Adelaide Kemble

lithograph of Adelaide Kemble by Richard James Lane

Adelaide Kemble (13 February 1815 – 4 August 1879) was an English opera singer of the Victorian era, and a member of the Kemble family of actors. She was the younger sister of Fanny Kemble, the famous actress and anti-slavery activist. Her father was actor Charles Kemble, her mother Maria Theresa Kemble.

Life

Adelaide studied in London with John Braham and in Italy under the great soprano Giuditta Pasta. On 2 November 1841, she made her first operatic performance on the London stage in Norma.

In 1843 she married

Chopin where, in 1849, he made his London debut. This is now marked by a plaque. She wrote A Week in a French Country House (1867), a bright, humorous story, followed by other, more mediocre tales.^[2] She recorded one interesting incident at a late London concert by Pasta, whose powers had diminished badly, and she asked of fellow singer Pauline Viardot

what she thought of Pasta's voice now and got the reply:

"Ah! It is a ruin, but so is Leonardo's Last Supper."

Her son, the singer Algernon Charles Frederick Sartoris, married Nellie Grant, the daughter of the famous American general and president Ulysses S. Grant, on 21 May 1874 in the East Room of the White House. Their son, Algernon Edward Sartoris, married the granddaughter of the conductor Sir Charles Hallé.

The young

Leighton House and open to the public) in Kensington in London. Mrs. Sartoris and the younger artist, who shortly before his death was granted a peerage, becoming Lord Leighton, maintained a close friendship for the rest of her life.^[3]

Leighton painted several portraits of her daughter, Mary Theodosia (May) Sartoris, who married

Arthur Stanley, 5th Baron Sheffield; their daughter Pamela Stanley (Adelaide's great-granddaughter) was an actress noted for her film and stage portrayals of Queen Victoria

.

Selected works

Sartoris, Adelaide (1867). A Week in a French Country House. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
Sartoris, Adelaide (1880). Past Hours. (two vols.). London: Richard Bentley and Son. Volume 1 • Volume 2

Notes

^ One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Kemble s.v. Adelaide Kemble". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 15 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 723.
^ Chisholm 1911.
^ Barrington, Mrs. Russell (1896). The Life, Letters, and Work of Frederic Leighton. (two vols.). London: George Allen. Volume 1 • Volume 2

[EB1911-1] One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Kemble s.v. Adelaide Kemble". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 15 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 723.

[FOOTNOTEChisholm1911-2] Chisholm 1911.

[3] Barrington, Mrs. Russell (1896). The Life, Letters, and Work of Frederic Leighton. (two vols.). London: George Allen. Volume 1 • Volume 2

[2]

[3]

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