Sir George Power, 7th Baronet
Encyclopedia
George Power was an operatic tenor
known for his performances in early Gilbert and Sullivan
operas with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company
, most famously creating the roles in London of Ralph Rackstraw in H.M.S. Pinafore
(1878) and Frederic in The Pirates of Penzance
(1880).
He later became a noted voice teacher and continued to perform. On the death of his elder brother, in 1903, he became the seventh baronet of Kilfane
.
, Kilkenny
, and Frances Elizabeth, née Wade. He was educated at Cheltenham College
and Trinity College, Dublin
, and studied voice in Milan and Florence, 1873–76.
In 1876, Power first appeared on stage at the Teatro Manoel in Malta
, singing Count Almaviva in The Barber of Seville
. He made his London stage debut in 1877 at Her Majesty's Theatre
playing the tenor role in Thomas Haynes Bayly
's English version of Adolphe Adam
's opera The Swiss Cottage.
Power joined Richard D'Oyly Carte
's Comedy-Opera Company in February 1878 at the Opera Comique
in London, succeeding George Bentham in the role of Alexis in Gilbert and Sullivan
's comic opera
The Sorcerer
. From March to April 1878 Power played the Defendant in Trial by Jury
when that companion piece was added to the bill at the Opera Comique. He created the role of Ralph Rackstraw in the next Gilbert and Sullivan opera, H.M.S. Pinafore
, playing the character from May 1878 to February 1880. The Daily News
wrote that Power "displayed a light tenor voice of very agreeable quality, and acted the part of the sentimental lover well", although The Times found his intonation "a little uncertain".
When The Pirates of Penzance
premiered in London, Power sang the role of Frederic. Power received warm reviews for this role from the London press. The Times said that his "sympathetic tenor voice was heard to great advantage in the sentimental music", and The Standard wrote that he "acts ... just in that simple-minded way that brings out most strongly the absurdity of the character, and he sings exceedingly well." A critic from The New York Times
, however, commented: "Temple has been a member of the Gilbert-Sullivan company from the first. Mr George Power has not: and his "thin" style is a material drawback. As an actor, he is weak, as a man he is not interesting, as a tenor he is small. Once or twice he sang sweetly, and he was always in tune. As a concert singer he would probably be very successful in sentimental ballads; as Frederic he is unsatisfactory."
During the run of Pirates, Power took part in some Sunday matinée performances of new operettas along with Rutland Barrington
, and on one occasion acted in a non-musical play, L'Aventurière, given in the original French by a cast headed by Herbert Beerbohm Tree
. Power played Frederic until October 1880, when he left the D'Oyly Carte company.
. In August 1881, he created the role of Charles Lorrimore in the Edward Solomon
and Henry Pottinger Stephens
comic opera Claude Duval
at the Olympic Theatre
. The production ran for only 54 performances, and Power left the production three days before it closed in October. He then became a teacher of singing, continuing to make occasional appearances on the stage during the next twenty years. In 1885 he played Colonel Sylvester in a new operetta, When One Door Shuts Another Opens by Harriet Young and Charles Thomas. His students included the popular Russian tenor, Vladimir Rosing
.
When his elder brother Sir Adam Clayton Power (1844–1903) died, Power succeeded to his family's hereditary baronet
cy as the seventh baronet of Kilfane
. Together with Jessie Bond
, Leonora Braham
and Julia Gwynne
, he was one of four artistes of the original D'Oyly Carte Opera Company
who attended a reunion at the Savoy Hotel
in 1914. The four then posed for a group photograph beside Arthur Sullivan's monument in the Victoria Embankment Gardens
.
On 2 September 1915, Power married Eva Gertrude Boulton (1864–1952), the daughter of Sir Samuel Bagster Boulton
and Sophia Louisa Cooper. There were no children, and the Power baronetcy ended on his death in 1928.
Power died in Kensington
, London, aged 81.
Tenor
The tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...
known for his performances in early Gilbert and Sullivan
Gilbert and Sullivan
Gilbert and Sullivan refers to the Victorian-era theatrical partnership of the librettist W. S. Gilbert and the composer Arthur Sullivan . The two men collaborated on fourteen comic operas between 1871 and 1896, of which H.M.S...
operas with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company
D'Oyly Carte Opera Company
The D'Oyly Carte Opera Company was a professional light opera company that staged Gilbert and Sullivan's Savoy operas. The company performed nearly year-round in the UK and sometimes toured in Europe, North America and elsewhere, from the 1870s until it closed in 1982. It was revived in 1988 and...
