Horace Stevens

 Horace Stevens: A brief history of his career and repertoire

Introduction

It is of no surprise that Australia has produced a plethora of excellent opera singers in the brief time Europeans have lived here. Dame Nellie Melba, though not our first opera star, is certainly one of the best remembered. She has gone down in public consciousness in part for her exceptional voice and in part for a steely desire for self-publicity. Currently there are at least five biographies of Melba on the market, including her autobiography Memories and Melodies. Opera historian Roger Neill has produced his excellent book on the students of Mathilde Marchesi, which includes not only Melba, but Australians Ada Crossley, Fanny and Martina Simonsen, and their sister Frances Alda.

Neill has also written an essay on the mysterious Australian dramatic soprano, Margherita Grandi, which places the histories well and truly into the post-world war two era. Opera Australia historian and archivist Brian Castles-Onion AM has produced a series of CDs displaying the talent of Sutherland’s contemporaries, which includes interviews he was able to undertake before some of these legends were lost to us forever.

The histories have been predominantly directed at our female stars. The glamorous Marjorie Lawrence had her autobiography Interrupted Melody turned into a Hollywood movie, and a further biography, Wotan’s Daughter has been produced following a renewed interest in her re-released live recordings. Another Brünnhilde, Florence Austral was celebrated in an autobiography by James Moffat, accompanied by a two CD set released by Larrikin Records, but what of our male singers? There have been several world class talents, and particularly in the inter-war period Australian exported a trio of exceptional baritones; Harold Williams, John Brownlee and Horace Stevens. Brownlee is remembered in America because of his time at the Met, and as director of the Manhattan School of Music. In addition, he is the subject of a biography A memoire of Don Juan, and features on the justifiably famous Fritz Busch recordings of Mozart Operas from Glyndebourne in the thirties. Harold Williams is less well remembered, although the recent re-release of the first ever complete recording of Mendelssohn’s Elijah from 1930 has brought renewed interest in his career.

Horace Stevens, on the other hand, remains an enigma. He was of an earlier generation to his aforesaid baritone colleagues, born in the same decade as singers of the golden age like Caruso, van Rooy and Tetrazzini. He arrived on the British music scene in 1919 as a dramatic baritone with his voice fully matured and nurtured by the sophisticated Melbourne musical scene of the Edwardian era. His very first performance as Elijah created such a stir, he was hailed as the greatest exponent of the role since Sir Charles Santley (an opinion echoed by Santley himself), and later endorsed by no less a personage than Sir Edward Elgar who described him as the greatest Elijah, “not excepting Santley”. His operatic debut as Wotan at Covent Garden at the age of 47 resulted in adulations from Melba, something so unusual, it was remarked upon in the newspapers of the time.

Sir Edward Elgar

Sir Charles Santley

This “out of time” quality alone is worth further investigation. By the time Stevens was creating such a stir, his operatic contemporaries had either died or retired. The interesting point to make here is that often one’s introduction to the singers of the “golden age” is an acoustic recording where the singer sounds like they’re a mile away, calling through the scratches and hiss. With Stevens we can hear what a robust sound these singers must have made, with his later electrical recordings.

The other important point I would like to make about Stevens is his pedagogic pedigree. While the majority of singers at this point in history went to Europe for their singing lessons, Stevens was a home-grown product. As a child he was taught by Mr. Charles Truelove, the chorus master of All Saints Church, St Kilda. As an adult, he seems to have been taught solely by Bessie Jukes, a close friend of his mother’s, and to whom he credited his technique quite late in life. The longevity of Stevens voice, and it sounds just as impressive in recordings made before he left Britain in 1937, also points to the amazing musical scene in Melbourne in the Edwardian era. Though he had sung no opera by the time he arrived in Britain, his knowledge of concert repertoire was astounding. He maintained a life-long love of choral works, many of which we may never hear again, due to the financial resources and sheer numbers required to stage them.

This brings me to my third and final point. We know so much more of singers in the Victorian and post-World War Two eras, than we do of the Twenties. After the First World War Europe was in a parlous financial state, and understandably the health of the Arts was not at the top priority for governments. Without the Aristocracy to fund opera and concerts, a group of concerned musicians set about creating Government funding of the Arts. This passed without a murmur in Europe, but Britain was less inclined. In 1922 the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) was created and, despite a rocky beginning, was able to save institutions like the Proms. Opera in Britain was not as smooth: as then, like today, its social desirability attracted too many cooks, but by 1931 Covent Garden was funded by the British Government. Against this unstable background, it is amazing that Stevens made the extraordinary impact that he did. When he returned to Australia with the Fuller Opera Company in 1934, it was expected the newly formed Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) would assist with the running of the company, and Australia would have a National Opera. Against the background of the Great Depression, this proved not to be the case, although Stevens continued to lobby for a national company, and was able to assist Gertrude Johnson in her efforts to create the National Theatre in the forties.

Stanley Parker caricature of Stevens as 'Wotan'

Table Talk (Melb.), Thursday, 8 November 1934, p.22

John Frith caricature of Stevens as 'Kurvenal'

The Bulletin, 6 February 1935, p.18

During the research and writing of this thesis, the writer has pondered the question “why is the Australian public so much more interested in our female opera singers, than our males”? At one stage I conjectured that it may have been a form of sexism. I suspect the true answer, though, lies in several interviews Stevens gave in the thirties where the interviewers felt compelled to point out that men in the arts weren’t “sissies”. There is something of this attitude even today. The male singers of this era we return to as a nation are Peter Dawson, who, one might argue, never had the size of voice to sing the great orchestral works, and Malcolm McEachern, who put aside his career as Hagen to become Mr. Jetsam in a popular music hall duet. Stevens remained a true artist. A friend of Ralph Vaughan Williams and Sir Edward Elgar, he is truly an Australian legend.

Preliminary considerations

Horace Stevens is an important singer for several reasons. He spans three very distinct eras in classical singing, providing a link between those scratchy acoustic recordings of the early part of the twentieth century, to his connection with a generation of post Second World War vocalists who recorded onto magnetic tape, and in stereo.

Secondly the study of his repertoire provides a window into the lost world of the great tradition of Victorian choral music, with its massive groups and extraordinary compositions, sometimes of a gargantuan size, both in physical resources required for their staging and in the physical stamina required for their length. The texts of these works comprise an eclectic group of subjects taken from the Bible, religious and secular poetry and historical subjects.

Finally, Stevens was a part of a largely forgotten group of Australian musicians who travelled to Britain, Europe and both North and South America after the First World War with remarkable success. Considering the paucity of operatic performance in Australia, their success is nothing short of miraculous. Many of these artists, Stevens included, were involved in the unsuccessful attempt by Sir Benjamin Fuller to start a full-time opera company in Australia in 1934. After his retirement from professional singing, Stevens indeed pursued a long-held desire by assisting his colleague Gertrude Johnson in the formation of an opera school to prepare a generation of young singers for their turn as Australia’s operatic ambassadors to Europe.

Stevens was born in 1876. Fifteen years younger than Melba, he was three years younger than Caruso and Chaliapin and the same age as DeLuca, the great baritone. While these singers are remembered as the golden generation that performed from 1900-1920, during this period Stevens was a successful dentist and a popular recitalist in Melbourne. Not that he was estranged from the performances of international singers. Australia, and particularly Melbourne, was visited by some of the greatest vocalists in the world, due in no small part to the influence of Melba.

Clara Butt, Kennerly Rumford and family embark for their 1907- 08 tour of Australia and New Zealand for J & N Tait

Because of the era in which he was born, and the artists with whom he sang, Stevens becomes a missing link between the operatic “Golden Age”, the mid-19th century and ultimately with today. I have sung with one of Stevens’s pupils on many occasions in the early part of my career as a singer and have been influenced and educated by that experience. We can experience the era of electrical recordings through Stevens whereas many of his contemporaries only survived to record in an acoustic format.¹ The quality of his voice in his live recording of Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius from Hereford Cathedral in 1927 gives the listener an insight into the two singers he was so often compared with, Sir Charles Santley and the French basse chantante, Pol Plançon, both of whom recorded before the First World War.

