Jessie Bond
Jessie Charlotte Bond (10 January 1853 – 17 June 1942)[1] was an English singer and actress best known for creating the mezzo-soprano soubrette roles in the Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas.
After leaving her abusive husband, she continued her concert career and studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London with such famous singing teachers as Manuel García.
[4] The same year, at Hope Hall (now the Everyman Theatre) in Liverpool, she accompanied the music students of professor Isouard Praeger, her piano teacher.
[9] The marriage was a terrible experience for Bond, and she became pregnant and ill. "He ill-treated both my mind and my body, he denied me every comfort, often I had not even enough to eat.
[9] After leaving her husband, Bond continued to teach piano and was immediately back on stage singing oratorios, masses and other concerts near Liverpool, with a busy schedule throughout the early 1870s.
[17][18] For example, in the summer of 1877, she appeared at the Queen's Theatre in London in at least three of the conductor Jules Rivière's promenade concerts[19] and was widely seen throughout Britain into 1878.
[20] In May 1878, Bond made her first appearance on the dramatic stage at the age of 25, creating the role of Cousin Hebe in W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan's H.M.S.
[24] In December 1878, Bond created the part of Maria in After All!, composed by Alfred Cellier, when that companion piece was added to the bill with Pinafore.
[17] In late 1879, Bond travelled to America with Gilbert, Sullivan and D'Oyly Carte to give American audiences their first opportunity to see the authentic H.M.S.
I doubt if the management ever knew; the public certainly didn't; and those who saw me dancing and capering light-heartedly about the stage for twenty years little thought under what difficulties I did it, and the pain I often suffered.
One poem sent to her by an admirer ran in mock-Gilbertian style as follows (in part): After the company had moved into the new Savoy Theatre, Bond met the Prince of Wales on several occasions, who assisted her career, securing singing engagements for her.
She wrote in her memoirs about a performance of Iolanthe: "Realism can be carried too far, as it was when one night a zealous property man said to me: 'It'll be just like the real thing to-night, Miss Bond.
For instance, Gilbert noted in an interview that the fact that the female singers to be engaged for The Mikado, Leonora Braham, Bond, and Sybil Grey, were all of short stature inspired him to make them schoolgirls—three "little" maids—and to treat them as a closely linked trio throughout the work as much as possible.
"[31] After seven years with D'Oyly Carte, and still earning money from private and concert singing engagements, Bond's salary had risen to the point where she was able to move into a better flat and hire a maid.
She wrote that when she was in a thoughtful mood, she would consider the following: I had worked so hard at serious music, I had loved it so much and been so successful, that it was not without a pang that I gave it all up to sing little songs and choruses that were, after all, child's play to me.
...[O]ften my heart ached when I thought of those days when I lived in an atmosphere of music of the highest order, and could express my inmost self in it.
...[S]ometimes when I thought things over I felt how far I had fallen from that first austere ideal, and wished that fame and success could have come in a higher sphere.
[31]During the run of The Mikado, Bond met Lewis Ransome, a young civil engineer from a wealthy Quaker family.
Among the host of her admirers few had given the popular Savoy soubrette credit for such great ability as a genuine comedy-actress, for never before had the opportunity been afforded her to display her latent talent—Jessie Bond's triumph came as a surprise to all....
So true to real life was the portrayal of Mad Margaret that Mr. Forbes Winslow, the famous authority on mental disorders, wrote a congratulatory letter to Miss Bond and inquired where she had found the model from which she had studied, and so faithfully copied the phases of insanity.
By the time The Gondoliers was in preparation, Gilbert felt that his regular principal cast members were becoming too demanding and that the precision and style of D'Oyly Carte productions could be maintained only if there were no "stars".
'[36]After The Gondoliers closed, Gilbert and Sullivan were estranged for a time,[37] and Carte hired Bond to play Chinna-Loofa in Dance, Desprez and Solomon's The Nautch Girl (1891).
[11] She enjoyed good runs as Helen Tapeleigh in the musical comedy Go-Bang (1894)[40] and Nanna in Gilbert and F. Osmond Carr's His Excellency (1894–95).
[42] In 1894, she also played in Wapping Old Stairs, by Stuart Robertson and Howard Talbot (with Courtice Pounds and Richard Temple), and Pick-me-up at the Trafalgar Square Theatre (with George Grossmith, Jr. and Letty Lind).
Subject to an increasing number of short illnesses that prevented her from performing, and tiring of life in the theatre, Bond finally agreed to marry Ransome, and the couple wed in May 1897: When I told Gilbert he was so angry that I don't think he ever quite forgave me; he would not accept my health as an excuse, he was unreasonable, as, alas, he often was!
[48] Together with George Power, Leonora Braham and Julia Gwynne, she was one of four artistes of the original D'Oyly Carte Opera Company who attended a reunion at the Savoy Hotel in 1914.
In that book, she expressed great admiration particularly for Gilbert, but also for Sullivan and D'Oyly Carte, and she bemoaned overacting by performers in the "modern" era.
[51][52] In her last years, Bond entertained wounded World War I servicemen, playing the piano and singing at a south coast home for disabled soldiers and sailors.
After a breath of sea air ... she would always go into her favourite hotel for a drink and would often sit down at the piano and entertain the company with some of her old Gilbert and Sullivan tunes.
[54] The Worthing Herald wrote: "Despite her great age, Miss Bond preserved a quick and active mind, and hated to be fussed over.