, most famously creating the roles in London of Ralph Rackstraw in H.M.S. Pinafore
H.M.S. Pinafore
H.M.S. Pinafore; or, The Lass That Loved a Sailor is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and a libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It opened at the Opera Comique in London, England, on 25 May 1878 and ran for 571 performances, which was the second-longest run of any musical...
(1878) and Frederic in The Pirates of Penzance
The Pirates of Penzance
The Pirates of Penzance; or, The Slave of Duty is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. The opera's official premiere was at the Fifth Avenue Theatre in New York City on 31 December 1879, where the show was well received by both audiences...
(1880).
He later became a noted voice teacher and continued to perform. On the death of his elder brother, in 1903, he became the seventh baronet of Kilfane
Power Baronets
There have been three Baronetcies created for persons with the surname Power, all in the Baronetage of the United Kingdom.The Power Baronetcy, of Kilfane in the County of Tipperary, was created in the Baronetage of the United Kingdom on 15 July 1836 for John Power...
.
Early years
Power was born in Dublin, the fourth son of Sir John Power of KilfaneKilfane
The name of old gardens and townland outside of Thomastown in County Kilkenny Ireland.This is in the parish of TullaherinThis is also the site of a 13th century church, now in ruins, has an adjoining castellated presbytery or stone house...
, Kilkenny
Kilkenny
Kilkenny is a city and is the county town of the eponymous County Kilkenny in Ireland. It is situated on both banks of the River Nore in the province of Leinster, in the south-east of Ireland...
, and Frances Elizabeth, née Wade. He was educated at Cheltenham College
Cheltenham College
Cheltenham College is a co-educational independent school, located in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, England.One of the public schools of the Victorian period, it was opened in July 1841. An Anglican foundation, it is known for its classical, military and sporting traditions.The 1893 book Great...
and Trinity College, Dublin
Trinity College, Dublin
Trinity College, Dublin , formally known as the College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Queen Elizabeth near Dublin, was founded in 1592 by letters patent from Queen Elizabeth I as the "mother of a university", Extracts from Letters Patent of Elizabeth I, 1592: "...we...found and...
, and studied voice in Milan and Florence, 1873–76.
In 1876, Power first appeared on stage at the Teatro Manoel in Malta
Malta
Malta , officially known as the Republic of Malta , is a Southern European country consisting of an archipelago situated in the centre of the Mediterranean, south of Sicily, east of Tunisia and north of Libya, with Gibraltar to the west and Alexandria to the east.Malta covers just over in...
, singing Count Almaviva in The Barber of Seville
The Barber of Seville
The Barber of Seville, or The Futile Precaution is an opera buffa in two acts by Gioachino Rossini with a libretto by Cesare Sterbini. The libretto was based on Pierre Beaumarchais's comedy Le Barbier de Séville , which was originally an opéra comique, or a mixture of spoken play with music...
. He made his London stage debut in 1877 at Her Majesty's Theatre
Her Majesty's Theatre
Her Majesty's Theatre is a West End theatre, in Haymarket, City of Westminster, London. The present building was designed by Charles J. Phipps and was constructed in 1897 for actor-manager Herbert Beerbohm Tree, who established the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art at the theatre...
playing the tenor role in Thomas Haynes Bayly
Thomas Haynes Bayly
Thomas Haynes Bayly was an English poet, songwriter, dramatist, and miscellaneous writer.The son of a wealthy lawyer in Bath, Bayly intended to become an attorney like his father, but he changed his mind and thought of entering the church, but he abandoned this idea also and gave himself to...
's English version of Adolphe Adam
Adolphe Adam
Adolphe Charles Adam was a French composer and music critic. A prolific composer of operas and ballets, he is best known today for his ballets Giselle and Le corsaire , his operas Le postillon de Lonjumeau , Le toréador and Si j'étais roi , and his Christmas...
's opera The Swiss Cottage.
Power joined Richard D'Oyly Carte
Richard D'Oyly Carte
Richard D'Oyly Carte was an English talent agent, theatrical impresario, composer and hotelier during the latter half of the Victorian era...
's Comedy-Opera Company in February 1878 at the Opera Comique
Opera Comique
The Opera Comique was a 19th-century theatre constructed in Westminster, London, between Wych Street and Holywell Street with entrances on the East Strand. It opened in 1870 and was demolished in 1902, to make way for the construction of the Aldwych and Kingsway...
in London, succeeding George Bentham in the role of Alexis in Gilbert and Sullivan
Gilbert and Sullivan
Gilbert and Sullivan refers to the Victorian-era theatrical partnership of the librettist W. S. Gilbert and the composer Arthur Sullivan . The two men collaborated on fourteen comic operas between 1871 and 1896, of which H.M.S...
