Harriett Everard
She was scheduled to originate the role of Ruth in The Pirates of Penzance, but she was forced to withdraw after an onstage accident during a rehearsal that caused her serious injury.
[3] Everard made her first known stage appearance in Exeter, at the Theatre Royal, about 1861, and in Swansea and Plymouth from 1862 to 1863, earning warm notices for her singing in the burlesques, pantomimes and comic operas, such as adaptations of Guy Mannering, Rob Roy, Aladdin, Ruy Blas and Fortunio.
Later that year, she returned to London at the New Greenwich Theatre as Leicester in Kenilworth, Charlotte in The Stranger, Sybil in Jack in the Giant Killer, and Apollo in Ixion.
[4] There, still only 23 years old, she originated the role of the fading Marchioness of Birkenfelt, the first of W. S. Gilbert's long series of "elderly, ugly" women, in his second operatic burlesque, La Vivandière.
At the Princess's Theatre in 1873, she appeared as the Spirit of Memory in Undine, among various other roles, and as Queen of Catland in Little Puss in Boots, where she was called "one of the best things in the pantomime".
[13] When The Spectre Knight by James Albery and Alfred Cellier was added to the programme in February 1878, she created the part of the First Lady-in-Waiting ("a capital Dueña", wrote The Examiner).
[16] During a scuffle at the Opera Comique, early in the run of Pinafore, when Carte's former backers tried to seize the scenery and properties during a performance and were repelled by the backstage crew, Everard earned admiration for carrying on bravely with the show.
Rutland Barrington was a witness to the incident and later described it thus: She was standing in the centre of the stage at rehearsal one morning, when I noticed the front piece of a stack of scenery falling forward.
I called to her to run, and got my back against the falling wing and broke its force to a great extent, but it nevertheless caught her on the head, taking off a square of hair as neatly as if done with a razor.
Although she was able to assume the role in June, her run did not last long – she turned the part over to Alice Barnett in July when the company returned to England from its New York production.
[1] Everard then left the company and continued to work for only the next several months; her last recorded appearance was as Aunt Priscilla de Montmorency in Francis Marshall's comic opera Lola in January 1881.
