coloratura Ellen Beach Yaw "Skylark" -highest voice recorded

Ellen Beach Yaw (9/14/1869--9/9/1947) was an American coloratura soprano, best known for her concert career. She had an extraordinary vocal range and could produce unusually high notes. Known as "Lark Ellen" or "The California Nightingale," she was reportedly the only known soprano of her era... More

Ellen Beach Yaw (9/14/1869--9/9/1947) was an American coloratura soprano, best known for her concert career. She had an extraordinary vocal range and could produce unusually high notes. Known as "Lark Ellen" or "The California Nightingale," she was reportedly the only known soprano of her era who could sing AND SUSTAIN the D above high D. She was also able to trill in major thirds or fifths! The Edison Diamond Disc---posted here--- of her vocal composition, "The Skylark," has always been a prized find for record collectors, as she does indeed trill on 3rds and 5ths...and the song ends with the highest note ever recorded during the acoustic-record days....prior to 1925. What makes this disc so "rare" is that it was in the Edison catalog for little more than a year. The master burned in the Edison fire of 1914 and was never redone. Secondly, the discs themselves have become unstable and break apart from their thick core, rendering them all but unplayable. The number of surviving good copies is dwindling. In spite of every precaution, my copy, which was "new" when I acquired it, continues to deteriorate. It's maddening! Yaw was born in the small town of Boston, near Buffalo, New York. Her family moved to Los Angeles when she was very young. Her father died when she was yet a child. The family was poor. Yaw began singing and composing songs as a child. Her first vocal lessons were from her mother. Yaw sang in concerts, beginning as a child in the 1880s, to make money to pay for singing lessons. Tours of the southern U.S., California, England, Switzerland, and Germany followed---and on her return to the U.S. she gave a concert in Carnegie Hall in 1896. Yaw raised enough money to study in Paris with Mathilde Marchesi, the teacher of virtually every really famous and well-trained coloratura soprano years ago. In 1899, Yaw was singing in private concerts in London, and at one of these, she so impressed Sir Arthur Sullivan that he prevailed upon the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company to cast her as the Sultana Zubedyah in his comic opera, "The Rose of Persia," which opened on November 29, 1899, at the Savoy Theatre in London. Sullivan went so far as to write a special high cadenza for her song, "'Neath My Lattice," a cadenza only she could sing. While it's a long and complicated story, Yaw soon was sacked! It's said that she was so beautiful that Sullivan's and Carte's wives wanted her gone. Yaw then made some grand operatic appearances in Monte Carlo, including Ophelia in Thomas' Hamlet in 1902 (her favorite role)---and in Rome, where she sang the title role in Lucia, in 1905. Yaw sang Gilda in Rigoletto in London in 1905-- and gave a single performance of Lucia at New York's Metropolitan Opera--on March 21, 1908--after which she was described by the Met's manager as "the world's greatest coloratura soprano." Her potential Met rivals saw to it that she never sang there again! Yaw sang a total of 18 operatic roles. However, she mostly devoted herself to the concert hall, where she had a long and successful career. In 1904, the Los Angeles Daily Times wrote, "Miss Yaw's voice is high soprano of crystalline lightness and purity and of a range so extreme in altitude that it was the wonder of the European continent." Yaw was much in demand as a recording artist, and her first discs were made in May 1899. She made a number of recordings for the Victor Talking Machine Company. Those who hear these today conclude that her Victor discs do little justice to her true vocal talents. In order to display her voice to its best effect, she wrote several songs of her own---"The Skylark," "The Cuckoo," and "The Firefly." Yaw resided in Covina, California, the last thirty years of her life. She taught singing, gave concerts, and devoted herself to charitable pursuits. Often her concerts were in aid of these charities. Yaw is memorialized in Covina by Lark Ellen Elementary School and Lark Ellen Avenue, one of the main thoroughfares in Covina. Yaw died there, just shy of her 78th birthday. Less

gmmix

Added Feb 20, 2008  

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