's comic opera
Comic opera
Comic opera denotes a sung dramatic work of a light or comic nature, usually with a happy ending.Forms of comic opera first developed in late 17th-century Italy. By the 1730s, a new operatic genre, opera buffa, emerged as an alternative to opera seria...
The Sorcerer
The Sorcerer
The Sorcerer is a two-act comic opera, with a libretto by W. S. Gilbert and music by Arthur Sullivan. It was the British duo's third operatic collaboration. The plot of The Sorcerer is based on a Christmas story, An Elixir of Love, that Gilbert wrote for The Graphic magazine in 1876...
. From March to April 1878 Power played the Defendant in Trial by Jury
Trial by Jury
Trial by Jury is a comic opera in one act, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It was first produced on 25 March 1875, at London's Royalty Theatre, where it initially ran for 131 performances and was considered a hit, receiving critical praise and outrunning its...
when that companion piece was added to the bill at the Opera Comique. He created the role of Ralph Rackstraw in the next Gilbert and Sullivan opera, H.M.S. Pinafore
H.M.S. Pinafore
H.M.S. Pinafore; or, The Lass That Loved a Sailor is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and a libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It opened at the Opera Comique in London, England, on 25 May 1878 and ran for 571 performances, which was the second-longest run of any musical...
, playing the character from May 1878 to February 1880. The Daily News
Daily News (UK)
The Daily News was a national daily newspaper in the United Kingdom.The News was founded in 1846 by Charles Dickens, who also served as the newspaper's first editor. It was conceived as a radical rival to the right-wing Morning Chronicle. The paper was not at first a commercial success...
wrote that Power "displayed a light tenor voice of very agreeable quality, and acted the part of the sentimental lover well", although The Times found his intonation "a little uncertain".
When The Pirates of Penzance
The Pirates of Penzance
The Pirates of Penzance; or, The Slave of Duty is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. The opera's official premiere was at the Fifth Avenue Theatre in New York City on 31 December 1879, where the show was well received by both audiences...
premiered in London, Power sang the role of Frederic. Power received warm reviews for this role from the London press. The Times said that his "sympathetic tenor voice was heard to great advantage in the sentimental music", and The Standard wrote that he "acts ... just in that simple-minded way that brings out most strongly the absurdity of the character, and he sings exceedingly well." A critic from The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, however, commented: "Temple has been a member of the Gilbert-Sullivan company from the first. Mr George Power has not: and his "thin" style is a material drawback. As an actor, he is weak, as a man he is not interesting, as a tenor he is small. Once or twice he sang sweetly, and he was always in tune. As a concert singer he would probably be very successful in sentimental ballads; as Frederic he is unsatisfactory."
During the run of Pirates, Power took part in some Sunday matinée performances of new operettas along with Rutland Barrington
Rutland Barrington
Rutland Barrington was an English singer, actor, comedian, and Edwardian musical comedy star. Best remembered for originating the lyric baritone roles in the Gilbert and Sullivan operas from 1877 to 1896, his performing career spanned more than four decades...
, and on one occasion acted in a non-musical play, L'Aventurière, given in the original French by a cast headed by Herbert Beerbohm Tree
Herbert Beerbohm Tree
Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree was an English actor and theatre manager.Tree began performing in the 1870s. By 1887, he was managing the Haymarket Theatre, winning praise for adventurous programming and lavish productions, and starring in many of its productions. In 1899, he helped fund the...
. Power played Frederic until October 1880, when he left the D'Oyly Carte company.
Later years
In July 1881, Power played Lieut. de Blanc Mange in a short operetta Out of Sight, by Frederick Clay and B. C. StephensonB. C. Stephenson
Benjamin Charles Stephenson or B. C. Stephenson was an English dramatist, lyricist and librettist. After beginning a career in the civil service, he started to write for the theatre, using the pen name "Bolton Rowe". He was author or co-author of several long-running shows of the Victorian theatre...
