Isabelle Urquhart

Isabelle Urquhart (December 9, 1865 – February 7, 1907) was an American stage actress and contralto, noted for her work in comic opera and musical comedy.

Urquhart was born in New York City and claimed to have been educated in a convent.

On February 19, 1881, she made her first stage appearance, as a chorus girl in the Richard D'Oyly Carte and E. E. Rice Opera Companies' production of Billee Taylor at New York's Standard Theatre. She had a small role in an opera called Elves and Mermaids, which lasted only three performances because the manager absconded with the box-office money. She was also in the chorus in another D'Oyly Carte production, Claude Duval, the following season.

Afterwards, Urquhart signed on with Augustin Daly's company from 1882 to 1883, acting in The Passing Regiment, Needles and Pins, and The Squire. In The Squire, the then seventeen-year-old played a ninety-seven-year-old woman, not without some reservations. She was persuaded to return to light opera because it paid better, though she stated in an interview that "I prefer legitimate drama to comic opera". Nonetheless, she had much success, with major roles in the genre, including the hit operetta Erminie, which ran from 1886 to 1888 at the Casino Theatre; Gilbert and Sullivan's The Yeomen of the Guard (1888), as Dame Carruthers; and W. S. Gilbert's translation of Offenbach's Les brigands (1889), as the Princess of Granada. As a leading lady in Erminie, according to a theatre program, she started a fashion trend by foregoing her petticoats "to accentuate her gorgeous figure".

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