December 27 is the birthday of Anna Russell (1911-2006), English–Canadian singer and comedienne. Russell gave many concerts in which she sang and played comic musical sketches on the piano. Among her best-known works are her concert performances and famous recordings of The Ring of the Nibelungs (An Analysis) – a humorous 30-minute synopsis of Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen – and (on the same album) her parody How to Write Your Own Gilbert and Sullivan Opera.
Born in Maida Vale, London, England, as Anna Claudia Russell-Brown, she was educated at St Felix School at Southwold, Suffolk, at Harrogate College and in Brussels and Paris. She studied at the Royal College of Music. Russell had a difficult childhood, and particularly a difficult relationship with her mother. Russell was twice married and divorced, first to John Denison and second to artist Charles Goldhamer.
Russell's early career included a few engagements in opera as well as appearances as a folk singer on BBC radio in 1931. Russell's mother was Canadian, and the family returned in 1939 to Toronto, after her father's death, where she began to appear on local radio stations as an entertainer. By 1940, she began to find success as a soloist, a parodist, and a comedienne.
Russell became known for her deadpan humor, including her disbelieving emphasis of the absurd in well accepted stories and her mockery of pretension. For example, in her humorous analysis of Wagner's Ring cycle, she began by noting that the first scene takes place in the River Rhine: "In it!!" After pointing out that a character in the Ring Cycle is the first woman that Siegfried has ever met who is not his aunt, she pauses and declares, "I'm not making this up, you know!" This phrase also became the title of her autobiography, published in 1985. At the end of her monologue she sings the Rhinemaidens' leitmotif and declares, "You're exactly where you started, 20 hours ago!" Besides her Ring and Gilbert and Sullivan parodies, Russell was famous for other routines, including "Wind Instruments I Have Known", and parodies of Lieder ("Schlumpf"), French art songs ("Je ne veux pas faire l'amour" and "Je n'ai pas la plume de ma tante"), English folk songs ("I Wish I Were a Dicky-Bird" and "Oh How I Love the Spring"), and English music-hall songs ("I'm Only A Faded Rose"); even stretching to blues and jazz ("(I Gave You My Heart and You Made Me) Miserable").
Perhaps the apotheosis of Russell's Wagner Ring parody came during the celebrations of the Cycle's 100th Anniversary in 1976 when Wolfgang Wagner held a dinner and musical soiree featuring lighter entertainment based on his grandfather's music. The program included some Chabrier adaptations into waltzes and polkas, and was capped by playing Russell's Ring send-up for his guests.
Russell composed, wrote, and performed her own material for Columbia Records, was the author of The Power of Being a Positive Stinker (1955) and the Anna Russell Songbook (1958), and was the President of the B & R Music Publishing Company. She received the Canadian Women's Press Club Award in 1956 as the best Canadian comedy writer of the year. Giving advice on how to be a successful singer, she quipped that although a glorious voice was important, "it helps to be an independently wealthy, politically motivated, back-stabbing bitch."
Russell retired to Unionville, Ontario, Canada, in the late 1960s, living on a street named after her, but she went on several "farewell" tours in the 1970s and 1980s, including one-woman shows at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and Carnegie Hall parodying opera divas who did the same. In 1980 she played Helga ten Dorp opposite Charles Dennis's Sidney Bruhl in Deathtrap at the Grand Theatre in London, Ontario.
In her last years she moved to Australia, to be cared for by Deirdre Prussak, a fan who became Russell's close friend for over 50 years. Russell and Prussak had developed a kind of mother-daughter relationship. Russell died in Rosedale, New South Wales, near Batemans Bay. Prussak was the author of Anna in a Thousand Cities, a memoir of Anna Russell's life.
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Born in Maida Vale, London, England, as Anna Claudia Russell-Brown, she was educated at St Felix School at Southwold, Suffolk, at Harrogate College and in Brussels and Paris. She studied at the Royal College of Music. Russell had a difficult childhood, and particularly a difficult relationship with her mother. Russell was twice married and divorced, first to John Denison and second to artist Charles Goldhamer.
Russell's early career included a few engagements in opera as well as appearances as a folk singer on BBC radio in 1931. Russell's mother was Canadian, and the family returned in 1939 to Toronto, after her father's death, where she began to appear on local radio stations as an entertainer. By 1940, she began to find success as a soloist, a parodist, and a comedienne.
Russell became known for her deadpan humor, including her disbelieving emphasis of the absurd in well accepted stories and her mockery of pretension. For example, in her humorous analysis of Wagner's Ring cycle, she began by noting that the first scene takes place in the River Rhine: "In it!!" After pointing out that a character in the Ring Cycle is the first woman that Siegfried has ever met who is not his aunt, she pauses and declares, "I'm not making this up, you know!" This phrase also became the title of her autobiography, published in 1985. At the end of her monologue she sings the Rhinemaidens' leitmotif and declares, "You're exactly where you started, 20 hours ago!" Besides her Ring and Gilbert and Sullivan parodies, Russell was famous for other routines, including "Wind Instruments I Have Known", and parodies of Lieder ("Schlumpf"), French art songs ("Je ne veux pas faire l'amour" and "Je n'ai pas la plume de ma tante"), English folk songs ("I Wish I Were a Dicky-Bird" and "Oh How I Love the Spring"), and English music-hall songs ("I'm Only A Faded Rose"); even stretching to blues and jazz ("(I Gave You My Heart and You Made Me) Miserable").
Perhaps the apotheosis of Russell's Wagner Ring parody came during the celebrations of the Cycle's 100th Anniversary in 1976 when Wolfgang Wagner held a dinner and musical soiree featuring lighter entertainment based on his grandfather's music. The program included some Chabrier adaptations into waltzes and polkas, and was capped by playing Russell's Ring send-up for his guests.
Russell composed, wrote, and performed her own material for Columbia Records, was the author of The Power of Being a Positive Stinker (1955) and the Anna Russell Songbook (1958), and was the President of the B & R Music Publishing Company. She received the Canadian Women's Press Club Award in 1956 as the best Canadian comedy writer of the year. Giving advice on how to be a successful singer, she quipped that although a glorious voice was important, "it helps to be an independently wealthy, politically motivated, back-stabbing bitch."
Russell retired to Unionville, Ontario, Canada, in the late 1960s, living on a street named after her, but she went on several "farewell" tours in the 1970s and 1980s, including one-woman shows at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and Carnegie Hall parodying opera divas who did the same. In 1980 she played Helga ten Dorp opposite Charles Dennis's Sidney Bruhl in Deathtrap at the Grand Theatre in London, Ontario.
In her last years she moved to Australia, to be cared for by Deirdre Prussak, a fan who became Russell's close friend for over 50 years. Russell and Prussak had developed a kind of mother-daughter relationship. Russell died in Rosedale, New South Wales, near Batemans Bay. Prussak was the author of Anna in a Thousand Cities, a memoir of Anna Russell's life.
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