LYALL, Charles [Matthew] (b Regent Street, London c 1833; d 42 Clifton Hill, St John’s Wood, 3 May 1911)
Charles Lyall. Photographer unknown. Victoria & Albert Museum, London.
On 4 April 1854 the Queen of the South, a 1,800 ton vessel of the General Screw Steamshipping Company, under the command of Captain W.H. Norman, set out for St Vincent and Melbourne carrying the newly appointed Governor of Victoria, Sir Charles Hotham and his suite, plus sufficient other non-viceregal emigrants to make up a quota of 90 souls, heading for the nirvana of the Victorian goldfields.
Amongst that quota was the 21 year-old Charles Lyall, a black-and-white and watercolour artist from Long Acre, London. Leaving behind him his mother Mary, a widowed needlewoman and bookfolder, and his sisters, 25 year-old Isabella and 20 year-old Ellen, Charles was crossing the world in search of his fortune. In a way, he found it.
Charles Lyall’s voyage is actually chronicled in some detail, for the lively young man kept a diary on the journey out, and somehow that diary has found its way into the archives of the State Library Victoria. So too has a ‘ship’s newspaper’, written in the manner of Punch, which he had edited for the pleasure of his fellow emigrants. Maybe even the Governor. But best of all, in the same library, can be found eighteen sketches and watercolours which Charles completed on his voyage and in his early days in Australia. There are sketches of St Vincent from the sea and the shore, of a local woman, of the Queen of the South in a gale of wind, as well as various sailory pictures and then come the goldfields ones. Starting with what he has entitled Conveyance to the diggings, and Dray and wagon on the road to the diggings, and going on to Possum shooting by moonlight, Bullock Dray Camped Out, Digger outside his tent, View of our encampment, View of our encampment and California Gully, Station on the Campapse River.
But there is, in this collection, an eighteenth picture which is neither of the high seas nor of Australia. It is older, just a sketch on blue graph paper, and it is entitled ‘Lake of Ing from Goldau’. Switzerland. So, it seems, Charles Lyall, in his early years, had spent time in Switzerland. Perhaps studying art? Or just being a tourist? But he was there. It’s the one piece of information that I have—give or take the sisters—about his life before he stepped aboard the Queen of the South. So far. But from here on in, things start to get better.
The pictures are our only evidence on Charles’s earliest days in Australia. It looks as if he may have operated out of the Echuca area and, to all evidence, he pursued his career as an artist for a while, at least. Obviously, he didn’t find any gold. But he did find something else. He found himself a career which he would follow for the next thirty years of his life.
State Library Victoria, Melbourne
My next sighting of Charles Lyall is in January of 1856. He’s on a ship again, the City of Hobart; and that is exactly where he is heading. Mr C. Lyall and Mr J. Gregg are travelling to Tasmania as support singers for the voyaging British soprano Catherine Hayes. For 22 year-old Charles has become an operatic tenor. The three of them appeared in Hobart together in concert and also in various potted and otherwise mutilated versions of popular operas. Charles sang Elvino to the La Sonnambula of Miss Hayes and the Rodolpho of Gregg.
Later in 1856 he appears with the Melbourne Philharmonic Society in The Messiah alongside local diva Madame Carandini, the long expatriate contralto Sara Flower, Miss Hancock, Mrs Testar, Mr Ewart and Gregg, and in September of the year he can be seen on the bills at the local Theatre Royal singing on a bill with Anna Bishop, Harriet Fiddes, Coulon, Laglaise and one of the Howsons. In early 1857 the papers report that he has been playing at the Theatre in Ballarat with soprano Carandini and bass Laglaise and that the trio are now on their way to Bendigo. But not for long, for almost immediately the little group is announced by Frank Howson for series of Sydney performances. They must have been nearly his last in Australia, for on 7 March 1857 Bell’s Life in Melbourne announces ‘Mr Lyall has taken his passage to Europe’.
Print depicting Sadler's Wells Theatre, published by Restoral Ltd. Victoria & Albert Museum, London.
Maybe he took a long time to get to England, for I lose him from here until the middle of the following year, but then on 5 May 1858, he turns up at a matinee at the home of the harpist, Mr H. Trust, sharing the vocals with Marian Prescott, and in no time he is up on the operatic stage in a leading part, all ready to move in to a career as a Victorian vocalist. The occasion was one of the periodic opera seasons mounted by conductor J.H. Tully, and it opened on the Whit Monday at Sadler’s Wells. Tenor Henry Haigh and his soprano wife Lizzie were the stars of the occasion, and they played La Traviata as the main item on the bill. Charles’s moment came in the afterpiece, The Daughter of the Regiment, in which he took the role of the hero, Tonio, to the Marie of the young soprano Mary (or at this stage Maria) Edwin and the Sulpice of Tom Bartleman. The main purpose of Tully’s season was, however, the first British production of Verdi’s Luisa Miller. The Italian opera house had announced it ‘in preparation’, so Tully flew into action and flung a half-prepared version on to the stage on 2 June. Charles, once again, featured in the afterpiece, an 1837 Ben Webster musical farce entitled Swiss Swains. After three nights of Luisa Miller Henry Haigh got a (tactical?) sore throat and the season ended.
During its course, however, young Mr Lyall had made what seems to have been another debut, in Marian Prescott’s concert ‘for the poor of Bethnal Green’ at the Surrey Gardens. The young tenor shared a bill with Hermine Rudersdorff, the Pyne sisters, Elizabeth Poole, Ham Braham, William Harrison and a little more of British vocal royalty. But I suppose as a man who had sung opposite Catherine Hayes, such company didn’t faze him.
