Ilka Pálmay

Pálmay began her stage career in Hungary by 1880, and by the early 1890s, she was creating leading roles in opera and operetta at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna.

She was married twice, first to actor-manager József Szigligeti (from 1877 to 1886), and then to Austrian Count Eugen Kinsky in the early 1890s, who maintained an estate at Althofen in Carinthia.

"[2] Pálmay began her stage career in Hungary (including Kassa, Budapest and Kolozsvár) by 1880 and played about two dozen roles in the 1880s, including Serpolette in Les Cloches de Corneville[3] In the early 1890s, she performed at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna, where she created leading roles in Carl Zeller's Der Vogelhändler (1891) and Johann Strauss II's Fürstin Ninetta (1893).

There, in 1893, she was cast in a German production of The Mikado to play the tenor hero, Nanki-Poo, in drag, and Sullivan unsuccessfully tried to stop the performances.

[6] She later played the title role in La belle Hélène (Offenbach); Fiametta in Boccaccio (von Suppé); Denise in Mam'zelle Nitouche (Hervé; Nebántsvirág in Hungarian); Yvonne in The Pirate King (Planquette); Yum-Yum in The Mikado (Sullivan); the title role in The Grand Duchess of Gerolstein (Offenbach); Lisbeth in Rip Van Winkle (Planquette); and Bronislawa in A koldusdiák – The Beggar Student (Karl Millöcker).

[7] In June 1895, Pálmay made her first appearance on the London stage as a guest artist with the Ducal Court Theare Company of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha as Christel in five performances of Der Vogelhändler at the Drury Lane Theatre.

His Majesty gave Pálmay opportunities to display her talents as ballad singer, opera soprano and comedian, including the chance to sing in German, the language in which she usually performed.

A chapter of the book about her days at the Savoy was translated into English by Andrew Lamb and was printed in the May and September 1972 issues of The Gilbert & Sullivan Journal.