John Amadio

On Wednesday 18 March 1908 at 10.25pm, a masked woman walked for the first time on to the stage of the Alhambra music hall in Leicester Square, London. She was eighth in the pecking order that night, top-of-the-bill being Edouard Garceau, fresh from the chansons of Montmartre. She had been advertised that day as ‘L’Incognita’ and she sang the dazzling ‘Shadow Song’ from Meyerbeer’s Dinorah, taking the high E with ease. She ‘took the house by storm.’¹

Violet Mount (aka "L'Incognita") - Meyerbeer: DINORAH, Shadow Song, 1913

But who was she?  

Although she has been ignored in all the standard works on singers from Australia and New Zealand, Violet Mount, ‘L’Incognita’, was much admired by K.J. Kutsch and Leo Riemens in what has become the standard international Concise Biographical Dictionary of Singers. They wrote:

Strange rumours about the identity of the singer grew up after the appearance of her records. People conjectured that behind the pseudonym was Luisa Tetrazzini, who had just had great triumphs in England, or Alice Verlet or Yvonne de Tréville. Actually, they were made by the Australian music-hall singer Violet Mount, who was at that time appearing at the Alhambra Music Hall … The records, which appeared under the name L’Incognita and sold in large numbers, presented a lovely coloratura soprano, who possessed a thoroughly trained and virtuoso voice, which would not have been suspected of a music-hall singer.²

Violet Emily Le Breton Mount was born on 15 March 1875 at Caulfield, south-east of Melbourne’s CBD, the house of her paternal grandfather, Dr Mount. For quite differing reasons, her parents were rather extraordinary people.

Her father, Lambton Le Breton Mount, was born in Montreal, Canada, in 1839, the seventh son of Dr Edward Henry Mount and Emily Catherine Le Lièvre Mount (née Le Breton), who had immigrated to Australia from Canada in 1853, settling in gold-rush Ballarat, where Dr Mount practised as a surgeon and general practitioner. It was in Ballarat that Lambton met and befriended Adam Lindsay Gordon, who was to become the ‘father of Australian poetry’. In 1866, Gordon and Mount set up a sheep station at Bunbury in Western Australia. However, there were problems and the venture folded. To the end of his long life, Lambton remembered how he and Gordon ‘rode together’.

The sheep business was to be a portent for a stop-start career that Lambton was to have, much of it as an innovator in the glass manufacturing sector. This was his working life until he retired in his late sixties. However, he was a man of enormous energy, famous for his long-distance running (‘pedestrianism’)―one such being the 285 kilometres from Beechworth to Melbourne. In 1876 he imported forty lacrosse sticks from Canada, establishing that sport in Australia.³ And in 1887-88 he was President of the Victorian Chamber of Manufactures and a commissioner for the Centennial International Exhibition in Melbourne.

But he was also very conscious of his position in Australian society as a ‘gentleman’. And, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, gentlemen’s daughters led cloistered, lady-like lives and did not take paid work―particularly not on the rackety stage. And this set of beliefs was to affect Violet Mount’s whole life and career.

Lambton Le Breton Mount, c.1878

The Gold Museum, Ballatat

Adam Lindsay Gordon

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

Violet Mount’s mother was Mary Frances Mount (née Glynn), who was born in the St Kilda East suburb of Melbourne on 28 December 1855. Her parents were both immigrants from Cork, Ireland, her father a builder. Mary was a talented pianist and singer, who was to have a profound effect on her daughter’s growth as a musician, playing as her accompanist throughout her early years.

Where (and how) Mary learned that pianistic expertise is not known to me. There are many skills involved in successfully accompanying singers (and other musicians), among them: the ability to sight-read the music; the ability to transpose from one key to another at will; sensitivity both to follow the interpretive wishes of the singer and to provide advice on interpretive matters.

A Melbourne childhood

Violet was Lambton and Mary’s first child, born just nine months after their marriage. And there were five siblings to come, four brothers and a sister Winifred.⁴ Of these, it appears that only Winnie shared her sister’s musical gift, providing obligato violin to Violet’s singing in early concerts, but not going on to pursue music as a career.

Did Violet (or Winnie) go to school? There is no evidence that they did. So, if not, were they home-schooled by their mother Mary (or by a governess)? Given the later evidence of Lambton’s genteel opposition to Violet having a professional career on the stage, this might well seem to be another part of his beliefs concerning the restricted role of women and girls in the Victorian/Edwardian world.

Nor is there evidence of music teachers being employed by the Mounts—and as a consequence there are no early listings of performances of any kind. They must have been taught their music by Mary and if so, she must have been a remarkable teacher. Perhaps it is no surprise that the three of them first appear in print in Table Talk of 2 December 1892 with products for sale at a church sale of work—Mary offering her ‘fine art’, while Violet (17) and Winnie (15) had made confections.

The next we hear of them is leaving Melbourne on 29 April 1893 on a German steamer, the Karlsruhe,⁵ whose eventual port will be Bremen, but the Mounts were to disembark at Southampton. The family group consists of ‘Mrs L.L. Mount, Miss Violet Mount, Miss Winnie Mount, Masters Harold and Ray Mount’.⁶ The boys are the two youngest, with their older male siblings left behind with father Lambton in Melbourne, who was to put their house and furniture up for sale to fund the expedition.⁷

At the time, it was quite unclear as to why they went on this long voyage. Was it to find music teachers for Violet in Europe? Or just to have a holiday experience? I have yet to discover when they returned to Melbourne but in August 1896, at an ‘At Home’ in Caulfield, Violet sang and her mother Mary both sang and accompanied.

Keroongola—where the Mount family lived during 1896-1898. State Library Victoria, Melbourne.