In June the unquenchable Tully took his opera company on the road, and Charles went with them for the first of what would be decades of touring in opera companies more often large than small. This one was a medium one. And Charles was officially ‘second tenor’; to Henry Haigh. Which meant small parts in the main operas (Ruiz in Il Trovatore, Colonel Mannering in Guy Mannering, Florestein in The Bohemian Girl, bits in La Traviata, La Sonnambula, Martha etc), and the leads in the afterpieces (Lubin in The Quaker, Tom Tug in The Waterman, Love in a Village, No Song No Supper, Swiss Swains, Netley Abbey etc). They played a four-week season at Portsmouth, then visited Southampton, Manchester and Blackburn. They did not play Luisa Miller.
A few weeks after Tully had folded his scores, Charles was back on the road in another seemingly slightly more stable company, under the management of tenor Elliot Galer. The company, which had been on the road in the autumn, underwent some slight changes over the Christmas break, and Charles was one of the additions. The new ‘second tenor’ to manager Galer. Galer’s partner, Fanny Reeves, and a lady named Maud Bishop were the principal ladies, and Borrani the baritone. He made his bow with the company on 27 December at Liverpool, playing Lorenzo in Fra Diavolo and the press reported ‘Mr Charles Lyall was warmly applauded and his debut was successful’. The company played the full range of regular English operas during eight weeks in Liverpool, including the regular afterpieces, and Mr Lyall got to play the leading roles in The Quaker, The Waterman, Rosina and the like. He also got to create his first role when Galer produced an opera entitled Zaida, or the Pearl of Granada composed by the company’s musical director, Meyer Lutz. Charles was credited with ‘an excellent illustration’ winning particular notice for a masquerade scene in which he appeared as ‘Hercules, King of Clubs, wielding his unwieldy weapon in a masterly style’. Mr Lyall was, more and more, showing that on top of a fine tenor voice, he had distinct aptitudes for comedy. Unfortunately, Galer’s company came apart at the seams in March, but by April Mr Lyall’s name was back on the bills in London. And in a rather unexpected context.
Charles had, of course, sung in oratorio before. In Australia. But now, he appeared on the Passion Week programs at the Surrey Theatre, where The Messiah, Judas Maccabaeus and The Creation were given, along with some concerts ‘Gems of Haydn and Mozart’. He was, of course, second tenor, behind Augustus Braham, but in superb company—Mme Rudersdorff, the Weisses, Bessie Palmer, Theresa Jefferys, Charles Santley and musical director Alberto Randegger.
Poster advertising Raymond and Agnes and other works at St. James's Theatre, 1859
Victoria & Albert Museum, London
A number of these artists went on from the Surrey to the St James’s a few weeks later. Augustus Braham had gone into management to present a bunch of Spanish dancers and an operatic version of Raymond and Agnes, composed by Edward Loder. George Perren and Mme Rudersdorff played the title roles in the opera, and Charles was cast as the hero’s comical valet, Theodore. It was the kind of role that he would play for most of the rest of his long career. But he didn’t play this one for long. The season shuttered after a month, and they had already dropped the opera from the bills half way through anyway.
So Charles Lyall promptly found himself another opera company. And this one was definitely more stable, for following the St James’s closure, the young man was hired as a second tenor in the Pyne and Harrison company, the acknowledged acme among the English opera companies of the day. In fact, although he was billed as ‘second tenor’ it wasn’t a case of being number two in the hierarchy. The Pyne and Harrison didn’t work on such slim means. Harrison was of course tenor number one, the supporting number one was Henry Haigh. Then there was the versatile Alfie St Albyn, as chief number two. So Charles came in fourth. The company opened their Covent Garden season on 3 October with Dinorah. The part of Claude, the reaper, was one of St Albyn’s, as were the number two tenor parts in The Rose of Castile, The Crown Diamonds and Satanella, so Charles had to wait until 7 November to make his debut with the company, alongside the number two team of Haigh and Euphrosyne Parepa, as Ruiz in Il Trovatore. He appeared later as the notary in La Sonnambula, but also got to introduce roles in two new operas, as La Roche in Mellon’s Victorine and, more significantly, as the original Wilhelm in Wallace’s Lurline.
Photograph believed to be that of Alfred St. Albyn. Photo by Horatio Nelson King.
Victoria & Albert Museum, London
Charles Lyall. Photographer unknown.
Victoria & Albert Museum, London
At the end of the London season the company took its repertoire on a short tour, but when Miss Pyne and Mr Harrison headed back to town, baritone Henri Corri took up the reins of the remnants of the company and continued round the provinces. Alfie St Albyn was now first tenor, so Charles ended up playing all of what were usually his roles, until they got to Sheffield. There Alfie went down with singer’s throat, and Mr Lyall was rolled on to play Thaddeus in The Bohemian Girl.
Come October, however, it was back to Covent Garden and the status quo. Starting with more Lurline. The status quo was going to remain just that for the four seasons of life that the Pyne and Harrison company had remaining. Harrison as star, with Haigh oft times as support, St Albyn as first-second, and Charles, originally second-second but ultimately on equal footing with his colleague. The town season, followed by a brief tour of main centres only, and the gap between that tour and the new town season usually filled by the enterprising Henri Corri’s troupe.
In the 1860 season, he had a tiny part in Balfe’s new Bianca the Bravo’s Bride and apart from repeating his roles of the previous season, and playing something in the company’s revival of The Night Dancers, also took over the odd one of St Albyn’s. In 1861 he got to play Allan-a-dale in Macfarren’s Robin Hood and introduced Ephrain Fleetwood in The Puritan’s Daughter, best-friend to Alfie St Albyn’s one-off hero in the little Court and Cottage, and created the part of Mr O’Moore in the hit of the year, The Lily of Killarney. In 1862, he repeated his Lorenzo to the Fra Diavolo of Harrison, and introduced a bit part as M. de Kerkoam in Balfe’s The Armourer of Nantes.