The repertoire with which Stevens rose to prominence is also of interest, and possibly a reason why he is not better known today. While it is true that his operatic output remains at the core of modern operatic repertoire, nevertheless Stevens didn’t appear on a professional operatic stage until 1923, at the age of 47. Prior to that he was famous in his home state of Victoria as an amateur recitalist, and a soloist with many of the local, long-standing choral societies and remembered predominantly as a “concert singer”. He continued as a concert singer well into his 60s, performing his last Elijah in 1939.

It is difficult, from a 21st century perspective, to understand the importance the community choral group played in Victorian and Edwardian society. By the time Stevens was performing in the United Kingdom in the 1920s and 30s, it was already waning. In an interview from 1934, at the beginning of his Australian concert tour, he remarked that “due to the popularity of wireless more than 25 per cent of musical societies have been forced to close”.² These were not small groups. A photograph in my possession of the Murwillumbah Philharmonic Society from 1950 shows a group of over 50 performers, whose repertoire extended from William Byrd to Benjamin Britten. In 1852 the Handel and Haydn Society of Boston boasted a membership of 200.³ The Fairbairn production of Hiawatha that featured so prominently in the career of Stevens, was said to have utilized 800 choristers. There were certainly so many that they had to dress in tents erected outside the Royal Albert Hall, in Kensington Gardens.

Understandably, much of the repertoire of this period can no longer be performed. The resources are no longer there. The Early Music renaissance has allowed the choral masterpieces of Handel to remain in repertoire, simply because he used much smaller choral resources, often one singer per part. Other pieces like Mendelssohn’s Elijah, are performed regularly with smaller groups. Coleridge-Taylor’s Hiawatha, although glorious, is a victim of modern sensibilities to the plight of the Native American, while a massive choral work like Bantock’s Omar Khayyam was regarded as a “bulky novelty” when revived in 1927.⁴

Swindon Libraries

Stevens as 'Hiawatha'

Many of these pieces have, though, had very good modern recordings made of them and can be rediscovered in the privacy of one’s lounge room. When one considers that great composers like Gounod, Elgar and Vaughan Williams composed specifically for these great choruses, they remain an important area of musical achievement, and help to illuminate an era in which a performer could survive purely as a concert singer.

My research has uncovered so many Australian musicians who worked with their British colleagues to keep opera as a valid art form in inter-war England. Conductors like Aylmer Buesst, who assisted John Barbirolli and Adrian Boult, both with the British National Opera and the re-formed Covent Garden in 1931. Forgotten singers like Sydney-born soprano Leah Myers who created a storm in the 1923 Covent Garden season performing the lead role in Charpentier’s Louise. Sydney-born baritone, Harold Williams and Melbourne-born bass baritone Frederick Collier. So many stories. Their brief appearances in the Stevens story belies their importance in the history of Australian music.

Horace Stevens and "friends" at the re-opening of Covent Garden (photo by Sasha) The Tatler (London), 23 September 1931, p.521

Williams was, like Stevens, a digger in the war driving an ambulance, although one story has him discovered by General Birdwood singing in the trenches of Gallipoli and moved to the entertainment corps. Collier, a little younger than Stevens was a product of Archbishop Thomas Carr, Roman Catholic prelate of Melbourne’s attempt to inject some Catholic blood into an art form that had attracted mostly Protestants.

All these Australians arrived in Britain with extensive musical experience in their home country. Stevens’s background with the Melbourne Philharmonic had grounded him in the repertoire of the great oratorios. It must be remembered that when he made his historic debut as Elijah in Leeds in 1919, he had been performing in the piece since 1888, first as a boy, then in the title role from 1902. As a youth he had observed the great Charles Santley sing the role in 1890. Unlike many Australian singers, his vocal education had been an all-Australian affair. His mother’s life-long friend, Bessie Jukes eased the transition from boy soprano to baritone, and, as he remembered in an interview during his brief return to Australia in 1920, she had coached him on all his repertoire since then, until the war.⁵

There are several remarkable aspects to the British career of Stevens, not the least being that by 1922 he had performed with Sir Henry Wood, Sir Thomas Beecham, Malcolm Sargent and Adrian Boult. He was introduced to Sir Edward Elgar in 1926 and recorded with him in 1927. He sang with Ralph Vaughan Williams throughout the twenties and premiered his Sea Symphony in the United States. During his visit to North America, he was bass soloist in the American premiere of the Bach B minor Mass with the New York Philharmonic.

All these accomplishments are remarkable, but to that I add his operatic accomplishments. By all accounts not the most animated performer, nevertheless it appears he may have been Australia’s first, native-born Wotan. There is more information coming to light every day, but for now, this brief introduction will help fill in the blanks of an extraordinary time, and an amazing Australian performer.

Australian Singers 1890-1950: A Literature Review

Two books form the principal secondary sources for Australian singers of Horace Stevens’s lifetime: Opera for the Antipodes by Alison Gyger,⁶ and Singers of Australia by Barbara and Findlay Mackenzie.⁷ The Mackenzie’s present brief biographies of Australian singers from 1880 to 1966. The book is now dated but when it was written many of these singers were either still alive, or fresh in the memories of people who knew them. As Horace Stevens was a very private man, accounts by contemporary colleagues and friends are a vital window into the life of this great artist.

Opera for the Antipodes is a fascinating overview of the Australian operatic world from 1881 to 1939. The only section that deals with Stevens directly discusses the Fuller tour of 1934-35 in some detail. The book is of great interest also, for information about the Australian cultural world prior to the First World War in which Stevens established his career. The earlier development of opera in Australia in the period between 1861-1880, prior to Stevens, is outlined in The Golden Age of Australian Opera.⁸ This book is useful as it discusses some of the older singers who sang with the young Stevens, for example the tenor Armes Beaumont.

There are several books which present biographies of individual Australian singers of this period. Four biographies of Dame Nellie Melba are currently extant, plus her autobiography Melodies and Memories.⁹ Melba’s very presence was such an inspiration to young singers. She regularly returned to Australia to hear and advise young singers, many of whom she took under her wing. At a time when it took a month by steamer to travel between Australia and England, her international schedule was exhaustive.

After Melba, the Australian singer most often written about is the Wagnerian soprano, Marjorie Lawrence. Less familiar to Australians, her career was mainly in North America, where she made regular appearances at the Metropolitan Opera. A famed beauty, her vocation was interrupted by polio. Her autobiography, Interrupted Melody ¹⁰ was made into a Hollywood film ¹¹, and recently a biography, Wotan’s Daughter ¹² has been published.

Marjorie Lawrence

photo by Delar, N.Y. (1947) - National Library of Australia, Canberra

Florence Austral

National Library of Australia, Canberra

A direct contemporary of Stevens and his partner on both the operatic and concert stage, soprano Florence Austral was the subject of a biography by James Moffat.¹³ There are some errors in the references to Stevens, particularly regarding his 1927 American concert tour.

Stevens’s famous contemporary, Peter Dawson, also wrote an autobiography, Fifty Years of Song,¹⁴ and an excellent biography of this artist was written by Horace Stevens’s last student, Russell Smith.¹⁵ Given the popularity of Dawson between 1900-1950, I was initially surprised how little his story connected to Stevens’s career. Dawson’s reputation has been raised to mythical proportions, but during my studies it became clear that he was in a different milieu to Stevens. Although Dawson appeared in the Proms two or three times, and attempted to sing Elijah once, he was primarily engaged for popular entertainment, in which he was a highly-paid success.

