Alice Burville

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Burville as Arabella in Billee Taylor

Alice Julia Burville (11 July 1856 - 4 July 1944) was an English soprano and actress, best known for her performances in Gilbert and Sullivan operas and other operettas in the 1870s and 1880s.

[edit] Life and career

Burville was born in Stepney, England. Her first professional appearance was in 1874 at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in an operetta, Ten of 'Em, by Franz von Suppé. She also performed in La Branche cassée that year. She soon performed in other West End theatres in London as Princess Fleur d'amour in Dagobert (1875), the title role in Fleur de thé (1875), Malvina in The Duke's Daughter (La Timbale d'argent, 1876), and Laurette in La Chanson de Fortunio (1876), as well as touring during this period. She also appeared in Jacques Offenbach's Orphée aux Enfers in London in 1876 and took over the role of Rosalinde in London's first Die Fledermaus, by Johann Strauss II in 1877. She also played the title-rôle in a West End revival of Offenbach's Geneviève de Brabant.

Burville then toured in America in 1877 with Lydia Thompson's troupe, appearing in Offenbach's Blue Beard and Robinson Crusoé, as well as in Oxygen and Piff-Paff, playing, respectively, Fatima, Polly Hopkins, Suzel and Joconde. She returned to London in January 1878, playing in an Offenbach opera. She also played the Duchesse in Le Petit Duc in 1878.

Later in 1878, Burville joined Richard D'Oyly Carte's Comedy-Opera Company at the Opera Comique in the chorus and playing Lady Viola in the curtain raiser The Spectre Knight. She also understudied Emma Howson as Josephine in H.M.S. Pinafore and took over that role periodically in 1878 and 1879. Later in 1879, she played Josephine on tour with D'Oyly Carte. Burville then left the D'Oyly Carte organisation, returning to Drury Lane as Clairette Charles Lecocq's La fille de Madame Angot in 1880. In 1881, she played Arabella Lane with Carte's American Billee Taylor company and then played Lady Angela in Patience with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company in the New York cast at the Standard Theatre in 1881-82.

In 1882, Burville returned to London to play Fiametta in Suppé's Boccaccio. After this engagement, she appeared primarily in the provinces, where she appeared in the title role of Merry Mignon, composed by her husband, John Crook, and starred in The Bachelors (1885). Her last known appearance was in Geneviève de Brabant in Leicester in December 1893.

Burville was married for a brief time, beginning in 1876, to W. H. Denny and then to conductor-composer John Francis Crook (1847-1922), a friend of Alfred Cellier's. She survived Crook for over two decades and died in Littlehampton, England, a week before her 88th birthday. Burville and Crook are buried in the West Norwood Cemetery.