The tour of that year almost saw Charles’s connection with the company abruptly broken. Always merry and agreeable, and easy-going to boot, he had played spits-and-coughs and walk-ons, Ruizes and ‘a notary’s for the company and deputised when needed. But on this occasion he revolted. The Puritan’s Daughter was the opera for the night, and someone was off. Harrison told Mr Lyall that he would have to go on, in addition to his own role, in a second part in the same opera, and Charles refused. He walked out, and went off to join Henri Corri’s company, as second tenor to Henry Haigh. Once again he got to play the comic afterpieces and when the troupe arrived in Leeds with Masaniello and found no suitable scenery, Charles put on his artist’s hat and zipped out a fine backcloth of the Bay of Naples. ‘A capital scene painter as well as a singer’ gasped the press.
In June, at the Edinburgh Sheriff’s court the case of Lyall versus Pyne and Harrison came up for hearing. Charles didn’t have a chance. The evidence on ‘theatrical custom’ was given by other major managers naturally eager to uphold managerial rights. He was hired to play as directed, so that was that. No one had said he couldn’t be made to play two parts in one piece, and anyway he’d done it before in emergency. No chance. Harrison was given gain of cause.
The Morning Herald, 18 November 1863, p.4
All must, however, have been somehow papered over, for when the 1863 season opened at Covent Garden, Charles Lyall was there to repeat his old parts and to appear in the negligible part of de Navailles in the new Blanche de Nevers. He doesn’t seem to have done anything else of note in this, the company’s final season, except play pantomime. For Pyne and Harrison, over the Christmas period, paired one of their operas on the bill with a full-scale richly-produced pantomime and occasionally some of the operatic company took a part. This year it was Harlequin St George and the Dragon and Charles Lyall was cast, in travesty, as the comical sorceress Kalyba ‘with a laughable song or two’. He did what he could with it.
Unlike Alfie St Albyn, Charles Lyall didn’t quite see the Pyne and Harrison venture through to its end. For in March a small crisis occurred over at the opposition English opera season at Her Majesty’s Theatre. On 23 January Her Majesty’s had produced the first English version of Faust. Sims Reeves and Helen Lemmens-Sherrington as Faust and Marguerite, Santley as Valentine, Elisa Taccani as an Italian Martha, Florence Lancia a delicious Siebel and Eugene Dussek as Wagner. And as Mephistopheles, in a curious bit of ‘English’ casting, Signor Marchesi. It was a bad idea. He played it like a pantomime demon and sang it not much better. One month down the line, Signor Marchesi departed, and Santley was promoted to sing the role which should have been his from the start. And to replace Santley as Valentine ... I wonder who thought of Charles Lyall. But they did, Harrison agreed to let him do it, and it proved to have been a splendid idea. The press thought so too. Santley had so identified himself with the role of Valentine that it was a bit of a shock to the pundits to see someone else—someone so physically and vocally different—in the role. ‘Mr Lyall’s Valentine was a very creditable personification and he was in good voice, so much so that the death scene was given with more than wonted vigour.’ wrote The Times. Since the pantomime was still being intermittently played at Covent Garden, it appears that Charles was doubling: a low comedy sorceress at the one house, and a dramatic baritone soldier at the other!
Soon, the London seasons were finished and Henri Corri’s snatched up Faust for its first provincial showing at Brighton. Henry Haigh and Annie Thirlwall (Mrs E. Dussek Corri) played the leads. Corri took Mephistopheles, and brother Dussek and Mr Lyall (‘created a favourable impression’ ‘all that could be desired ... his death scene was capitally rendered’) from Her Majesty’s repeated their roles. Although Faust was the feature of the four-week Brighton season, the usual repertoire was gone through and Charles Lyall found himself virtually upped to a curious mix of no.2 first tenor (behind Haigh), no.2 first baritone (behind Corri) and the more usual no1 useful tenor-comic. When The Bohemian Girl went on, he was the effete Florestein (‘looked the character to the life and was loudly applauded’), when Fra Diavolo was done he repeated his Lorenzo, and he took supporting parts in such as The Rose of Castille (Sallust), Satanella (Karl) and Il Trovatore (Ruiz), but in The Waterman he was Tom Tug, in The Marriage of Figaro he was Figaro and when Dinorah was staged, he took the leading tenor role of Corentin.
The gap left at Covent Garden was filled the following year by a limited company called The Opera Company (Limited), and Charles Lyall went back. Haigh and American Charles Adams were the lead tenors, and he was back again to playing Lorenzo in Masaniello, the notary in Sonnambula, Flavio in Norma and of course the wretched Ruiz. He created parts in two new little operas Constance (Caritz) and The River Sprite (Enguerrand), and also took the role of Lucas in a version of Gounod’s The Mock Doctor. The following season he got to play Don Alvar in L’Africaine, Don Julian is Le Domino Noir and a part in Henry Leslie’s unfortunate Ida, but the Opera Company Limited was a doomed things, and come 1866 Charles Lyall’s comfy niche of so many seasons was gone.
However, finding work was no problem. Mr Lyall was a popular man. He went on the road playing Valentine and other roles with the Corris, he visited Astley’s Theatre to play Ottokar in E.T. Smith’s vast spectacular of a Der Freischütz (finally here restored to its original form, after years of being played in a sadly butchered state). Smith followed up with The Bohemian Girl and Guy Mannering and Lyall took his usual roles.
Sims Reeves drawn by Charles Lyall, c.1880
Victoria & Albert Museum, London
Charles Lyall in costume. Photo by Somers.