Returned to Australia, they lived until 1898 at Keroongola in Orrong Road, St Kilda East. And on 28 June 1897 Violet was ‘heard to advantage’ in Marie’s famous aria, ‘Convien partir’, from Donizetti’s bel canto comedy La fille du régiment in a pupil concert for the Howard Conservatoire.⁸ This conservatoire had been opened in Melbourne the previous year but both the founder, George Howard and its leading singing teacher, the ageing prima donna Fanny Simonsen, died in 1896 and the business was taken forward by Howard’s widow, Mme Houyet-Howard. It offered the full range of musical tuition, singing now being taught by the English tenor William Parkinson and others. Violet was later to disclose that it was Parkinson who was the one who taught her there.

She appeared again in the conservatoire’s second student concert of the year in August, where she gave Agathe’s aria, ‘Softly sighs the breath of evening’ (‘Leise, leise’), from Weber’s Der Freischütz, this time accompanied by a thirty-piece orchestra.⁹ She was announced to sing a lead role (Plaintiff) in Gilbert and Sullivan’s Trial by Jury in October, a charitable performance.¹⁰ And in December Mme Howard gave an ‘At Home’ which featured Violet singing Anton Strelezki’s then-popular ‘Dreams’ with Winnie Mount providing obligato violin.¹¹

To start out on her performing career as an amateur at the age of twenty-two with two showpiece arias shows how confident Violet Mount must have been in her capabilities. In fact, the Weber aria was to have form: it was later sung by Kiri Te Kanawa when she won the Sun Aria competition in Melbourne in 1965 and then by the Finnish soprano Karita Mattila, who sang it when winning the inaugural Cardiff Singer of the World competition in 1983.

It was a promising start and Violet went on the following year to sing at a number of private events in Melbourne, one of them (2 July) including the young baritone Horace Stevens, and another was an ‘At Home’ (7 July) given by her mother at the Mount home in St Kilda East, which included the New Zealand-born tenor Walter Kirby.¹² He was to turn out to be a fortunate contact for Violet.¹³

To New Zealand

In 1899 the Mount family moved from Melbourne to Wellington. It seems that father Lambton was the instigator of the move as his glass manufacturing business was struggling in Australia and …

He came to New Zealand to test the colony’s mineral wealth. He thought Wellington would provide a fine field for glassworks …¹⁴

However, the major beneficiary of the migration was undoubtedly Violet, whose singing career simply took off in Wellington with many concert performances that were to be paid for. Did her ‘gentleman’ father approve of the reality that she was becoming a professional?

Violet made her debut in New Zealand on 13 June 1899 in a concert given by the Ladies Musical Society at the Art Gallery in Wellington, conducted by Mrs Alfred Levi. Looking forward to the event, the Evening Post reported:

She is the possessor of a fine soprano voice and has for many years studied at the Howard Conservatoire in Melbourne and in Germany and Paris.¹⁵

She sang her aria from La fille du regiment and two songs, ‘creating a favourable impression’. It was a start. Then in July she was in a chamber concert at Choral Hall, where she sang a wider range of arias and songs, accompanied this time by Cyril Towsey, and received fulsome endorsement:

She is gifted with a soprano voice of considerable power and singularly sympathetic timbre, and she sings with ease and displays great intelligence in the management of the words.¹⁶

On 29 August, booked by her new friend Walter Kirby, she sang at a concert at the Opera House, attended by the Governor, the Earl and Countess Ranfurly. Again, she sang the Weber aria and Tosti’s ‘Goodbye’.¹⁷

NZ Sporting Review, 2 March 1899

Wanganui Chronicle, 12 October 1899

In subsequent months, engagements for Violet came usually twice a month, including: a cantata, Corder’s Margaret; German pianist Albert Friedenthal’s farewell concert (where she sang two of the pianist’s own songs); another concert with Walter Kirby at Wanganui; and in June 1900 she performed in her first opera, Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Grand Duke(as Julia Jellicoe), at the Opera House. She got a mixed review:

Miss Mount’s ability as a singer is well known, but as an actress she is unable, as yet, to give a particularly telling reproduction of a comedienne’s part.¹⁸

In November 1900 she sang (perhaps for the first time in public) Henry Bishop’s ‘Lo! Here the gentle lark’,¹⁹ accompanied on the flute by Charles Hill, eldest brother of Australasian composer Alfred Hill, with her mother at the piano.²⁰ The song, with its testing coloratura, had already held the stage over many decades, recorded by (among others) Nellie Melba, Galli-Curci, Joan Sutherland, Kiri Te Kanawa―and Violet Mount (as ‘L’Incognita’) with Australasian flautist John Amadio.²¹ It was to remain in her repertoire throughout.

And the following month she was soloist in Stanford’s Te Deum at a Jubilee event at the Canterbury Hall in Christchurch, among the many speakers prime minister RJ Seddon.²²

Alice Hollander, 1900s, by The Biograph Studio

Elisabeth Kumm collection

Jean Gerardy, 1900s, by Falk, Sydney

Elisabeth Kumm collection

Early in the new year, Violet was recruited to ‘assist’ at a concert given by the Australian contralto Alice Hollander at Sydney Street Hall in Wellington. Although she was some seven years younger than Violet, Hollander was already further ahead in her career, which was looking to be in conventional concert halls. Yet it was not long after this meeting that Alice Hollander made an unusual career choice, moving into music halls in Britain:

A good voice is just equivalent to capital, which should be banked where it will draw the best interest … And people who pretend this is not the mainspring of all we do, and talk Art with an exaggerated capital A, are merely ‘foozling’ … The business aspect of the question is that the concert platform is limited to the concert season, whereas the halls are open all year round.²³

Hollander implemented this radical strategy in the years before the arrival of Violet Mount in London in 1907. There were few ‘serious’ singers on the halls. Hollander herself would play several music-halls every night, singing just one song at each venue and picking up a handsome fee every time. At some stage, Violet will have recognised the good business sense in Hollander’s working life―and this proposition may well have been put to Violet’s business-oriented father.