Peter Dawson

photo by Harrods (c.1933) - National Library of Australia, Canberra

Harold Williams

National Library of Australia, Canberra

During the 1930s there were three Australian baritones frequently appearing together in reviews and articles: Horace Stevens, Harold Williams and John Brownlee. Brownlee, like Lawrence, is better known in the USA, appearing regularly on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera, and later directing the Manhattan School of Music. He is commemorated in Giovanni: the life and times of John Brownlee by Lloyd Bell.¹⁶ Harold Williams is treated in a chapter within Singers of today by Donald Brook.¹⁷ Sadly, written after Stevens’s retirement, and a year before his death, Brook’s book does not include Stevens, but is a significant source of information concerning many of Stevens’s fellow performers, including Norman Allin and Muriel Brunskill, who also were part of the 1934-35 Fuller tour of Australia. While the biography Malcolm McEachern: Master of Song by Howard C. Jones documents the life of the Albury-born bass.

Despite the significant presence of Australian singers on the International opera and concert stage at this time, it is remarkable there are so few books detailing their lives and careers. Many of the women are discussed in Roger Neill’s Divas: Mathilde Marchesi and her pupils,¹⁸ but material discussing male singers is comparatively sparse.

Understanding the Context.

The accounts of pre-Federation and early Edwardian Melbourne in Manning Clark’s History of Australia ¹⁹ illustrate the vibrancy and sophistication of the city, although in country Victoria people were shooting each other. The Kelly gang was formed the same year Stevens was born. The incomplete collection of The Australian Musical News (1911-1963) at the State Library of Queensland ²⁰ and chapter two of The Australian Symphony from Federation to 1960 ²¹ by Rhoderick McNeill also shows how musically sophisticated Australians were during this period.

The era of Stevens’s professional life in Britain between 1919 and 1937 is best understood from the biographies and autobiographies of the conductors and musical leaders of the era. Many of the problems encountered by singers of the age were a direct result of the mighty shadow cast by conductor Sir Thomas Beecham. His efforts to control operatic Britain both during and immediately after the First World War were set against the social and fiscal difficulties that the war had created. Beecham’s autobiography²² finishes at the beginning of 1923, the year Stevens made his operatic debut at Covent Garden as Wotan. The centenary tribute by Allan Jefferson²³ did not illuminate the period surrounding 1923, where Beecham left the Garden, and 1931, when he returned. However, the musical politics of the era is well presented in A History of the Royal Opera House. Covent Garden. 1732-1982.²⁴ A key contribution to operatic stabilization was made through the continued political lobbying of publisher William Boosey, which resulted in the Government funding Covent Garden in 1931. This is chronicled in his autobiography, Fifty Years of Music.²⁵

Charles Reid’s biography of conductor Malcolm Sargent²⁶ mentions Stevens in a way that shows his importance in the musical world of Britain at the time. It gives vital information on the preparation and performance of the fabled Hiawatha performances at the Royal Albert Hall.

HIAWATHA perfomed as an Opera at the ALBERT HALL, The Sphere (London), Saturday, 24 May 1924, p.11

As Stevens’s professional career was tied so closely to the support of Sir Henry Wood, the related chapters in My Life of Music²⁷ are pertinent. Although Stevens is not directly mentioned, Wood describes the British debut of fabled heldentenor Lauritz Melchior at the Proms. Stevens was the Wotan at that concert, and Wood points out that each singer in the concert performance of Die Walküre sang in their native language.

Finally, the conductor Eugene Goossens’s²⁸ letter to his father en route to take over the Sydney Symphony Orchestra is perhaps more evocative of the personality of the conductor than of the singers he dismisses as teachers in Australia.

What is documented about Stevens?

Aside from Singers of Australia and Opera for the Antipodes, there is little published about Stevens in secondary sources. The essay on Horace Stevens in the Australian Dictionary of Biography²⁹ is a very important source and features some interesting anecdotes. The author, James Griffin, knew Stevens personally, according to his son, and many of the references at the end list ‘private information’. I have been able to access Griffin’s other named sources which include the Mackenzie book, Isabelle Moresby’s Australia makes Music³⁰ and Melbourne Savages by David Dow.³¹ The Moresby account of Stevens has the friendly, chatty aura of an interview, although it mistakenly puts Stevens’s Covent Garden debut in 1927 rather than 1923. The Dow book is reverential towards Stevens, while detailing some of the robust exploits of the Savage Club members.

A Century of Harmony, the centenary history of the Royal Melbourne Philharmonic Society, by W.A. Carne is a very important source. Through its chronological list of all appearances as the Youth to Sir Charles Santley’s Elijah in 1890 to his final official appearance with the choir in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in 1935. He is not mentioned in the cast of Hiawatha in 1939 but did perform in it and was broadcast in the role by the ABC.

There are several mentions of Stevens in Frank van Straten’s National Treasure,³² the story of Gertrude Johnson’s creation of the National Theatre. Stevens and Johnson knew each other when they were performing together in Melbourne before the First World War. Given the tone of some of Stevens’s interviews when he returned to Australia, the germ of an idea to train young singers in stage craft had already taken root by 1934. He assisted Johnson and coached from time to time. Brian Castles-Onion, in his obituary for Robert Allman for The Australian ³³ mentioned that young singers were sent to Stevens first, to gauge their suitability in the field of opera.

The Record Collector³⁴ has a fascinating article by Wayne Turner and Graham Oakes which appears to have information that could only be gathered from first hand sources, including a story of the 12-year-old Stevens suffering from stage fright at his first audition. It makes a couple of obvious errors. The contralto for the Santley performances of Elijah was not Adelina Patti, but Janet Patey. However, the article includes some descriptions of Stevens’s performances by colleagues Sir Keith Falkner, Norman Allin and Rispah Goodacre. The Record Collector article claims that Stevens sang in The Golden Cockerel, Madame Butterfly and The Marriage of Figaro, though I have found no press reviews to confirm or consolidate this information.³⁵

Stevens is so closely associated with the three major oratorios of Sir Edward Elgar, particularly The Dream of Gerontius, it came as no mild surprise that he didn’t meet Elgar until 1926, the year before their celebrated collaboration at Hereford Cathedral which produced the magical live recording of ‘Jesu, by thy suff’ring dread’. Michael Kennedy’s essay ‘Some Elgar interpreters’ in the book Elgar Studies³⁶, is effusive in his praise for Stevens’s performance. Bearing in mind the recording itself, (initially re-issued on Lp in 1972 and re-released on CD in 2011), one can only agree. It has been said that the acoustic of Hereford Cathedral was perfectly attuned to Stevens’s voice. One certainly hears none of the American critic’s complaints that sometimes he was drowned out by the orchestra.

Regarding Stevens’s limited recording career, I was fortunate to obtain a copy of Herman Klein’s contemporary reviews for the magazine The Gramophone.³⁷ Klein is extremely complimentary about Stevens’s voice and, usefully, most of the recordings he reviews are issued on the Truesound Transfers discs discussed below. Klein also provides critical comparisons with contemporary singers in the same repertoire. Most of these recordings are also available for comparison.

Singers to Remember,³⁸ by Harold Simpson, gives a good, if somewhat basic account of Stevens’s career. It ignores his amateur career in Melbourne, and, like many of the later articles and biographies, places his death in 1954. There is also mention of him singing Hagen from Götterdämmerung. The Moffat biography of Florence Austral also states that he took part in a performance of that opera with her. It was never reviewed, if it happened. The excerpts at the Cincinnati May Festival in 1927 contain no Hagen sections.

James Glennon devotes one and a half pages to Stevens in his book Australian Music and Musicians.³⁹ It is a brief and basic account of his life. The dates and repertoire are correct. There is no mention of Elgar and Sir Henry Wood becomes Sir Thomas Wood not once, but twice.

Portrait of Horace Stevens by Ernest Buckmaster (Entered into the 1936 Archibald Prize)

The Recorded Legacy

One of the most challenging aspects of researching Horace Stevens is the difficulty in obtaining recordings, not only of Stevens himself, but also for much of the music he sang, which is no longer fashionable, or requires resources that are, at best, difficult to assemble.