. In August 1881, he created the role of Charles Lorrimore in the Edward Solomon
Edward Solomon
Edward Solomon was a prolific English composer, as well as a conductor, orchestrator and pianist. Though he died before his fortieth birthday, he wrote dozens of works produced for the stage, including several for the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, such as The Nautch Girl, among others.-Early...
and Henry Pottinger Stephens
Henry Pottinger Stephens
Henry Pottinger Stephens, also known as Henry Beauchamp , was an English dramatist and journalist. With a variety of partners, he wrote burlesques, comic operas and musical comedies that briefly rivalled the Savoy Operas in popular esteem.-Life and career:"Pot" Stephens was born in Barrow-on-Soar,...
comic opera Claude Duval
Claude Duval (opera)
Claude Duval – or Love and Larceny is a comic opera with music by Edward Solomon to a libretto by Henry Pottinger Stephens. The plot is loosely based on supposed events in the life of the eighteenth century highwayman, Claude Duval....
at the Olympic Theatre
Olympic Theatre
The Olympic Theatre, sometimes known as the Royal Olympic Theatre, was a 19th-century London theatre, opened in 1806 and located at the junction of Drury Lane, Wych Street, and Newcastle Street. The theatre specialised in comedies throughout much of its existence...
. The production ran for only 54 performances, and Power left the production three days before it closed in October. He then became a teacher of singing, continuing to make occasional appearances on the stage during the next twenty years. In 1885 he played Colonel Sylvester in a new operetta, When One Door Shuts Another Opens by Harriet Young and Charles Thomas. His students included the popular Russian tenor, Vladimir Rosing
Vladimir Rosing
Vladimir Sergeyevich Rosing , aka Val Rosing, was a Russian-born operatic tenor and stage director who spent most of his professional career in England and the United States...
.
When his elder brother Sir Adam Clayton Power (1844–1903) died, Power succeeded to his family's hereditary baronet
Baronet
A baronet or the rare female equivalent, a baronetess , is the holder of a hereditary baronetcy awarded by the British Crown...
cy as the seventh baronet of Kilfane
Power Baronets
There have been three Baronetcies created for persons with the surname Power, all in the Baronetage of the United Kingdom.The Power Baronetcy, of Kilfane in the County of Tipperary, was created in the Baronetage of the United Kingdom on 15 July 1836 for John Power...
. Together with Jessie Bond
Jessie Bond
Jessie Bond was an English singer and actress best known for creating the mezzo-soprano soubrette roles in the Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas. She spent twenty years on the stage, the bulk of them with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company.Musical from an early age, Bond began a concert singing...
, Leonora Braham
Leonora Braham
Leonora Braham , born Leonora Lucy Abraham, was an English opera singer and actress primarily known as the creator of principal soprano roles in the Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas....
and Julia Gwynne
Julia Gwynne
Julia Gwynne was an English opera singer and actress best remembered for her performances with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company from 1879 to 1883...
, he was one of four artistes of the original D'Oyly Carte Opera Company
D'Oyly Carte Opera Company
The D'Oyly Carte Opera Company was a professional light opera company that staged Gilbert and Sullivan's Savoy operas. The company performed nearly year-round in the UK and sometimes toured in Europe, North America and elsewhere, from the 1870s until it closed in 1982. It was revived in 1988 and...
who attended a reunion at the Savoy Hotel
Savoy Hotel
The Savoy Hotel is a hotel located on the Strand, in the City of Westminster in central London. Built by impresario Richard D'Oyly Carte with profits from his Gilbert and Sullivan operas, the hotel opened on 6 August 1889. It was the first in the Savoy group of hotels and restaurants owned by...
in 1914. The four then posed for a group photograph beside Arthur Sullivan's monument in the Victoria Embankment Gardens
Victoria Embankment
The Victoria Embankment is part of the Thames Embankment, a road and river walk along the north bank of the River Thames in London. Victoria Embankment extends from the City of Westminster into the City of London.-Construction:...
.
On 2 September 1915, Power married Eva Gertrude Boulton (1864–1952), the daughter of Sir Samuel Bagster Boulton
Boulton Baronets
There have been two Baronetcies created for persons with the surname Boulton, both in the Baronetage of the United Kingdom.The Boulton Baronetcy, of Copped Hall, Totteridge, in the County of Hertford, was created in the Baronetage of the United Kingdom for Samuel Bagster Boulton, the founder and...
and Sophia Louisa Cooper. There were no children, and the Power baronetcy ended on his death in 1928.
Power died in Kensington
Kensington
Kensington is a district of west and central London, England within the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. An affluent and densely-populated area, its commercial heart is Kensington High Street, and it contains the well-known museum district of South Kensington.To the north, Kensington is...
, London, aged 81.