Violet was to sing Irish songs, presumably learned in Melbourne at her Irish mother’s knee, at the Opera House in Wellington on St Patrick’s Day 1901―‘Kate O’Shea’, ‘Kathleen Mavourneen’ and ‘The Minstrel Boy’.

However, it was not to be many weeks before the family moved again, this time north to Auckland. And (again) it was father Lambton who instigated the move, having ascertained that there were rich sandstone deposits in the area ideal for glass manufacture.²⁴

That month (May) there was a first Complimentary Farewell Concert for Violet Mount in Wellington, given at the Opera House. She sang ‘Ernani involami’, Chaminade’s ‘L’été’, the trio from The Bohemian Girl, and the grand sextet from Lucia di Lammermoor (with two brothers of Alfred Hill among others).

But before the Mounts left the city, the Wellington Liedertafel with Violet Mount and others gave a concert performance at the Art Gallery of Offenbach’s one-act operetta The Rose of Auvergne.

The New Zealand Free Lance waved farewell to them from Wellington in July 1901:

Miss Violet Mount, the sweet singer from Melbourne, who had practically become a Wellingtonian, left last week to take up her residence with her people in Auckland. Wellington’s loss is Auckland’s gain, for the Mount family is highly musical. Mr Mount, who has successfully floated a glass manufacturing concern in the Queen City of the North, is a sound critic and Mrs Mount is both songstress and pianist. Violet is the flower of the flock and the Mount family simply adore her.²⁵

Her performing life in Auckland picked up immediately, this time with more opera. But first, Violet was hired to assist the Belgian international cellist Jean Gerardy in a series of concerts.²⁶ In October it was announced that Violet would create the lead role in Auckland-based surgeon-composer George de Clive-Lowe’s new comic opera, The LadyTypist. In the event, it does not seem to have got past rehearsals stage.²⁷

New Zealand Graphic, 26 October 1901

But there was better luck with Gilbert and Sullivan’s Iolanthe, given by the Auckland Amateur Opera Club in November—with Violet as Phyllis: ‘Miss Violet Mount was in delightful voice and unquestionably scored the first honours of the evening.’²⁸

She travelled from Auckland to give concerts in other North Island cities―Hawera in December 1901 and New Plymouth in January; and later that month she again ‘assisted’ contralto Alice Hollander, this time at the Choral Hall in Auckland, singing the cavatina from Verdi’s Ernani.

To Sydney

However, Violet Mount’s sojourn in Auckland was short-lived and, after the obligatory Complimentary Farewell and a performance of Schumann’s Paradise and the Peri, she left for Sydney in May 1902 aboard the Mararoa, the rest of the Mount family remaining in Auckland.²⁹

Violet opened in Sydney with performances on successive days: first, on Monday 14 July, she gave an invitation matinée at Centenary Hall, ‘best heard in Grieg’s Solvieg’s Song’. She must have briefed a local journalist, for in his/her report it was finally disclosed that Violet had studied with singing teachers in Europe in1883: with a Herr Odenwald in Germany (probably Dresden, as disclosed in another interview) and with Mme Caut in Paris. I have (as yet) not been able to identify either of them.³⁰

And on the following day she assisted the Florentine tenor Carlo Dani in his ‘final’ concert in Sydney at the Town Hall. The Watchman was full of admiration for Violet’s performance: she had ‘clear enunciation, sweetness of tone and an expressive style of singing’.³¹ In the event, she was retained by Dani for his touring company and gave several more performances with him, the ‘Waltz Song’ from Gounod’s Romeo et Juliette being her calling card.

Alfred Hill, 1910, by May and Mina Moore

National Portrait Gallery, Canberra

Roberto Hazon, 1890

National Library of Australia, Canberra

Then in August she sang in a complimentary farewell concert for composer Alfred Hill. Violet had got to know (and had performed with) several of Hill’s brothers in New Zealand. The main event was a performance of Hill’s Maori cantata, Hinemoa, and Violet sang ‘several songs’.³²

However, business dropped off in the summer months and Violet felt the need to advertise in the Sydney Morning Herald for work.³³ This initiative seems to have borne fruit, as in December she was hired ‘at great expense’ to be the principal soprano in a concert party playing the towns of the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales (Lismore. Byron Bay, Grafton, Ballina, Tweed Heads).³⁴ And she was to repeat the experience with another touring company the following June.

Next came a series of recitals in the Town Hall played by the city’s organist, Arthur Mason. One of these focused on Wagner and Violet sang ‘Elisabeth’s Greeting’ from Tannhäuser.³⁵ In March Violet was appointed soprano soloist for St Patrick’s Church in the Rocks, a role which was to provide her with consistent work. And April brought a Sydney Philharmonic Society performance of Haydn’s The Creation with Violet as soprano soloist. The Italian Roberto Hazon conducted, and Violet was later to claim that he had had a major influence on her singing.³⁶ She must have sung well as the Society booked her again in September for Mendelssohn’s Elijah.

Also in September, Violet sang in the first performance in Sydney of Liza Lehman’s song cycle ‘The Daisy chain’.³⁷ And later that month, Violet was to meet and sing with the visiting Australian contralto Ada Crossley, by now an international concert artist and living in London. Violet’s first encounter with her was at a reception given for Crossley where Violet sang. Then, on 6 November, Mount and Crossley performed together with the Sydney Philharmonic Society in Sydney in Elijah. Both singers received outstanding response from the audience and very generous reviews in the media.³⁸

By this stage in her career, twenty-eight years old Violet Mount had built a strong reputation as a singer―in Wellington, Auckland and Sydney. But her career had quite simply not taken off as other women before her in Australia had managed―among them Nellie Melba, Frances Saville and Ada Crossley. And each of them, in order to take their careers on to a new level, had made the choice to relocate to much bigger markets in Britain or continental Europe.