In dealing with Stevens’s recordings, the Eloquence release on Decca,⁴⁰ Pearl’s 20 Great Bass Arias and songs volume 2⁴¹ and The Elgar Edition on Warner Music⁴² (formerly EMI) all contain the same excerpt; ‘Jesu, by thy suff’ring dread’. At the start of my research at the beginning of 2017, YouTube had one Stevens recording; an obscure aria, ‘Sulla Poppa’, from La Prigione d’Edimburgo (Frederico Ricci).⁴³ This performance is of interest because it appears to be Stevens’s only recording not in English (his Italian is impeccable), and that there is no evidence that he sang it in public. The year it was recorded, it was sung at the Proms by Herbert Heyner.

Two volumes of Stevens recordings are available on Truesound Transfers.⁴⁴ Restored by Christian Zwarg, they contain his important recordings, including the Elijah arias, both in early versions for Vocalion records, and later versions for the fledgling Decca corporation. ‘Hiawatha’s Vision’ is also there, and gloriously sung.

Lastly, there is Elgar’s Interpreters on Record. Volume 5.⁴⁵ This set contains excerpts from The Dream of Gerontius from 1936, conducted by Adrian Boult. We hear Stevens at 60, about to leave England forever, and despite Boult’s extremely slow tempi, the voice sounds powerful and fresh.

Finally, I needed to familiarise myself with the music Stevens sang. Whenever possible I tried to obtain contemporary recordings or versions that retained similar performance sensibilities. Stevens recorded the arias from Elijah, but the first recording of the complete oratorio was made in 1930 featuring compatriot Harold Williams.⁴⁶ Sir Malcolm Sargent left an early recording of Handel’s Israel in Egypt⁴⁷ without bass solos. The bass chorus sings ‘The Lord is a Man of War’. It doesn’t include the interpolated aria from Ezio, ‘Nasce al Bosco’, that Stevens sang, but it presents an interesting insight.

Stevens sang in the British premiere of Handel’s Eracle under Beecham. A later live recording from 1958 at La Scala exists⁴⁸ that shows an older performance practice with basses singing the castrato roles, now usually undertaken by counter tenors, and the tenor arias sung by Franco Corelli, not a voice we would associate with Handel today. The Vaughan Williams Sea Symphony,⁴⁹ and the three Elgar oratorios⁵⁰ are all available under Sir Adrian Boult, with whom Stevens worked on a regular basis. Parry’s Job,⁵¹ Coleridge Taylor’s Hiawatha⁵² and Bantock’s Omar Khayyam⁵³ are available on excellent, modern recordings. Stevens’s repertoire as a boy soprano can be heard on the Nostalgia Naxos release; Master Ernest Lough. Wings of a Dove.⁵⁴

Leff Pouishnoff, who shared the concert stage with Stevens on his tour of Australia in 1934, can be heard on a double CD set for APR.⁵⁵ Sadly, his lieder recordings with Walter Widdop are yet to be released.

The performers with whom Stevens shared the operatic and concert stages are available on several excellent compilation CDs, and to finish, to give some of the flavour of the 1920s music scene, Whispering Jack Smith,⁵⁶ the performer who provided light relief during Stevens’s Armada Concert on BBC Radio, and the Coon-Sander’s Nighthawks,⁵⁷ who finished off the Cincinnati May Music Festival, after the concert performance of Götterdämmerung, both have dedicated CDs.

To be continued...

Endnotes

1. Many of Stevens’s operatic contemporaries had remarkably brief lives. Caruso was dead at 48; Emmy Destinn, Puccini’s first Fanciulla del West died in 1930 at the age of 52.

2. The Argus, 20 February 1834, p 5. Trove. Accessed 21 March 2017.

3. Michael Broyles, Growth, Change, and Discoveries in the Nineteenth Century, p.57,  The Handel and Haydn Society; Bringing Music to Life for 200 Years, The Handel and Haydn Society in association with David Godine, Publisher, 2014.

4. The Times, 29 October 1927, p.10. Trove. Accessed 3 May 2017.

5. Table Talk, 19 August 1920, p.25. Trove. Accessed 19 April 2017.

6. Alison Gyger, Opera for the Antipodes: Opera in Australia 1881-1939, Currency Press, 1990

7. Barbara and Findlay Mackenzie, Singers of Australia from Melba to Sutherland, Lansdowne Press, 1967

8. Harold Love, The Golden Age of Australian Opera. W.S. Lyster and his companies. 1861-1880, Currency Press, 1981

9. https://trove.nla.gov.au/book/resulty?q=Damje+Nellie=Melba Accessed 11 March 2018.

10. https://trove.nla.gov.au/book/result?q=Marjorie+Lawrence Accessed 11 March 2018.

11. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0048210/ Accessed 11 March 2018.

12. Richard Davis, Wotan’s Daughter. The Life and Times of Marjorie Lawrence, Wakefield Press, 2012

13. James Moffat, Florence Austral. One of the Wonder Voices of the World, Currency Press, 1995

14. http://trove.nla.gov.au/book/result?q=Peter+Dawson Accessed 11 March 2018.

15. Russell Smith and Peter Burgis, Peter Dawson. The World’s Most Popular Baritone, Currency Press, 2001

16. Lloyd Bell, Giovanni: The Life and Times of John Brownlee, [Philadelphia]: Xlibris, c 2002

17. Donald Brook, Singers of Today, Tapp and Toothill Ltd., 1949

18. Roger Neill, Divas. Mathilde Marchesi and her Pupils, Newsouth, 2016

19. Charles Manning Clark, A History of Australia, Melbourne University Press, 1962

20. http://onesearch.slq.qld.gov.au/primoexplore/search?vid=SLQ&searchscope=SLQPCIEBSCO&query=any,contains,Australian%20Musical%20News

21. Rhoderick McNeill, The Australian Symphony from Federation to 1960, Chapter 2, Ashgate, 2014

22. Sir Thomas Beecham, A Mingled Chime, Hutchinson and Co., 1944

23. Alan Jefferson, Sir Thomas Beecham. A Centenary Tribute, MacDonald and Jane’s, 1979

24. Andrew Saint, B.A. Young, Mary Clarke, Clement Crisp, Harold Rosenthal, A History of the Royal Opera House: Covent Garden. 1732-1982, The Royal Opera House, 1982

25. William Boosey, Fifty Years of Music, Ernest Benn Limited, 1931

26. Charles Reid, Malcolm Sargent. A Biography, Hamish Hamilton, 1968

27. Sir Henry Wood, My Life in Music, Victor Gollancz. Ltd., 1938

28. Carole Rosen, The Goossens. A Musical Century, Andre Deutsch, 1993

29. http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/stevens-horace-ernest-8653 Accessed 1 March 2017.

30. Isabelle Moresby, Australia Makes Music, Longmans, Green and Company, 1944

31. David M. Dow, Melbourne Savages: A History of The First Fifty Years of The Melbourne Savage Club, The Melbourne Savage Club, 1947

32. Frank Van Straten, National Treasure. The Story of Gertrude Johnson and the National Theatre, Victoria Press, 1994

33. https://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/a-baritone-of-celebrated-force/news-story/4b1f555ab3b4a967f1c30d79d34afde8?sv=58df8723023c060e8936f5074e4c4009

34. Wayne Turner. Graham Oakes, The Record Collector. Vol. 46. No. 3, Editor: Larry Lustig, September 2001

35. The absence of Horace Stevens in the credits for such productions listed in J.P. Wearing's The London Stage 1920-1929 and The London Stage 1930-1939 [Scarecrow Press. 1984] indicates that such performances took place outside of London. 

36. Raymond Monk (editor), Elgar Studies, Scholar Press, 1990

37. William R. Moran (editor), Herman Klein and The Gramophone. Collected Reviews. 1923-1934, Amadeus Press, 1988

38. Harold Simpson, Singers to Remember, The Oakwood Press

39. James Glennon, Australian Music and Musicians, Rigby Limited, 1968

40. Decca Eloquence, From Melba to Sutherland. Australian Singers on Record, Compilation Producers: Tony Locantro and Roger Neill, 482 5892

41. Pearl, 20 Great Bass Arias & Songs. Volume II, GEMM CD 9173, Pavilion Records Ltd.

42. Warner Classics, The Elgar Edition, 9 CD. 50999 95694 2 3 Mono ADD.

43. https://youtu.be/WSXzyhUh288

44. Horace Stevens 1. TT-3002. Horace Stevens 2. TT-3003. Source Materials provided by Chris Mankelow (Sunday Opera records). Christian Zwarg Compilation, discographical research and digital audio restoration: Christian Zwarg.

