TURNER, James William (b. Sutton in Ashfield, Notts 5 June 1842; d. The Croft, Yardley, 17 January 1913)
TURNER, Charles (b. Sutton in Ashfield, Notts 15 March 1845; d. Auckland, New Zealand, 11 July 1894)
The name of leading tenor, J.W. Turner, became a household word around the opera houses of provincial Britain in the last decades of the Victorian era. It is even, still, the name of an Avenue in his native town. And the name of his younger brother, Charles, also a leading tenor, became almost as familiar in the theatres of Australia and New Zealand.
J.W. Turner
Charles Turner
The brothers were born in Sutton, at High Pavement says one story, although in the 1841 census father John, mother Elizabeth, and their elder children Frances and Edwin can be seen living in Back Lane. John Turner was a hosier by trade, and a bass singer, with the local glee club, in his spare time.
Local lore, and there was plenty of that once James became a singing star, says that he was a lively musical lad (Brown and Stratton claim lyrically that he sang treble in local concerts) … but the 1861 census shows that both our future tenors were at that stage, working for their living in the hosiery business as ‘frame work knitters’.
Soon after that date, however, James apparently left home. He related, and others related of him, that he began singing in 1861, and that his first professional job (1863 or 4?) was on a concert party tour to India and the far east. ‘His first appearance was at Foo Choo, China’. Well, why not? Thence, it is alleged, he continued on to Australia, sang in Maritana (one source insists it was Sonnambula) in Melbourne, voyaged on to San Francisco, and eventually arrived home. The only bit of all that which I can verify, is the coming home. In 1869 he was back in England.
I have tried. I have looked up the cast of every Melbourne Maritana of the 1860s—the Lyster ones, the Howsons’ ones, Professor Schott’s opera di camera one, the burlesque ones by Geraldine Warden and Willie Gill, Mr Albert Richardson’s pupils… And La Sonnambula? The only Elvinos I can find are Mr Armes Beaumont and … Miss Blanche Clifton in blackface.
I have sought the Mr (James) Turners, too. A prominent storekeeper, a land agent and ... ah! in August 1868 the Royal Colosseum Music Hall has a Mr Turner in its company! Along with an Irish comedian and jig dancer and Miss Neville, the ‘greatest favourite out’. But they aren’t doing Maritana.
Was he a chorister? With Lyster? Because the Lyster company (including Miss Warden) went from Australia to San Francisco at around the right time. But he’s not listed in the chorus, and unless he’s Mr W.F. Baker, Mr Charles or Mr Bachrach he’s not a comprimario either. So Mr J.W. Turner’s first eight years of musical life remain ‘unproven’.
However, maybe I’m looking in the wrong places. A memoirist, writing after Charles’s death, added some local colour to the story. Both boys ‘sang in a church choir in their native town’, Charles had told him. ‘A member of the church noting the high natural gifts of the lads had them educated musically (what about father?), but both were trained as baritones …’ I thought as much. I think we may take it that Jimmie Turner’s early singing was not as a tenor.
It has been written that Jimmie studied at the Royal Academy of Music. He didn’t. Sometime in 1869 (?) he enrolled at the much less pretentious London Academy of Music of Dr Henry Wylde, where he took singing lessons from Signor Schira. And soon he was to make his first impression on the London music world.
Parenthesis. Jimmie had apparently not yet adopted his ‘J.W.’. Charles had allegedly not yet appeared in public. But there is a Carl Turner singing in East End concerts. And a Mr J. Turner playing bit parts in touring opera. But this, I believe, is John or James Turner ‘of the Turner family’, who stayed around in little troupes for some time. And I can’t find one member of the family, parents, sons or daughters, in any part of Britain in the 1871 census. Which is odd.
Why? Because Jimmie, at least, was there. He was singing in London, and had been for a year and a half. And very soon after the census he got married, to Miss Emma Cowpe Pendelton (or Pendleton Cowpe, the family couldn’t make up its mind), the daughter of a Sutton in Ashfield farmer. She’s in the census, but no Turners.