Violet Mount, 1905, by Appleby, Sydney

State Library of New South Wales, Sydney

This is exactly the advice that Crossley gave to Violet. And some time later Crossley was to write to Violet, ‘asking her to go straight to her [in London] and promising her many engagements.’³⁹ But it was to be a further three and a half years after that Elijah before Violet took the plunge.

The following years, 1904 and 1905, provided Violet with a constant stream of work in Sydney, much of it of the bread-and-butter kind―including oratorios, disaster relief concerts and many farewells for Australian singers and other musicians leaving for the northern hemisphere. There were perhaps two more outstanding events: in April 1904 she sang the role of Elsa in Act One of Wagner’s Lohengrin for the Sydney Philharmonic Society under Roberto Hazon at the Town Hall;⁴⁰ and June saw the arrival in Sydney of the German pianist Albert Friedenthal, at whose concert she had performed in Wellington four years earlier, again singing the pianist’s own songs.⁴¹

It seems likely that father Lambton Mount sailed from Sydney to London on the Rimutakain May 1904.⁴² In 1905 Violet led the cast as Arline in Balfe’s The BohemianGirl, first at Penrith in May, then at the Palace Theatre in Sydney in September, where her acting was said to be ‘very spirited’.⁴³

More Farewells than …

However, 1905 saw the start of a two-year ‘farewell’ period for Violet as she moved towards leaving Australia and New Zealand, sailing with her mother to London in May 1907.

‘Farewells’ have for so long been synonymous in Australian mythology with Dame Nellie Melba, who very regularly gave performances so named as she approached the end of her illustrious career. But what Violet Mount’s life story shows is that farewells were common currency—for herself and for so many of her musical friends and colleagues.

The planning process for Violet’s farewell from Sydney started in July 1905, leading to the event itself taking place at the Town Hall on 20 September. There were many performers, but Violet’s own main contributions were the ‘Bell Song’ from Delibes’ Lakméand ‘Casta diva’ from Norma, in both of which she ‘sang brilliantly’.⁴⁴

Then in December Violet returned to Auckland to give a farewell concert ‘before going to Europe’, singing ‘Ah! fors’è lui’ from La traviata, the ‘Bell Song’, ‘Villanelle’ and a Rossini song:

Always a sweet soprano, Miss Mount’s voice has materially increased in power since she was last heard here.⁴⁵

By February of 1906 Violet was back in her home city of Melbourne, where she opened with an invitation concert at the Pianola Hall in March, followed by Elijah at the Town Hall for the Melbourne Philharmonic Society. While Violet was gratefully received, the star attraction was the Scottish-born baritone Andrew Black, who was touring Australia and was to settle there, perhaps the only leading singer from the ‘Golden Age’ to immigrate.

Andrew Black, 1905

Elisabeth Kumm collection

Melboune Town Hall, c.1906

State Library Victoria, Melbourne

The obligatory Complimentary Farewell Concert for Violet in Melbourne came on 2 May 1906—still twelve months before her actual departure. It was given at the Town Hall, where …

a large audience received the young artist with great enthusiasm … Her voice is a bright, clear, ringing soprano of very wide range—she touched F sharp in alt with exact truth of intonation and perfect sweetness—and she has trained it to an astonishing degree of flexibility … She was accompanied by her mother Mrs Lambton Mount.⁴⁶

Still marking time, Violet organised in September an operatic event at the Masonic Hall in Melbourne, where she was Marguerite in Acts 3 and 5 of Faust, plus giving arias from Rigoletto, Dinorah and Mignon.⁴⁷

October saw a return for Violet with Andrew Black, this time in Haydn’s Creation at the Town Hall, a performance they repeated when Violet returned to Sydney in March 1907.⁴⁸

Her final farewell was, fittingly, given at Her Majesty’s Theatre in Ballarat, the hometown of her father’s family, on 9 May. In ‘Lo! Here the gentle lark’ her obligato flautist was another Amadio, Master Adrian, half-brother of John, and the whole was accompanied by Violet’s mother.⁴⁹

Violet, ‘Australia’s best soprano’, and her mother finally left Melbourne for London on 24 May 1907 (Empire Day) on the White Star liner Afric.⁵⁰ She was thirty-one.

What would the future hold?

Mathilde Bauermeister, 1900s

The Newberry, Chicago

L'Incognita, photo by Bassano

The Sketch, 15 April 1908

London: Becoming L’Incognita

When Violet and her mother arrived in London, Violet was quite clear responding to inquisitive reporters: it was to be opera or the concert stage. And strenuous efforts were made in that direction.

In October 1907 she sang at a ‘semi-private’ event where she ‘scored an unequivocal success’.⁵¹ Maybe. At that time, she (and presumably her mother) were living with an ‘aunt’ in Queen’s Road Bayswater.⁵² Was Ada Crossley any help to her? Not much, it seems. Did she go to see Melba, who had helped so many young Australian singers?

In November it was announced that Violet was studying with Mme Bauermeister in London. Born in Hamburg, the mezzo-soprano Mathilde Bauermeister had sung at Covent Garden for thirty-seven years. Melba had organised her Farewell. And in January-February 1908 it was rumoured that Violet had been offered a three-year engagement touring with the Carl Rosa Opera Company—which Violet turned down.⁵³ And she was said to have auditioned unsuccessfully for Covent Garden.

In truth, without causing any stir, from January 1908 Violet had already started, under her own name, to perform in music halls around London—at Putney, Uxbridge, Stoke Newington, Park Lane and Hyde Park.⁵⁴

The Alhambra in 1905

It was in March of 1908 that the decisive change in Violet’s fortunes took place. It was reported in these words:

Mystery surrounds the identity of the talented singer, L’Incognita, who created such a sensation at the Alhambra, London, on Thursday evening. A short time ago Mr Alfred Moul, the managing director, received a letter from a firm of solicitors, asking him to give a hearing to a young protegee of theirs. He consented, and the girl, closely veiled, sang before him. Mr Moul discovered that she possessed a voice of remarkable range and purity of tone, and pressed her to appear at the Alhambra, naming a very high fee. She consented to do so for one performance only, on condition that she should not be required to give her name, that no announcement should be made … and that she should be allowed to wear a mask. These were hard conditions but Mr Moul accepted them with the result that the unknown duly made her single appearance and took the house by storm.⁵⁵

Thus, at thirty-two years old, Violet Mount, L’Incognita, was to embark on a new career, not in opera houses or concert halls, but in the music halls. Immediately following her debut at the Alhambra, she was given a contract of indefinite duration on an exclusive basis to sing nightly.