45. Elgar Editions, Elgar’s Interpreters on Record. Volume 5. EECD003-5 Broadcasts from the Leech Collection at the British Library. (1935-1950) add Mono.

46. Divine art. HISTORIC SOUND. Mendelssohn: Elijah. 27802 mono ADD

47. Dutton, G.F. Handel: Israel in Egypt , CDLX 7045

48. MYTO., G.F. Handel. Eracle, 2 CD 00159

49. Warner Classics, British Composers. Vaughan Williams. The Nine Symphonies, Sir Adrian Boult. 5099 0 87494 2 3 Stereo ADD.

50. Warner Classics, Elgar Choral Works, Sir Adrian Boult.0946 3 67931 2 2 Stereo ADD.

51. Hyperion, Sir Hubert H. Parry, Job. CDA67025 DDD

52. Argo, Scenes from the Song of Hiawatha, The Decca Record Company. 430 356-2 ZH2

53. Lyrita Itter Broadcast Collection, Granville Bantock, The Complete Omar Khayyam, Norman Del Mar. BBC. REAM.2128

54. Nostalgia Naxos, Master Ernest Lough. Wings of a Dove, ©2005, Naxos Rights International. 8.1 2083 2

55. APR Leff Pouishnoff, The Complete 78 rpm and Selected Saga LP Recordings, APR 6022

56. Flapper, Whispering Jack Smith, Past CD. 7074

57. ASV Mono. Living Era,. Everything is Hotsy-Totsy Now. The Coon-Sanders Nighthawks, CD AJA 5199

1876-1902

The life and career of Horace Ernest Stevens (1876-1950) remains largely forgotten, despite accolades from Sir Edward Elgar as “the best Elijah I have ever heard.... not even excepting Santley” ¹ and from Dame Nellie Melba who said, “Horace Stevens was one of the greatest in the part of Wotan”.²

Few remember him today. Those who do met him during Stevens’s seventies, in the late 1940s. Lauris Elms, the great Australian contralto, met him on several occasions.  She described him as “pompous”,³ a trait echoed by one of his last students, bass Russell Smith. Geoffrey Chard, baritone, remembered him as “very old fashioned”⁴ according to the new patterns of operatic performance post-World War Two, with new “singing actors” like Tito Gobbi making headlines. This may account for the disappearance of Horace Stevens from the Australian operatic consciousness soon after his death in 1950.

Details concerning his personal life are relatively few in secondary sources. He was born in Prahran in Melbourne on 26 October 1876 to Horace Stevens (1850-1916) and Fanny, nee Gittins (1850-1936), who had married on the 21 November 1874. His paternal grandfather, Alfred, was from Reading, Berkshire, while his maternal grandfather, Cyrus, was from Shrewsbury, Shropshire.⁵

Interior of the Melbourne Exhibition Buildings in 1888 showing the stage and Grand organ. State Library Victoria, Melbourne.

The register of All Saints Grammar School, St Kilda, lists him as an only child.⁶ This is incorrect, as his parents also had a daughter, Emily Frances in 1875.⁷ Emily (Emelie) Frances Stevens, named after her mother, was a contralto who was to sing alongside her brother on several occasions, including his debut in his most famous role, Elijah in 1902. She married organist W.F.G. Steele in 1904, and as Mrs. W.F.G. Steele continued to sing in Melbourne.⁸ The All Saints Grammar School registers Horace’s enrolment at the age of “seven years, eleven months and ten days” on the 6 October 1884, Horace Stevens senior being listed as a dentist of Chapel Street, St Kilda. His teacher at All Saints was a Mr. W.H. Goff JP, and more importantly, his choir master, and first voice teacher was Mr. Charles Truelove.⁹ According to Stevens’s entry in the Australian Dictionary of Biography, Mr. Truelove later created the choir for the opening of St Paul’s Cathedral, Melbourne, in 1891.¹⁰

Stevens’s solo debut as a singer was in the duet ‘I waited on the Lord’ (Mendelssohn) with “Master William Chamberlain”. The Prahran Telegraph doesn’t give his age but records that the performance was so successful that it was repeated at the Bishops Court.¹¹ In 1888, Horace was selected by Mr. Frederic Cowen (1852-1935), the Music Director of the Melbourne Centennial Exhibition, to sing the part of the Youth in Mendelssohn’s oratorio, Elijah. His fellow soloists were Madame Gabriella Boema (an Italian operatic soprano, who had recently sung Donna Anna and Valentine in Melbourne), Miss Christian (contralto and a popular ballad singer),¹² Sir C.M.J. Edwards (tenor) and Mr H. Morton in the bass-baritone title role. Stevens’s contribution was chronicled in The Age: “Master Horace Stevens singing with good effect the short fragments of solo allotted to the youth”.¹³

Madame Patey. Photo by Elliott & Fry, London.

 

Sir Charles Santley, 1890. Photo by Barraud, London.

National Portrait Gallery, London

In 1889 and 1890, celebrated British baritone Sir Charles Santley (1834-1922) sang two sets of performances of Elijah in Melbourne, with the Royal Melbourne Philharmonic. In the 1890 performances the youth was again sung by Master Horace Stevens.¹⁴ Santley was supported by an all-star cast, including tenor Armes Beaumont (1842-1913), who although born in England, was discovered and trained in Australia, and specialised in high lyric tenor roles.¹⁵ The contralto in the quartet was Australian Ada Crossley (1871-1929) who had made her professional debut only the year before. In 1894 she went to England to have lessons with Santley and went on to have a stellar international career.¹⁶The soprano was American Emma Osgood; the contralto arias sung by Janet Patey (1842-1894), the great contralto of the era before Clara Butt. Stevens’s contribution was acknowledged by The Argus and The Age respectively: “The small part of the youth sent by Elijah to ‘look toward the sea’ was undertaken by Master Horace Stevens”.¹⁷ “A word of praise must be given to Master Horace Stevens for his rendering of the recitatives of the youth”.¹⁸ Santley and Madame Patey presented Stevens with photographs of themselves as a memento.

In 1890 Horace began studying dentistry with his father,¹⁹ a somewhat unnerving thought that a fourteen-year-old boy would be checking one’s teeth.  This was to become his primary career until the end of World War 1 with singing as a major interest, nevertheless. An article on “Modern Dentistry” (Darling Downs Gazette,30 November 1908) by Mr Horace Stevens (the article doesn’t mention whether senior or junior) describes injecting the pulp of the tooth and the gum with “a hypodermic syringe … a cocaine and adrenaline solution. The adrenaline having an astringent effect on the pulp, and it is the more easily removed, while the cocaine desensitises, not only the nerve matter itself, but the sensitive dentine of the tooth”.²⁰

The article “Sketches of prominent youths: Our boy Nightingale” from The Prahran Telegraphof 17 September 1892,notes of Stevens: “His voice showed signs of breaking last year while singing alto, and it was determined that he should sever his connection with All Saints Choir at the end of the year, but last January, while on a visit to Launceston, he suddenly and fully recovered his voice, and sang several times at the Launceston churches and at the Tasmanian exhibition most successfully”. At around this time, he began lessons with Melbourne singing teacher, Miss Bessie Jukes, who helped settle his adult technique. His first performance under her tutelage was the solo in ‘Consider the Lilies’ (E.H. Packard) at a choral service for the relief of the distressed at Melbourne Town Hall in 1892.²¹

Horace in a photograph dedicated to his second teacher, Bessie Jukes

Horace the athlete

This last piece appears to be for soprano and choir, which implies that maybe Bessie Jukes was working with the young Stevens’s head voice, rather like a modern countertenor today. The Australian Dictionary of Biography entry states that his voice did not break, but rather transitioned down, and that he stayed singing soprano until he was seventeen, which would have been 1893. Bessie Jukes must have been a remarkable teacher. She was a mezzo soprano, and in 1889 performed Messiah(Handel) with the Royal Melbourne Philharmonic.²² In 1899 she was described as “Miss Bessie Jukes, the well-known contralto of Melbourne”.²³ Jukes described herself as Horace’s mother’s “life-long friend” when the latter’s death in 1936.²⁴

In a 1936 interview in the magazine Table Talk, it was reported of Stevens, “He does not forget to give credit to whom credit is due, and says he always feels he owes much to his first teacher, Miss Bessie Jukes, with whom he studied when he was singing in the choir as a lad. ‘Every solo I had to sing, I always went over with her, and it is to her I owe many of my ideas now’.” In the same interview, the story that Horace’s voice didn’t “break”, as such, but “merely changed gradually” is mentioned again. This allowed him, by 1898, at a mere twenty-two years of age, to make his debut as a semi-professional solo baritone with quite advanced works.²⁵

In the choir of All Saints church at East St. Kilda, Melbourne, the 20 year old Horace stands fourth from the right in the second last row. Third from the right next to Horace, is his first singing teacher, Charles Truelove.

