E
mily Soldene started her improbably
varied career in the music halls, where she
became a leading lady, producer, director
and impresario. She circled the globe
many times, conquering Broadway,
touring the Wild West and sailing to
Australia and New Zealand. But it was her final reinven-
tion – as a writer – that is perhaps her most heroic. When
the theatrical world turned its back on her, Soldene
kick-started her career once more, publishing two books
and becoming a successful journalist. She had that rare
thing for a Victorian working-class woman: a public voice,
which she used to speak fearlessly about issues such as
adultery and abortion. Though she despised the suffragette
movement, she was the living embodiment of a practical
feminism that would seem remarkable even decades later.
It was sheer envy that first propelled Soldene onto the
stage. Born in 1838 to a bonnet maker in Clerkenwell,
London, by her early twenties she found herself married
with two young children, living in her mother’s cramped
lodgings and with the threat of the workhouse always
looming. Having read a glowing review of the Italian opera
singer Adelina Patti, the very next day Soldene spied a
poster of Patti – with a chin that was “very long and
underhung”, as she described it – and marched straight to
the house of a singing instructor.
Soldene, it quickly became apparent, boasted an un-
common ability to convey emotion through her singing.
Her first reviews were good but
she struggled to find paid work, so
turned to the music halls. Women
who worked in these dens of drink-
ing, sex work and lewd humour had
terrible reputations. For Soldene,
though, they offered her the chance
to escape a life of drab domesticity.
Adopting the stage name Miss
FitzHenry, she started work at the
Oxford Music Hall in Westminster,
where she became an instant hit
singing tragic ballads.
Meanwhile, in Paris, the
German-born composer Jacques
Offenbach was revolutionising
musical theatre with his new brandof satirical operettas dubbed opéra bouffe. That new genre
gave Soldene her next big break. Early one morning in
1869, she was woken by frantic knocking at her door.
The leading lady of the new Offenbach operetta The Grand
Duchess of Gerolstein had fallen out with her leading man,
she was told, and Soldene should come right away to take
her place. She did – and was a triumph, being lauded as
the darling of London’s burgeoning light-opera scene.
Though Soldene’s career so far had been impressive,
it was not unique. But in 1871 she was given the job of
producer and director at a new theatre in Islington, the
Philharmonic. Her first decision was to première Offen-
bach’s Genevieve of Brabant, in which she also starred.
The production was a sensation, running for 18 months.
Every night, liveried carriages lined both sides of Islington
High Street, with duchesses content to sit in the stalls, the
boxes all being sold out. Soldene attributed her success to
picking the best-looking women for the chorus and hiring
a banned troop of cancan dancers led by one “Wiry Sal”.Breaking the States
By this time, Soldene had a lively and – unusually, for
a Victorian woman – very social life. She weekended in
Brighton, attended races, played poker, smoked, drank
brandy, and ate lavish dinners with the most fashionable
men in the country. Still she wanted more. In 1874, she
formed her own production company and hired the
Lyceum Theatre in London. She had no capital, and it was a
huge financial risk. As wives were still seen as the property
of their husbands, it was difficult for a woman to run a
business. Fortunately, Soldene’s husband, John, was
compliant, and she opened with The Grand Duchess.
Following this success, the US beckoned, and she
embarked on a tour. The Soldene Opera Bouffe Company
delighted Broadway audiences, and she became just as
popular across the Atlantic as she was in England. A range
of “Soldene” clothes was launched, her face adorned sauce
bottles, and a gala ball held in her honour in New York
City sold out. The only criticism levelled at her was about
her weight, to which she retorted: “Everybody can’t be as
fat as a stoat nailed on a barn door.”
Soldene travelled constantly throughout the 1870s and
80s, embracing one improbable adventure after the next.
She drank brandy at Niagara Falls, was poisoned by
sulphurous air in the Nevada mining town of Eureka, andEmily Soldene
Actress, writer, rebel
As the darling of London’s opera scene, and then as a journalist printing scandalous
revelations about the cream of society, Emily Soldene thrived in the limelight.
HELEN BATTEN explains why this trendsetting, rule-breaking, genre-hopping
Victorian celebrity deserves to take centre stage once more
She attributed
her success to
picking the best-
looking women for
the chorus and
hiring a troop of
cancan dancers
Amazing Lives
ON THE