But who was she? Was she the daughter, as rumoured, of an impoverished nobleman? From the start, she was headlining in the Alhambra’s ubiquitous advertisements. It was in a prime location in London, Leicester Square, the Alhambra being one of the leading halls in the capital with a long line of stars who had performed there.

By the late nineteenth century, music hall was well established in Australia, as in Britain and America. However, there was simply not enough employment for Australian performers in Sydney, Melbourne and the other major cities, and so many came to Britain to find work. 

Florrie Forde, 1900s, photo by Foulsham & Banfield

Theatre Heritage Australia

Annette Kellerman, 1910s, by H. Walter Barnett

National Portrait Gallery, London

The majority of the emigrant Australian music hall artists were from working-class backgrounds, performing popular material for primarily working-class audiences, among them the singers Florrie Forde, Albert Whelan and Billy Williams. But there were also successful novelty acts, including the ‘living statue’ La Milo (Pansy Montague), the champion swimmer turned to vaudeville, Annette Kellermann, the ‘world’s greatest liar’, Louis de Rougemont, and the New Zealand-born coloratura ‘siffleur’ (whistler), Borneo Gardiner.

And there was a handful of classically trained Australian-born singers, who, usually unable to break into the opera houses, came to work on the halls in Britain. Among these were contralto Alice Hollander (whose conversion was mentioned earlier), sopranos Syria Lamonte (in 1898 the first woman singer to make gramophone records in Britain), Ada Colley and Florence Esdaile, and baritone Hamilton Hill (who popularised Boer War songs).

Nevertheless, that kind of singer remained the exception rather than the rule in music halls. And an unnamed but a first-rate coloratura soprano in a mask was unique, well appreciated and newsworthy.⁵⁶

Not to miss the excitement The Times sent along one of their music reporters, who, true to form, sniffily appreciated the performance, while finding fault:

‘L’Incognita’ has a clear and powerful high F, and considerable skill in singing scales and florid passages; it is to be hoped that the money she earns by this engagement will be applied to the continuance of her musical studies, and in particular to the acquirement of better pronunciation both of French and of Italian.⁵⁷

In mid-April one of the leading illustrated magazines in Britain, The Sketch, carried the by now famous masked singer on its front page, full page, the photograph by the fashionable Bassano.⁵⁸ And L’Incognita’s first season at the Alhambra went right through to early September, at which point it was suggested that she was to make a tour in Scottish halls and venture abroad to the continent.⁵⁹

The Phono Trader and Record, April 1908

Was she the sister of the great Luisa Tetrazzini?

Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Within weeks of first appearing at the Alhambra, she was in the studios of the Gramophone Company in London, recording arias for their Zonophone label which featured in her act: ‘Caro nome’ from Rigoletto, ‘Ah! fors’e lui’ from La traviata, the ‘Shadow Song’ from Meyerbeer’s Dinorah and the ‘Mad Scene’ from Lucia diLammermoor.⁶⁰

The legendary recording producer Fred Gaisberg recalled her entry into the studio wearing her mask: ‘I remember her as a first-class artist with a very pleasing and graceful stage presence.’⁶¹

At one of those recording sessions, she was a third persona, Violetta Viamonti—it was issued on HMV. Did she wear her mask for it?⁶²

But, really, who was this L’Incognita? Speculation was rife. If not the daughter of a poor peer, was she perhaps the sister of the great Luisa Tetrazzini? Or was she the real Tetrazzini moonlighting—she was then wowing audiences at Covent Garden in Rigoletto, Lucia di Lammermoor and La traviata.

Her season at the Alhambra completed, in July 1908 L’Incognita appeared at the Grand in Corporation Street, Birmingham, the first of many Stoll-Moss theatres:

Last night every seat in the building was occupied and L’Incognita, who has already achieved considerable distinction in the Metropolis, was given a hearty welcome to this city. She possesses a rich soprano voice. Wearing a black mask, L’Incognita last evening rendered ‘Lo! Here the gentle lark’ and the Polonaise from Mignon in a beautiful clear, rich and telling voice. The applause lasted for several minutes and was led in a hearty manner by the leader of the orchestra.⁶³

Birmingham was followed in August by the Olympia in Liverpool, L’Incognita ‘an artiste of great ability’,⁶⁴ then the Hippodrome in Coventry. She was to return to London in September—to the Empire at Shepherd’s Bush—then back north to the Stoll-owned Empires in Nottingham and Manchester, where she was introduced as ‘the greatest soprano ever heard on the Vaudeville Stage’.⁶⁵

The masked singer who is creating quite a sensation at the Alhambra

The Tatler, 10 June 1908

Caricature of Sir Oswald Stoll by Ape

Vanity Fair, 4 January 1911

There was every reason that she would suit Sir Oswald Stoll and his Empire group of theatres. Not only was he Australian born, but he was also committed to presenting music hall as suitable for everyone. And L’Incognita, was fully booked up in Stoll’s theatres in the provincial cities of England and Wales to the end of a year of massive change for her.

This pattern for L’Incognita continued into1909 with her first engagement north of the border at the Empire, Glasgow, her name on the advertisements still in the largest typeface. Then, in February, she made a return to the Alhambra in London for six weeks, before going on to Vienna, where she appeared at the Apollo Theatre.⁶⁶

After that she returned to the Stoll’s provincial theatres before arriving in July at one of his major London venues, the Hippodrome. From September, for Violet it was back touring in provincial theatres, several of them for a second time around.