Stevens’s extensive experience of singing in church choirs was also foundational in his musical development. The regularity of weekly rehearsals and sung services required choristers to sight read and learn their music swiftly and accurately. The rules of the Choir of All Saints’ Church, St Kilda, forwarded to me by Michael Humphries, the archivist, stated that a chorister absent for two Sunday services in a row was liable to be dismissed. According to Stevens’s entry in the Australian Dictionary of Biography, the boys of All Saints Choir, St Kilda, were selected and trained specifically for the opening of St Paul’s Cathedral Melbourne in 1891. He became a lay clerk in the Cathedral choir in 1898. Griffin notes that Stevens sang at the opening of the Cathedral as “a silver voiced soprano” and at the fiftieth anniversary of his membership of the choir as a “silver haired” baritone.²⁶ Dorothea Rowse, the archivist for St Paul’s, stated that the choristers were paid a small stipend to cover costs. When one realises Stevens was working as a dentist, singing in the choir, rowing sculls (at which he was to become a major sportsman), playing cricket and later, hunting, it is astounding that he had time to fulfil his professional engagements as a singer!

In 1898, he began his career as a solo baritone with the Castlemaine Liedertafel and Associated Ladies choir, on the 6 September at the Mechanic’s Institute, Mount Alexander. Liedertafel (literally ‘song table’) societies sprang up in Australia from the 1850s onwards. Of German origin, they were male voice choirs, and proved very popular in Melbourne in the 1870s and 1880s right up to the outbreak of World War 1. They produced a highly professional standard of choral music including recently composed works. On this occasion the society performed Dr C.H. Lloyd’s dramatic cantata Hero and Leander. Miss Maggie Stirling performed Hero, while Horace sang Leander. “The passion of the lovers found able exponents by these artists, while parts of the Liedertafel and Associated Ladies’ Choir were done justice to”. Hero and Leander, while not a vocally demanding piece, and running to a mere seventy pages of vocal score, is nonetheless ideal for young singers. Only when he drowns, is Leander required to sing sustained F’s above the staff (although alternative notes are supplied).  It was common practice after a cantata or oratorio performance for a piano to be brought on stage and for the soloists to perform encores.²⁷ There was no exception here: “the first song fell to Mr Horace Stevens, ‘Strong Hearts’ (Home), in which his full baritone voice of much sweetness was so much appreciated that there were loud calls for an encore, but a bow from him passed. Upon the second occasion, however, he grew still higher in favour by his singing of ‘the Yeoman’s Wedding’ and for an encore he delighted with the song ‘I’m off to Philadelphia’.”²⁸

Mors et Vita, Melbourne Town Hall, 26 October 1897

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

Judas Maccabaeus, Melbourne Town Hall, 22 November 1898

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

On 22 November 1898 in the Melbourne Town Hall, Stevens made his baritone debut with the Royal Melbourne Philharmonic Society, in Handel’s Judas Maccabaeus.²⁹ For a twenty-two-year-old, this was quite a remarkable undertaking. Featuring four arias for the bass, the first is the show piece ‘Arm, Arm ye brave’. The Age opined, “HoraceStevens it may be said that, without possessing a voice of special resonance or power, he contrived to sing the bass airs with credit, though in the recitatives, his intonation was not always above reproof”.³⁰

Although not an unanimously brilliant review, his performance was judged successful enough for the Society to offer him the far more taxing baritone role in Gounod’s oratorio Mors et Vita in 1899.³¹ Seldom performed today, the work was composed in 1885 for the Birmingham Festival. A wonderful late piece of Gounod, the baritone solos are quite dramatic and declamatory. The tessitura of the aria Et Ego Johannes is unremittingly high and soft, a difficult undertaking even for an experienced singer. The entire role sits a little higher in the voice than the Handel, which may explain the intonation criticism the year before. Perhaps his voice sat naturally as a higher baritone. “Miss Nellie McClelland had not sufficient voice to do justice to the soprano music, and a similar remark is applicable to Mr Horace Stevens in the baritone part. With further practice and experience better results may be expected from both singers”.³²

Alongside Mors et Vita, 1899 was a busy year of recital engagements for Horace. In May were the celebrations for Queen Victoria’s Eightieth Birthday, for which a concert was given in Ballarat, conducted by Alberto Zelman,³³ followed by performances of the ‘Victorian Operatic Company’ where young singers, including Horace, gave a concert prior to curtain up.³⁴ He also appeared with sister Emelie in a concert in aid of St Thomas’ Church, Essendon, ³⁵ and the following month took part in a recital for the Royal Melbourne Liedertafel.³⁶ In September he performed with the ailing Armes Beaumont, the tenor from the performances of Elijah he had sung as a boy, with the Royal Melbourne Liedertafel at the Melbourne Town Hall. As was the fashion, the concert consisted of one or two major works, followed by various songs and arias. The major choral work on this occasion was Columbus! by Caspar (or Carl) Joseph Brambach (1838-1902), for male chorus, a baritone soloist (Columbus) and a tenor (The Captain). Its subject matter deals with the end of the voyage of discovery and the arrival in the New World. The baritone part appears much more suitable for a twenty-three-year-old baritone, featuring only one exposed, sustained F above middle C, and a far more comfortable tessitura.³⁷ “Mr Horace Stevens sang his parts in very good style” being encored after his first solo. Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony was also performed.³⁸

W.F.G. Steele in 1908, seated at the organ at St Scot’s Church. Mrs W.F.G. Steele, Horace’s sister, is fourth from the right in the second row from the front. From The Encore, 15 August 1908.

In November Horace took part in a patriotic concert to assist the Boer War effort and “in aid of the choir stalls for St. Martin’s Church, Hawksburn”. Horace’s friend and future brother in law, W.F.G. Steele played the organ, and following a rendition of ‘The Soldiers’ Chorus’ from Gounod’s Faust, Colonel Reeve, commander of the 1st Battalion announced the latest news from the Transvaal, “about the Victorian Contingent”. Prior to a grand tableau, arranged by Sergeant Bead, late of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, and portraying the defence of Her Majesties’ Colours in the field, Horace Stevens sang ‘Rule Britannia’ (originally from Thomas Arne’s masque Alfred, but by this stage achieving the status of a National Song). The entire entertainment was arranged and conducted by Mr Charles Truelove, Horace’s first voice teacher, and director of All Saints’ Choir.³⁹

Many of Steven’s concert appearances during 1900 were linked to Boer War events. On the 16 January, Horace and Emelie Stevens took part in a fund raiser for the Tasmanian Contingent Fund, at the Albert Hall in Launceston. Billed as a “Concert and Military Tableaux”, Stevens was hailed as “one of the soloists of the celebrated Melbourne Philharmonic Society” and sang ‘The Gay Hussar’ by Louis Diehl (1838-1910), a “dashing song”.⁴⁰ In February Stevens performed in “A Grand Kipling” concert, another Boer War fundraiser at the Melbourne Town Hall. Stevens sang the emotive ‘Danny Deever’, from Kipling’s Barrack Room Ballads, set to music by Walter Damrosch (1862-1950), future director of The New York Philharmonic Orchestra. The “Kipling Concert” was repeated the following Thursday at the Athenaeum Hall but was poorly attended.⁴¹

