Ada Baker

Baker was born on 11 December 1866 in Strawberry Hills as the ninth child of English-born parents: George Frederick Baker (c. 1827 – 1900), auctioneer, and Sarah Wilkinson Baker, née Epsley (died 1885).[1] The family moved to Wagga Wagga where her father purchased the Pastoral Hotel and worked as its manager.[2] At the age of 15 she started giving music classes to fund her own singing lessons in Sydney.[1] She raised £50 for Wagga hospital[1] and £24/15/6 to the Lord Mayor of Sydney for survivors of the shipwreck of the Ly-ee-moon off the Green Cape Lighthouse.[3] In September 1884 she sang in the role of Lily in a cantata, Flower Queen, at the Freemason's Hall, Wagga Wagga alongside Charles Henry Hall, who sang as the Recluse.[4]

Bondi Aquarium c. 1891

Baker moved back to Sydney in late 1886 to have piano lessons with Victor Benvenuti and singing lessons by Albert Fisher.[5] During the same year, she participated in a number of Promenade concerts, held at the Exhibition Building which was situated in Prince Alfred Park, Surry Hills. She received favourable reviews, with The Evening News writer praising her debut performance:

Miss Baker possesses a voice of rare quality, good range, and sings with the ease and grace of a natural artiste and a cultivated vocalist. Her style is marked by fascinating refinement, her intonation is perfect; her enunciation distinct, and as a ballad singer she bids fair to take place in the front rank of Australian vocalists.[6]

She performed in another two concerts and for her second concert The Sydney Morning Herald reporter described: "The palm must be given to Miss Ada Baker, who appeared for the first time at these concerts. She possesses a voice of rich calibre; the lower notes are deliciously liquid, the upper ones of full power, so that she fills the building with ease."[7]

Baker as a member of Harry Rickards' Company, Perth, July 1898. When the company returned to Sydney, Baker remained in Perth.[8]

Baker married former cast mate Hall, now a law clerk, on 23 April 1887 at the Congregational Church, Surry Hills. According to Baker, Hall had married her reluctantly – she had directed her brother to "break his head" if he did not.[9] The couple had two children: Beatrice in 1887 and Vera in 1889.[1] Being married and a mother did not stop Baker from continuing as a teacher and performer. In 1887 she had sung in three concerts at Bondi Aquarium (at Tamarama).[note 1] In October 1890 she was in Henri Kowalski's "Grand Concert" at Centennial Town Hall as the lead soloist, singing Gioachino Rossini's "La Carita".[10] She finished 1891 in the Christmas pantomime playing Zorilda in Sinbad the Sailor.[11]

Between 1891 and 1893 Baker toured India and China with the Willard Opera Company, playing lead for three years in a series of Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas, and "created something of a stir in the part of Hollee Beebee" in a rival opera, The Nautch Girl.[12] Decades later she recounted how she gave a concert to the Maharaja of Mysore (though she also stated that it was the Maharaja of Cooch Behar).[13][14] She recalled that during the concert only six people were in the direct audience, and that though she could not see any women of the court she could hear them. She also claimed that after the concert she was granted the privilege of riding on the Maharajah's elephant.[13][14]

Upon her return from overseas, Baker performed in a hospital benefit at the School of Arts in North Sydney,[15] and in August 1894 joined Harry Rickards' vaudeville company at the Tivoli Theatre.[16] She applied for divorce from Hall in 1897, on the grounds of desertion since 1891. During the court case, her lawyer revealed that Hall had been convicted of embezzlement and imprisoned.[17] She had continued her teaching and singing after the wedding and claimed that Hall had not financially supported her nor their children.[17] It was alleged by Hall's lawyers that Baker had committed adultery with her cast mate Harry Fitzmaurice, which she denied. The judge found that there was no evidence of desertion and no evidence that Baker had been unfaithful to her husband, so dismissed the case.[9][18] In the era of at-fault divorce – Australian enacted no fault-divorce in 1975 – if neither party could prove fault in the marriage by the other, then it would not be granted. Baker and Hall never formally divorced although they remained separated. Hall died in 1937 in Sydney.[1]

Advertisement announcing Ada Baker's intentions to stay in Perth to teach singing.[19]

During July and August of 1898 Rickards' Tivoli company, including Baker, played in Western Australia. When the company returned to Sydney, Baker remained in Perth.[8] There she worked as a singing teacher,[20] and performed with the Fremantle Orchestral Society, the Perth Musical Union, and the Lyric Club.[1][21]