Victoria & Albert Museum, London
The casting of Charles Lyall as Valentine might have seemed unusual, but it had worked. His next engagement was even more unusual. It was at no less a lofty venue than the Exeter Hall, for no less lofty a body than the Sacred Harmonic Society. The Society had billed for their 11 May 1866 concert the Athalie music and Rossini’s Stabat Mater. Sims Reeves, Santley, Charlotte Sainton-Dolby and Helen Lemmens-Sherrington were hired as a top-shelf team of soloists. Then, on the day, Reeves did one of his ‘no-can-sing’ turns. Reeves’s propensity for such scratchings was infamously well known. Why did the society have no understudy waiting in the wings? They can’t have, for they called on Charles Lyall. Mr Lyall who had barely sung an oratorio in years. But, once again, it worked. The Times reported ‘Mr Charles Lyall of the defunct English Opera Company (Limited) took the place of Mr Reeves in the tenor music of the Stabat Mater and acquitted himself not merely in the quartets but in the trying air ‘Cuius animum’ to the general satisfaction. It is well to be musician enough to take advantage of such rare occasions for distinction’. Quite so. And the society thought so too. In November they invited Charles back for a performance of the Lobgesang and Beethoven’s service in C. This time he shared the tenor music with Reeves.
1866 was a busy year. Ten days after his exploit at Exeter Hall Charles opened at season at the Surrey Theatre where soprano Jenny Bauer was presenting herself in a series of operas. He played Karl to her Satanella and repeated his Corentin to her Dinorah. In October of the year, he appeared at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, teamed with Miss Bauer and Rebecca Isaacs as the singing witches in Macbeth and he made a swift operatic tour Miss Susannah Cole’s little opera troupe. Come Christmas, he did another mercy job for Reeves when the tenor dropped out of The Messiah at Leicester, and early in the new year he appeared in an unaccustomed role as a concert singer in a number of concerts at St James’s Hall. At one of Henry Leslie’s concerts he gave his long-time party piece, Hodgson’s ‘Tell me, Mary, how to woo thee’ and at another took part in Mendelssohn’s Antigone music with W.E. Evans, Chaplin Henry and Smythson, at the Civil Service Musical Society evening (at which the other two vocalists were Louisa Pyne and Santley) he delivered Kücken’s ‘We met by chance’, and at Charlotte Sainton-Dolby’s ballad concerts several pieces including Rodwell’s ‘The Flower of Ellerslie’.
But by April 1867 Charles Lyall had found his way back to his natural habitat. When the prospectus for the new Italian Opera season at Her Majesty’s Theatre went up, his name was there along with Signor Agretti as ‘second tenor’. Now, very, very few British singers got to be company members at the Italian opera. Some starry folk put in an occasional performance as guests, but ... well, this season, amongst the vast forces of Mapleson’s company there were just five listed. The tenor Tom Hohler, Charles Santley, the Irish bass Foli, and little Tillie Bauermeister who made an entire career singing the sort of bits-to-pretty-small parts Charles had been doing with Pyne and Harrison, here at the Italian opera. And Charles Lyall. Of course, there would be no Corentins or Figaros here. Charles was hired as a second tenor, a comprimario, on the same bases as Miss Bauermeister, but he actually did a little better than she when the parts were handed out.
Charles Lyall made his debut as a member of Mapleson’s Italian Opera on the opening night of the season, 28 April 1867, and the opera was the same Le Nozze di Figaro which he’d just been playing in the provinces in English. Now of course the part of Figaro was taken by the splendid Edouard Gassier, with Therese Titiens as the Countess, Clarice Sinico as Susanna, Santley as the Count and Amelie Demeric-Lablache as Cherubino in a superb cast. Signor Foli was Bartolo, and Charles Lyall took the part of Basilio. He was judged ‘undoubtedly successful on this his first appearance at Her Majesty’s’.
‘Mr Lyall’s makeup was perfect and the little music he had to sing was so well sung that it would be uncharitable to congratulate him on having omitted the air ‘In quagli anni’ Basilio’s sole chance of display …’. Elsewhere it was deemed a shame that the aria had been cut. However, it was stay cut through the many years that Charles would play the role of Basilio.
The roles of de Cosse in Les Huguenots and the Surgeon in Britain’s first La Forza del destino were decided comprimario roles, but Charles got another nice part when Nicolai’s Falstaff (Merry Wives of Windsor) was produced with Rokitansky in its title role. Titiens played Mrs Ford, Mme Demeric Lablache was Mrs Page, Santley was Ford, and Gassier played Page with Hohler and Mlle Sinico as the juveniles. Charles was Slender and the Times, looking back to the original production of a few years previous, commented ‘The roles of Slender and Dr Caius are now far more ably represented by Mr C. Lyall and Signor Bossi than they were formerly by Signors Manfredi and Mazetti. The former is a really quaint and original impersonation, while both, in a musical sense, are beyond reproach. Slender, too, would remain long (if not so frequently) part of Charles’s artillery.
The almost non-existent part of Giuseppe in La Traviata did not supply Lyall with any opportunities, but the last weeks of the season would bring one more fine role, one which would be even more appreciated and lasting as a part of his repertoire. On 28 July Mapleson mounted Il flauto magico. Christine Nilsson and Rokitansky were the two protagonists, Titiens and Gardoni the lovers, Santley and Sinico the soubrets at the head of one of the outstanding arrays of talent of the season. Even the part of third lady was taken by a star of the magnitude of Trebelli-Bettini, Foli was second priest and Demeric Lablache was second boy!
Charles Lyall was cast as the comic jailer, Monastatos. and achieved a stunning success in a stunning revival for his ‘genuine humour’. When the season ended and the pundits filled their columns with summaries of the months just passed, his name appeared more than would have been expected for a ‘second tenor’ (Agretti was nowhere) and he was voted ‘a real acquisition to the company’.
