Blanche Roosevelt

Blanche Roosevelt (born Blanche Isabella Pauline Tucker; 2 October 1853 – 10 September 1898) and his wife Elizabeth Letitia "Lizzie", née Roosevelt. Her sister was Minnie C. T. Love, a physician and suffragist who served in the Colorado House of Representatives. Roosevelt traveled to Europe with her mother for vocal studies in Paris and then in Milan, briefly with Francesco Lamperti.

In 1876, billed as Mlle. Rosavella, she made her singing debut at the Royal Italian Opera House, Covent Garden, London, as Violetta in La Traviata. The Times noted the enthusiastic reception she received from the Covent Garden audience, and the paper's reviewer praised her acting as well as her singing. She went on to sing in concerts in Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and France. She also worked as a correspondent from Paris in 1875 for newspapers in Chicago and London. The music critic in The Morning Post commented, "she has manifest talent and promises well. Her voice is sweet, sympathetic and of considerable compass, and her manner is very light and pleasant". She was then chosen by W. S. Gilbert, Sullivan, and Richard D'Oyly Carte to play Aline in The Sorcerer, and Josephine in the first authentic D'Oyly Carte Pinafore, at New York's Fifth Avenue Theatre, beginning on December 1, 1879. On December 31 of that year, in the same theatre, she created the role of Mabel in The Pirates of Penzance. The New-York Tribune reviewed her as "certainly a pretty object to look upon; she sang creditably; she acted with zeal and good sense." The New York Mercury, however, was unimpressed by her performance, commenting that she and her tenor colleague, Hugh Talbot, were "incapable performers", although they "failed to destroy" the opera. She played Mabel in New York and on tour until March 1880, when she left the company, but she returned briefly as Mabel for performances in Boston from 26 April to 8 May 1880. appearing in its productions, which were financial failures, of Alfred Cellier's The Sultan of Mocha (Union Square Theatre, New York, September 1880) and B. C. Stephenson and Cellier's operatic adaptation of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's The Masque of Pandora (Boston Theatre, January 1881). During this project, Roosevelt became friends with Longfellow.

Later books by Roosevelt, then referred to as the Marchesa d'Alligri (all published posthumously), included Elisabeth of Roumania – a study (Carmen Sylva) (1891), the novel Hazel Fane (1891), Familiar faces – Victorien Sardou: poet, author, and member of the Academy of France; a personal study (1892), and A Riviera Romance (1899).

Later life and fatal accident Roosevelt spent the later years of her life in the south of France.

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