Baker, in December 1898, sued the proprietors of The Continental Gardens for £5 over lost wages. The case centred around her assertion that when signing her contract she had told them she could not travel. However the company advertised performances at the goldfields in the Kalgoorlie and Coolgardie regions with Baker prominently billed. When Baker learned of this, she produced a medical certificate testifying she was too sick to travel. She denied knowing what opposing counsel meant that this was "a Coolgardie or Kalgoorlie reason" for not going. The defendants counter-claimed that Baker knew of the travel arrangements and her non-attendance resulted in financial and reputational disadvantage. They produced a witness who said that Baker had said it would inconvenience her singing business if she was to go to the fields. The magistrate was unconvinced by Baker's claims of illness and determined that the medical certificate was provided to avoid attending the fields. Hence decided to find against Baker.[22]

When Baker left Western Australia in 1907 to go back to Sydney she had built a solid reputation, with The Bunbury Herald describing her as "perhaps the best mezzo soprano vocalist in the State."[23] Years later her achievements and performances in Sydney were reported in the West Australian press. Hall, her estranged husband, had been living in Western Australia by that time. Despite Baker not arriving in Perth with him nor living with him, the Truth reported that "there seemed no regret for 'the man she had left behind her.'"[24]

Baker returned to Sydney in December 1907,[25] and her first reappearance in the city was for the Highland Society early in the following year.[26] She formed a new juvenile choir at Nicolson and Co., a piano importer in George St, Sydney.[27][28] By February 1908 she had enrolled over 60 students, and their first concert in mid-year was a benefit for Perth Children's Hospital, where they raised over £42.[29][30][31] By March of that year she had re-commenced teaching singing to young students, in Marrickville,[32][33] with the first concert on 19 June 1908 at St James Hall, in Phillip Street, Sydney.[34] From this time that she became known as Madame Ada Baker, its earliest known press reference was in The Sunday Times in August 1908.[35]

Baker arranged music for and led the St Cecilia Ladies' Choir in Pymble,[36] where she raised £1000 for the local branch of the British Red Cross Society during World War I.[1][37] The Sydney Morning Herald said that "Madame Ada Baker's Pymble Cecilia Ladles' Choir can fairly claim to be the original 'All-Girl' Patriotic Entertainers."[38] The choir performed a variety of concerts, including the play The Princess of Poppyland, by C. King Proctor,[note 2][39] and the cantata The Hours, by Shapcott Wensley.[40]

Baker was a prolific fund-raiser; including for the Sydney Hospital,[41] the Protestant Orphan's Fair,[42] the Callan Park Hospital for the Insane,[43][44] the Sydney Mission to Seamen,[45] the Sydney Night Refuge for destitute men,[46][47] and the Royal Alexandra Hospital for Children,[48] Baker enthusiasm when raising funds for the Rachel Forster Hospital for Women and Children, had her made a life governor in 1927.[1] From 1925 to 1932 she raised £500 for a permanent cot.[49][50] In 1932 she raised a further £140 for that hospital.[51]

Baker also arranged and performed in numerous concerts, recitals and eisteddfods,[52][53] including a performance of Stephen Vost Janssen's concert The Rajah's Ruby (1921)[54] and operetta The Lucky Dream (1930),[55] Arthur A. Penn's light comic opera In Old Havana (1928)[56] and The China Shop (1937),[57] Franz von Suppé's opera Boccaccio (1933),[58] Paul Lacôme's opéra comique Ma Mie Rosette (1935),[1] and Robert Planquette's opéra comique Les Cloches de Corneville (1939).[59] Starting in mid-1925,[60] Baker arranged radio programmes and had her juvenile students broadcast over the medium, chiefly on 2FC.[61]

Baker continued working throughout her life and remained involved in teaching children to sing. In March 1933 she was elected to the executive of the Australian Music Teachers' Alliance[63] and on 25 November was elected vice-president.[64] She was re-elected to this position in 1934[65] and 1935.[66] She gave two lectures for the alliance: the first in July 1934 was "The Training of Children's Voices"[67] and the second in August 1938, was on English music of the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries.[68] By 1939 she had become an active member of the Nothing Under Seventy club, whose members were seventy years of age and above, regularly performing and undertaking charity work with other members.[14][69]

She continued to raise funds for charity. In 1945, after one of her grandchildren died while serving in the RAF,[70] she set-up the "Grandmothers' Victory Bond League" to fund Australians in the Second World War. This, she said, would "give grandmothers a chance to do what they can to help fill the Third Victory Loan."[71] Baker worked till she was 82, but retired after she was injured in a motor vehicle accident.[72]

Upon her retirement, over 60 past and present students arranged a testimonial concert at Sydney Town Hall on 14 July 1949, but Baker was too ill to attend.[72] She died at her Pymble home on 24 July 1949. Services were held at St. Swithen's Church in Pymble, and she was interred at Northern Suburbs Crematorium.[73][74]

Ada Baker Street in Forde, Australian Capital Territory is named in her honour.[62]

• Ada Baker at Find a Grave