The Anna Bishop Story
If you think Nellie Melba was the first travelling Diva, you’d be wrong.
Anna Bishop – scandalous, charismatic and adored – was the FIRST EVER truly international, adventurous diva, who blazed a path for women artists of all genres.
Born a few years before Queen Victoria, she lived in an age when middle-class women were under strict norms of behaviour, where the only woman accepted with a career was The Queen.
Her life was remarkable in its freedom and ended just as the first murmurings of the English Suffragette movement were emerging. She was however, instrumental in the American Suffragette movement in the mid c19, and a champion of womens rights altogether.
Highly charismastic, this adventurous Diva travelled and performed to great acclaim and adoration to all known parts of the globe. To date is still known to have performed for more people in their own land than any other singer.
A winner-takes-all risk taker, she did anything a woman was not permitted to do — including eloping with her lover, and forming an enviable career and life of excitement.
Her life is an incredible story with one unbelievable event after another: enchanting the Royal Courts of Europe; charming audiences in the Goldfields of Australia; sharing the stage with Lola Montez; avoiding the American Civil war, and African tribal skirmishes; enduring a cholera epidemic; being held hostage by banditos in Mexico; surviving a shipwreck 1400 miles from land and being saved from a tiger attack in India – the list goes on! Most of her travel was done by carriage and ship — while the rail network was in its infancy.
Together with talented pianist, ‘Charles Lascelles’, the Anna Bishop Project aims to celebrate Anna Bishop through the creation of a music show about the great diva and her accompanist, reliving the magnificent adventures, sharing the soul-enriching music and highlighting the courage and talents of this acclaimed artist.
Just as Anna Bishop did, the show is designed to tour so that those communities in Australia who originally hosted Anna may enjoy her spirit again.
I am raising funds to get this show on the road. If you would like to be a part of contributing to an adventurous Arts venture, a tax deductible donation to my crowdfunding page would be gratefully received.
The link is:
Please feel free to sign up to my mailing list for updates on my shows, or make contact via the ‘Contact Us’ on this site.
I look forward to sharing Anna Bishop’s story with you….. for a taste of what she sang, here’s a little something I prepared earlier!
Wednesday Lunchtime Concert 9 September, 2020 @ Wesley Music Centre, Forrest, ACT
Sarahlouise Owens (soprano) & Natalia Tkachenko (piano), “The Bishop Victoriana”
Excerpt from preliminary script by Melvyn Morrow
cantaviva.com 