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Butt, Dame Clara (1872-1936). English contralto, who studied at the Royal College of Music. Her first major success was as Orpheus in Gluck's opera at the Royal College in 1892. Her career, however, centred on the concert platform, where her tall, imposing figure was matched by a powerful voice. She was particularly associated with the music of Elgar, singing the première of his Sea Pictures (Norwich, 1899).
Dame Clara Ellen Butt
Clara Butt was born in Southwick, Sussex. Her father was a sea captain. In 1880 the family moved to Bristol and Clara was educated at South Bristol High School, where her singing talent was recognised and encouraged. At the request of her headmistress, she was trained by the bass (vocal range) Daniel Rootham and joined the Bristol Festival Chorus, of which he was musical director. In January 1890 she won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music. In her fourth year she spent three months studying in Paris at the expense of Queen Victoria. She also studied in Berlin and Italy. In 1892 she appeared in the title role of Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice, performing the same role at the Lyceum Theatre in London. She went to Paris and made further studies with Jacques Bouhy (the teacher of Louise Homer and Louise Kirby-Lunn) and later with the soprano Etelka Gerster in Berlin.
Camille Saint-Saëns wanted her to study Dalila, but due to laws then extant forbidding the representation of biblical subjects on the British stage, nothing came of it.
She made her professional début at the Royal Albert Hall in London in Sir Arthur Sullivan’s The Golden Legend on 7 December 1892. Soon she had acquired an excellent reputation, aided by her physical presence - she was 6 feet 2 inches tall. She made many gramophone recordings, often accompanied by the (uncredited) pianist Miss Lillian Bryant. She was primarily a concert singer and only ever appeared in two opera productions, both of Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice, in 1892 and 1920.
Clara Butt was the first to perform the solo role in Elgar’s Sea Pictures, a piece especially written for her.
In 1900 she married the baritone Kennerley Rumford, and thenceforth often appeared with him in concerts. Besides singing in many important festivals and concerts, she was honoured with royal commands from Queen Victoria, King Edward VII, and King George V. She made tours to Australia, Japan, Canada, the United States and to many European cities.
During the First World War she organised and sang in many concerts for service charities,
and for this she was appointed
Butt's three sisters were also singers. One of them, Ethel Hook, became a famous artist in her own right and made some superb solo recordings.
In later life Clara Butt was dogged by tragedies. Her elder son died of meningitis while still at school, and the younger committed suicide. During the 1920s she became seriously ill of cancer of the spine, but her faith gave her the strength to continue working. She made many of her later records seated in a wheelchair. She died in 1936 at the age of 63 at her home in North Stoke, Oxfordshire, as a result of an accident she suffered in 1931.
Sir Thomas Beecham once said, jokingly, that "on a clear day, you could have heard her across the English Channel".
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 | British History. A Dictionary of British History. Copyright © 2001, 2004 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Clara Butt". Read more |
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