and concerts

Yaw made her grand opera debut in 1904 in Nice, playing Ophelia in Ambroise Thomas's ''Hamlet''. In 1905, she sang the title role in Donizetti's ''Lucia di Lammermoor'' under the name of Elena Elvanna at the Quirinal Theatre in Rome, followed by performances in Naples, Catania, and Milan. She sang Gilda in Verdi's ''Rigoletto'' in London in 1905 and gave a single performance of ''Lucia di Lammermoor'' at New York's Metropolitan Opera on March 21, 1908 (after which she was described by the Met's manager as "the world’s greatest coloratura soprano). She sang a total of about 18 operatic roles.Walters, pp. 29–38 However, she mostly devoted herself to the concert hall, where she had a long and successful career, singing for many of the crowned heads of Europe and for U.S. President William McKinley. In 1904, the ''Los Angeles Daily Times'' wrote, "Miss Yaw's voice is high soprano of crystalline lightness and purity and of a range so extreme in altitude that... it was the wonder of the European continent."

Recordings

Yaw was in demand as a recording artist after her first records were made in London in 1899 for the Berliner Gramophone company. In Paris in 1902 she was engaged by the Shah of Persia to make a series of cylinder recordings on his private machine. She recorded ten selections for the Victor Talking Machine Company in 1907, and several more for the Edison company and for Keen-o-Phone in 1912–1913. Thomas Edison reportedly said of her voice, "I can see no defects of any kind in this voice. Sweet on lower notes, and mellow. Best high tones yet for the disc machine." To showcase her unusual range, she recorded several of her own songs, including "The Skylark", "The Cuckoo" and "The Firefly".

Later life

Yaw resided in Covina, California, for the last thirty years of her life. She taught singing, gave concerts (continuing her tours in Europe until World War I and throughout North America until about 1931), and devoted herself to charitable pursuits – often her concerts were in aid of these charities. She remained a feature draw in public events. For example, she sang at the opening of the Los Angeles Aqueduct on November 5, 1913. According to her student, Antonio Altamirano, she sang the witch in a production of ''Hansel and Gretel'' in later years. She established the "Lark Ellen League" to give concerts in hospitals, homes, and jails; and the "Lark Ellen School for Boys" (she did this early in her career, in the 1890s), later taken over by the Lions Club. Yaw is memorialized in Covina by Lark Ellen Elementary School and Lark Ellen Avenue, one of the main thoroughfares connecting Covina to neighboring West Covina.Noll, Paul
"Lark Ellen Home for Boys – Ellen Beach Yaw"
PaulNoll.com, accessed September 7, 2017

She reportedly wrote her memoirs, ''The Song of the Lark'', which Mr. Altamirano reported were finished in 1983, but they were never published. Altamirano died in 1986, and the memoirs have not been found.

Yaw died in Covina, just shy of her 78th birthday.

Notes

References

*Walters, Michael. "Madame Ellen Beach Yaw" in ''Daly's Issue'' 1, Gaiety Publications (2002), Ed. Roderick Murray, pp. 29–38.

External links

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Yaw, Ellen Beach
American operatic sopranos
American stage actresses
1869 births
1947 deaths
Pupils of Alberto Randegger
Singers from Los Angeles
Singers from New York (state)
People from Erie County, New York
Burials at Rose Hills Memorial Park
19th-century American actresses
20th-century American actresses
20th-century American women opera singers
Classical musicians from California
Classical musicians from New York (state)
19th-century American women opera singers