Emily Soldene

Emily Soldene (30 September 1838 – 8 April 1912) was an English singer, actress, director, theatre manager, novelist and journalist of the late Victorian era and the Edwardian period.

She was one of the most famous singers of comic opera in the late nineteenth century, as well as an important director of theatre companies and later a celebrated gossip columnist.

[1] In 1859 she married law clerk John Powell (1834?–1881) and gave birth to her first child before she began to study singing in 1861 with William Howard Glover.

[2] As English-language versions of French opéra bouffe first arrived in Britain, Soldene soon became the leading proponent of Jacques Offenbach and Hervé, combining her comedic and vocal talents.

"[3] She played the title role in The Grand Duchess of Gerolstein in 1867, with the touring company of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden,[4] and in 1870.

[1] Soldene wrote, "From the first moment of going into management – recognizing the attractive force of female beauty – I surrounded myself with the best-looking and best set-up girls that could possibly be found.

[1][13] Back in London in 1879, she played Princess Fanfreluche in La poule aux oeufs d'or and other productions at the Alhambra Theatre.

[17] She left this show when America's top musical manager, John McCaull, invited her there to star in comic opera, vaudeville, variety musicals, and, briefly on Broadway with his McCaull Comic Opera Company, as Oudarde in an adaptation of a French melodrama, Lorraine (1887).

For the next seventeen years, she wrote weekly columns of lively London gossip for the Evening News and then The Sun and other publications.

Soldene named a long list of aristocratic and wealthy gentlemen who had had liaisons with young ladies in the theatre during her younger days.