L’Incognita’s outstanding, top-of-the-bill career in the music halls of Britain was to sustain itself steadily through the following years. 1910 was fully booked for her, although without a return to London, while 1911 showed a slight slowdown, but included her first performances in Northern Ireland—at the Hippodrome in Belfast. The census of 1911 showed that Violet was living with both her parents at Lauderdale Mansions in Maida Vale.

The London Coliseum today, londoncoliseum.org

However, the pace was kept up through 1912-1914, and she made a return to the metropolis in February 1912, singing at the Victoria Palace, then again in April 1913 at Stoll’s top London theatre, the Coliseum, where Albert Chevalier was also on the bill.

And she was to return to the Coliseum in October—in the same week that the legendary French actress, Sarah Bernhardt performed there.

28 July 1914 saw the start of the Great War and, although music hall theatres generally remained open, business contracted substantially, 1915 being a particularly bleak year for music hall performers before a slight revival in 1916. It appears that L’Incognita had only one booking in 1917—at the Hippodrome in Newcastle.

In her innumerable appearances as L’Incognita, what had she sung to her music hall audiences? She would always start with one or two bel canto arias, filled with trills and runs and sustained top notes. A regular starter was the dazzling Polonaise (‘Je suis Titania’ but doubtless sung in English) from Ambroise Thomas’s Mignon, or the Jewel Song from Gounod’s Faust, or ‘Ah! fors’è lui’ from La traviata, or the ‘Shadow Song’ from Dinorah. And she continued to sing Bishops’ ‘Lo! Here the gentle lark’, which she had performed before regularly in New Zealand and Australia and was to go on with in duet with flautist John Amadio.

Then she would end with a popular song of the day – ‘I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls’, or ‘Annie Laurie’, or ‘Killarney’, or ’Home Sweet Home’ (a Melba favourite).

In 1919 and 1920, Violet Mount returned to the studio for Zonophone, recording ten new arias and songs, including: ‘Calm and peaceful’ from Il trovatore, ‘Casta diva’ from Norma, ‘Beauty’s Sleep’ by Arditi and the ‘Doll Song’ from Tales of Hoffmann. 

Hamilton Gardens in St John’s Wood, London

www.onthemarket.com

And by 1921 the Mounts had moved home from Maida Vale to live at 7 Hamilton Gardens, St Johns Wood, surrounded by expatriate Australian artists, musicians and other singers (including Ada Crossley).⁶⁷

Probably the wartime slowdown for L’Incognita was exacerbated by the fact that by 1917 her music hall act was already some nine years old and in need of rejuvenation. And this came along in the shape of partnership on stage with the outstanding New Zealand-born flautist, John Amadio.

L’Incognita and Amadio

One of a dynasty of flautists and other musicians, John Amadio was born in Christchurch in 1886 and brought up in Wellington, before moving aged seventeen to Sydney, then Melbourne. However, initially taught by his stepfather, he started playing with the Wellington Orchestral Society at eleven. In 1911 he was principal flute in Dame Nellie Melba’s touring opera company in Australia.

John moved to London in 1920, where he was to tour with a range of top-flight artists, including Nellie Melba, Luisa Tetrazzini, Emma Calvé, Galli-Curci and his second wife, Florence Austral.

Palace Theatre, Grimsby

Grimsby Local History Library

Royal Hippodrome, Preston

Lancashire City Council

Already a star in his own right, Amadio was to tour in music halls as a duo with L’Incognita from October 1920, and they were given equal billing. To great applause, they opened at the Palace in Grimsby, going on immediately to Liverpool, Darlington and Rochdale, in each place greeted warmly. They were usually advertised as ‘The Phenomenal Soprano and Wizard of the Flute in the Magic of Flute and Voice’.⁶⁸

The partnership continued touring around UK music halls through to 1924, at which point it came to an abrupt end—the final engagement being at the Royal Hippodrome in Preston in July 1924.⁶⁹ When Amadio went on to perform in the USA in 1925 with soprano wife Florence Austral, it effectively spelled the end of L’Incognita’s performing career. She was approaching fifty. Violet’s only future appearances on stage came in a touring pantomime in the north of England, ‘Dick Whittington and his Cat’ in 1925 and in a concert at the Star, Tonbridge, in 1928.

But a lasting legacy of her time performing with John Amadio came in the form of three gramophone records made for Zonophone in September 1921—‘La Villanelle’ by dell’Acqua. ‘Lo! Here the gentle lark’ by Bishop and ‘Sweet Bird’ by Handel. Already well-known by the halls’ audiences, they were an ideal catch for Zonophone and the recordings sold very well, and the three pieces were at the centre of their live performances together.

As an aside, it’s curious to note that, although Australian and New Zealand newspapers knew from the start that Violet Mount and L’Incognita were one and the same person, this was never revealed in the British media.

John Amadio with his wife soprano Florence Austral, 1930

National Library of Australia, Canberra

From 1925 onwards, Violet Mount is less easy to find. That year she gave written evidence in the divorce proceedings in Melbourne between John Amadio and his first wife, Leonora Soames Amadio. Violet was now living at Birchington Road, West Hampstead.⁷⁰

The following year, Violet visited Australia House (which had opened in 1918) with her aged father.⁷¹ Lambton Mount died at 95 in London in June 1931, remembered in Australia for his friendship with Adam Lindsay Gordon and for his long-distance foot races.⁷²

That’s all …

But in 2009 I was lucky enough to find Violet’s great-niece Linda Mount, and she sent me this email about the singer’s last years. It gives us a rare glimpse into the more private personality of Violet Mount, the woman:

I remember her well when she was older and retired. She came to live in Weybridge in Surrey to be near her brother Ray and his family, my father being one of his sons, Jack. I don't remember exactly when she died but it was in the mid-60s sometime. She was extremely fit, lived independently and never went to hospital until she was in her 90s when she had a short illness and died.

