Frances Saville by Reutlinger

as Virginie in "PAUL ET VIRGINIE " by Masse

FRANCES SAVILLE
(Fanny Martina Simonsen)
(6 January 1865 – 8 November 1935)
Soprano
Born in San Francisco in 1865. Her parents managed the Simonsen Grand Opera Company and moved the family to Australia when the company toured here early in Saville's childhood.

She began to study singing with her mother, an accomplished operatic and concert soprano, at the age of thirteen and made her first public peformance in 1882 in a production of Balfe's 'Satanella'.

Saville performed extensively in Sydney and Melbourne throughout the 1880s. She made her final appearance in Australia in a concert at Her Majesty's Theatre, Melbourne in 1891 before heading to Paris where she began her studies with Mathilde Marchesi.

She made her European debut in the role of Juliette at the Theatre de la Monnaie in Brussels on 7 September, 1892 and continued to perform lead roles to great acclaim over the next three years throughout Europe and the United Kingdom. Saville began her first season at New York's Metropolitan Opera in 1895. She made her first recording the same year for Giammi Bettini.

It was during her debut season with the Vienna Court Opera (known as the Hofoper) in 1898 that Saville purchased a property in Styria where she would spend six months of every year after her retirement. Saville's relationship with the director of the Hofoper, Gustav Mahler, became increasingly strained over the next five years. She left the company in 1903 and made her final appearance in an opera as Violetta in Prague on 9 May, 1903.

By 1903 Saville had amassed a considerable fortune, and had recieved numerous honours. Her retirement was spent mainly in Austria where she suffered the loss of her son Frank in 1911 and that of her estranged husband Max Rown soon after. She was forced to leave Austria at the onset of the First World War and eventually returned to Australia where she lived briefly with her sister.

Her final years were spent in California with her niece Daisy before declining health forced her to move to a sanitarium in Belmont where she died on November 8, 1935.