Clara Butt - 20th Century

20th Century

On June 26, 1900 she married the baritone Kennerly Rumford and, thereafter, would often appear with him in concerts. The couple eventually had three children, two sons and a daughter. Besides singing in many important festivals and concerts, she was honoured with royal commands to appear before Queen Victoria, King Edward VII, and King George V. She made tours of Australia, Japan, Canada, the United States and to many European cities.

During World War I, she organised and sang in many concerts for service charities, and for this she was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 1920 civilian war honours. That year she sang four performances of Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice at Covent Garden, with Miriam Licette, under the baton of Sir Thomas Beecham. According to The Times she 'played fast and loose with the time and spoilt the phrasing' and it appears not to have been a success. It was her only appearance in grand opera.

Butt's three sisters were also singers. One, Ethel Hook, became a famous contralto in her own right, made some solo recordings, and in 1926 appeared in an early sound film made in the Lee De Forest Phonofilm sound-on-film process.

In later life, Clara Butt was dogged by tragedies. Her elder son died of meningitis while still at school, and the younger one committed suicide. During the 1920s, she became seriously ill with cancer of the spine. She made many of her later records seated in a wheelchair. She died in 1936, age 63, at her home in North Stoke, Oxfordshire, reportedly as a result of an accident she had suffered in 1931. It is not clear how ill she was with the spinal cancer at the time of her death. Her voice can still be heard on CD transfers of her 78-rpm recordings.