The Illustrated London News, 14 December 1867, p.644
Lyall varied his operatic activities a little during the season with a couple of appearances as Exeter Hall. When Tom Hohler’s lady friend the Duchess of Newcastle, an amateur vocalist, had a Benefit concert, he stepped in for an ailing amateur, and shortly after he joined the same lady for a performance of Schachner’s oratorio Israel’s Return from Babylon. Bessie Palmer, W.H. Cummings and Foli also got themselves into this one, and the principal soprano music was the portion of the Duchess. When the opera season was over, too, Lyall took a turn to the seasonable delights of Margate and in October went down to sing for the holidaymakers, with Rebecca Isaacs, at the celebrated Hall by the Sea.
But at the end of October Mapleson mounted his out-of-season mini-season of opera at Her Majesty’s, and Lyall was back on board. He performed his usual bits in Les Huguenots (de Cosse), Traviata (Giuseppe) and Martha (‘un servitore’), and gave his regular Basilio in Nozze, but he was not on stage on 6 December for Don Giovanni on what would be the last night of Her Majesty’s Theatre. That night the theatre burned down.
As usual, Charles Lyall wasn’t slow to find work. He appeared at the Princess’s Theatre as Henry Bertram in Guy Mannering vice Wilford Morgan, he visited Salisbury to sing The Messiah with Annie Edmonds, Miss Poole and W.T. Briggs and Leicester for another oratorio, Elijah, with Santley in the name part, and in February 1868 he was cast in a German Reed production of Auber’s L’Ambassadrice at St George’s Hall. Lujza Liebhart took the title role, Morgan was the jeune premier, and Lyall was cast as the Duke de Valberg. However, part way through the show’s run he handed over his role to William Terrott, for the Italian opera season was upon London, and it was time to become an Italian again.
Martha, Les Huguenots, La Traviata, Liverotto in Lucrezia Borgia—the comprimario roles were much the same—and the maintenance of Nozze di Figaro and Il flauto magico in the repertoire meant he kept his two best roles, but he added two new ones—Isaac the pedlar in La gazza ladra (‘the Jew pedlar of Mr C. Lyall is capital—an instance in short of what a man resolved to do all that lies within him can manage to do with the most subordinate of characters’) and the more substantial part of Jacquino in Fidelio, previously the property of Tom Hohler who had renounced the opera for the beaux yeux of his Duchess. The Times reported: ‘the small but in a musical sense by no means insignificant part of Jacquino was made conspicuous by the correct and artistic singing of Mr Charles Lyall, one of the most serviceable members of the establishment’. He ‘not only knows the music thoroughly but gives significance to the part by acting alike unobtrusive and sensible’.
John Hollingshead. Photo by London Stereoscopic and Photographic Company.
Victoria & Albert Museum, London
Johnnie Toole in 1870. Photographer unknown.
Victoria & Albert Museum, London
The annual visit to Margate, the out-of-season mini-season with the same repertoire, followed as the previous year, but come December Charles Lyall put in another surprising one. A striving theatrical manager, John Hollingshead, was opening a new theatre in the Strand. It was called the Gaiety, and he had gathered together a very eclectic company—drawn from theatre, opera house and music hall—with which to present his opening bill of operetta, comedy and burlesque. The representative of the opera house was Charles Lyall billed as ‘from the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden’. Charles was not cast in the comedy (although Hollingshead later wrote of him ‘[he] came from Covent Garden and had the reputation of being even better a light actor than a singer..’) nor (yet) the burlesque, he paired with Constance Loseby—the celebrated Mlle Constance of the music halls—in a charming little two-handed operetta The Two Harlequins which served as the evening’s curtain raiser.
And so, Charles Lyall became the first man ever to set foot on the Gaiety stage. The first man to sing a note in the auditorium which was to become famous around the world as a home of musical theatre. The Two Harlequins set things off on very much the right foot and the critic smiled: ‘The music is so sprightly and so capitally sung by Mr C. Lyall and Miss C. Loseby and the picture presented is so bright and pretty that the descent of the curtain is followed by an amount of applause seldom earned by the performance of so slight a work’.
Lyall stayed little more than a month at the Gaiety, for his obligations to Mapleson were upon him, but he had made his mark at the little house on the Strand, and he would return there on a good many occasions.
1869 at the opera brought Lyall few novelties. He apparently played the part of Zamiel in Der Freischütz in Edinburgh, but in town minor parts in Rigoletto (Marullo), Roberto il diavolo (un cavalier) and Le Prophete (Sergeant) were his lot. However, in his better roles, an in particular ‘his very quaint and critical impersonation of Monastatos’. ‘As on previous occasions ‘O cara armonia’ when Monastatos and his fellows are compelled to dance in spite of themselves to the irresistible strains of Papageno’s music, was one of the most diverting incidents of the performance’. He ‘has of recent years made the character his own’ ‘Mr C. Lyall’s scene when Monastatos and his fellow slave are compelled against their wish to dance to the strains of Papegeno’s magic instrument accompanied by the tuneful chorus ‘O cara armonia oh dolce piacer’ was as humorous, and his execution of the patter air ‘Regna amor in ogni loco’ when Monastatos describes in quaint utterances his hopeless passion for the sleeping Pamina as fluent, glib and animated as in former seasons’, ‘he acted the conventional Negro so to the life that he might have been at the head of a troupe of Christy Minstrels’.
After a two-months’ visit to the Gaiety, where he once again opened the program with Offenbach’s The Rose of the Auvergne alongside Annie Tremaine and Edward Perrini, it was time to return to the opera, but in the operatic world a great deal of jiggery pokery had been going on, and when Lyall began what would be his last season with the Italian opera in London it was at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, under the management not of Mapleson but of music publisher George Wood. The season brought little that was new, but he was able to repeat his Monastatos (‘with a comic humour very rare in those to whom minor parts in opera are allotted’) and his Basilio, played the Sheriff in Martha and took a small part in L’oca del Cairo before the season folded.
