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Genevieve Ward

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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"GENEVIEVE WARD (1837-), English actress, was born in New York March 27 1837, the daughter of Col. Samuel Ward, and at the age of 18 married Count Constantine de Guerbel. She studied singing in Italy and in Paris, and made her first appearance under the stage name of Ginevra Guerrabella at Bergamo in the opera Stella di Napoli (18J5). She further appeared at Milan in Lucrezia Borgia (1856), in Paris in Don Giovanni (1859), in London in Robin Hood (1861) and in New York in La Traviata (1862). Loss of voice due to an illness obliged her to leave the operatic stage in 1862 and for some years she taught singing in New York, but in 1873 she came to England and began a long dramatic career, appearing first at the Theatre Royal, Manchester, as Lady Macbeth. In March 1874 she first appeared in London in The Prayer in the Storm and later played with Charles Wyndham in The Hunchback and at Drury Lane as Rebecca in Ivanhoe (1875). Her most popular success was as Stephanie de Mohrivart in H. C. Merivale's and F. C. Grove's Forget-Me-Not, produced by herself at the Lyceum theatre, London, Aug. 21 1879, and subsequently played over 2,000 times all over the world. Increasing years found her talents as an actress in full vigour, specially in Shakespearean parts, and as late as 1920 and 1921 she repeated her old roles of Volumnia in Coriolanus and Margaret of Anjou in Richard III. at the " Old Vic " theatre in London. On her 84th birthday, March 27 1921, she was created D.B.E. She published a volume of reminiscences (with Richard Whiteing), Before and Behind the Curtain (1918).