Dame Clara Butt, a most fantastic Contralto of yesteryear, here singing one of my favourite pieces, Hatton's "The Enchantress". As far as I am aware, this is the only professional recording out there. Please, all you Contralto's out there: make a recording of this and put it on YouTube! Both myself, and all the followers of Contralto Corner, will be forever grateful.
Below is a story of Butt's audition for the Royal Academy of Music. I'll quote it in it's entirety, as it's quite funny:
Below is a story of Butt's audition for the Royal Academy of Music. I'll quote it in it's entirety, as it's quite funny:
"In January 1890 she auditioned for a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music in London. The examiners sat up and took notice when a very pretty girl, already over six feet two inches in height, walked on and boomed out the octave leap from E to E that begins Hatton’s song “The Enchantress”. Miss Butt noticed the growing excitement of the examiners but believed they were laughing at her, so when she came to the line “Kings have trembled when I came, reading doom upon my face!” she sank down to the low E with all the power she could muster. “I don’t know about the Kings,” said Dame Clara many years later, “but those examiners, they certainly trembled!” When Miss Butt was asked to sing something quieter, she chose Mendelssohn’s “Woe unto them!” She got her scholarship. Her teacher was Henry Blower."
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