Anna Bishop
Anna Bishop (1810-1884). English opera singer.
Contents
Biography
Born Ann Rivière in London in January 1810, she trained at the recently created Royal Academy of Music and was taught by composer Henry Bishop, the most popular English musician of the day. Twenty-three years her senior, he was also later to become her husband.
In 1839, she abandoned Bishop and their three children and eloped with the French harpist Nicolas-Charles Bochsa, a move which caused huge scandal and much press coverage. Together they set off to continental Europe where they spent the following seven years making appearances in Denmark, Sweden, Russia, Austria, Germany and Tartary. In Italy, she became prima donna assoluta at the San Carlo in Naples. After Italy, she set off for the Americas, singing in New York, in San Francisco during the Gold Rush, in Mexico, Havana, Chile, Argentina and Brazil, and across Asia in the Philippines, Hong Kong, Singapore, India, Ceylon, New Zealand, and Australia. She toured incessantly and sang on every continent, her voice heard not only in opera houses and concert halls but also in makeshift venues around the world.
In 1858, in New York she married Martin Schulz, a diamond merchant.
On 14 July 1873, at the personal invitation of Brigham Young, she gave the first concert at the Mormon Tabernacle in Salt Lake City. In 1875 she sang in Australia once more, then in Cape Town and other places in South Africa, on to Madeira and England, and back to New York. Anna Bishop Schulz died in New York in March 1884, aged 74.
Shipwrecked
During her extraordinary travels she was one of the few survivors of a shipwreck in the middle of the Pacific, but lost all her jewelry, scores and costumes. She spent three weeks surviving on seabirds and fish on a coral atoll, until she and her fellow survivors recovered two small rowboats from the ship and sailed 1400 miles towards the Mariana Islands. After enduring another two weeks on the open boat they finally – and miraculously – reached the tiny island of Guam. after a short period of recovery, she resumed her tour of Asia.
Contribution to theatre in South Africa
In 1876 Bishop travelled throughout South Africa, giving concerts in Cape Town, Bloemfontein, Pietermaritzburg and Durban. Bishop, who was 66 years old at the time of this tour, not only gave solo performances, but also initiated productions with local opera groups. She was able to produce Vincenzo Bellini's La sonnambula as well as light operas such as La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein (The Grand Duchess of Gerolstein) by Jacques Offenbach in Durban. Charles Lascelles was Bishop's accompanist on this tour.
Sources
Hilde Roos. 2010. 'Opera Production in the Western Cape: Strategies in Search of Indigenisation'. Unpublished PhD thesis. Stellenbosch University.
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