The story goes that Charles had been working in the sock business, perhaps in Liverpool, and playing amateur cornet, when his brother suggested that he too should try his luck as a singer. So Charles dropped stockings and followed Jimmie back to London, and lessons with Signor Schira. Maybe. So who is the ‘Mr Turner’ singing the baritone role of Wagner in the Faust staged by Signor Gilardoni (colleague of Schira) with his pupils in 1871? Not Jimmie: he’d already sung Faust. So maybe it’s Charles.
But back to Jimmie. The London debut of ‘the new English tenor’ took place at the Oxford Music Hall, in October 1869. ‘Turner the new English tenor expressly engaged to sing in Temptation has made his debut. He may be pronounced the finest singer on the English stage’, advertised the management. Temptation was a potted Faust show that the Oxford was mounting for the holidays, but understanding that they had a winner in Mr Turner, they hurriedly put their last girly ‘cantatina’ The Apple of Discord back on, with Turner cast as Paris (it had been a pants part for Miss Rivers in the original) alongside Miss Theresa Egan as Venus.
In the meanwhile, he apparently took a day off and appeared at St George’s Hall (18 December) in an Academy concert of The Creation, singing ‘In Native worth’. He was ‘vehemently applauded … proved himself a complete artist and displayed his fine voice and excellent style of singing to great advantage’. The Music Hall critics agreed. Temptation was a real success and Mr Turner was adjudged to have ‘a pleasing tenor voice of good compass and will assuredly rise in the profession’.
Mr Turner continued his double life. While Temptation and The Apple of Discord gave place to a Bohemian Girl selection, with Jimmie teamed with Charlotte Russell and ‘Signor Montelli’ (‘his singing of ‘You’ll Remember Me’ is nightly received with vociferous cheering’), the ‘primo tenore of Dr Wylde’s New Philharmonic Concerts’ visited Mansfield (‘his second annual concert’), Chesterfield (‘fairly electrified the audience’), Gloucester (Ode to Labour) and Sheffield, where he gave ‘Salve dimora’, ‘The Death of Nelson’ and his Bohemian Girl selection with a local Miss Twigg.
I can’t find him at the earlier New Philharmonic concerts, but Wylde used his LAM students regularly in his performances, so maybe Turner was one. He certainly took part in the one of 1 February 1871, when he sang Telemachus in Loder’s The Island of Calypso (‘a voice difficult to match in these days of dearth of tenor singers’). Where I do find him, however, is making his London theatre debut, at the Opera Comique, in a revival of W.S. Gilbert’s burlesque Dulcamara (3 December 1870), alongside the same Miss Geraldine Warden who had been a Christy Minstrel in Australia and deputy prima donna of the Lyster opera company in America. The burlesque supported Madame Déjazet’s French play, and its cast won high praise during its short season.
He returned to the Oxford in the new year (‘The magnificent tenor singing of Mr Turner is now, as it was long since, a great attraction here…’) but his next appearance was in court. The theatre managers, jealous of the Oxford’s success, prosecuted Temptation as an illegal stage play in an unlicensed house, and it was withdrawn.
On Good Friday, Mr Jennings of the Oxford staged a sacred music concert at St James’s Hall, featuring the Rossini Stabat Mater and selections from The Messiah and The Creation. Vernon Rigby sang the Rossini, but Mr Turner (‘a new comer in so far as sacred music is concerned’) gave his ‘In native worth’ and was judged to have ‘a remarkably a fine voice’. At Mlle Josephine Bondy’s concert (‘a new tenor who appeared for the first time in operatic music at the Opera Comique and there won considerable credit’) he repeated his ‘Salve dimora’ and gave the ‘Cuius animum’ (‘taking the high notes which appear so frequently with the greatest of ease’) alongside Ann Banks. And on 24 April he returned to the London Academy to play Dorville in Schira’s opera Mina with the students.
But he was present on all fronts. Back at the Oxford they retreated into operatic selections, and Jimmie appeared with Mlle du Maurier in potted Masaniello or Rigoletto while the bills trumpeted that each night you could hear ‘Turner the tenor at ten’. By the time he ended at the Oxford, ‘Turner the great English tenor’ had sung there for two and a half years.
During 1872 the newly-married Turner appeared in concerts in his home area, and sang in Schira’s newest piece The Earring which he made the main item in a concert of his own at St George’s Hall (6 July). At the same concert he sang Sullivan’s popular ‘Once Again’ ‘better than we have ever heard it sung, save and except by Mr Sims Reeves. Mr Turner’s high notes are especially pure and brilliant and he produces them without unnecessary effort… He has abilities to do great things’.