After a few performances with the opera company at the Crystal Palace (Alphonso in Masaniello), Charles returned to the Gaiety and, this time with no opera engagement to take him away, he stayed for an extended period. Hollingshead was, at the time, staging a run of French operas-comiques and he had cast the concert vocalist W.H. Cummings in the tenor role of Franz Millar in a version of Adam’s La Poupee de Nuremberg. Cummings won grand reviews for his singing, poor ones for his acting, and after four performances quit the role and went off to sing at the Birmingham Festival. His replacement, alongside Florence Lancia as the doll-girl, was Charles Lyall.
Dolly was followed (8 October 1870) by Zampa with Santley in the title-role alongside Miss Lancia and Cummings, giving the stage one last go. Lyall had a smaller part as Dandolo, the timid bellringer. The Times reported ‘Owing to this gentleman’s quaint and yet natural acting the trio for Camilla Rita and Dandolo (Act 1) when the last mentioned enters terror stricken at the menaces of Zampa, threatening him with instant death should he ring the bell for the marriage of Camilla and Alphonso became one of the striking effects of the performance’ The Era qualified him as having ‘displayed a remarkable talent’ ‘The effect produced in a small part was another proof added to the many which Mr Lyall has given of unusual ability’.
In December the Gaiety mounted Fra Diavolo with Santley and Blanche Cole featured. Lyall left his usual role of Lorenzo to the young Arthur Byron and moved up to team with Annie Tremaine in the principal comic parts of Lord and Lady Allcash. Once again he pulled raves. ‘We have seen Fra Diavolo many times, but never a better Allcash’ ‘He appears to be a comedian of great talent and sang his music like musician’ ‘admirably funny’ .
The Christmas piece of the year was a noteworthy piece entitled Aladdin II, an English opera-bouffe with an original score by the Parisian composer Hervé. The chief comic role of Ozokerit was played by the Gaiety’s comic star Johnny Toole ‘of very little voice’ with Nellie Farren and Connie Loseby as principal boy and girl. Charles had a fine comic role as the Emperor’s Remembrancer, whose duty is to remind the king of what he ought not to forget, but whose own memory is somewhat faulty. Hollingshead recalled the performance many years in his memoirs ‘the droll figure of Mr Lyall as the Remembrancer in his willow pattern plate costume and his marvellous eyes …’. Aladdin II ran for 100 nights at the Gaiety.
Later in the year Hollingshead mounted Lortzing’s Peter the Shipwright in which Lyall played Peter Ivanhoff, the Russian army deserter who is mistaken for the Czar of all the Russias. He was adjudged ‘as efficient as ever ... singing with care and refinement and acting with great spirit’ in an evening which was very largely centred on Charles Santley in the role of the real Czar. He repeated his Lubin in The Quaker, Lord Allcash, and The Two Harlequins, and took on another new role as Herman in Balfe’s Letty the Basketmaker (The Devil’s in It) alongside Julia Mathews and Connie Loseby. The Era was delighted: ‘it is impossible to overpraise Mr Lyall for the clever bit of character he made out of the basketmaker’s part. The self-satisfied leer of the toper, and his utter contempt for every other form of amusement save draining the bottle, was so much better than the general representations of such characters that is deserves special notice.’ The Musical World concurred ‘The basket maker is played by Mr Charles Lyall who, as is his wont, dresses, acts and sings it with a taste, intelligence and musical skill which we do not find combined in any other performer on the English stage. Nor are we certain that his prototype could be found even among past, any more than present, so-called English singing actors.’
Julia Mathews. Photo by W. & D. Downey.
Victoria & Albert Museum, London
Charles Lyall in costume. Photo by Robinson & Thompson, Liverpool & Birkenhead.
The autumn season opened with Julia Mathews playing her original English role as The Grand Duchess and Charles Lyall was cast as her leading man, in the role of the cloddish but tenorious soldier, Fritz. It was in almost every way an inspired piece of casting (‘almost’ for Charles Lyall was not exactly possessed of the glamorous physique which is Fritz’s rasion d’être) and The Era confirmed to a London which had seen William Harrison, Wilford Morgan, the Gaiety’s own Dick Beverley and, above all, the rôles French original, Dupuis—‘she was admirably supported by Mr Charles Lyall as Fritz whose version we prefer in many respects to every other we have seen. Mr Lyall does not make Fritz a buffoon, but simply a stolid, blunt, thick-headed, good-hearted fellow, who doesn’t care whether he is private or commander-in-chief as long as he can be left in peace and prove his affection to Wanda. Nothing could have been better acted that the scene with the Grand Duchess. The obtuseness and good nature of Fritz were represented to the life. Of course, Mr Lyall was perfectly at his ease singing the familiar music. There is hardly a more competent musician on the stage than Mr Lyall and if his voice had a little more volume he would be a really remarkable singer.’ The provinces liked him as much as town. ‘He is far away the best representative of the loutish soldier who has sustained the part in England and we regret that he is about leaving us for America’ agreed. It was a good one to go out on. For at the end of August, his twelve months at the Gaiety completed, Charles Lyall moved on, and once again he came up with the unexpected. The ‘America’ was for real. Max Maretzek was mounting his latest Italian opera season at the New York Academy of Music with a company headed by Pauline Lucca and Clara Louise Kellogg. Miss Kellogg was one of only three Anglophone principal artists billed for this season. The only man among them was Charles Lyall. In an uneventful two and a half months in New York he repeated his ‘excellent Basilio’ and in Mignon was judged ‘an efficient representative of Laertes, whose role is as thankless as can be imagined …’, before the company moved on to Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, Detroit and dates beyond. He caught the ship home, after a thoroughly successful engagement, on 5 June 1873.