The Lyric Orchestra, Melbourne Cricket Ground, 5 February 1900

 State Library Victoria, Melbourne

Eli, Melbourne Town Hall, 18 September 1900

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

Horace was a life-long member of the Savage Club of Melbourne, and he is documented as being one of the club commemorators of the lifting of the Siege of Mafeking, one of the signature events of the Boer War.  Starting at the Savage Club, the celebrations of a “large party” shifted to an impromptu theatre at 4:00 pm at the music warehouse of Messer’s W.H. Glenn & Co., Collins Street. There, Stevens performed the song ‘Bobs’ from Kipling’s ‘Barrack Room Ballads’ (composed by Joseph Gillott (d. c.1939) several times. Bobs was the soldier’s nick-name for Lord Roberts, whose flying column relieved the besieged township.⁴²

On the 18 September 1900 the Melbourne Philharmonic Society performed the oratorio Eli, by Sir Michael Costa (of which only the March is heard today). Stevens sang the minor role of ‘A man of God’, who sings two recitatives and a duet of limited difficulty with the character of Eli. The music critic for The Age wrote, “Mr Horace Stevens acquitted himself with credit in the ‘Man of God’”.⁴³ On the 22 September, Eli was repeated in the Adelaide Town Hall.⁴⁴

On 22 November 1900, Stevens was among a group of singers performing at a Civic Reception held by Mrs C.J. Davies, Mayoress of Flemington and Kensington. He sang the cavatina ‘Eri Tu’ from Verdi’s Un Ballo in Maschera.⁴⁵ Based on hearing later recordings of him, the writer believes that this repertoire would have suited Stevens to perfection. It is one of the lower of the Verdi baritone parts. Rudolph Kloiber, in the Handbuch der Oper, lists Renato as a ‘Kavalier Baritone’ - almost a bass baritone, whereas most Verdi baritone roles are listed as ‘Heldenbaritone’, with a fairly unforgiving and high tessitura. This is noteworthy of mention because in Stevens’s later career he sang only two Verdi roles; Falstaff, listed in Kloiber as ‘Heldenbaritone’, and Ramphis, the High Priest in Aida, a ‘Seriöserbass’.⁴⁶

At Christmas 1900 Stevens gave his first chronicled performance of Handel’s Messiah, a work that stands alongside Elijah and The Dream of Gerontius amongst the principal concert roles with which he would be most associated. Although W.A. Carne noted that the press reports were ‘at variance’,⁴⁷ The Argus reported “the bass solos were satisfactorily undertaken by Mr Horace Stevens, whose delivery of ‘But Who May Abide’ (sung with becoming reverence), ‘The People that walked in Darkness’ and ‘The Trumpet shall sound’ was decidedly praiseworthy”.⁴⁸

Concert, Town Hall, Melbourne, 18 April 1901

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

The Messiah, Melbourne, 25 December 1901

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

On 11 January 1901, Stevens accompanied Charles Truelove and the boys of All Saints Choir as assistant choir master and guest baritone soloist on a short but concentrated tour of Tasmania. The tour concluded on the 14 January with a performance of Messiahat St John’s Church, Launceston. The reviewer, ‘Modkbato’ wrote that Stevens “displayed a fine voice” but worried that an excessive vibrato “may hold him back from reaching the highest pinnacle of fame”.⁴⁹ Vibrato is often a result of unsupported singing, but tiredness was noticed in the boys’ singing perhaps due to the concentrated schedule of the concerts.

Otherwise, the usual round of concerts filled Horace’s diary for 1901. He performed the baritone solos in Brahms’s German Requiem at St Paul’s Cathedral as part of the official ‘in memoriam’ activities marking the passing of Queen Victoria, who died on 22 January. He was not included as a soloist in the Melbourne Philharmonic’s performances for the opening of the first Federal Parliament at the Melbourne Exhibition Buildings on 7 May, although the choir was expanded with both the Royal Metropolitan and Melbourne Liedertafel.⁵⁰ However, on the 5 April, he was one of the bass soloists in Charles Gounod’s The Redemption. This piece was first composed for the Birmingham Choral Festival in 1882, the first of a trilogy of oratorios, the second being Mors et Vita. On the 8 April 1901, the critic for the Melbourne Age described Stevens as a “rapidly improving singer who deserves to get on”.⁵¹ Stevens finished 1901 with a Messiah performance with the tenor James Gregor Wood (d.1938) who was to share the stage with Horace for much of his pre-war work.

1902 was a monumental year for Stevens. On 28 March he gave his first performance with the Royal Melbourne Philharmonic Society as Elijah in Mendelssohn’s oratorio Elijah, a role that would define his career and which he sang some 500 times. The part of Elijah is written for a bass-baritone in the truest sense of the term although it has been sung regularly by basses, baritones and all voice classifications in between. The reviews were critical. The Age opined, “Horace Stevens, who made his chief successes in the airs, ‘Lord God of Abraham’ and ‘It is Enough’ would have been a very acceptable exponent of the heavy part allotted to the Prophet, were his vocal utterance less thick”.⁵² I can only assume he artificially darkened his voice, a common vice in young basses and baritones, in an attempt to sound mature. His sister, Emelie, joined him on the podium, singing the contralto part.

Antonia Dolores. Photo by Falk, Sydney.

Theatre Heritage Australia

Death of Minnehaha and The Creation, Town Hall, Melbourne, 24 June 1902

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

In early June, 1902, Horace and Emelie Stevens are listed as members of the St. Paul’s Cathedral Quartet Party, a group of four singers which also included J. Gregor Wood.⁵³ This was followed, on 24 June  by a Miscellaneous Concert given by the Royal Melbourne Philharmonic, featuring part of another piece with which Stevens’s name would be linked: the second part of the Hiawatha trilogy Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast (1898), The Death of Minnehaha (1899) and Hiawatha’s Farewell (1900), settings of the Longfellow poem by  composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912). The only mention of the Australian premiere of The Death of Minnehaha comes from The Adelaide Critic in the weekly section of goings on in Melbourne.⁵⁴ In The Death of Minnehaha, the part of Hiawatha is a true baritone, rarely dropping below G below middle C, with frequent passages staying up around the d to f above middle C. From this, we get an intimation of Stevens as the Wagnerian he was to become. This is repertoire that would, had he been born in Europe, put him in that peculiarly German Fach of ‘Barak the Dyer’ from Strauss’s Die Frau ohne Schatten, or the father in Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel.

In November, Horace undertook the title role in Mendelssohn’s St Paulwith the Royal Melbourne Philharmonic Society. The soprano was Antonia Dolores, a pupil of Melba, the contralto was Miss Emilie Kefford, while J. Gregor Wood was the tenor.  Stevens was “congratulated on achieving a higher degree of success than he had previously attained”.⁵⁵ The Age similarly congratulated Stevens.⁵⁶

At a concert on 4 December 1902, attended by Melba, Stevens performed the solo baritone part in Stanford’s Cavalier Songs with the men of the Royal Melbourne Liedertafel. A reviewer noted that “Madame Melba was a very vigorous plauditor”.⁵⁷

Stevens was a renowned sculler and on 13 December he discovered a floating corpse of one George Montgomery in the Yarra river. The body “was floating on the surface when it was seen by Mr Horace Stevens of Collins Street, who was rowing past the spot. He informed Constable Hunichen, and the body was put into a boat and taken to the morgue”.⁵⁸

His year ended as a soloist in the Royal Melbourne Philharmonic’s annual Messiah.⁵⁹

To be continued...

Endnotes

1. Herbert Hughes. ‘Sir E. Elgar on the Music Crisis’, Daily Telegraph, 5 November 1931. The Telegraph Historical Archive.Accessed 14 October 2017.

