Clara Butt

Life

Her debut celebrated at the Royal Albert Hall ( London) in Sir Arthur Sullivans The Golden Legend. She took, often together with the pianist Lillian Bryant, several gramophone records on. Agnes Elizabeth Overbeck accompanied them also before 1904 at the piano.

In 1900 she married the baritone Kennerley Rumford. Clara Butt sang in the context of many important festivals and concerts and was honored by Queen Victoria, Edward VII and George V with royal honors.

For charitable services in the First World War, she was raised as Dame Commander of the British Empire (DBE ) in the peerage in 1920.

In the 1920s, she contracted spinal cancer, continued her work but largely continued. In many of her later recordings she was in a wheelchair.

Clara Butt died at the age of 63 years.