Henry Hallam (actor)

Henry Hallam (August 7, 1850 – November 11, 1921) was a British-born operatic tenor and early film actor who began his five decade career singing on stage in England and then Australia and on tour in Australasia and India.

[1] After a brief time in London Hallam sailed to Melbourne in Australia where from 1870 to 1872 he embarked on a successful singing career touring with the Royal English Opera Company, on one occasion being described as 'a young gentleman with a very pretty, very light tenor voice, extremely smooth and pleasing to the ear’.

[2] From late 1873 with the Alice May Opera Company Hallam sang the lead tenor roles in The Bohemian Girl, La Sonnambula, The Grande-Duchesse of Gérolstein, The Daughter of the Regiment, Maritana and Geneviève de Brabant.

In February 1874 Hallam stayed with the company when it embarked on a tour of New Zealand in which he sang the lead tenor roles in works including Satanella, Fra Diavolo, Der Freischütz and Cinderella.

Here Hallam toured with Charles Durand's opera company, before appearing in 1877 as Pluto with Kate Santley's production of Orpheus in the Underworld and was Donkeyherd in Happy Hampstead with a score by Richard D’Oyly Carte.

His professional reputation in London was ruined when he agreed to sing in the American-style musical comedy Capers at the Standard Theatre (1885) in a piece written by the American composer Richard Stahl in an attempt to launch his wife Bertie Crawford as a soubrette.

[2] The 35-year old Hallam arrived in the United States in December 1885 and quickly found work with Rudolph Aronson's Company, for which he played Sylvio in The Enchantress with the New York Clipper describing his performance as 'weak and unsatisfactory'.

On joining the Boston Lyric Company he played Pietro, Prince of Palma in Boccaccio, Pippo in La mascotte and sang opposite his wife in Fra Diavolo, The Fencing Master and in Scott Marble and Richard Stahl's Said Pascha.