Mrs Howard Paul

Isabella Hill (1 April 1833 – 6 June 1879), better known as Mrs Howard Paul, was an English actress, operatic singer and actress-manager of the Victorian era, best remembered for creating the role of Lady Sangazure in the Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera The Sorcerer (1877).

She was educated in France and Italy,[1] and studied singing under the composer and teacher George French Flowers, whose biographer Louisa Middleton rates her as "perhaps his most distinguished" pupil.

[4] She appeared briefly at the Theatre Royal, Cork the following month,[4] returning to the Strand in March to play Captain Macheath en travesti in The Beggar's Opera.

[1] The Era later reported, "Her dashing style and rich, powerful voice at once attracted attention and more important engagements rapidly followed at Drury Lane and the Haymarket.

[10] They went on to Paris, where she played for a month at the Théâtre du Palais-Royal in a specially-written sketch, La fille adroit, which was highly praised by Jules Janin in the Journal des débats.

[11][12] Later the same year she acted in her husband's play My Neighbor Opposite and a comic duologue, Locked Out, which proved to be very popular and toured extensively in the provinces.

[15] In July of the same year she was Sir Launcelot de Lake (sic) in the Lancashire Witches, or the Knight and the Giants, a burlesque included as part of an entertainment that opened the Lyceum Theatre.

[5] In musical entertainments given by herself and her husband in 1860 and over the next 17 years in London and the provinces, Mrs Paul became a favourite for her impersonations of Henry Russell, Sims Reeves, and other popular singers of the day, particularly tenors.

"Anticipating subsequent actresses, she softened Lady Macbeth, subjugating to conjugal love the sterner traits ordinarily assigned the character.

Among the characters that she portrayed through song were the bluestocking Miss Grym, the advocate of women's rights,[17][18] and Jemimer Cobb ("cruelly deceived by the Footman who wore false whiskers").

[5] Mrs Paul's obituary in The New York Times said: "She was gifted with a wonderful voice [but] ... nearly all her efforts were made in the lighter branches of dramatic and musical art ... her acting was at once droll and vivacious".

Joseph Knight wrote in the Dictionary of National Biography: "Mrs Howard Paul was a woman of ability, whose talents were often frittered away in parts and occupations unworthy of them.

"[5] A writer in The Athenaeum agreed, commenting that "had she adhered to the lyric stage instead of being an erratic artist associated with Mr Howard Paul in 'musical and dramatic entertainments,' [she] would have taken the highest position as a contralto.