t h e r o s a t r o u p e
Ben Davies & Clara Perry
Ben
Davies, born at Pontardawe on 6 January 1858, acquired a local
reputation as a tenor and from 1878 studied under Alberto Randegger at
the Royal Academy of Music. The Rosa company recruited him and he made
his debut at as Thaddeus in Bohemian
Girl
at the New Theatre Royal, Bristol, on 11 October 1881. He appeared in
fifteen operas and 370 performances over the next three years. This
included three world premieres Esmeralda
(Goring Thomas), Colomba
(Mackenzie), Canterbury
Pilgrims
(Stanford) and the British premiere of Tannhäuser in English.
His
last performance as a regular member of the company was as Wilhelm in Mignon at Drury
Lane on 16 June 1886. His engagement with Rosa also brought him a wife;
he married soprano Clara Perry in 1885.
The next few years were a mixture of opera and musical comedy. He made a few appearances with the Turner Opera Company in the 1886-87 season and then achieved great success in Cellier’s Dorothy. He returned to opera in 1891 creating the title role in the world premiere of Sullivan’s Ivanhoe and the following year appeared at Covent Garden. But his operatic work was becoming limited to guest appearances with the Rosa and other companies squeezed between concert, oratorio, and foreign tours. He was still before the public forty years later when he was seventy-five although his later singing was probably reserved for private occasions. His last recordings were also made at this time. This great Welsh tenor died at Bristol on 28 March 1943 and was cremated at Arnos Vale Cemetery.
Clara Perry, born at Boston, Lincolnshire in 1858, was a pupil
of
Louisa Pyne who made her Rosa debut as Denise in Isouard’s Piccolino at the
Gaiety Theatre Dublin on 12 August 1879. She sang in eighteen operas
including Flotow’s Alessandro
Stradella, the British premiere of Massenet’s Manon
and the three previously mentioned world premieres when she shared the
stage with Davies. Her last Rosa performance was at Drury Lane on 26
May 1885 as Michaela to the Carmen of Marie Roze and the Don Jose of
her future husband. In all she appeared in about 540
Rosa performances.
She continued her career for a short time after her marriage before family obligations took over in a marriage which lasted for over fifty years. She died in a Bristol nursing home in February 1944 only a few months after the death of her husband.
© 2017 John Ward
