Quote from insert to The Anna Russell Album tape:

   Patti, Melba, Ponselle, Flagstad, Russell.  Russell?  Had the gods
   smiled upon the efforts of a young and determined English singer more
   than half a century ago, that litany would not sound odd at all.
   Instead of smiling, however, the gods laughed.  So, for that matter,
   did everyone else within earshot.  And to her everlasting credit,
   Anna Russell, on her way to becoming just another failed opera singer,
   realized that her voice could be the medium for a far greater gift
   - her ingenious sense of humor. [....]

   Born Anna Claudia Russell-Brown, she grew up surrounded by the starchy
   nannies, potted palms and potty relations that characterized London's
   genteel life before World War I.  After a series of Quaker, convent,
   boarding and finishing schools, she spent five years at the Royal
   College of Music, where, apart from studying piano, composition and
   cello, she eventually learned that "if you go there with a tin voice,
   you'll come back with a 'loud' tin voice."  That revelation came,
   however, after her desperately slow progress as a lyric soprano on
   the British concert circuit.

   The outbreak of World War II obliged Anna and her mother to leave
   London for Toronto, where she began to appear on local radio stations,
   entertaining military personnel.  Soon she was touring the provinces
   with a troop show, composing and arranging all her own material.
   Catching her act, Sir Ernest MacMillan, director of the Toronto
   Symphony, invited her to appear as soloist with his orchestra, and
   the debut was a triumph punctuated with spontaneous laughter and
   applause.

   Her subsequent campaign to conquer New York took a bit longer, however.
   Refused by every management, she hired Town Hall for a recital in
   1948.  Only 250 friends showed up (leaving 1250 empty seats).  But
   the critics were encouraging.  Three years later she attacked again.
   This time over 1100 people came, while every major critic in atendance
   proclaimed Anna Russell one of the great artists of the day.
   Thereafter, she belonged to the world, a star at virtually every
   important music festival, not to mention her appearance with major
   symphony orchestras, on radio and television.

   [....] If Anna Russell proved one thing in her career as a humorist,
   it is that the essence of a successful musical satire is affection
   for the original.  [....] - but her undoubted masterpiece is the
   analysis of Wagner's Ring, which she has called 'the only grand opera
   that comes in the giant economy package.'  To call it funny is to
   understate the obvious.  More important, however, beneath the laughter
   is an accurate musical and dramatic analysis of the tetralogy that
   countless university lecturers might envy.  And the better you know
   your Wagner, the funnier hers will be.

             .... Barrymore Laurence Scherer

Mary Esterheld <[log in to unmask]>