Alice Burville

Alice Julia Burville (11 July 1856 – 4 July 1944) was an English soprano and actress, best known for her performances in Gilbert and Sullivan operas and other operettas in the 1870s and 1880s.

Beginning her West End career by 1874, Burville played leading roles in a variety of operettas. She also toured in Britain and America, appearing there with Lydia Thompson's troupe in 1877. She performed frequently with Richard D'Oyly Carte's companies, joining his Comedy-Opera Company at the Opera Comique in 1878–79 where she played a role in a curtain raiser to H.M.S. Pinafore, while covering the role of Josephine in that opera and playing the role occasionally. After another West End role, Burville toured America with Carte, finally playing Lady Angela in Patience with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company in the New York and then on tour in 1881–82. Over the next decade, she continued to star in operettas and pantomimes, primarily on tour in Britain.

Burville was born in Stepney, London. In August 1874 she appeared in Richard D'Oyly Carte's presentation of Gaston Serpette's operetta, La branche cassée at the Opera Comique. Later that year, she made a success in Ten of 'Em, by Franz von Suppé, at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane: "Miss Burville sings a charming song (which she gave with such freshness and effect as to secure an enthusiastic encore.)" This was a curtain raiser for the pantomime Aladdin, in which she also appeared. In 1875, she performed in other West End theatres in London as Princess Fleur d'amour in Hervé's Dagobert (1875) and in the title role in Lecocq's Fleur de thé (1875).

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