Mrs Howard Paul

Isabella Hill (1 April 1833 – 6 June 1879), better known as Mrs Howard Paul, was an English actress, operatic singer and actress-manager of the Victorian era, best remembered for creating the role of Lady Sangazure in the Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera The Sorcerer (1877).

Her stage career began in 1853 in London in ballad operas, such as The Beggar's Opera. In 1854 she married the American writer Henry Howard Paul, in whose comic entertainments the two performed for much of the next two decades, often on tour, both in Britain and America. She was popular for her musical impersonations of singers of the day. She also played in Victorian burlesque and other theatrical roles, among the best known of which was her Lady Macbeth at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in 1869. Various composers wrote songs for her to premiere.

After The Sorcerer, Gilbert and Sullivan cast Mrs Paul in their next opera, H.M.S. Pinafore, but her vocal abilities had declined so much by that point that they cut parts of her role, and she resigned from the production.

Mrs Howard Paul was born as Isabella Hill at Dartford in Kent, the daughter of George Thomas Hill, a leather merchant. She was educated in France and Italy, and studied singing under the composer and teacher George French Flowers, whose biographer Louisa Middleton rates her as "perhaps his most distinguished" pupil.

Under the name Isabella Featherstone she began her stage career as a member of the Strand Theatre company in London. There, in January 1853, she played Tom Tug in Charles Dibdin's ballad opera The Waterman. According to the theatrical newspaper The Era, she made a great hit. She appeared briefly at the Theatre Royal, Cork the following month, returning to the Strand in March to play Captain Macheath en travesti in The Beggar's Opera. In April she was cast as Margery in Thomas Arne's Love in a Village at the Strand. The Era commented, "We take the opportunity of predicting for her much future success. She has an excellent voice and is by no means devoid of acting capabilities." After this, she played Lucy Lockit in The Beggar's Opera.

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