Humour and Classical Music: 18. Anna Russell
by David Barker

When I look back at the previous seventeen articles in this series, I am somewhat embarrassed to note that the only one to feature women is that on Salut Salon (unless one counts Marge and Lisa Simpson). This is not, I assure you, due to some misogynistic streak, but simply a distinct lack of women connected to both classical music and humour. Fortunately, here in Number 18, I can do something to ever so slightly correct the imbalance.

Anna Russell was born in London in 1911, and studied at the Royal College of Music. She claimed that her graduation recital at the RCM was stopped by a judge who asked whether her singing was a joke. This story did come from one of her comedy routines, so may not be entirely (or at all) accurate. In 1939 after her father’s death, she moved with her Canadian-born mother to Toronto, Canada.

Soon after arriving in Canada, she began appearing on local radio as an “entertainer”, but it is not clear what type, and the information I have available to me doesn’t explain where her inspiration to become a comedian came from. Nevertheless, by 1942, she was performing a solo stage show, doing parodies of musicians. Her big break came in 1944 when she was invited to be part of the Christmas Box Symphony Concert, organised by the prominent Canadian conductor Ernest MacMillan. By 1948, she had taken her one-woman show to New York City, and then around the English-speaking world. She appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, and performed at the Royal Albert Hall, Sydney Opera House and Carnegie Hall. Her shows appear on at least five albums from Columbia Records. She continued performing into her seventies, her “First” Farewell Concert recorded in 1984. She died in Australia in 2006, aged ninety-four.

So, if like me, you had never heard of Anna Russell before this, you may be wondering about her comedy style. “Deadpan” is the word used in her Wikipedia entry, and I can’t disagree. Her speaking voice is one you don’t hear any more, and I can only describe it as “arch” – very high-pitched with a pronounced upper-class English accent. Much of it was put on for effect; there is a short extract of a Canadian TV interview with her that reveals her usual speaking voice (YouTube). In most of her sketches, she also plays the piano for the parody songs and musical illustrations. Her catchphrase, which became the title of her 1985 autobiography is “I’m not making this up, you know”. Without wishing to give away her best lines, it is probably easiest to give you a sense of her humour with a few examples.

In her best-known (and probably best) sketch, she gives a summary of the plot of Wagner’s Ring Cycle in under half an hour, emphasising its absurdities and parodying some of the arias. The Prelude to Das Rheingold is described as the orchestra playing the chord of E flat major for about six minutes, and the Rheinmaidens as “a sort of aquatic Andrews Sisters”. Towards the end of Götterdämmerung when Siegfried meets Gutrune, she is described as the first woman he has met who isn’t his aunt.

There is a three-part video of her performance of the Ring Cycle on YouTube (Part 1 ~ Part 2 ~ Part 3) and an audio-only one from her 1953 Columbia recording. Both are taken from live performances, and are somewhat different. The video is from later in her career, and is in very mediocre picture quality. It is almost ten minutes longer, partly due to being a little less tightly delivered, but also with extra jokes (the Rheingold Prelude for example), and it is good to see her performing.

Her other well-known sketch is How to Write Your Own Gilbert & Sullivan Opera. Again, it is available on YouTube from a Columbia album. It was taken from a New York performance, and the background of the “opera” is New York. I’m not sure whether she adapted the sketch for performances in different cities. I don’t think it is anywhere near as good as the Wagner sketch, though that may be because I’m not really interested in G&S. For the story of the “opera”, she uses stereotype characters from the New York elite, with names such as Parnassus Q Vanderfeller and his daughter Pneumonia.

Her 1973 performance at the newly opened Sydney Opera House demonstrates that, even in her sixties, she didn’t rely on the old “favourites”, and she was willing and able to develop new material. The show did not include either of the Wagner or G&S sketches, but rather some commentary on the new opera house and opera in general, as well as “analyses” of Nabucco and The Magic Flute (available in good quality sound on YouTube: Introduction & Nabucco ~ The Magic Flute). The material on the opera house was very specific and pertinent to Australian arts of the period, so she had clearly spent a deal of time researching the topic. In her discussion of opera in general, she touches on the disparity in appearance and character in so many operas: the consumptive maiden played by those who look “not in the least consumptive” and the tenor hero/lover who is “generally shortish, barrel-chested, with a moon-face”. Her treatment of the two operas is actually relatively straight, describing the stories of each fairly accurately. The fantastical nature of the Mozart does allow plenty of scope for laughs without overdoing it, while I’m not sufficiently familiar with Nabucco to get all of her jokes, but the audience certainly seemed to.

Her Survey of Singing from Madrigals to Opera (recorded in 1955 – YouTube) includes much more singing than  her opera sketches, singing parodies, ranging from madrigals, cantatas, coloratura arias and modern opera. These are substantial pieces, some more than four minutes long, and presumably because of this, she doesn’t accompany herself. In one, she strays into PDQ Bach territory with a selection from The Ill-Tempered Clavicle (or to be more accurate, she beats Peter Schickele to the punch by at least a decade). At times, her singing moves into the territory of Florence Foster Jenkins, the so-called “world’s worst opera singer”. While Jenkins was always totally serious about her craft, Russell of course is playing up the terrible over-the-top singing. She finishes the half hour sketch with two arias from fake operas, Anaemia and The Psychiatrist, which she supposedly sang with the Ellis Island Opera Company. Her take on contemporary opera shows sharp satire: she sees it as covering the same themes as grand opera, but “backwards”. A typical example would then be that the heroine dies of TB at the start of the opera whilst in an institution, and the main action concentrates on the mismanagement of the institution by government. (I realise this might spoil your listening, but felt it showed the range of her comedy).

The above doesn’t cover her entire repertoire – I will leave you to discover more of it on YouTube if you wish. Looking back at Anna Russell’s career, I’m not sure which surprises me more: that a career parodying and satirising classical music would be a success, or that in the still conservative 1940s and early 50s, it was a woman who created and performed the shows. I thought I knew a good deal about the history of comedy, so was surprised not to have known about Anna Russell before this. I am very glad to have made her acquaintance, and so will you.