He was engaged for the Surrey Gardens on a bill of music-hall performers, visited Glasgow for the Saturday Evening concerts, gave the Lobgesang and The Messiah as a pendant to lectures at St George’s Hall and made a debut at the Crystal Palace (‘Angiol d’amore’, ‘The Shades of Evening’), but it was only in 1873 that he finally made a regular stab at the stage.
Mr T. Thorpe Peed ka Pede, musician, had taken over the effective control of the Alexandra Theatre, and he produced several of his own pieces there during the year. For his troupe he hired Turner, sopranos Gertrude Ashton and Alice Barth and contralto Louie Costin. Turner and Miss Ashton played Marguerite, A Lesson in Love and Moonstruck, and the tenor sang in The Magic Pearl with all the ladies. Mr Pede later claimed his stars as his pupils and got soundly and publicly rebuked.
In 1874, Turner finally got on to the right route. After appearing on the bill for the opening of the Grafton Theatre of Varieties in Dublin, performing an Il Trovatore selection with Miss Russell, he was hired by Carl Rosa as a principal tenor, behind Henry Nordblom, for his operatic tour. He sang Manrico opposite Pauline Vaneri, Thaddeus to the Arline of Annie Sinclair and Elvino with Blanche Cole, and, when Nordblom appeared, the press commented ‘the new tenor Mr J.W. Turner threatens to outshine him’.
Harvey & Turner’s Opera Troupe
Blanche Cole
V&A, London
But not yet. The biographies tell us that at this time he got ill, and was sent off to South Africa. He made the trip with a strange ragtag company of singers: Mrs Marie Dolby RAM late of the Petit Faust chorus, Louie Costin from the Alexandra, Mr Montelli from the Oxford et al. And, I suspect, of the unbilled Charles who is said to have gone at this stage ‘for eighteen months to the diamond fields’. Maybe as a cornet player. The Harvey-Turner Opera Company took Faust, Il Trovatore, Maritana, The Bohemian Girl, Lobgesang and Stabat Mater to the goldfields (‘Mr Turner’s beautiful tenor voice has quite enchanted the South Africans’) for nearly a year and in June 1876 it was reported he ‘has returned with his health quite restored’.
On his return, he was re-hired for the Carl Rosa company, as a third principal tenor with Fred Packard and Nordblom. At the Lyceum Theatre he sang Elvino with Ida Corani, the Steersman to Packard’s Erik in The Flying Dutchman, Lucas in Joconde and Glavis in Pauline with Nordblom in the principal tenor role. On tour, he sang Manrico to Ostava Torriani’s Leonora.
He took time out to appear with Blanche Cole and Sydney Naylor’s company (Crown Diamonds etc) between Rosa seasons, and when they started up again, Nordblom having been replaced by Charles Lyall, he was given the roles of Thaddeus opposite Julia Gaylord (‘an ovation of applause’) and Don Cesar to the Maritana of Cora Stuart. Hull gasped ‘We doubt if the music of the character has been better sung in English opera during the last ten years’. He played Fenton in The Merry Wives of Windsor, Don Henrique in The Crown Diamonds and Faust, as the company wended its way to a season at the Adelphi Theatre, London, 11 February 1878.
On opening night he was called on part way through the show to replace Packard as Fenton, and went on to give his Thaddeus and Steersman during the two months season.
During the remainder of the year, and 1879, he went back and forth between the opera companies at the Crystal Palace and the Alexandra Palace (Fra Diavolo, Maritana, La Sonnambula, Lily of Killarney, Lucia di Lammermoor, Lurline, Crown Diamonds, Il Trovatore, Satanella, Don Giovanni, Cinderella, Robin Hood, Faust) and stints with Henry Walsham’s company and Charles Durand, before going on the road with Blanche Cole. In October, the Cole troupe played a season at the Standard Theatre, and in 1880 returned to touring (Irene).