I remember her being a very feisty old lady who enjoyed debating various topics, particularly with her brother. I am sure she must have been quite a dramatic singer and after a glass of wine at Christmas she would suddenly burst into an aria or two during the lunch! If she had had a good time, she would also sing some opera when she waved one off from her flat! Certainly, as a child it was quite something.

I also remember she had some friends who lived in Weybridge so I think she had quite a happy retirement. I was a teenager when she died and I cannot remember more about her. It is nice to have a couple of old records of her singing and so we can hear how good her voice was. I gather the reason she was called L'Incognita or the Masked Soprano was because her father felt it was unladylike to appear on stage so everyone could see her face—how times have changed!⁷³

In fact, Violet Mount died, not in the mid-1960s, but in September 1972. Living a year longer than her father, she was ninety-six. Sadly, her passing was not noted—neither in Britain, nor in Australia or New Zealand.

But the neglect of Violet Mount since that time seems hard to explain, when her surviving recordings reveal an Australian bel canto soprano only equalled by Nellie Melba and Joan Sutherland.

L’incognita and Violetta Viamonti Recordings

Based on a full discography by David Mason

All of Violet Mount’s recordings, made under the pseudonyms L’Incognita and Violetta Viamonte, were made for the Gramophone Company’s subsidiaries, Zonophone and HMV. In total there were 21 recordings issued under the L’Incognita name, all on Zonophone (plus 4 unissued takes) and just one as Violetta Viamonte on HMV.

The early recordings were from 1908-09 and the later ones from 1919-21. All but one of the L’Incognita records were later reissued, most of them twice over, indicating that the company thought they still would sell.

L’Incognita: issued recordings (all Zonophone)

La traviata, Ah fors’è lui (Verdi), Matrix 8146, recorded April 1908

Dinorah, Shadow Song (Meyerbeer), 8147, April 1908

Mignon, Io son Titania Thomas), 8164, April 1908

Lucia di Lammermoor, Mad Scene (Donizetti), 8196, 1908

Rigoletto, Caro nome (Verdi), 8199, 1908

Hamlet, Mad Scene (Thomas), 21620, 10 June 1919

Rosebuds (Arditi), 21644, June 1919

Il trovatore, Calm and peaceful was the night (Verdi), 21657, 1919

Norma, Gentle Godess (Bellini), 21658, 1919

The Tales of Hoffmann, Doll Song (Offenbach), 21723, 1919

Beauty’s Sleep, (Arditi), 21725, 1919

Mireille, Waltz Song (Gounod), 21920, 1920

The Daughter of the Regiment, None can gainsay (Donizetti), 21922, March 1920

Maritana, Scenes that are brightest (Wallace), 21923, March 1920

Der Freischütz, Softly sighs the voice of even (Weber), 21935, 1920

Tom Jones, Waltz Song (German), 21936, 1920

A Masked Ball, You’d fain be hearing (Saper vorreste) (Verdi), 22111, September 1920

Il trovatore, Silent the sombre wings of night (Verdi), 22126, October 1920

Il pensiero, Sweet Bird (Handel), 493, 23 September 1921 (with John Amadio, orchestra George W. Byng)

Villanelle (dell’Acqua), 494, 23 September 1921 (with John Amadio, orchestra George W. Byng)

Lo! Here the gentle Lark (Bishop), 495, 23 September 1921 (with John Amadio, orchestra George W. Byng)

Note: This ‘Lo! Here the gentle lark’ recording was included in the 4CD set, From Melba to Sutherland: Australian Singers on Record(Decca Eloquence 2016)

Bibliography

Warren Bebbington (ed), Oxford Dictionary of Australian Music, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1998

J.S. Bratton (ed), Music Hall: Performance and Style, Open University Press, Milton Keynes, 1986

Doug W. Fox, Lacrosse in Australia: Lambton L. Mount and the Foundation Years, self-published, Melbourne, 2021

Edouard Garceau, The Little Doustes, (translated by Vera A Chappell) Frederick Muller, London, 1935

Victor Glasstone, Victorian and Edwardian Theatres: An Architectural and Social Survey, Thames and Hudson, London, 1975

K.J. Kutsch & Leo Riemens, A Concise Dictionary of Singers: From the Beginning of Recorded Sound to the Present, Chilton Book Company, Philadelphia, 1962/1969

Barbara & Findlay Mackenzie, Singers of Australia: From Melba to Sutherland, Lansdowne, Melbourne, 1967

W. Macqueen-Pope, The Melodies Linger On: The Story of Music Hall, WH Allen, London, 1950

Raymond Mander & Joe Mitchenson, British Music Hall: A Story in Pictures, Studio Vista, London, 1965

Roger Neill, ‘Going on the Halls’, unpublished, part of uncompleted dissertation, Goldsmiths College, London, 2013

―― DIVAS: Mathilde Marchesi and her Pupils, NewSouth (University of New South Wales Press), Sydney, 2016

――, Melba’s Farewell, Decca Eloquence (CD), Sydney, 2017

――, ‘Re-discovering Syria Lamonte: Pioneering Recording Artist, Theatre Heritage Australia (online), Melbourne, 2023

――, The Simonsens of St Kilda: A Family of Singers, Per Diem Projects, King’s Sutton, 2023

――, ‘Florrie Forde at 150: Melba for the Masses’, Theatre Heritage Australia (online in three parts), Melbourne, 2025

Roger Neill & Tony Locantro, From Melba to Sutherland: Australian Singers on Record(4CD set), Decca Eloquence, Sydney, 2016

Adrienne Simpson, Opera’s Farthest Frontier: A History of Professional Opera in New Zealand, Reed, Auckland, 1996

Douglas Sladen (ed), The Poems of Adam Lindsay Gordon, Constable, London, 1912

J.B. Steane, The Grand Tradition: Seventy Years of Singing on Record 1900-1970, Scribner’s, New York, 1974