On his return to Britain, Lyall joined the company at the Opera Comique where E.P. Hingston was running opera-bouffe productions with some success. In November 1873, however, he took a turn away from the French product and mounted a British burlesque of the favourite old ballad opera The Waterman, in which Lyall had featured so many a time. This being a burlesque, of course, the hearty young Tom Tug was played by the theatre’s leading lady, Pattie Laverne, and Lyall was cast as Inspector Blunderson of the River Police. He all but stole the show with his ‘excessively droll specimen of grotesque acting’ and The Era assured that he ‘at once takes a position as one of the leading grotesque actors of the day’. The musical hit of the show was his, too. A ditty about ‘Mary and her canary’ ‘sung with imperturbable gravity’ became such a success that it was published with his portrait on the cover, and featured in the advertisements for the show. “Where’s the Police?” at the Opera Comique! Inspector Blunderson with all his forces in the great song of Mary and her canary, sung by Mr Charles Lyall every evening in Little Tom Tug’. The canary sang, alas, for little more than a month, after which Hingston gave up his theatre and retired from the costly business of management.
At Easter 1874, Charles returned for another twelvemonth at the Gaiety, and opened there 8 April in a piece entitled The Great Metropolis; or the Wonderful Adventures of Daddy Daddles and his son in their Journey from Stoke-in-the-Mud to Venice, via London with Diddler’s Tourist Tickets. In this version of Offenbach’s MM Dunanan pere et fils Lyall and Nellie Farren played a pair of shysters who, for reasons immaterial, persuade a couple of country bumpkins (George Honey, J.G. Taylor) that they have taken them to Venice. A splendid piece of fun, it remained on the Gaiety’s bills for a month.
Kate Monroe as Galswinthe in Chilpéric. Photo by Fradelle & Marshall.
Victoria & Albert Museum, London
Samuel Phelps. Photo by J.R. James.
Victoria & Albert Museum, London
He went on tour with the Gaiety company in the summer playing Tremolini in La Princesse de Trebizonde and returned to the Strand in August to play further opera-bouffe: more La Princesse de Trebizonde, and then the high comedy role of Sir Jonathan Pluperson the governor of The Island of Bachelors (an adaptation of Lecocq’s risqué Les Cent Vierges). As always, his reviews were splendid: ‘... always exceedingly happy in eccentric makeup, made a first rate sketch of the Governor and the little he had to sing was rendered with great care’. He played Pomponnet when the Gaiety revived La Fille de Madame Angot, and Quince to Phelps’s Bottom when A Midsummer Night’s Dream was given, and come Christmas migrated to the Holborn Amphitheatre where Gaiety manager Hollingshead was mounting a seasonal production of the operatic Cinderella. Connie Loseby took the title role, Kate Monroe was the Prince, and Charles Lyall headed the comedy as the Buttons of the affair, before again going with the Gaiety company to the country (Sir Hugh Evans in Merry Wives of Windsor).
When he returned to London, however, it was not to the Gaiety but to Alhambra. Manager J.A. Cave had decided to mount a spectacular revival of that most bouffe of operas-bouffe, Chilpéric (10 May 1875) and for the title-role, the role originally played by the author/composer Hervé (but more recently round the country by Emily Soldene) he hired Charles Lyall. It sounded like a splendid bit of casting, and for Lyall the role of a lifetime, but although he had been playing in opera-bouffe and burlesque with considerable success, Lyall’s comic talent was not of the ‘bouffe’ kind but of the legitimate. His Chilpéric was ‘agreeable and artistic’ and ‘not quite the rollicking monarch we remember of yore’. And in the vastness of the Alhambra a big rollicky performance rather than an artistic one was the order of the day.
Charles played Chilpéric for a couple of months before handing his role over to Henry Walsham. and having done so, he once more did the unexpected. From playing good, large, even lead, even star roles in opera-bouffe, from playing Shakespeare with Phelps at the Gaiety, he took a turn back a decade in time and became a member of a new English Opera Company. As second tenor.
Notes at the Carl Rosa English Opera, Princess’s Theatre
Penny Illustrated Paper, 18 September 1875
“Marriage of Figaro”—as given by the Carl Rosa Opera Company
Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News, 13 April 1878
The Carl Rosa opera company gave its first London performance on 11 September 1875 at the Princess’s Theatre. The opera was The Marriage of Figaro with Santley as Figaro and Ostava Torriani as a German-accented Countess. Charles, of course, was Basilio ‘he was even more happy than usual in his comic make-up … his appearance when he first appeared was so whimsical that a shout of applause greeted him; a compliment well earned by very clever singing and acting throughout the opera’. He played his Florestein in a bloated-up version of The Bohemian Girl ‘with the additions written by Balfe for Paris’, Lorenzo in Fra Diavolo and a sliced-down version of the role of Armand in Cagnoni’s novel but unloved The Porter’s Knot. However, it wasn’t quite like ten years ago. Mr Petre played Ruiz and Mr Potter was the notary in La Sonnambula.
Later in the season Rosa produced The Siege of Rochelle (‘In the hands of Mr Lyall Schwarz the inebriate corporal though a subordinate personage becomes, as usual with that clever comedian, an original and amusing sketch’) and Cherubini’s The Water Carrier in which Charles was cast to play ... Charles Santley’s son. The reviews didn’t vary: ‘in the hands of that versatile comedian Mr Charles Lyall [Antonio] becomes one of the most agreeably conspicuous personages of the drama. A marked peculiarity of this gentleman’s vocal declamation by the way is that every word and syllable he enunciates is distinctly intelligible, which presupposes a method of study not quite so universally cultivated as might be wished’.
