Emma Howson

Emma Howson (28 March 1844 – 28 May 1928) was an Australian opera singer and actress primarily known as the creator of the principal soprano role of Josephine in the Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera H.M.S. Pinafore.

She began her operatic career in Australia as a teen. In her early 20s Howson's family moved to America, where she played leading roles in opera, Victorian burlesque, other dramatic forms, and on the concert stage. After vocal studies in Italy, she continued her career in England where, in 1878, she joined Richard D'Oyly Carte's company to originate the role of Josephine. In the early 1880s, she returned to the US where she continued to perform and, within a decade, retired to teach music.

Early life and career Howson was born in Hobart Town, Tasmania, and performed as a child in concerts with her father, Frank (a baritone and conductor) and her brothers. She was the niece of opera singer Emma Albertazzi (also born Emma Howson). Her father, with his tenor brother, John, moved to Sydney in 1845 and remained based there until 1866 when, at the suggestion of American actor Joseph Jefferson, the family moved to the United States. One of Howson's early mentors and teachers in Sydney was the English contralto Sara Flower. As a teen, Howson performed roles in such operas as The Night Dancers, The Mountain Sylph, The Rose of Castille, Il Trovatore and the opera adaptation of Guy Mannering, as well as in pantomime, Victorian burlesque, and on the concert stage.

In America, Howson performed in English-language opera as Amina in La Sonnambula (1866) as well as in comedy, drama, farce and burlesque with her family. Over the next three years in her engagements in California, including as the leading lady in La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein, La belle Hélène and Barbe-bleue, she earned critical acclaim as "the best operatic artist now in California". In the early 1890s, she retired from the stage and settled in Brooklyn, New York, where she taught music.

Howson died in New York in June 1928 at the age of 84 and was buried in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn. Her nephew was the actor Albert Howson.