Bertha Lewis

Bertha Amy Lewis was an English opera singer and actress primarily known for her performances as principal contralto in the Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company. Born in London and trained at the Royal Academy of Music, Lewis began her professional career as a concert singer. In 1906 she joined the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company on tour, playing smaller roles. The year after her 1908 London début at the Savoy Theatre, she was promoted to playing the principal contralto roles in H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance, The Mikado and the company's other Gilbert and Sullivan repertory. She left the company in 1910 and married the baritone Herbert Heyner, with whom she performed in concerts, among other appearances. Lewis returned to D'Oyly Carte in 1914, resuming her engagement as principal contralto. For more than 16 years, she portrayed all the leading contralto characters in the company's repertory: She died at the age of 43 in 1931 after sustaining fatal injuries in a car accident while on tour. She is sometimes considered the greatest of all the principal contraltos of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company. From Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertha_...) under Creative Commons Attribution CC-BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b...)