Sarah Frances Marie Martinot (August 19, 1861 – May 7, 1923) was an American actress and soprano singer who performed on stage in dramas, musical comedy and comic opera.
Her career began at the age fifteen as Cupid in Ixion; or, the Man at the Wheel and, but for a few years absence, she remained active on stage in America and abroad until 1908.
Pinafore, the first Katrina in the comic opera Rip Van Winkle and the first to play the title role in an English adaptation of the operetta Nanon.
[5][7] The next year she joined Adah Richmond's company at $18 a-week, touring in Chow Chow: or, A Tale of Pekin,[8] in which she performed a popular imitation of Marie Aimee,[9] singing Pretty as a Picture[10] Later came a Christmas 1877 engagement at the Boylston Museum, Boston [11] and a performance the following year at the city's Americus Club that led to an offer to join the Boston Museum stock company.
[5] Martinot made her London debut on Boxing Day, 1880, at the Alhambra Theatre as the Spirit of the Bracken in the three-act comic opera Mefistofele II.
[5] Martinot returned to New York to star in the much anticipated comic opera Nadjy, but after a disagreement with the Casino Theatre stage manager, she withdrew from the production before the piece debuted.
Over the following two seasons Martinot starred in a national tour performing the title role in the Charles Frederic Nirdlinger play Pompadour and Dora in Victorien Sardou's Diplomacy.
Martinot remained active in theatre, in New York or elsewhere, well into the first decade of the new century in roles such as:[18] Suzette in The Voyage of Suzette (1893)[19] Mrs. Darcey in The Passport (1894)[20] Lady Angela in Patience (1896) Hattie in A Stranger in New York (1897)[21] Leonie in The Turtle (1898)[22] Lady Carnby in The Marriage Game (1901)[23] Paula in The Second Mrs. Tanqueray (1903) Mary Erwin in Mary and John (1905)[24] Mrs. Temple in Mrs. Temple's Telegram (1906)[25] Lady Dover in Toddles (1908)[26] Martinot married twice, first to Fred Stinson (d. 1895),[5] a theatrical manager, on March 30, 1879, in Boston, and then to Louis F. Nethersole (d. 1936), a theatrical manager, producer and press agent and a brother of actress Olga Nethersole.
While it was reported she married Max Figman, a comedian-actor, with whom she fell into financial difficulty, her marriage record to Louis Nethersole on May 30, 1901, in Manhattan, New York, lists her name as Sarah F.