Alice Verlet

She sang principal roles at the operas in Lyon, Nice, and Monte Carlo; at His Majesty's Theater in London; at La Monnaie in Brussels; and at the Paris Opéra and Opéra-Comique.

Other members included contralto Edna Thornton and pianist Mark Hambourg; the accompanist was Cyril Towsey of Wellington, New Zealand, who had carved out a career performing in such ad hoc groups.

[11] In July, Verlet returned to Birmingham, the scene of her English artistic "coming out" 15 years before, as a participant in daily concerts for the city's centenary fetes, although perhaps upstaged by a massive air show, not unmarred by fatal crashes of the then-novel machines.

She was again in distinguished artistic company, organized and directed by Dan Godfrey: other participants included singers Nellie Melba, Agnes Nicholls, and Harry Plunket Greene; pianists Wilhelm Backhaus, Myra Hess, and Benno Moiseiwitsch; and violinist Mischa Elman.

Among her early US engagements was at the sold-out May 10, 1897, inaugural concert of the Fanny Mendelssohn Society, a women's choral group founded and directed by J. Alfred Pennington, in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

At the time of the Scranton performance, Verlet counted 25 operas in her repertoire; could sing fluently in French, Italian, and German; and planned to make her New York debut at Carnegie Hall on the following November 1 in a Damrosch concert.

Accompanying her were pianist J. Warren Erb and a young Spanish-born classical violinist from Cuba named Xavier Cugat,[16] who soon would shift genres and go on to fame as the "rhumba king", the first leader of a successful Latin dance band in the United States.

Its declared reason for being was to counter existing industry practice that companies paid performers only a flat fee for their services, while most others involved in the enterprise reaped royalties from each individual record sold.

[25] In addition to recording repertory for Edison including traditional and semi-classical songs,[26] arias from French and Italian opera,[27] standard coloratura display pieces,[28] oddities long vanished from the active stage,[29] and the national anthem of her native Belgium,[30] Verlet was a key player in the company's so-called "tone tests".

On August 10, 1915, she took the stage at the first Edison Dealers' Convention in West Orange, New Jersey, and sang "Caro nome" from Verdi's Rigoletto in duet and alternating with her diamond disc recording of the same aria.

The audience of dealers, by no means assembled as lovers of opera and already doubtless weary from attending more than a day's worth of company promotional sessions, gave her a standing ovation.