Kate Drew
Kate Drew (1863-1940)[1] was a operatic singer and actress.
Contents
Biography
Born Kate Greaves Rickards, daughter of William Rickards and the music teacher Georgina Louisa Rickards, in Kensington, London, on 4 March 1863. (She took her surname after her mother's second husband, Walter Paul Drew). Probably had her first musical training with her mother, performing at various local events, and was one of the earliest students at the Royal College of Music in the early 1880s. Her student performances (e.g. in The Marriage of Figaro and Cherubini’s The Water Carrier) then led to an engagement with the Carl Rosa Opera Company. There she made her debut as "Frasquita" in Carmen at the Prince’s Theatre, Manchester, on 14 September 1886 and subsequently appeared in some six hundred performances in twenty-one operas ranging from Balfe to Meyerbeer.
She had married a Doctor Dixon and left the Rosa company after a final performance in Carmen at the Theatre Royal, Birmingham, on 30 April 1891. In 1892 she gave birth to a son and was then briefly reunited with old colleagues at the Burns Crotty Opera Company, performing in musicals and concerts until December, 1895, when she accompanied her husband to South Africa.
There she became known as a fine singer and stage performer and remained in South Arica till her death on on 23 April 1940.
For more on her early career in England, see the entry on "Kate Drew" on The Carl Rosa Trust website: www.carlrosatrust.org.uk[2]
Contribution to SA theatre, film, media and/or performance
Kate Drew and her husband came to South Africa in December 1895, and she seems to have taken up performing again, for according to The Stage of 30 March 1899 (in the section "South African Stage") Madam Kate Drew was associated with a performance of Trial by Jury in Johannesburg in that year.
She is also mentioned by D.C. Boonzaier, who refers to her as one of the "popular singers of the day", she was one of the solo participants in the Bloemfontein Flood Benefit (a matinee benefit performance for the sufferers in the disastrous flood in Bloemfontein), put on in the Cape Town Opera House on 28 January, 1904, by a company brought together for the purpose by Grant Fallowes.
Sources
"Kate Drew", The Carl Rosa Trust: www.carlrosatrust.org.uk[3]
D.C. Boonzaier, 1923. "My playgoing days – 30 years in the history of the Cape Town stage", in SA Review, 9 March and 24 August 1923. (Reprinted in Bosman 1980: pp. 374-439.)
F.C.L. Bosman. 1980. Drama en Toneel in Suid-Afrika, Deel II, 1856-1916. Pretoria: J.L. van Schaik: p. 418.
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