The Simonsens of St Kilda:
A Family of Singers
Roger Neill
The fascinating true story of a family of singers and their pioneering opera company. Two became international stars in Europe and America, while another went to prison in San Francisco for robbery.
Available from the following booksellers – click on buttons below:
Extract
Read the Preface of The Simonsens of St Kilda by Roger Neill …
“Extraordinarily, twelve of the children and grandchildren of Martin and Fanny Simonsen became professional singers, several of them performing members of the Simonsens’ pioneering opera company, which toured Australia and New Zealand in the late nineteenth century”
Their home base was a noisy house of song in St Kilda, Melbourne. Two of the family members became international stars: daughter Frances Saville became a prima donna in Mahler’s famous company in Vienna, while granddaughter Frances Alda rose to star at the Met in New York alongside the legendary tenor Caruso and conductor Toscanini.
Latest Blogs
Bewitching: Frances Alda, the once forgotten rival of Nellie Melba
BEWITCHING: Frances Alda, the once forgotten rival of Nellie Melba Whilst Melba is well known to Australians, one of the nation’s icons, Alda has been substantially forgotten. Yet she was one of the world’s greatest sopranos, sufficiently outstanding to have been...
Phoebus Apollo driving the Horses of the Sun
Phoebus Apollo driving the Horses of the SunWaking in Australia, first light streaming through the window, or better still noticing dawn creeping over the horizon from the inside of the early morning flight over the mountains towards Botany Bay, one is immediately...
Empress Elisabeth of Austria goes hunting at Astrop
Empress Elisabeth of Austria goes hunting at AstropI’ve recently been doing some work on the decline and fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and on the rise of opera in Naples, and it all jogged my memory of the day that the Empress Elisabeth of Austria went hunting...
My Life In Art
My Life In ArtI grew up in a house in the English Midlands with few pictures on the walls, but nothing I recognised as ‘art’, and it was only when I took a job in advertising in London in the mid-1960s that I decided to explore that world. So, on my way to and from...
Reviews
“Having been brought up myself in Melbourne, the story of all the Simonsens of St Kilda is absolutely fascinating – brought vividly to life by Roger Neill”
Danielle de Niese
‘Here we have another mighty step in the chronicling of Australia’s musical history’
Kurt Gänzl