John Mansfield Thomson, The Oxford History of New Zealand Music, Oxford University Press, Auckland, 1991

Angela Woollacott, To Try Her Fortune in London: Australian Women, Colonialism and Modernity, Oxford University Press, New York, 2001

Endnotes

1. This recording has been transferred from an ancient shellac 78rpm record with all the clicks and buzzes left intact; nevertheless, Mount’s bel canto singing shines through

2. Kutsch and Riemens (1962/1969), p.203

3. The Lambton Mount Lacrosse Club in Melbourne exists to this day

4. Le Breton in 1876, Winifred in 1877, Lambton Le Breton in 1881, Rupert Henry Le Breton in 1886 and Frank Raymond De Tito in 1887

5. This Karlsruhe, a Norddeutscher-Lloyd vessel, was built in Glasgow in 1889

6. Argus, 1 May 1893, p.4

7. Argus, 10 April 1893, p.2

8. La fille du regiment was to become a core role in Joan Sutherland’s career many years later

9. Punch (Melbourne), 26 August 1897, p.18

10. Table Talk, 8 October 1897, p.9; Australasian (Melbourne), 16 October 1897

11. Punch (Melbourne), 9 December 1897, p.16

12. Punch (Melbourne), 7 July 1898, p.16

13. Argus, 8 October 1931; he later annoyed Melba, when he missed the boat to take him from Tasmania to New Zealand in 1903; and, sadly, in 1931 he was imprisoned for 21 days in London, having been accused of ‘an act of indecency’ at Victoria Station

14. New Zealand Free Lance, 11 May 1901

15. Evening Post (Wellington), 10 June 1899

16. Evening Post, 8 July 1899

17  Evening Post, 30 August 1899

18. Evening Post, 21 June 1900

19. The song is frequently, incorrectly, rendered by journalists and others as ‘Lo! Hear the gentle lark’

20. Evening Post, 29 November 1900

21. Flautist remained the spelling used in Australia and New Zealand at that time; more on John Amadio later

22. Evening Post, 18 December 1900

23. Don Ross, ‘The World of Music Hall in 1906’, Call Boy, London, June 1972

24. New Zealand Free Lance, 11 May 1901

25. New Zealand Free Lance, 6 July 1901

26. Auckland Star, 12 August 1901

27. New Zealand Free Lance, 12 October 1901

28. Observer (Auckland), 2 November 1901

29. Otago Witness, 28 May 1902

30. Australian Star, 11 July 1902

31. Watchman (Sydney) 26 July 1902

32. Daily Telegraph (Sydney), 18 August 1902; born in Melbourne in 1869, Alfred Hill was already the leading composer in Australia-New Zealand

33. Sydney Morning Herald, 15 November 1902

34. Northern Star (Lismore), 3 January 1903

35. Sydney Morning Herald, 19 February 1903

36. Daily Telegraph (Sydney), 3 April 1903

37. Sydney Morning Herald, 21 September 1903; words by Alma Tadema and Robert Louis Stevenson

38. Daily Telegraph (Sydney), 7 November 1903

39. Sydney Mail, 5 June 1907

40. Sydney Morning Herald, 11 April 1904

41. Sydney Morning Herald, 6 June 1904

42. New Zealand Times, 12 May 1904

43. Sydney Morning Herald, 9 August 1905

44. Sydney Morning Herald, 21 September 1905

45. Observer (Wellington), 2 December 1905

46. Argus (Melbourne), 3 May 1906

47. Argus (Melbourne), 20 September 1906

48. Sydney Morning Herald, 22 March 1907

49. Ballarat Star, 11 May 1907

50. Punch (Melbourne), 30 May 1907

51. Punch (Melbourne), 24 October 1907

52. Daily Telegraph (Sydney), 31 October 1907; who is the ‘aunt’? I can’t see that mother Mary had sisters, so maybe it was a sister of father Lambton, born in Canada

53. Sydney Morning Herald, 12 February 1908

54. Daily Telegraph (London) and others, 19 March 1908

55. Worcestershire Advertiser, 21 March 1908

56. Curiously, while Australian newspapers joyfully reported that L’Incognita was in fact Violet Mount, British papers never revealed the connection

57. Times (London), 1 April 1908

58. Sketch (London), 15 April 1908

59. Sydney Morning Herald, 9 September 1908

60. Zonophone was a subsidiary of The Gramophone Company in London

61. Gramophone, February 1943

62. David Mason points out that Zonophone recordings by ‘Madame Violetta’, some of them with Ernest Pike, were not by Violet Mount but by English mezzo-soprano Edna Thornton

63. Evening Despatch (Birmingham), 21 July 1908

64. Liverpool Echo, 4 August 1908

65. Manchester Evening News, 14 January 1909

66. Mercury (Clevedon), 20 March 1909

67. In 1939 she lived at 51 Boundary Road, Primrose Hill (Hampstead); they had been at 7 Hamilton Gardens until the mid-1930s; Violet's mother, Mary Mount, died in January 1922 in Marylebone, Herald (Melbourne), 1 February 1922

68. Hampshire Independent, 11 August 1922

69. Lancashire Evening Post, 11 July 1924

70. Telegraph (Brisbane), 26 September 1925

71. Australasian (Melbourne), 25 February 1926

72. Sydney Morning Herald, 15 June 1931

73. Email from Linda Mount to Roger Neill, 26 August 2009

Acknowledgements

With especially grateful thanks to Tony Locantro, who originally introduced me to Violet Mount and several other Australian singers and is a constant editor of my writings. To David Mason for providing a full discography of Violet Mount’s recordings. And to Elisabeth Kumm, publisher and magician with illustrations.

Also, thanks to Jamie and Linda Mount, relations of the subject. And to my wife, Sophie Wilson, who always provides valuable perspective.