Olive Rae

Olive Margaret Milne Rae (1878–1933) was a Scottish soprano concert singer and actress who appeared in comic opera and Edwardian musical comedy in London and on tours of the British provinces. During her brief stage career, she played the May Queen during the original production of Merrie England and created the roles of Titania in A Princess of Kensington (1903) and Lady Violet in The Earl and the Girl (1903–04).

Early life Rae was born in Madras in India in 1878, the oldest of four children of the Rev. George Milne Rae D.D. (1840–1917) and Janet née Gibb (1844–1933) who had gone out as missionaries to Madras where her father taught at the university and at Madras Christian College. Her mother, writing as Janet Milne Rae, was a Scottish novelist. By 1891 the family had returned to Edinburgh, Scotland, where Olive Rae lived with her parents and siblings Maitland Milne Rae (1880–1961) Lettice Milne Rae (1882–1959) and Grace Milne Rae (1886–). During this period, her father published The Syrian Church in India (1892) and Connection between Old and New Testaments (1904), and was prominent in the United Free Church of Scotland. Rae studied in Paris under Jacques Bouhy; The Tatler later commented that "her style and method certainly do the famous Parisian teacher and his pupil infinite credit." She followed this later the same year with an appearances at the Steinway Hall and the Derby Temperance Hall with the bass Sydney Poyser, when they were both praised "for the charm and intelligence of their performances". with the reviewer of The Tatler writing of her:

Miss Rae's voice is a bright and flexible soprano of most sympathetic quality, which she uses with great taste and intelligence. She gave an admirable rendering of a dozen songs in French, German, Italian, and English, revealing a quite remarkable purity of enunciation and no little distinction of style. Miss Rae is still very young, and in addition to her accomplishments as a singer she has a singularly bright and attractive personality. in The Earl and the Girl at the Adelphi Theatre and the Lyric Theatre (1903–04). While performing in this musical in the evenings, she played the Princess in 23 matinee performances of Little Hans Andersen at the Adelphi Theatre.

After this, she returned to her family in Scotland, where she gave concerts, for example at St Andrews in 1909. She never married.