J.W. Turner in Maritana, 1888
ebay
J.W. Turner in Fra Diavolo
operascotland.org
In August 1880, Jimmie began another tour with the Rosa company, where Joseph Maas was now principal tenor, latterly supplemented by Barton McGuckin. He now played Wilhelm Meister in Mignon, Hardress Cregan in The Lily of Killarney and took the part of Birotteau in Ambroise Thomas’s The Cadi, and of Don Jose in Carmen. When the company did a season at Her Majesty’s Theatre, however, he still sang his little part in The Flying Dutchman. In 1883 he finished his time with Rosa, and returned to the Crystal Palace, and in 1884 spent time with ‘The English Opera Company under the management of Mr T.H. Friend’ (another Blanche Cole company) which evolved into other companies under J.S. Tanner and John O’Connor…
The J.W. Turner Opera Company developed over Christmas 1885. Robert Arthur of Glasgow hired Jimmie to play Guy Mannering alongside Emily Parkinson, Albert McGuckin and M.R. Morand. And the new Nottingham Grand Theatre wanted him for their February opening. The two enterprises melded, and Arthur put together from them the so-called J.W. Turner company, with members of his company combined with members of the old Friend-Tanner-O’Connor-Leslie troupe. They played their season at Nottingham (Bohemian Girl, Maritana, Fra Diavolo, Sonnambula), after which the backbone of the company—including Lucy Franklein, Arthur Rousbey and the young Payne Clarke—went on tour, as Turner’s English Opera Company. Ben Davies, Constance Bellamy, Josephine Yorke, Henry Walsham, Frederick Bovill, Chrystal Duncan, Amelia Sinico, and others of less repute, joined, as the company went its way, over the years that followed. The repertoire did not vary largely (although Cavalleria Rusticana with Turner as Turiddu was produced when the tenor was in his fifties), and the standard was always better than adequate.
By the 1900s, things were ageing a little, and Jimmie occasionally drew a notice such as ‘on the whole disappointing … he has evidently lost some of the old fire and skill with which for many years he has delighted whole towns around the country’. Nevertheless ‘the crowds have shown that the company still retains its hold on the popular affections.’
Around 1892 he (‘one of the few English tenors who have made a fortune by operatic management’) purchased the Birmingham Grand Theatre, which was thereafter run by his brother-in-law and long-time company manager, J.C. Carol [John Pendleton Cowpe], (d. Yardley 27 April 1899), before being sold opportunely to the Moss combine.
In 1913, shortly after his death, the continuing J.W. Turner opera company was advertising its ‘29th year of tour’. I think 29 may be a slight exaggeration, but not by much.
After three years disabled by a stroke, Jimmie Turner died in 1913. Emma survived him and died in 1918.
It seems that brother Charles (who at some stage acquired an H. as a middle initial) didn’t return from Africa with Jimmie. Perhaps that was when he did his time in the diamond fields. And when he did leave, he headed for America. I spot him there first in 1876, ‘his first appearance in America’, singing mostly secondary tenor-cum-baritone roles behind Joseph Maas and later William Castle in C.D. Hess’s touring opera company—Laertes (Mignon), Bucklaw (Lucia di Lammermoor), Florestein, Lorenzo (Fra Diavolo), Valentine (Faust), Basilio (Marriage of Figaro), Lord Latimer (A Summer Night’s Dream), Giorgio and Yermaloff (Etoile du Nord), De Vaux in The Talisman, as well as Lionel in Martha and the Steersman in New York’s first Flying Dutchman.
The Bulletin (Sydney), 11 June 1881, p.1
In 1878-9 he sang with the Hess and Emma Abbott company, created Max Maretzek’s opera Sleepy Hollow, and in December 1879 fulfilled an engagement with Emilie Melville in San Francisco (Les Cloches de Corneville, HMS Pinafore, The Royal Middy). The second prima donna of the company was Miss Annis MONTAGUE [Mary Annis COOKE b. Oahu 6 November 1846; d. Oahu 1920)] to whom he was married in her home town of Oahu, Hawaii soon after.
The couple voyaged to Australia, where they became extremely popular at the head of their own modest touring opera company and established themselves as popular stars on the Pacific circuits.
Miss Montague suffered from some vocal problems and Turner, who notoriously disliked singing opposite anyone but his wife, took some engagements alone. He toured with Strakosch in 1886 and with Jimmy Morrisey and Emma Juch in 1889, but returned ever to the Pacific, where he died, still performing, while on tour in New Zealand.
