Charles Lascelles

Charles Lascelles was a sketcher, caricaturist, actor, composer, pianist and singer (1835-1883).

Biography

Charles Lascelles was the stage/pen name of Charles Gray.

He toured Australia in 1868 as both accompanist and accompanying vocalist to the singer Anna Bishop. He later joined William Saurin Lyster’s Opera Company as chorus master, sometime prompter, expert in elaborate make-up, and occasional performer of subsidiary parts in English opera and leads in French opéra bouffe. He was an avid sketcher and caricaturist. In April 1873, Dr Charles Badham’s Ode, set to music by Lascelles, was performed at the opening of the Sydney Intercolonial Exhibition.

After leaving Australia, Lascelles continued his peripatetic theatrical career. He again joined Anna Bishop as her accompanist for a season at Cape Town in 1875, and he was regisseur of an opera company touring the English provinces in 1878. In 1879 he was back at Cape Town where, as well as other duties, he painted scenery for the Verner Dramatic Company. This career reputedly had a less picturesque end. Lascelles died while travelling on the Continent in August 1883.

He was a cousin of the novelist Wilkie Collins.

Contribution to theatre in South Africa

Lascelles ultimately settled in Natal, where he pioneered opera production until his death in 1883. His enthusiasm earned him the nickname ‘father of opera’ in Natal when he started the Philharmonic Society with whom he produced a number of operas by 1881, among others Gaetano Donizetti’s La fille du régiment.