2. The Age (Melbourne), 29 November 1923. Trove. Accessed 21 June 2017.

3. Personal interview, 23 March 2017

4. Personal interview, 8 May 2017

5. The Telegraph, St Kilda, Prahran and South Yarra Guardian, 21 November 1874. Trove. Accessed 30 June 2017.

6. Personal Note from Michael Humphries, Archivist of All Saint’s Church, St Kilda, 21 March 2017

7. The Age (Melbourne), 31 July 1875. Trove. Accessed 30 June 2017.

8. Theatre Heritage Australia Inc., STEELE, Mrs W.F.G. (1875-1957) - Theatre Heritage Australia Accessed 11 March 2026; and The Prahran Telegraph, 17 September 1892. Trove. Accessed 21 March 2017.

9. The Prahran Telegraph, 17 September 1892, p.3. Trove. Accessed 21 March 2017.

10. James Griffin, ‘Horace Ernest Stevens (1876-1950)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 12, MUP, 1990.Accessed 23 July 2017, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/stevens-horace-ernest-8653

11. The Prahran Telegraph, 17 September 1892, p.3. Trove. Accessed 21 March 2017.

12. Gabriella Boema came to Australia in 1880 with the W.S. Lyster touring company, and apparently had a fine voice, if somewhat insecure in her high notes. Madame Ellen Christian is better known for running the ‘Garcia School of Singing’ in Pott’s Point, Sydney. See Alison Gyger, Opera for the Antipodes Currency Press, 1990, pp.75, 292.

13. TheAge (Melbourne), 9 November1888. Trove. Accessed 14 June 2017.

14. W.A. Carne, A Century of Harmony. The official Centenary History of the Royal Melbourne Philharmonic Society,Royal Melbourne Philharmonic Society, Melbourne, 1954, pp.114-115

15. Kenneth Hince, ‘Beaumont, Edward Armes (1842–1913)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, Accessed 27 June 2017, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/beaumont-edward-armes-2960/text4307

16. Barbara Mackenzie and Findlay Mackenzie, Singers of Australia from Melba to Sutherland, Lansdowne Press Pty Ltd. 1967 pp. 83-87

17. The Argus (Melbourne), 24 January 1890. Trove. Accessed 14 June 2017. Trove.

18. The Age(Melbourne), 24 January 1890. Trove. Accessed 14 June 2017.

19. The Prahran Telegraph,17 September 1892. Trove. Accessed 21 March 2017.

20. The Darling Downs Gazette,30 November 1908. Trove. Accessed 14 June 2017.

21. The Prahran Telegraph,17 September 1892. Trove. Accessed 21 March 2017.

22. W.A. Carne, A Century of Harmony. The official Centenary History of the Royal Melbourne Philharmonic Society,Royal Melbourne Philharmonic Society, Melbourne, 1954, p.114

23. The Geelong Advertiser, 21 August 1899. Trove. Accessed 8 June 2017.

24. The Argus (Melbourne), 11 June 1936. Trove. Accessed 21 October 2017.

25. Table Talk (Melbourne), 19 August 1920. Trove. Accessed 21 March 2017.

26. James Griffin, ‘Horace Ernest Stevens (1876-1950)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 12, MUP, 1990.Accessed 23 July 2017, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/stevens-horace-ernest-8653

27. Personal Interview with Nicholas Braithwaite, 5 April 2017

28. Mount Alexander Mail, 7 September 1898. Trove. Accessed 19 April 2017.

29. W.A. Carne, A Century of Harmony. The official Centenary History of the Royal Melbourne Philharmonic Society,Royal Melbourne Philharmonic Society, Melbourne, 1954, p.127.

30. ‘Amusements’, The Age (Melbourne), 25 November 1898, p.3. Trove. Accessed 9 July 2017.

31. W.A. Carne, A Century of Harmony. The official Centenary History of the Royal Melbourne Philharmonic Society,Royal Melbourne Philharmonic Society, Melbourne, 1954, pp.127-128

32. The Australasian, 8 April 1899, p.36. Trove. Accessed 9 July 2017.

33. The Ballarat Star, 22 May 1899, p.4. Trove. Accessed 10 July 2017.

34. The Ballarat Star, 25 May 1899, p.4. Trove. Accessed 10 July 2017.

35. The Australasian, 13 May 1899, p.44. Trove. Accessed 10 July 2017.

36. The Argus(Melbourne), 28 June 1899. Trove. Accessed 10 July 2017.

37. C. Joseph Brambach, Columbus!, Male chorus, soli and orchestra, William Rohlfing, Milwaukee, 1886

38. Table Talk (Melbourne), 22 September1899, p.17. Trove. Accessed 8 June 2017.

39. Prahran Chronicle, 25 November 1899, p.3. Trove. Accessed 10 Jul. 2017.

40. Launceston Daily Telegraph, 16 January 1900, p.3. Trove. Accessed 10 July 2017.

41. The Australasian, 10 February1900, p.36. Trove. Accessed 10 July 2017.

42. The Age (Melbourne), 21 May 1900, p.6. Trove. Accessed 10 July 2017.

43. The Age (Melbourne), 19 September 1900, p.8. Trove. Accessed 10 July 2017.

44. Adelaide Critic, 22 September 1900, p.15. Trove. Accessed 10 July 2017.

45. Weekly Times, 1 December 1900, p.25. Trove. Accessed 10 July 2017.

46. Rudolph Kloiber, Wulf Konold, Robert Maschka, Handbuch der Oper GemeinschaftlicheOrigionalausgabe, Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag GmbH & Co, KG, München, 2002, www.dtv.de. Bärenreiter-verlag Karl Vötterle GmbH & Co. KG Kassel, Basel, London, New York, Prague. Translated by the author.

47. W.A. Carne, A Century of Harmony. The official Centenary History of the Royal Melbourne Philharmonic Society,Royal Melbourne Philharmonic Society, Melbourne, 1954, p.129

48. The Argus (Melbourne), 26 December 1900, p.6. Trove. Accessed 10 Jul. 2017.

49. Launceston Daily Telegraph, 19 January 1901, p.7. Trove. Accessed 30 May 2017.

50. W.A. Carne, A Century of Harmony. The official Centenary History of the Royal Melbourne Philharmonic Society,Royal Melbourne Philharmonic Society, Melbourne, 1954, pp.130-131

51. The Age (Melbourne), 8 April 1901, p.6. Trove. Accessed 20 July 2017.

52. The Age (Melbourne), 29 March 1902, p.10. Trove. Accessed 19 July 2017.

53. The Age (Melbourne), 3 June 1902, p.8. Trove. Accessed 19 July 2017.

54. ‘The Gay Metropolis’, Adelaide Critic, 28 June 1902, p.26. Trove. Accessed 7 June 2017.

55. The Argus (Melbourne), 18 November 1902 p.8. Trove. Accessed 27 July 2017.

56. The Age (Melbourne),18 November 1902, p.8. Trove. Accessed 27 July 2017.

57. The Age (Melbourne), 2 December 1902, p.5. Trove. Accessed 19 April 2017.

58. The Argus (Melbourne), 13 December 1902, p.16. Trove. Accessed 19 July 2017.

59. W.A. Carne, A Century of Harmony. The official Centenary History of the Royal Melbourne Philharmonic Society,Royal Melbourne Philharmonic Society, Melbourne, 1954, p.133

Australian operatic vocalist (bass-baritone). Né Horace Ernest Stevens. Born 26 October 1876, Melbourne, VIC, Australia. Son of Horace Stevens (dentist) and Fanny Gittins. Married (1) Nellie Chapman, 1905, (2) Ella Elizabeth Hallam, 1934. Died 18 November 1950, Melbourne, VIC, Australia.

On stage in England Australia from 1919. Noted Wagnerian and choral performer. Best remembered for singing the title role in Hiawatha at the Royal Albert Hall in 1924 and at the Exhibition Buildings in Melbourne in 1937.

Riley/Hailes Scrapbook, page 215.