The season ended on 30 September, but the connection of Charles Lyall with the Carl Rosa company did not. For the decade remaining of his career on the stage he would perform through each season and each tour of the Rosa or, for a period, with the one half of it which split away. And throughout, in the same roles. The same kind of roles. To be sure, there were ‘out’ periods where he took work with other managements, but they were few. For ten years he would be Basilio, Florestein and Jacquino, Dandolo the bellringer and Slender in The Merry Wives of Windsor, and inevitably to the same untiring notices:
‘in [Jacquino] as in other characters proves himself one of the best lyric comedians on our stage. Mr Lyall’s long Italian training has been of infinite use and serves him to good purpose in whatever he essays. Always attentive to the business of the scene, with a quaint individuality of his own, Mr Lyall boasts moreover the qualities of a trained vocalist and no music comes amiss to him’
‘Mr Charles Lyall’s Dandolo affords another instance of his ability to make a great deal out of little or nothing. So unpretending a part has seldom been rendered more diverting than by this ready and versatile comedian’
‘as the inane dandy nobleman [Florestein] … one of those rare bits of humorous character acting to which this gentleman has for some time accustomed us’
‘Mr Lyall has no equal as an operatic comedian’
In 1907 when Nicolai’s Merry Wives was reproduced at the opera the Rosa performance was recalled by a critic, and above everything else was recalled ‘the memorable performance of Slender by the caricaturist Charles Lyall’. He had also designed the costumes.
Selina Dolaro, who played the title role in Carmen, 1880
Flickr
Sheet music cover for Dick Quadrille composed by Edward Jakobowski, published by C. Jefferys, London, [1884]
Victoria & Albert Museum, London
During the ten years, the repertoire of the Carl Rosa company did, of course, alter and expand, so there were some new roles for Lyall to play as well as the Floresteins and Dandolos. In 1876 Rosa produced The Lily of Killarney. Charles had been in the original cast, in a small role, this time he was given Harrison’s original role of Myles-na-Coppaleen and it would become his one regular leading role with the company. Another leading role was that of the miller Gines Perez in Adam’s highly comical Giralda (‘another of those humorous impersonations for which he is obtaining higher and higher credit’) but Giralda did not find an enduring place on the Rosa rosters. Neither did Isouard’s unfortunate Joconde, Ignaz Brull’s The Golden Cross, Piccolino (Comète), Thomas’s The Cadi (Ali Bajou) or The Taming of the Shrew (‘a tailor’) in which he had a less prominent part to play. When Carmen was given its first English production, Lyall was given the role of Remendado (‘he made quite a little cabinet picture of the timorous Remendado’), a role he would retain to the end, and the part of Laertes in Mignon, played with ‘his long acknowledged comedy power’.
In 1882 the Carl Rosa company split temporarily into two, and Lyall went with Rose Hersee-Fred Packard-James Sauvage-Barton McGuckin ‘Royal English Opera Company’. Nothing was any different for the something more than two years before the split unsplit itself, except that he found J.W. Turner and Packard taking the tenor roles in The Lily of Killarney. His only new part of interest was that of Ethelrus in Nessler’s The Piper of Hamelin. ‘The town clerk found in Mr Charles Lyall a representtive of genuine humour. By dint of a natural gift and artistic aptitutde he gave reality to shadowy conception and his drinking duet with the monk (Mr E. Muller) excited a perfect storm of applause.’
When the company closed its Covent Garden season in early 1884, Charles went for the nonce back to comic opera, and after a venture into a short-lived piece entitled The Uhlans alongside Rose Hersee and J.W. Turner, took a comedy role in a piece entitled Dick, with music by Edward Jakobowski. This version of the Whittington story had a good run, in several chunks. Lyall played Jack Joskins factotum to the Emperor of Morocco for the original run, and was succeeded by the to-be-famous slightly singing low comedian Arthur Williams.
In April 1885 Charles Lyall returned to the Carl Rosa company at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. Remendado, Laertes … and a new role, even, the part of the ‘antique swell and dilapidated ladykiller’ Morfontaine in Manon. Yet again he was praised for his ‘clever character sketch of a spiteful and superannuated beau’. And then, on 31 May 1886 the Carl Rosa came one more time to Old Drury. Lyall was there, playing Basilio, Florestein, Laertes, Remendado and Morfontaine. But it was the last time. At the age of fifty-three, Charles took his retirement from the stage.
Statesmen, No. 119—Edward Pleydell-Bouverie by Charles Lyall. Published in Vanity Fair, 27 July 1872.
National Portrait Gallery, London
Statesmen, No. 121—Edward Horsman by Charles Lyall. Published in Vanity Fair, 10 August 1872.
National Portrait Gallery, London
In his retirement, with the wife—née Frances Augusta Wallace—whom he had wed when already in his later forties—he settled in Clifton Hill, St John’s Wood. Not that far from the maiden sisters with whom he had shared a home for so many years: Isabella and Ellen—the former now an accountant, the latter since forever a bookbinder—had a home in Hampstead.
Over the years, while he carried on his career as a performer, Charles had kept up his drawing and painting, very largely in the form of caricatures for the theatrical and musical newspapers. In 1880 when a Dramatic Fine Art Gallery was set up at 168 New Bond Street his ‘very clever and humorous operatic caricatures’ were the star item in an exhibition including works by John Parry, Kendal, Mrs Keeley and Charles Mathews. In later years he illustrated a number of books including William Henderson’s Who wrote Shakespeare? (1887) and G.H. Snazelle’s Snazelleparilla (1898) and on occasion ventured into stage decoration, as in the Snazelle/Frances Joyce Maas/Lionel Brough entertainment Mixed Pickles (1898).
Charles Lyall died at his home in St John’s Wood at the age of 78.
Theatrical scene, c.1854. State Library Victoria, Melbourne.
